24,000 Illegal Votes, Trump’s Foreign Fumbles, GTA 6 Leaks, and the Truth About U.S. Election Integrity | Tom Bilyeu Show

What's up, everybody—welcome to another episode of the Tom Bilyeu Show Live. We are living in a wild moment of history where global politics, technology, and culture seem to collide in the most unpredictable ways. Many people want to believe our institutions are rock solid, that voter fraud is a myth, media integrity is a given, and the incentives baked into our systems won't be abused. I hate that idea. The reality is far messier, and when incentives exist without safeguards, chaos is never far behind. Today, we're diving deep into everything from explosive new reports on noncitizen voting and the consequences for the integrity of our elections, to Trump’s unpredictable foreign policy shake-ups, to the culture wars raging in the video game industry and the viral leaks of Grand Theft Auto 6. We’re going to question everything, including our own biases, and dig into why our systems break down—and what it takes to build something better. If you want to see me confront my own beliefs, challenge both the left and the right, and grapple with what it means for the future of America, stick around. This is that episode. Let's get into it. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show: https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: Cash App: Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/v6nymgjl#CashAppPod *Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N. A., pursuant to a license from Visa U. S. A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosure. Quince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpod Whatnot: Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Surfshark: Go to https://surfshark.com/TOMBor use code TOMB at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark! ATT Business: Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com http://business.att.com Horizon.ai: Go to https://horizon3.ai/IMPACTTHEORY and request your free NodeZero demo. No commitment required. Results in hours, not weeks. Quo: Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impact Incogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impact Pique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impact Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom, Bill, you show live. We are living in a crazy world, boys and girls. Trump didn't like South Korea's refusal to join us in Iran. So now he's cozying up to an insane dictator in North Korea. I would not believe this if it were satire, but nonetheless, it's real life.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Trump also just announced that the Strait of Hormuz is now US territory. We did it. We're going to discuss what's likely to happen next. Dude, this is, we're back to gallows humor, Drew. We're back to gallows humor. All right. Historic analysis is indicating that China's economic and demographic decline is likely to lead us to war. We're going to do a deep dive on that live today. That one, you are definitely not going to want to miss. It's a whole idea that actually directly counters my belief about the U.S. city's traps. If you want to watch me confront my own belief system and see how it's changing over time. This is that moment. The Census Bureau just released a bombshell report showing at least 24,000 illegal votes have been cast in US elections.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  And there are still 32 million more votes left to assess to see. So I imagine that that number is going to climb even higher. The US is being accused of stealing Venezuelan gold. The question is, are they actually, or is this, as I think it is, a distraction from something far worse? That the US is actually doing. GTA six, they had a fresh round of leaks and the manifesto from the hacker has to be heard to be believed. There is a real cultural moment, a battleground that is playing out in the video game industry. And it is getting very aggressive. So we're going to be looking at that one. All right.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  The Census Bureau, man, they ran 2020 voter records against federal citizenship files of the first 128 million records. More than 24,000 belonged to non-citizens at the time they cast a ballot. So 32 million records still left unprocessed. So you can expect this to get worse. Now, this is not registrations. These are actual ballots that were counted. So these are real illegal votes, the very thing that people were telling you isn't happening. It's actually happening. Drew and I have been in sort of a silent battle behind the scenes about this. This is a particular thing for me. I am on fire for all of this. And Drew kept saying, listen, anecdotal evidence is not the same as data.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Although I really do believe that there is something to, the saying is that the plural of anecdote is not data. But I actually think that there's some BS behind that. I think that's precisely what data is. It's formalized anecdotes finally coalescing into something that you can show a repeatable pattern. But nonetheless, this really does hit a new threshold for what we can actually verify. Now, non-citizen voting in a federal election is already a felony. But are we treating it as such? As you guys, if you've been following me for a while, you know that I'm very heated about the way that things are done here in California. We're not the only place that does it. I know Minnesota also has very lax ID requirements.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  But in the state of California, it is actually illegal to ask somebody to show ID when voting. That's already crazy. So that is somebody saying, hey, let's make this easier for the fraud to happen. On top of that, there are all kinds of things that they do where you can use a voucher system. So one person can vouch for, I forget how many, but it's like 18 people. You can vouch and just say, yeah, yeah, they are who they say they are. And so you can walk up in California and as long as you know somebody's name that is a registered voter and you're willing to sign. You can vote. And of course, everybody kept saying this isn't actually happening. And now we're finding out this is actually happening. You have people that should not be voting that are actually voting.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  The Bureau linked voter files against USCIS ICE and social security records. Mexico led the country of birth list. So you've got roughly 3,800 of the illegal votes being cast were cast by people that are from Mexico. Followed by Canada, by the way, the Philippines, Jamaica, Germany, the UK. Around 7,000 records have no country data at all. So we'll see where those end up coming from. Now, the thing that the Bureau didn't publish is the immigration status breakdown. So please keep in mind that this ties back to, um, these are non-citizens voting. So when we talk about what do we need to do to shore this up? And people saying, you've got to prove that you're a citizen.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, you can't even rely on a government ID for that. Many states have already watered down the, like a California state driver's license does not mean that you're a citizen of the US. You can get that in some places regardless of your status, whether you're legal, illegal, doesn't matter. There are places that are pushing to get people those IDs. So that doesn't work. So we need something to prove that people are citizens. So take my wife, for instance, who cannot vote, doesn't vote, even though she's lived in America legally for over 20 years. But nonetheless, is not a citizen and should therefore not be voting in these elections. And what we're finding is that people actually are.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Now, in the fullness of time, I imagine that we'll actually get the answer to the immigrant status of the people that have been voting. At least if we're able to identify exactly who they were. So I don't know if the 7,000 people were because they're sort of mystery question marks, or if we know who they are. That data just hasn't been aggregated yet. We'll see. So it's still early days. But I really believe as we look closer and closer at fraud, at voter fraud specifically, that we're going to find that all of these things that we were told are not actually happening are in fact actually happening. Because the incentive system exists and the ability to do it exists. And anytime that you create an incentive structure and there are no safeguards, you're going to get that thing. That, that is just how these incentives work.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  And later today, we're going to be, hopefully we'll get to some DS, a DSA interview that I thought was very telling with the co-chair. And when people say that they're thinking through something from first principles and they don't mention incentive structures. And they don't mention that when there are incentive structures and nothing physically stopping people from doing it, that they will in fact do it. That you can follow that literally from first principles, then they're not being honest. And so when you look at voter reform needs from first principles, and you acknowledge that when you have access plus incentive, you are going to get that behavior.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  And so for me, it was literally just a matter of time that this was going to start coming out. And I think that this probably will be the beginning of something that will find more and more of this stuff. Now, why does all of this matter? This matters because everybody that votes illegally is watering down your vote. And at the end of the day, we are a republic. We are not a true democracy for the better, by the way. That is a battle for another diatribe, but we are a representative democracy that is, uh, making sure that people's voice can be heard at the ballot box. And when you're allowing people to come into your country to vote illegally, now that begins to water down your actual vote.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  And I know that there was a lot of cultural energy from the far left on this idea that borders themselves are somehow oppressive.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  You must understand that the first order of a government is to provide for the safety of the people within their country. And if you have a whole bunch of people pulling in opposite directions, you begin to lose that high trust society. That begins to break down. You now have people abusing the system, which is exactly what I think is going to come out more and more, that the fraud in America is just absolutely rampant, because you don't have people that are buying into the American system, because we are not putting up. And I use this word somewhat to get people's attention, but we don't have discriminatory borders that say this person can vote, that person cannot vote, so that we can maintain a cohesive identity. If you do not have a cohesive identity, you don't have a functioning

• 9:35Speaker 00

  society. And I do not understand how people don't look around the world and see how hard it is to create a high functioning society, how difficult it is to maintain that high functioning society, how much soft things like trust, social cohesion, play in that. And so when we look at the fact that people are removing the things that would stop somebody from voting illegally, and we create through social programs, the incentive to come in illegally and vote to ensure that you get a bigger and bigger base of welfare options, that that is obviously going to play out, that people are going to race down that path,

• 10:16Speaker 00

  that that is going to happen, and we're seeing that more and more. So to plant a very simple flag, what I believe is happening is there is a massive amount of fraud, there is a massive amount of corruption, there is a massive amount of voter fraud, and that this is going to be revealed over time as we look more and more closely at this, in the same way that I hope people were aghast when Doge first opened, and we saw some of the just absolutely insane things that were being done with people being able to sign off on funds without having to account for where it's going. I mean, that's absolutely insane to not even require that people say, these funds are for this thing, that there was

• 10:57Speaker 00

  no text field that was mandatory to fill out. I mean, that's just absolute insanity. And this all ties back to what J D Vance was saying about the exorbitant privilege of being the reserve currency puts people over time in this very, it's not lazy, but you get very undisciplined about everything. You get undisciplined about your finances, you start saying yes to everything, because you don't have to be in any way, shape or form disciplined. And when that discipline goes out the window, then you start the long and steady march to empire decline. And empires in decline start acting crazy. We're going to talk about that when we get to China. This stuff matters.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Okay, let's talk about what this is and what this is not. I want to just make sure that we are clear about what this report has released. Now, the report is very specific by saying non-citizen. It does not say illegal alien. It does not say illegal immigrant. The reason I'm making those two distinctions is because Lisa is a great example. If somebody has a green card, but they did not fulfill their nationalization oath, which means they didn't, they are a lawful permanent resident, and they try to vote, they will be counted here. They're searching the federal databases. So this is anybody that has a social security number, anybody that has an ITIN, anybody that is federally registered visas in both school visas, travel visas, immigration visas, green cards I mentioned already. So I just

• 12:29Speaker 01

  want to make it very clear that these are people who are permanent residents, who are then getting cross-checked around citizenship pool. And then after that cross-check, they are then checking, has this person been officially nationalized yet? If that answer is no, they are non-citizen. If that answer is yes, they are a citizen. I'm gonna click that box. The reason I want to give that specification is because it's very easy in this moment to be like, see, they're coming over the border and they're giving them a ballot, or they're ballot harvesting in Mexico and they're mailing them to California. That is not necessarily true. And I also want to

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Well, so in fairness, you're making a very fair point. I think that that's wonderful. At the same time, I want to make sure that we put the similar caveat, which is we don't know that these aren't illegal aliens. So right now, the document does not give a detailed breakdown of whether these are just non-citizens, and these 100% of them were all here legally, or if these were some mix of the two, which I imagine is precisely what you're going to find, that it is some mix.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  The sources that they are coming from are from federal sources. So if they have a person sourced in America, then you wouldn't be illegal, because then you wouldn't register.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  But are you saying that only people, the only people that have social security numbers are here illegally?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  I'm not saying the only people that have social security numbers are illegal. I'm saying everybody that is

• 13:41Speaker 00

  Right, but you could then be in the federal system, even though you are here illegally.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  You can't get a social security number if you are here illegally. You either have to go into the visa process.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  I'm saying that there is already, and fact-check me in real time, because if I'm wrong, then I'll just say, oh, yes, I was wrong about that. But it is my current understanding based on things I have read, that I may be misremembering, but things that I have read, that there are for sure illegal aliens who have been given social security numbers.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  It's either a work authorization, or I think it's an ITIN, I N I T, ITIN number, something like that. But it's a separate classification number.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Ryan's gonna fact-check us, but you're saying what this data says, which is not what I found in my research, but you're saying the data very clearly states that this is 100% people here that are legal.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Everybody here that is already federally in a federal mandate. The reason I'm making this designation is because there is an assumption, a lot of times when we have this conversation,

• 14:40Speaker 00

  Yes, this is my assumption.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  That people are coming over the border with no federal registration, we don't know where these people are, and they're going to the ballot box. And what I'm saying is you can't just walk into a federal, you can't just walk into vote, you have to be registered, you have to be on the list. Now, those people are registered in

• 14:54Speaker 00

  So this is what I was trying to cover. And so there are two things that are on the table right now. There's the point you're trying to make, which I think is actually a worthwhile point, we should keep going down that path. Then there is the single sentence that you just said now, which is that you can't just walk in and vote, even though you're an illegal alien, which I did address in my opening thing, you may disagree with my facts. I'm talking about, let's stick to California, because I know California better. So in California, it is illegal to ask somebody for their ID.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Yes, but you also have to have a voter ballot.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  So I can walk in, and all I have to do is know the name of somebody who is registered, and then I'll be able to vote, no problem, there will be no friction whatsoever. You agree with that, right?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Okay, so now there's nothing stopping an illegal thing from happening. So then we go, well, people aren't going to do the illegal thing. We've seen plenty of evidence.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  You're just saying you're voting for somebody. You're not saying you're illegally voting. Because you're, what you're saying right now is, you're, so you're saying, I could walk in and say, I'm Tom Bilyeu, I live here, I should be able to vote now. And they'll say, okay, Tom, here's your ballot.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Correct. But I'm also saying that somebody else could walk in and say, I'm Tom Bilyeu, and they would not ask them to show ID. So as long as you know the name of somebody who is registered to vote, you are going to be able to vote.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  And then on the back end, they'll have three Tom Bilyeu votes from three different people. And then Tom Bilyeu's vote will be stricken from the record.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, so let's presume that some of that will be that, and those will get thrown out, no problem. But some of it is going to be, I know the little old lady in my building is never going to vote, and so I'm going to go use her information to vote.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  And so they're already finding that people are doing this. They're already finding that people are registering to vote that are illegal. They tell the person, I am not here legally, can I still sign up? And they say, hey, you're gonna have to sign a document that says that you are legal. So we know that there are places, they've been caught on camera, saying that, hey, you gotta sign the thing, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't real. But they, even though that person has just said to them, I'm not here legally, they will still give them a registration form. And so they're like, you gotta sign it, so just make, so it's like, listen. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

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• 20:24Speaker 00

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. The, there is nothing stopping people from doing this. We are already finding that people are voting illegally. Maybe they're all true. They're here legally. They're just non-citizens. So we know that people cast illegal votes. We know that people register even though they're not legal. Hey, Tom, it's just anecdotal. It's, you know, only the, the, the three people that got caught on camera doing it. They're the only three that have ever done it. Get the fuck out of here. If you want to understand how I'm parsing this information, I look at that and I'm like, yes, you have made it so easy to go in and get registered, even if you're illegal.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  You have made it so easy for somebody to say that they're somebody else, even if they're not. We've had people on the voter rolls that are voting even though they're dead. We've had people on the voter rolls where you go knock on their door and say, hey, you, you ma'am, have voted in, you know, whatever, eight of the last elections. They're like, I haven't voted once in my life. So they either are so riddled with Alzheimer's that they're going out and voting and just don't remember, or someone is using their information to vote on their behalf. And I'm just saying, I have a feeling, and it is just a feeling. I have a feeling that we can all ignore because emotions don't matter. But I have a feeling that you're going to find that this is going to more and more, as we look more and more closely at this, we're going to find more and more illegal votes.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  So you and I have been having a private battle and you, you have been amazing. I want to let the record reflect. You came to me and said, hey, I want to make sure that you saw this thing, which is at least in very minor part, I think you would say, a vindication of my stance. And so Drew, as always, is intellectually honest. For whatever beef anybody may have with you, no one can say that you're not honest, and that's important for me to say.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  I appreciate it.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  So, uh, but nonetheless, it was at first, hey, that's just anecdotal. Okay. Well, now it's real and I'm, again, it's just a feeling. We will need the data to keep coming out. But I believe, just as I am one step closer to being vindicated now, I think there will be more steps and more steps and more steps because thinking from first principles, you realize if you make it very easy to abuse the system and you create an incentive or an incentive exists to abuse the system, then the system's going to be abused. So it's like, kids, what, what are we doing? So this is where we'll see in the fullness of time, this all needs to come out.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  We need to be looking at this stuff. But what I would beseech anybody that can hear my voice right now is where you see an incentive system and nothing is being done to block it, and that incentive system creates a real consequential problem. We should all be saying, hey, let's shore that up. Even if we don't have overwhelming evidence that this is a problem, let's shore it up. It's consequential enough. Now, if something isn't consequential, I get why people just say, listen, this is going to fall low on my priority list. But ooh, buddy, protecting the integrity of your elections when you are the wealthiest nation on earth and everybody is trying to get to your country and everybody would like some of them free handouts. And as a culture, we are sliding towards the give me more free shit, which is what every empire does.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  And guess what happens to every empire when they stop being disciplined and they say, give me more free shit? They collapse. And so I'm just saying, man, we are racing towards empire collapse. Tick tock, baby. You are on, bro. I, I still stand by my nine-year timeline. It was 10 a year ago. It's now nine. We are not moving in the right direction.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  I have the fact checks if y'all want them.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  So first fact checked is regarding the social security numbers. And then the next one is California's voter process. So I'm going to go through both of them.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  So we'll start with the social security numbers. Both of you are technically correct. So the Social Security Administration obviously doesn't give undocumented migrants social security numbers. That's not how that happens, but they do get them through like what Drew is saying. They're given specific permission to work by the Department of Homeland Security. And then the most common ways undocumented immigrants have social security numbers are both fraudulent documents and expired visas. And so fraudulent documents, at least I can speak from a Texas perspective. Most of the illegal immigrants in Texas fake their papers because there's just an underground industry for it. You know, that being said, most of the people doing that are just doing their day-to-day lives, but, and then expired visas. So people holding on to the things that allow them to be here.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  So that's the social security thing. Y'all were both kind of right. Points to the one lane. And then.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Real fast as an orienting mechanism to, so I can understand your worldview. What's your take on what they're now calling crimes of necessity?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Crimes of necessity. I think, I don't know why we need to go into this, but if we were going to.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Because you made a single sentence that was like, hey, I just want to make sure that everybody knows that they're really just going about their daily lives and that's why they have a fraudulent social security number.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think crimes of.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  Now I want to know if we're, if your belief system spills over into crimes of necessity.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Fall for the trap, right? Don't fall for it. It's not a trap, but I'll give my honest answer. I think crimes of necessity are still crimes and should be punished as crimes. But I'm not going to hate someone committing a crime of necessity as much as a murderer. And I think that's a fair take.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Very reasonable. I don't have any beef with that.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Now for the California voter identification, how this process works, and I'm a Texas boy, so our process is different. I have to hand my driver's license in when I go. But for California, which y'all voted, so correct me if I'm wrong in this. Basically you have to sign something and they compare your signature to the digital registration. And the key exception is if you're a first time voter and you didn't have like a license on record or an ID number from California or your social security number, you have to present that when you're there.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  So they'll compare. You have to present that when?

• 26:27Speaker 02

  If you're first, like if you, if you're a first time voter who didn't put that in there, like who didn't have that on record. That's the time they're allowed to ask that kind of thing.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Meaning, are you registered or not registered?

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Registered by mail and did not provide a driver's license number, California ID number, or the last four digits of your social security number at registration. Federal law, HAVA, requires you to show identification the first time you vote. So that's the one instance they can't ask for ID. I was just adding that extra.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Wow. Will you do a search, do a search to see if that's actually enforced?

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Oh, and you can do like a utility bill. I didn't know that. Texas didn't, I don't think, allow like utility bills and, and rent. What was the question? Sorry.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  You can, sorry, you can do a utility bill instead of showing ID?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  This is like for first time, it says acceptable ID in that case can be a photo ID, driver's license, passport, et cetera, or a document showing your name and address, utility bills, bank statements, government checks, et cetera.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  You look at that and you're like, this is locked down.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  I mean, to me, it's like, we just, there's less than 1% voter fraud in America.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  There's less than 1% voter fraud that's already been documented and shown. I will give you that.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I'm saying, are you asking my take? Are you asking for like people in general?

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Cause here's, here's what I think is far more likely, given the number of videos I've seen people record at registration offices, the number of videos I've seen people record actually going to the ballot box, my own experience going to the ballot box. They don't ask for shit. And in California, maybe minus this one caveat, it is, it is illegal to ask for somebody's ID.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Well, that's because they got the signature. So I think that's the, like a normal voting process, they show your signature, right? Like you sign something and then they compare it to your registration.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  They don't do shit.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  That's what this is saying. This is saying you give your name and address to a poll worker who looks you up in the roster of registered voters for the precinct. If they find you and you haven't already voted, you sign the roster next to your name and your signature is compared to the one on file.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  Look up, can somebody vouch for the identity of a voter?

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Vouch for, in California?

• 28:34Speaker 00

  It's California and/or Minnesota.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Can I just say California for the sake of?

• 28:39Speaker 00

  I would say California or Minnesota because I can't remember which one.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Minnesota has a James O'Keefe video, so we have to talk about Minnesota to back up the claims of the video. Otherwise the video will be thrown out of evidence. Well, I'm just saying like, are there processes different or are they similar?

• 28:52Speaker 00

  I would assume they're different, yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Cause I just wouldn't want the things to get mixed, but I'm asking both. We'll ask both.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Okay, so it's saying, the first thing it said is they handled it differently, but I'm gonna go to Google while this is processing.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wouldn't expect them to be the same exactly, but go ahead.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  California, no, there is no vouching system. California verifies identity through the registration process, and then it's just repeating the stuff I said earlier.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  So now I know that's bullshit, because in California, you can, if somebody is unable to sign, you can sign for them and say, yes, this is that person's ballot.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  That's for mail-in ballot. So they'll sign it, put it in a sealed envelope, and then you drop it in the mailbox or drop it off at a pilot.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Oh, and if someone can't, this is actually as is in California. If someone can't verify-

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Is that better?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Mail-in ballot, you have like the sealed envelope. So it's just like if you drop in, you drop off your mail-in ballot.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  So if Ryan gave me his mail-in ballot, it's sealed, it's closed, and all these other things, I can then drop it off with mine.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  And say, yeah, for real, for real, this was Ryan. You don't see a way that that could be abused.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  I can take somebody else's and sign their names and yes, submit it. Yes, I can do that.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  I mean, I think any system can be abused.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  But also, like, I have the Minnesota, if you want Minnesota.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  That's his whole point.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Because Minnesota does back here.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  It is possible that people can seal mail-in ballots and do that. Yes, that is-

• 30:09Speaker 00

  And then, sorry, you're saying the vouch-

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Minnesota part, yes, Minnesota has a longstanding vouching provision under Minnesota used for same-day election day registration. A registered voter can vouch for up to eight people, but someone who is vouched for cannot vouch for someone else. And the staff at residential facilities can vouch for an unlimited number of facility residents. The mechanics, the voucher must accompany the person to the polling place and sign an oath under penalty of perjury affirming that they're registered in the precinct or employed to the facility, and that they personally know the person resides in the precinct.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is utterly fascinating. So, boys and girls, the key takeaway, in my opinion, to all of this, at least for the three of us here on camera right now, is we are looking at the same facts and we see something so different. This is why, understanding that the vast majority of the human experience is perception, and it is almost impossible to ascertain what an actual fact is, because people will look at the same things and see something completely different. So I see a system designed to be a grease shoot for fraud. And you guys see, I don't want to put words in your mouth, you see something different than that.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  I see 24,000 from the Census Bureau out of 128 million. They got 32 million more to go. Let's see what that final number comes up to.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  There it is, boys and girls. There it is. Welcome to the human experience, everybody. If you're new here, this is how life works, man. Much to my dismay, all of life is interpretation. It's wild. Everything's perception. Okay, it is what it is.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  All right, we gotta jump over to Trump. Trump had a generational week this week, and it's only Wednesday. I want to start with the video, and then I'll go with the tweet, because the video at least makes a little bit more sense, and the tweet is too accusatory. I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt with this.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  True.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  And during my first term, they agreed to pay close to $3 billion a year for protection, because they essentially weren't paying. And I asked them to do that at my request. I said, "Not right." They weren't happy about it, but they agreed. I asked for $10 billion, and they were very unhappy. But we agreed for a short term, there would be $3 billion, and next year would go up, and the next year would go up. So they start paying for their protection. When the election was rigged and I ended up watching for four years and then coming back, I watched Biden rescind that $3 billion now for whatever reason. When I called recently, the president of South Korea, who I like, I think he's very nice, actually.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  But I called him, I said, "Would you like to give us a little hand? We don't need help with Iran, but if you'd like, give us a hand with Iran." He said, "No, thanks."

• 32:55Speaker 00

  I love the way he says that. That is so dumb. Hey, I really, you know what? It'd be, I don't need your help, but like, if you rolled up and you did help, like, that'd be cool. It's up to you, you know? I'm just saying, it's up to you.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I could carry the couch by myself, but if you're busy on Saturday, I could use a hand. No, I'm good, I'm good.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  You don't need to help, but like, if you're here.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  And if you don't, by the way, I'm going to your mortal nemesis, and I'm gonna start talking very highly of them. Oh, God.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  And then that leads us to the tweet. Based on my, so-

• 33:29Speaker 00

  This is Trump, just for the record, on Truth Social.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  The background is, South Korea was announcing military exercises on that day Trump tweeted, or Truth Social, I don't know what the verb is. "Based on my very good relationship with King John Un of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has long ago agreed to participate in joint military exercises with South Korea. These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States as usual, but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile to a country that as long as Donald J. Trump has been president, has been unthreatening and respectful. Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War Pete Hexef to substantially reduce the joint military exercises while somewhat unrelated. I recently asked the president of South Korea if they would like to join us in the denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran,

• 34:17Speaker 01

  and they said, "No, thanks. Thank you for your attention to this matter." President Donald J. Trump. He told on himself in the tweet.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  In unrelated news, and then he put it, a question mark, himself, in a parenthetical. So, while somewhat unrelated, question mark.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Or is it?

• 34:34Speaker 00

  "I recently asked the president of South Korea." Jesus. All right, so clearly, this is just some straight petty bullshit from Trump, who is trying to bully longstanding allies, acting as if the disintegration of globalism should be done via hand grenades. It is such a weird approach to the world, and maybe this works in the razor-d-elbow world of New York real estate, but when you start doing this on an international stage and you put yourself in a position where nobody wants to come to your aid, where nobody feels like they actually are an ally with you, like, look, I get it, I know that America, I forget if it was Kissinger, but somebody said, and I think it was Kissinger,

• 35:20Speaker 00

  that America has no allies, just interests. And I get it, but you've got to pretend like that's not the case. You've actually got to do nice things for people. You can't always just bully and push people around. Dude, this is one thing you learn as a business leader very fast. Yes, you might be the CEO, and yes, you can theoretically force everybody to do what you want, but let me tell you how poorly people will help you when they feel like there's a gun to their head, and how much extraordinary talent you can get from people when you show them you're such an incredibly important part of this, these are your contributions, you did that, that wasn't us. And so that country, that person, whatever,

• 36:03Speaker 00

  understands their story, their like self-narrative in the victory. If the self-narrative is, you're the fucking little guy and just go do what I say, this is where you get into A2 brute, where you're getting stabbed in the fucking back by somebody you thought was your friend. Yeah, because you clowned on them, you treated them like an asshole, you were abusive to them psychologically. You, like, I will just tell you, rule number one, never, ever, make fun of a man in front of his wife and kids. Never fucking ever. Dude, that guy will come for you. He will come for you in a thousand ways. They might all be subtle, they might all be backdoor, they might all be feminine, whatever, but that guy's gonna fucking come for you. And if you're the dumb asshole that runs around the world, essentially clowning on people in front of their own constituents,

• 36:49Speaker 00

  not thinking they're going to find a way to get back to you. Dude, this is the dumbest foreign policy I've ever heard in my life.

• 37:01Speaker 00

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• 37:46Speaker 00

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• 38:07Speaker 00

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. Some people have to understand, alright, this is my guy. And I'm gonna do things sometimes that are hard with my own voters. Because I understand that this relationship is important and we need to protect this. And that you're also gonna do some hard things like, hey, if we were actually going to bat for the Japanese yen because we actually gave a shit about Japan, that actually might not be a stupid move. Now, we're not doing it for that reason, so it probably is a stupid move, but... Sort of. I'm gonna set that aside. If we had pure intentions, it would do better things for the relationship. We do not have pure intentions, and so people are gonna feel that. And so, we are going from globalization where we were so dumb.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  And we pretended like, oh, we're gonna be holding hands forever. And now, we're in the opposite direction where globalism is breaking apart. And we're like, I can shoot anyone in the face that I want to, and everything is gonna be just fine. It's really stupid. Do you people not engage with other people? Is that the problem? Have you, do you not understand how people respond when you're unkind or you're cruel?

• 39:16Speaker 00

  By all means, there is a phenomenal quote from Churchill. You made enemies? Good. It means you stood for something. Great. If you've got a principle, somebody violates that principle, you're not afraid to say, hey, you violated my principle. These are gonna be the consequences, and you move on it, and you don't apologize? I love it. I'm here for that. But when you're just like, I'm going to get my way. I'm going to say, I don't really need your help, but I, you know, if you wanna help, that'd be cool. And then they're like, we don't wanna help, but thank you for asking. And then you start punishing them? Dude, it's so weird. It, it, it's weird very precisely because it will turn that person off. They will not want to help you. They will start acting spiteful.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Regardless of whether you're dealing with a leader of a nation, the leader of that nation is still human. And they will have resentment, and they will want to see you fail. And watching you struggle will become schadenfreude. And you've now given them a positive dopamine loop for you being in a dark place. Dude, you can do that with a handful of people, but you can't do that with everybody you come across. It's terrible fucking policy.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  To follow it up, he's playing all the hits today.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Trump just declared the Strait of Moos, new US territory. I think this was tongue in cheek. To his credit, I don't think he was actually being serious. But read the room, bro.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is one I, I really wanna look inside of his heart. If this were trolling that he could back up, then that would mean something. Given that this is trolling that he can't back up, and that he is setting himself up to be embarrassed over and over and over at this point. This is, in my opinion, very unwise trolling. This is precisely where you wanna be building alliances. You wanna be figuring out, what do people need? You don't wanna keep going. You know, we don't have, we don't need anything from this, so these guys are gonna have to go and do all of this on their own. You have to come across as a statesman, because listen, you overextended yourself. You played the aggressor here, and if you're going to be the aggressor, and you're not going to have people on your side,

• 41:27Speaker 00

  then you're gonna have to find a way to start digging out of that hole. And the way out of that hole is not to ratchet up, ratchet up, ratchet up the bully behavior. The way to get out of that hole is to get everybody together and say, listen, I made the move for this reason. We could not have a nuclear Iran. The initial salvo did not go the way that I wanted. It didn't happen as quickly as I would have liked it to. I'm now gonna run an anaconda strategy. And if you guys haven't heard this, I don't know if you can pull it up fast, Drew, but there's a guy named Victor Davis Hansen, who I think is, he's definitely partisan, but I think he's somebody that really does have a grounded take on what a wise strategy would be if you are the Trump administration.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  He's a little too between the lines, like maybe Trump is really brilliant in all of this. But if we're really running that strategy, then you've gotta articulate it to people. And you've gotta keep walking people through it. And if you can actually build a coalition by re-grounding yourself, Trump is able to ground himself. He's able to talk in a way that isn't just completely unhinged. And you're gonna have to build a coalition around that. Okay, listen, this is what we were hoping would happen. This is how far we actually got. They've buried a lot more things than we realized. The mosquito fleet is proving harder to address than we thought. We're working with internal weapons manufacturers like Lucky Palmer. We're developing a new type of ammunition, which is much cheaper to make.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  It's going to be able to be produced on the auto factory assembly lines. And so, that's going to help us return jobs, but it's also going to help us deal with this new style warfare. While I can't force Lockheed Martin and the other companies to license out their missiles to Ukraine, I am putting as much diplomatic pressure on them as I can. I would really like to see that. I would like to see America play this role where we're able to help people that are on the right side of history. We're able to help them stand up to the people around them. So just as we are going to defend Taiwan, we are going to defend Japan. If you haven't heard China, they're starting to talk real fucking crazy about Japan.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  So, we're gonna defend Japan, longstanding ally. You don't have to remind everybody about fucking Pearl Harbor.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  We're gonna defend our longstanding ally there. We understand the importance of Taiwan to everybody in terms of the modern world. And hey, while we believed it was our moral duty to ensure that Iran did not get nuclear weapons, we understand that this has made things far more difficult for a lot of people. And even though we don't need the, a lot of the resources that are going through there, we understand that they're very important to the rest of the world. We're gonna stand here, we're gonna fight this fight. Now, quietly behind the scenes, if you've gotta like, put a little bit more pressure on people, fair enough, man. But like, if you're coming across, he, he just, he's always gonna come across this way because it is his personality.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  But man, that's what he should be doing. And if he were doing the, the approach that somebody like Rubio is doing, where he goes and gives that speech several months ago, if you guys remember, to the European Union, and he was talking to them, he basically wanted to slap them around about like free speech and where the partnerships were going. And he did it in a way where he reminded them that in many ways, we're a child of this region. You guys are incredibly important. He gave them the vision of why they matter on the world stage, how important they are culturally. Now, they're way more likely to listen. But you've got to recognize the truth of human psychology, which is just something that Trump doesn't do.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  He's, he's got a very narrow band of cards that he likes to play, that have a lot to do with just carrot and stick over and over and over, with no like psychological, how does this nation see themselves as the hero? Like, this is sales 101. So, let's say I'm teaching an entrepreneur, and an entrepreneur comes to me and they say, hey, I'm trying to get XYZ thing done. The first thing I ask is, are you selling to individuals or are you selling to corporations? Tom, I'm selling to a corporation. Okay, great. It's a very different sales cycle. You've gotta think about, how do you make buying your product the thing that's gonna make that guy a hero inside of his company? If buying your product makes him a hero is likely to make him get promoted, you, you just sell around that.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  And as long as that is true, your sales are gonna be easy. But you have to understand, that guy probably doesn't give a fuck about your software. He wants to know how it's gonna help him. He wants to know how it's gonna elevate him in the company. People in countries are asking the same question. They've gotta turn around and talk to their constituents and say, we, no matter how small the country is, we're the good guys. We've got, we're doing this amazing thing, this Herculean lift, we're important on the international stage. If you don't give people that, they're gonna look for every reason to trip you up.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Did you hear about this Natalie Hart nonsense?

• 46:27Speaker 00

  No?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  With Trump?

• 46:28Speaker 00

  I don't even know what you're talking about.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  About his like assistant, who was like writing him love letters and all that? It's gossip. It's gossip. It's hearsay.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Hit me with it.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  But it's funny to me.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  So wait, this is one of his interns?

• 46:38Speaker 01

  This is one of his aides. One of his aides.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Should I be thinking Monica Lewinsky right now?

• 46:44Speaker 01

  This is the reason why. Remember when he switched planes? He left his press secretary, Rubio, all those people, she came with him.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  That's conspiracy theory. This is me 100% with my aluminum foil.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  Do we know that she went with him or that's just the rumor?

• 46:59Speaker 01

  No, no, yes. Thank you. Um, yes, confirmed that she went with him. And everybody's like, well, this is his aide, his closest, like, I'd rather have Pete head set than my secretary. You know what I'm saying?

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Especially if I'm in foreign tier hostile territory.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  But he couldn't let her. And then there is, there was a series of love letters.

• 47:17Speaker 00

  Okay, I need to know about these love letters because that, that's.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  There's only one that has quote, the one that has quote is, you're all that matters to me. I want you to bring joy. I want to bring you joy. And she's the one that writes his tweets in the documentary that came out. So it's like, everybody's been, all right. I'm, I'm gonna get more evidence. Let me get more rock. Cause right now it's just tweets and vibes and, you know, people are trying to run with it, but.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  You're all that matters to me. I, I hope she's single because if she's saying that shit and she's got kids and a spouse, that, that would be wild.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  In Trump's defense though.

• 47:49Speaker 00

  You're all that matters to me in this administration? That would be less, uh, unnerving, but this is interesting. Uh, this is interesting. You want to talk about human dynamics?

• 48:00Speaker 00

  Women love power, man.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  I was about to say, if Trump bagged her though, that is, that is a win.

• 48:03Speaker 00

  Bro, that'd be easy. That's a, a guy, the president of the United States is pulling from a very deep pool. A very deep pool, for sure.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Shout out to Trump.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  And he's wealthy, forget it. Like that, listen, this is just psychology.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  He won't have to grab her.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  Oh God.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  She'll be throwing it out of. Ha ha.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  Oh dear Lord.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  No, nothing?

• 48:27Speaker 00

  No.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  There's another quote for that one where he's like, I have money and power and the, the women will throw it at me. They throw, it's like, he said that about like, uh, there's a quote for everything with this guy.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  The bad news is that actually is really true. Now it isn't universal. It's not like every woman, but.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  But that's the thing, like, there's, there's differences in though, because just having money doesn't make you attractive. It's the power. Like you have to be able to wield that money in a way that elevates your status.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  Yes, I will grant you that, but if you are, I, I, if you have those resources and you're willing to spend it on that person, even if it isn't something that, um, makes you look good, think about Anna Nicole Smith. Uh, this is now a long time ago. I don't even know if Ryan knows who that is, but, uh, Anna Nicole Smith was married to a guy deep into his eighties. And he was, I mean, as far as I could tell, physically infirm. So it's not like, I imagine they were having sex, but he, she like, would dote on him and act almost like a nurse. And when you hear him talk about her, he talks about her like a drug. Like I need you around and you're so good to me and like you take such care of me. And so it was like, she was drawn to him for the cash.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  This was not somebody that, um, he was powerful or cool, or this looked good on her. In fact, it was one of the things that people threw at her all the time. Like you're a gold digger. Like it was much more an element of shame, the kind of thing you'd want to hide. Like, I mean, he was like the quintessential guy in the wheelchair who, he's 80 and he looks 130. I mean, it was just like rough, rough, rough. But when you go from the depths of poverty to being extraordinarily wealthy, because this guy's giving you God knows how much allowance, uh, I mean, unfortunately it gets you a long way. It's not going to buy you love, but it's certainly going to buy you companionship. So, yeah.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  Now, if you also have power and so you have wealth, power and man, if you've really got the trifecta and you're also good looking, sure. Now that person's going to be even higher on sexual market value. But the reality is access to resources is a real intoxicant, uh, for women who don't have their own access to resources from an evolutionary lens. It actually is logical. So I understand how we end up there. It doesn't make it any less icky. But yeah, if you want to understand how guys like that end up in that position where I, I, and I really do think from an evolutionary perspective,

• 50:52Speaker 00

  there's a reason that women look at looks less than men look at looks. And so the, like, I think guys, when you see the sort of underground cliche of the bodybuilder who's like with the old rich woman, that one, I think you're fighting evolution a lot harder than a woman who is with an old decrepit man.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  I feel like old women are hornier though than old men.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  That might be true, but I don't think that's what's going on in the bodybuilding community.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  So, I mean, jeez, you want to talk about a fractal, that'll get me in trouble. But yeah, uh, that one, I think is these guys are so obsessed with working out all the time. They just literally can't hold a job. This was something that you would see more back in the eighties.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  But yeah, they would, um, oftentimes the, oh God. So mental map, I have not studied this in any deep way, but the accusation was always basically these guys were, some percentage of them were gay. They were with a woman. She wanted companionship, emotional connection. He needed a place to live. He needed money so that he could just lift and do all that stuff. Uh, and so, uh, my instinct is those are different evolutionary pressures. They play out the same where it's like young, attractive person with older person, but I doubt that the majority of those were sexual relationships. Again, I have not done some deep dive, so I could very much be wrong on the reality of that.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  But knowing what I know about evolutionary pressures, that would make more sense.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Uh, last thing on the Natalie Harp thing, uh, shout out to Dr. James in the chat. Uh, I forgot about that one. When he was at Mar-a-Lago, they couldn't book her in the same like golf course, I guess. So she slept in the locker room.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  I think Trump just thinks it's Ivanka.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  So wait, why couldn't they put her in a room?

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Cause she's weird. Like she was like the love letters and stuff. So they, I guess for optics, they were like, we should separate them. And then she like slept in like the locker.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  Okay, that's getting weird. I'm gonna need some confirmation on that, but that's like.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  That's what I mean. It's like, it's like rumor sources. I'm like, I need, I'm waiting for like the Atlantic deep dive, but, uh, we're very early on. Uh, okay. Last Trump hit, um, Disney, ABC has filed a first amendment lawsuit against the FCC. ABC lawyers claim that Trump administration has attacked ABC's speech on multiple occasions, including the stories its journalists report and viewpoints its network programs airs. Over time, those attacks have escalated and expressed demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast license because of its speech. FCC sued, um.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, listen, let this play out in the fullness of time. This is exactly how the court system should work. If you've got, uh, an administration that's weaponizing the, um, different regulatory bodies against somebody, you want that to come out. You do not want the government to have unchecked power. This is one of the things that, um, drives me crazy about this moment in time is everybody wants to weaponize, whether it's the Department of Justice, whether it's, um, the FCC, that they are actively trying to browbeat their opponents. Uh, that very aggressively is coming from both sides of the aisle. They are trying to, um, just one up each other constantly leveraging the power when they hold it,

• 54:01Speaker 00

  acting like it is an existential threat to be out of power because it's becoming more of an existential threat to be out of power. So it's not like they're crazy. And the problem is with each election, this goes up and up and up. So this is why I really want Trump, I'm, oh God, I'm always conflicted with this, but I really want Trump to leave Obama alone. It's like, listen, I'm sure there were things done that we would not like if we looked too closely at, but to some point, at some point, the most important thing is that we find a sensible way forward where we're not weaponizing everything. But you're, you're never going to get to that state while you're locked in a populist moment, because it's not what the voters want. The voters want you to hate each other. The voters really do think the other side's an existential threat.

• 54:46Speaker 00

  And so now you get into this, it's going to be weaponized because that's what the voter wants to see. And so people need to remember Donald Trump was, um, summoned in a demon summoning circle. In the same way that the DSA was summoned in a demon summoning circle. This is what you get in a populist moment. And so now that you have these leaders, we all have to take responsibility that we pulled them forward. And I think people instead take the flip side. And there really is a, um, the great man theory of history. It's real. And so if there wasn't somebody like Donald Trump that could galvanize people the way that he did, it wouldn't have worked as well.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  Um, and you would just get degrees of efficiency. Take Biden. Biden was not able to galvanize his side in the way that Trump was able to galvanize his side. So I'm not saying that, that you, Trump is just an avatar and we're all to blame. But the reality is like, that person doesn't get called forth. That person, when they start hurling insults back in the day, we just wouldn't vote for them. Like there was a guy, I forget the guy's name. Maybe Ryan can find this for us, but he became known as like the howler or the shouter or something. So he was really trending well, I think for president, uh, maybe governor, but I think it was for president. And he gave the speech and he's like, we're gonna go from this city to that city, da, da, da. And he starts yelling.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  Oh, Howard Dean. Cause he goes, ah.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  And that literally ended his political career.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  That.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  That's all it took.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  Yelling, like being a little bit awkward ended his political career. And now.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Those were the good old days.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  Right? So now it's completely the opposite. So the more unhinged, the better. Uh, and so, yeah, unfortunately we need to stop weaponizing the different departments. So I'm glad to see these guys push back. I think that's an absolute must. This is how the court system is meant to work. Uh, and yeah, at least you can hope for a stalemate, even if you can't hope for a return to people's senses.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Bro to bro, as somebody who was, Obama's a perfect person to, I do like ACA. I think y'all are haters, but Obama did make the drone warfare thing. Obama did, um, open up the door to private credit bubble that we're in right now. Obama wasn't flawless. Yeah. I can admit that I liked what he did, but it might not have been the best presidency overall in totality with some of the down, like extreme conflicts, uh, effects. Trump is not having a good run this presidency. We gotta call a spade a spade.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  That's obvious.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Like, it's not, it's not cool. And I'm not gonna say that Kamala would have done it better. It's impossible to tell. But I would say, I'm not gonna project this on you, but would you be, say you are disappointed with the presidency and how it turned out so far?

• 57:29Speaker 00

  That's of course. Like that, um, so I tried to warn people at the beginning of this. If you think I'm supporting Trump, you're out of your mind. Um, I obviously, with my belief system, I don't think anybody will be surprised to hear that I think that a vote for Kamala would have been far worse. Uh, but there, your worst-

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Far worse?

• 57:49Speaker 00

  Far worse. Your worst is different. Remember, Drew, I know you don't like me.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Your worst is different.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  You don't want me getting in the loop. Uh, so I will simply say that Trump is trying to build a system where he'll win off of things that will make America stronger. When you start talking about controlling grocery stores, uh, from the top down, when you ran a president who obviously had dementia, uh, but your party got behind that, uh, they, they refer to themselves as the Politburo. So this is like, I don't even understand how people aren't radicalized by that. So the only way I can parse the world is that people

• 58:33Speaker 00

  have leanings at a temperament level. Because I lean right, I don't, um, I'm not as, I'm not as inclined to be animated by those abuses as I am the ones on the left, because they, I, I just, it, it's so crazy to me. But that's whatever. Now, when you get into like the actual policies of it all, it is self-evident to me that you have provably the most murderous ideology the world has ever seen, being put forward by people on the left. And I, I,

• 59:17Speaker 00

  every time we're prepping for an episode, I go through this weird cycle of, um, what the left is doing is so dangerous, I imagine myself for three hours just screaming into the microphone. And then I'm like, that would not be wise. And so I stopped myself from doing it. But-

• 59:33Speaker 01

  But the rise of the DSA wouldn't have happened if Kamala would have won.

• 59:36Speaker 00

  I disagree with you wholeheartedly. She, a thousand percent-

• 59:41Speaker 01

  They don't even endorse her. They don't even like her.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  So, understand that when you put people in power that are going to do more left-leaning things, what's going to happen to the economy? In my worldview, it's gonna break, right? So, the economy's gonna get worse, and they're going to keep letting people flood over the border. That is going to continue to put downward pressure on wages. It's going to put upward pressure on crime. Uh, all the incentive structures, the legal voting, the things that I'm worried about, those are going to increase. So now, the blue states have a bigger census, because more and more illegal immigrants are coming in, um, giving them the power to do that, to change the body politic of the entire nation. Uh, she

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  was floating the idea of we're gonna start doing the top-down control, that we're not going to let grocery stores set their own prices, we're gonna go after people for price gouging. All, all the lunacy, she is like, this is where people going, uh, the standard Democrat Party, they're fine, but the DSA, that's crazy. Watch the Democrat Party embrace the DSA, because that's already where the energy is.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Now, I don't think the energy was there during the election.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  So, I'll, um, I'll step on your side of the fence for a second, and I'll say, okay, Tom, here's what you're missing. That the mere fact of electing Donald Trump so energized the left, that if you had not given them that galvanizing force, then we wouldn't see the rise of the DSA on the left. And I'll say, there's a case to be made, we're never gonna be able to run the counterfactual, it's a very fair point. But I remember what it felt like before I had even heard the letters DSA put together, how, when I was looking at the fact that they called themselves the Politburo, which is what the, um, the Russians call themselves, the Chinese call themselves-

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Allegedly Biden's wife called them, called their-

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  No, they called themselves the Politburo, and I'm almost certain in writing, like, this isn't a Tom is making this up, or I believe some rumor I heard. So, they refer to themselves as the Politburo, which tells you where their ideology is. The things that Kamala was running on were nonsensical. She was a nonsensical candidate in terms of intellect. Um, you also have just playing out what they did with Biden, the number of people that came across the border, how that does things to the actual makeup of the country. Um, the, they were already talking, defund the police, they were already talking about, um-

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  I, I feel like that sound, I look at Kamala as Biden 2.0. And if we would have run a Biden 2.0 strategy, based on Biden's economy, and based on what Trump's economy in the first two years have been so far, I personally would have preferred Biden, based on the results that we're getting. What Trump said was great. Trump was, Trump sold it. He told us he was gonna do all the things.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  Right, but so here's, here's where this breaks down, and why I think people, um, the only right answer to this, which is why I'm never gonna be like, oh, I'm sad that I voted for Trump.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  I'm always gonna say the same thing. At that moment, here was the information that I had. I couldn't, like, if you could just run them both and go, okay, this is what you get out of Trump, this is what you get out of Kamala, and then I can judge and go, oh, we're gonna live through either this or this, that one's great. Like, I wouldn't have any problem voting for a Democrat.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  Great. Literally, I, I am not a Republican. I wanna be very clear. I know people get confused, because I say that my temperament leans right, but I mean that from an evolutionary standpoint, not from a party affiliation standpoint. I'm not a Republican, I will never declare myself a Republican. Nobody can assume I'm gonna vote for them because they're a Republican. Hell no. So, if we are honest, what we're looking at is, we got to see the first almost two years of a Trump presidency, so we know what that looks like. But now we're saying, oh, he said nice things, but then didn't do nice things. So, we're saying, it was a one-way decline. So now I'm saying, imagine you get the same thing.

• 1:03:49Speaker 00

  That the things Kamala says are the best it's gonna be, but it's actually gonna be a decline from there. Just like Biden ran on, hey, I'm working-class Joe from Scranton, I'm middle-of-the-road, uh, Democrat, and then became the most progressive president we've ever had since like FDR. So, it's like, well, I would assume that you're gonna get the same thing from Kamala.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Obama would get that label versus him, because Obama's actually passed universal healthcare.

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  I would have to go through and put together the case for that. I think, emotion.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  I think that that would be a very easy case to make, as it is something that I've seen over and over and over and over and over. Uh, but hey, maybe that's just echo chamber, maybe I find, oh my God, he was actually amazing. I doubt it, but it's certainly possible, and I'm happy to look at it.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  You got it. It's a TSMC, uh, facility, built up. The Chip Sack is winning. That was a great legislation for Biden.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  Hey, great. If that brought manufacturing to the US, I love it, I'm here for it. Uh, but again, I, I am literally scandalized in ways that I cannot say. So, um, I will often say to somebody who I have a big disagreement with, I want you to imagine me screaming. I'm not going to scream, because it's unhinged, but I, the, the, the intensity with which I feel the following statement, Drew, I want you to imagine me screaming.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  You had a president that had dementia. They knew he had dementia. They wanted somebody with dementia, so that the Politburo could actually run the country. That is immediately disqualifying. Love or hate Trump, he's actually the guy. He's the guy that you're engaging with. And so, um, I don't, that whole, like, blob, uh, bureaucrats, like, beginning to choke people out, also all the censorship stuff, I have a real, again, imagine me screaming, a real problem with that. I think it is psychotically dangerous. So, anyway, I think that they have been moving in the direction of the DSA for a long time, which is why they're having such an easy time getting that part of the wing energized, which is

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  why they're not shunning them and getting them out. Um, the, whatever brief civil war they were going to have over the DSA, they're going to lose. So, there is no energy in that. Nobody on the left is going to go to bat for, uh, the centrist Democrat routine right now, in the same way that traditional Republicans lost to the neg wing. So, it's like, it just, it is what it is. So, again, without actually running the counterfactual, the only thing you can say is, each side can only talk about, in terms of like, should you have voted for that or not, each side can only talk about what was known at that time. And so, I'm not going to now compare a known against an unknown, because we're all just going to fantasize, oh my God, that one would have been great, it would have

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  been so much better. We don't know that.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  True. Uh, okay, I'm gonna be honest. Um, the DSA is not beating these allegations, cuz, um, Gustavo Gordillo, when we actually covered his interview with Fox News a couple of weeks ago. Lives in a $1.5 million Brooklyn townhouse held through his parents' trust.

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  That's wild.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  And it's subject to the Mamdani Pira terre tax.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Also, he's registered as an electric, as a union electrician. It's from his family's engineering firm. Like, it just keeps going worse and worse. He's literally in like a Bed-Stuy neighborhood that's like historically black. So technically, he's the gentrifier that has like turned over the name. Like, it just keeps getting hit. Like, this is bad.

• 1:07:16Speaker 00

  Overproduction of elites, man. What, once you see it, you can't unsee it. These are a bunch of rich kids that can afford to be revolutionaries. And they are trying to break a system that has created more wealth than any nation has ever created in history. And they want to break it in the name of workers, but their party is only like 5% actually working class. The rest of them are upper class. Like, it's so crazy. And what's really wild is a lot of these people, like, this guy's born in Peru. How's Peru doing? Right? So you get these people whose parents fled a country. They come here, they raise their kid in the middle of wealth.

• 1:07:58Speaker 00

  And then that kid mistakes that for like this just eternal condition, adopts the Marxist framework of oppressed and oppressor. And it just becomes complete madness all the way down.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Six row, six bedroom townhouse in Brooklyn. Crazy.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  Bro. And what's crazy is it won't matter because all of the overproduced elites that are a part of the DSA movement, they all get it. And so this is part of the reason why people like Bernie Sanders no longer have a problem with millionaires because they themselves are wealthy. Bernie Sanders is a multi, multi, multi-millionaire. So it's like, bro, yes, you exist in a system that allowed for you to be successful. It's dope, celebrate it, don't be an asshole about it. Same thing with Hassan, man. Listen, I love that this kid has been successful. I hate the stuff he talks about, but it's awesome. He should be like an example for people of like how well something can go.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  So Laura Ingraham on Fox News, Hassan is a nepo baby, labazine, champagne, socialist. You live in a $3 million house, you got rich off capitalism, now you're railing against capitalism. And he replied, okay, I'm a class traitor now, but I want you to talk about this term class traitor of people who are, according to them, they are upper class, they are affluent, and they're going to the working class because they see that. Just because they're on that side of the fence, they shouldn't stay there. What do you like?

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  To understand this, you have to understand that the socialism is a movement of resentment. You absolutely cannot track their behavior if you don't understand that they are people that are full of resentment. They always thought they were going to be more important, that they were going to have more control. And now they're being iced out. They went, they got their degree and because they went, got their degree, did everything that they were supposed to do, and then got out. And they're an Uber driver. Now, all of a sudden, they're extremely pissed off, but their family has money. And so these guys have the ability to play around and to go to all these meetings and go to protest all the time. And instead of actually going out into the workforce, trying to build something, trying to do something great.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  And that resentment allows them to turn a blind eye to the fact that they've been, in the case of Hassan, that they've been successful, that they've been able to do these things. Or that if you want to look at him from the perspective of his family was already doing well, and so he had a leg up. And so now he's quote unquote, class trading. The only way that that would make sense is the, the question everybody should ask is, okay, everything that Hassan is putting forward, he could do right now. But he doesn't do that right now. And so if he were saying, well, there's a bunch of people that helped me build my company, so why aren't they all getting as wealthy as I'm getting? And he doesn't have an answer for that.

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  Why am I the one in the fancy house and none of the other people that have helped me build my, you know, my thing up? They're not doing as well as I'm doing. But he could do that. We've had people do that. We covered this in a deep dive. There have been throughout American history, there have been people that tried to build these socialist utopias. Every single one of them failed. And one of the more famous ones was a guy who was a wealthy textile owner from Scotland, comes over to the US, begs the US Congress to understand the brilliance of socialism. And they basically say, well, just do it yourself. So he does it himself and it collapses within a year. He sinks 80% of his money into it and it doesn't work because of the free rider problem, which we've talked about many times before.

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  And so I don't know if Hassan is being honest with himself or not honest with himself. But the reason that he isn't doing that is it is much easier to push for change that you've not really thought through from an economic perspective as to why it's actually going to break. He's never thought through what it means to be, like, if you want to build China, because that's going to be, everybody's sort of moving away from all the failed examples of socialism. And now they're going over to China and they're saying, okay, well, China's the example, not understanding that China's not communist. China is authoritarian. China is in a moment right now where they only, you know, put a million-ish people in concentration camps. They don't have like a full 5 or 10% of their population concentration camps yet.

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  They're not currently in the middle of starving people to death. They are purging the government, they are doing that, so that gets a bit dicey. But until you're the person that's disappeared, everything feels fine. And this is why people absolutely must read the Gulag Archipelago. Which is where you watch a guy go from not thinking any of this is really a big deal to one of his friends rats him out over something that he says privately. And he spends, I forget how long, in the Gulags, but a very long time. And he writes like 1,200 pages of a man who's basically screaming into the page for 1,200 pages, just absolutely eviscerating that type of authoritarian rule and all the bullshit about being a comrade.

• 1:12:54Speaker 00

  It's all fake, everybody lies all the time about everything because they have to, to stay in line with the party. And this is what these guys are asking for. So it's like, you look at China and understand what actually happened to China. So that's where they're just divorcing themselves from that reality, or they haven't studied that reality well enough to know what it's really like, or they think it's not going to happen to them. I don't know. It's some amount of that. But if you assume these are resentful people and they assume that they're going to be the ones in power, then it all makes sense. But they certainly don't see themselves as being on the bottom of the Politburo. No one is going to imagine that life. They don't imagine themselves as a working class person in China that's not allowed to say the things that they think are true.

• 1:13:37Speaker 00

  They assume that they're going to be one of the wealthy, successful people in China. They don't look at the fact that China has more disparity in household wealth than we have in the US. And even the people that dispute that aren't saying that there isn't massive catastrophic disparity, inequality in China. Nobody's saying that. They might say it's not quite as bad as the US, but nobody's like, there is none. So all of these guys are assuming they're not the ones living under the, you know, underpass, being online, selling things 24/7, but actually are homeless. Like, they're not imagining that. They're imagining they're one of the people in power. That's the crazy shit about all this. And anybody who thinks that all the workers are going to unite and we're going to be able to do everything by democratic vote, have you never met people?

• 1:14:21Speaker 00

  Like, that is the crazy thing that I'm just like, what is happening? Yeah. So that doesn't work. There are reasons that people protect against that kind of thing. There's reason that the US government very specifically said, humans tend towards tyranny, we have to protect ourselves against that. That there is very aggressively something called the tyranny of the majority, where they will tyrannize the minority. But you could have a 51-49 split and now you've got 51% of people tyrannizing the 49% of people. Like, it's just crazy that they haven't, they either haven't thought through this stuff or they're perfectly happy. Because when they imagine it on the other side, they imagine they're the ones in control. Just remember, Trotsky got exiled.

• 1:15:02Speaker 00

  The people that helped the Ayatollah rise up in Iran were killed basically immediately. Both Stalin and Lenin shot a bunch of the people that helped them get in power. Just how it goes, man. And so when the gun gets turned on you, it's a little late and you're suddenly like, oh shit, this was a bad idea. And my advice to all of us is instead create a system that mitigates the inevitability of humans breaking bad. Humans will break bad. You want to make sure that you have something that cleanses the system of a Donald Trump, that cleanses the system of a Stalin, a Mao, whatever. Not that I'm trying to say that Trump is bad like that, I'm not. I'm just saying that you want a system that when you get somebody in power and you're like, oh my God, this is not what I wanted.

• 1:15:46Speaker 00

  Cool, they're going to get out. You don't want a system where that person can get control of the levers of power and maintain them forever, like a Putin or a Xi. You don't want that, man. You don't want that. And that's what I see these guys are moving towards with they want to abolish the Senate. They want to abolish the, or they want to defund the police. This is about getting rid of the structures of power so that they can just vote for everything that they want. And they think it's going to work out well for them and they don't understand how bloody that becomes. How do I know it becomes bloody? Because we've run this experiment over and over and over and over. And even in China, after Mao, they rolled in with tanks and shot their own citizens in the face.

• 1:16:28Speaker 00

  So that's the part that I'm just like, guys, remember, even modern day China shot people, their own citizens, shot them dead to get them back in line. That's what we're fighting for? That's what we're saying we want? That's crazy. And if you're going to say, well, the Trump administration is doing the same, you're out of your fucking mind. So three people getting shot by ICE in the middle of a scramble is very different than rolling tanks into a peaceful protest and shooting people dead. It's just fucking absurd.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  You know the Maslow's hierarchy of like needs?

• 1:17:01Speaker 00

  Intimately.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. I think that this should be like a political one of like hierarchy of like issues. Because I think what happens a lot of times is just like in the hierarchy of needs, when you get past struggle mode, when you have housing and you have food and you have those things and you're not operating from that level, you can then focus on your higher, the needs higher up the pyramid. And I think that the economy right now, there are too many people who are struggling for that bottom level of the pyramid that they don't understand or they don't go to bat for those nuances and the structures and institutions at the top. And we, they go a lot to the same bookmarks that we had throughout history. So just like we look at history to show that this can not work in history and all the time socialism failed.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  Some of these people are looking at history and like, well, all change is coming from revolution and right now they're not changing. And not these incremental steps, the things that we need to do, abolish the debt, get money out of politics. None of those things are gonna happen in this lifetime, I'm gonna be honest. Because it threatens too many people in the power structures. I think everybody's bought and paid for in Washington. I'm not optimistic about that. So a lot of people are saying, instead of trying to fight for the thing that would work, we can't get that thing. So now we just wanna flip the table and go, we wanna inflate the ball and go home.

• 1:18:19Speaker 00

  It's really interesting that you're tying this to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Let me say why that's so brilliant and why you actually need less change than you think for this all to click into place. So Maslow's hierarchy of needs is trying to explain to people why humans act differently in different times, what motivates us. This is why, Drew, if I could snap my fingers and everybody had to spend a year developing an open world sandbox survival crafting game.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  That specifically.

• 1:18:43Speaker 00

  No, but for real, for real. Here's why. This has been one of the most, it's not transformational. It's been, it's organized my thinking. Because what you realize, when you start developing the game, you just think, oh, I just want this to be really fun. You've played games and so you're like, I wanna make something fun, but I wanna do it in like my unique way. And then as you try to make it fun, you start going, why isn't my game fun? And so this is exactly how I'm developing Kaizen. I'll play it and go, I'm bored now. Why am I bored? And as you do that, you start re-describing to yourself life. And what you realize is, oh my God, I'm trying to replicate the entire human experience inside of a video game in this really distilled fashion. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is basically that. It's a guy trying to explain like, what is this?

• 1:19:27Speaker 00

  What is the human experience? Like if I don't have my resources, okay, I start there. But what are the things that make me do that? There's an element of evolution, but there's just hunger. Hunger is so immediate. Thirst is so immediate. Shelter is so immediate. So it's like, oh, he's literally trying to grapple with what are, what's the programming of the matrix that drives humans to behave in a certain way? And then how does that behavior change over time? Once you understand that, you'll begin to understand from what you're trying to get at, the political of it all. So when you think about getting to the revolutionary state where people wanna tip everything over and go in a different direction, what's that being born out of?

• 1:20:09Speaker 00

  It's being born out of, we fought really hard to establish safety. We establish safety. Go back to kings and queens. Okay, these were incredibly strong families that usually killed somebody else. They stopped an invading army. They had the will of the people, the will of the people elevate them. And then the people don't want the instability when the king dies. So they go, okay, well, your heir is you genetically and they're gonna be raised by you. So let's just do hereditary. That way we know we have this succession line and as long as nothing disrupts that, we should be able to maintain this level of peace. But the problem is, especially if you get a bad role, that that person who you did, who had the real belief of everybody because they fought for you, they won, they rose you up out of the mud.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  Their kid grows up where it's all stable and they grew up a prince. And so like, who the fuck are all these peasants? And they just have a totally different mentality. So we've now gone all the way up, right? Where you get that same thing that happens when you have overproduced elites. You have stability. The kid is raised in stability. The kid is raised when everybody just adores you. You don't have to earn that right. And so that creates these distortion mechanisms in their mind. Now, when you get the revolution is when people got all the way to self-actualization and they realized that the core-based physiological needs of the game of life is anchoring people. And when they don't have that, things start to derail.

• 1:21:37Speaker 00

  This matters to me. I don't expect it to matter to anybody else, but I'll keep coming back to this idea. As an adult, the first profound realization I ever had, where it was like the first piece of my worldview snapped into place, was what I said to myself was, some people need to be chased by a lion. And what I was getting at is, there's something about down here, when it's actually dangerous, people's thinking is clear. Because it's like, we don't have time to fuck around. We don't have time to posture and pretend like I'm the right guy to follow. If somebody breaks in and one of the guys in the company is six, eight and he's a jujitsu fighter, I don't go, I wanna look cool, let me go up front. We're all like, where's fucking Achilles?

• 1:22:21Speaker 00

  You bring Achilles up and we're all like, he's the one. Because it's real danger. And so you see that with men and women. When shit pops off, the woman, smartly, unless it's Ronda Rousey, is gonna fall in line behind a guy that has more strength. And it's like, yes, you're the disposable male. You better be fucking stronger. I, as a woman, have bred you over hundreds of thousands of years, have more upper body strength than me. Go fucking use it, right? But that requires the physiological need thing to still be going. Once you climb up to self-actualization and the person realizes there's no finish line, and now I don't have any physiological needs or safety needs driving me anymore. Now I'm like, I'm in Minecraft and there's, there's no quest. I don't have to do anything.

• 1:23:06Speaker 00

  So now I've got to come up with a quest on my own and say, I'm gonna go do this thing. And I'm gonna make progress towards that. Progress is one of the foundational pillars of human happiness. If you're not making progress, you will feel completely diseased, literally diseased. You will feel diseased for sure. It will fucking rot you mentally. Like you've gotta have a very clear thing that feels like it matters. I'm pursuing this thing. Whenever somebody asks me, why do you still work? You don't need to. I say, because thank God, I learned that when I was in my twenties and I realized, oh shit, I've gotta always have something I'm progressing towards. I've gotta always do something that makes me feel like I'm contributing to the group in a meaningful way. And the second I don't do that, I'm gonna feel diseased.

• 1:23:46Speaker 00

  So what happens is, you get the revolution, when people climb up, they're not self-directed in any way other than, I'm gonna break this fucking system because something, esteem, did not work out the way that I thought it would. I thought I was gonna come out and be important, but I come out and first of all, I'm young, but I'm buried under debt. I'm mad about that. And I'm not as important as I thought I was going to be. So fuck all this, like I'm gonna flip it over. And when the, when the economy makes you feel like you're gonna get pulled back down from your 1.5 million dollar mansion, you're gonna get pulled back down into having to deal with your safety needs and your physiological needs. You're like, nah, fuck that. All these guys that have more than me, I'm taking some of that. And so you realize that other people have that anxiety.

• 1:24:28Speaker 00

  But the crazy part is, Drew, you never get there when you're actually struggling with the safety and the psychological problems. You don't even get it when you're peak. You get it when you're afraid you're gonna slide back down. And so that fear of like, oh shit, tomorrow might not be as good as today, like I'm about to take something. And so that's where, like, that's why, fucking brilliant, Drew, bringing up this pyramid is, that's exactly what's happened. People have been raised up at the top, they don't have to worry about any of that shit. But they have this fear of, uh-oh, I'm never gonna be able to get out from under my dad's shadow. I'm not gonna perform as well as my parents did. I've got debt. I'm not as important as I thought I would be. Uh-oh. And now we're in this backslide, tip it all over.

• 1:25:11Speaker 00

  Because what should happen is, parents should be raising their kids to do better than they did. The kid should have the expectation, I'm gonna do better than my parents. Dude, I never once felt trapped under my dad's shadow. My parents were just like, go, man, you're gonna do amazing shit. Like, we're working hard so that you can go do this incredible thing, which is a great fucking message for kids. Hard work, it's important, you gotta do it. There's expectations of you. You're gonna go be great, go pursue it. Your future's gonna be so cool. It's gonna be way cooler than what you're raised in, but you were raised safe. You were fed, you know, yada, but you could imagine a cooler world. But this moves in fucking cycles because you get to the point where it's like, uh-oh, where do we go from here? And that's where we're at.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  That was profound, bro. That was good. I bit the wrong butt, my bad. That was good.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  That was good. That was good. Um, and it grounds us. I feel like it makes sense. So yeah, to the people out there, you guys should look at this like pyramid and see where you are individually and see how you feel about your life and how you feel about you, not how Trump did, not what Tom said, but how do you feel about you and go downstream from there.

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  It's so true. And by the way, just make sure you're progressing towards something. Set a sight on the horizon and go after it. And the problem is though, that can be hijacked. This is why I think Heather Heinz's philosophy that one of the things that we're seeing now is women who aren't having kids and aren't having to struggle with the lower tiers of Maslow's pyramid. They're putting all of that mama bear energy into climate change, into the DSA. And so it just becomes like this, we're protecting things with a ferocity that just doesn't match reality. And this is one thing I would like to see, because when we talk about revolution and people point to the founding fathers, there's the, the people saying that we need a revolution now, they have disdain for the founding fathers.

• 1:26:58Speaker 00

  And if you're putting forward a message like the DSA, so there's, um, I can't remember if it's in the doc, but there was an interview, oh, it would be in the reacts doc. I don't know if you want to pull this up, but, um, there is, it's longer. So do with that information what you will, but, she is talking about her policies for the DSA. And the guy interviewing her is from the New Yorker, if I remember right, he did a really good job. And he was saying like, okay, but you, you say things like just tax the hell out of the rich. What do you mean by that? And she couldn't give an answer. And he's like, well, hold on. Like if you're putting forward policy and you guys want to be in charge of policy,

• 1:27:40Speaker 00

  don't you think that you should actually be able to articulate what that means? Now, I would like people to compare that to Alexander Hamilton, writing the Federalist Papers, not by himself, but he did most of it.

• 1:27:52Speaker 00

  And the level of thought, the level of understanding of cause and effect that he displayed in the Federalist Papers, the level of cause and effect that you can see displayed in the structure of the constitution, it's like, these were profound thinkers that were really trying to anchor themselves in what is true. Now, the thing that drives me crazy about this chick is she keeps saying, let's start from first principles and then proceeds to not start with first principles. But when you have a set of profound thinkers like the, the founding fathers, who to whom we all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude. You see what it looks like to really organize something and not just be like, we're going to tear it down.

• 1:28:35Speaker 00

  They were like, we know what we want it to become. We have a vision for precisely the economic structures that are going to get us there, how we migrate. You know, first we're going to be agricultural, we're going to leverage that to industrialize. We're going to need a brief period with the central bank to do that. We're going to let the states be individual experimentations, uh, but we're going to come together as one nation. Like dude, it was so clear headed and they, you know, did all of the debating, but it was in good faith about where we're going. They had tasted tyranny. So this was the generation that had such an intimate relationship with somebody having power over them, but them not having a vote and so feeling powerless that

• 1:29:16Speaker 00

  when you understand that generation of people are the people you want doing the revolution, because they're legitimately being abused. And instead, what you have is a generation where 47% of our national budget goes to entitlements. And we're acting like we're being abused. It's wild. And so it's like, we're in the richest nation in the world. We have inequality, but that's a resentment trigger. That's not an actually you're starving on the street. Almost nobody's starving on the street in America. If you're starving on the street in America, odds are you're a drug addict. So people have food insecurity, but that's very different than starving to death. So it's like, we're, we're in this like hyper-protected bubble. And that's the generation that's talking about revolution.

• 1:29:58Speaker 00

  So to them, it's just like fucking break it because life's so safe, man. What could go wrong? It's like, whoa, you don't understand how dangerous it can get and how dangerous it can get fast.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. I pulled up the point, um, what do you mean by tax the hell out of them?

• 1:30:10Speaker 00

  All right. So real fast, this is Meghan Romer. She's the co-chair of the DSA. This is not some rando chick. And if I'm not mistaken, she's the co-chair of the New York chapter of the DSA, which is like their Rome. So yeah.

• 1:30:24Speaker 04

  The hell out of millionaires. Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:30:27Speaker 05

  Well, what does taxing the hell out of them mean?

• 1:30:30Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, you know, again, I don't have like a solid, but, but I think.

• 1:30:34Speaker 00

  I will, I will, I will.

• 1:30:37Speaker 05

  I mean, if you're the co-chair, if you're the co-chair of the, of the DSA, shouldn't you be more specific than just taxing the hell out of something? What, what exactly do you mean?

• 1:30:47Speaker 04

  So again, it's democracy, right? And, and we have to look at what we need to spend and what we need. We don't want to depend on the existence of millionaires because that means people are still getting exploited. So, so yeah, we need to, we need to look at what we need to pay for in the interim, what, what sort of tax base we need for that to happen and then, um, and build from there.

• 1:31:06Speaker 00

  Bro, I want you to imagine the Federalist Papers sounding like that. Like if you've ever read the Federalist Papers, which admittedly I've only read a small portion, but it's like, damn, this shit is grounded. They're bringing in economic thinkers. They're talking about how this leads to that, leads to that, and this is how this is going to work. Like, here's the bad news. Because Marx has been so thoroughly discredited, they can't, they do often, but they can't even just be like, all right, here's the book. Here's what it says. This leads to this. But if you start trying to walk people through the Marxist, like this leads to this, this, this, people are going to be like, actually fact check. No, it doesn't. Try it here, try it here, try it here, try it here. Oh, by the way, you can even get Steve Keen, who loves Marx

• 1:31:47Speaker 00

  and thinks Marx was one of the greatest economic thinkers the world has ever seen, literally. And says, but unfortunately he had philosophy that he let override the reality of his economic thinking. So his economic thinking, when followed out, you realize that workers are not the only people that can provide surplus value. And so the whole, uh, value theory of labor just goes away, which is like the entire thing that Marx is, is, uh, standing on, writing on top of. And so that's why you never get this worker revolution. And so anyway, and also I cannot believe, I have a theory on why what Marx is failing to take into consideration. I don't hear anybody talking about anywhere, uh, which is absolutely crazy. And I think the reason nobody talks about this is economists almost never run their own companies.

• 1:32:32Speaker 00

  And so they don't understand the actual thing that derives value from a bunch of people that are working their asses off. Workers are dope. Nobody should underestimate the power of a good team. One of the things I teach entrepreneurs all the time is that the people in your company, you don't scale, they do. And so if you get somebody in that's really great at what they do, oh my God. Like it, it, it is night and day. You guys have heard me say this a thousand times. Companies are not nameless, faceless organizations. They are a collection of individual people. And if you left, the company would be fundamentally different, especially at our size. So it's like, anyway, nobody talks about that. And if you don't have somebody that can galvanize them, that can get everybody pointed in the right direction,

• 1:33:15Speaker 00

  make them believe, allocate the capital right, uh, get the public to believe in the product, ah, that so much of the value exists at that level. That's not to undermine the contributions of people that are working in the company. That would be just as big of a mistake. But if people want to understand why Marx doesn't work, there are real reasons that you can point to that are hyper tangible. But instead you get this level of like full retard. That's crazy.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  To your point, um, Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers. And that was before like his like rise to power, like that's when he was shouting in the streets. So it's interesting how she became the co-chair without that level of specificity beforehand. So.

• 1:33:54Speaker 00

  It's a different time, man. It's a different time. And so look, not to overestimate just Hamilton. There were a whole host of incredible founding fathers, but that kid grows up hard, gets on a boat, risks everything. I think even shipwrecks, which is wild, on his way to America. Uh, finally makes his way to the shore. I mean, as like a what, somewhere 18 to 21, he was young as hell. Uh, and gets there and just starts making a name for himself where on the battlefield, motherfucker, like riding next to George Washington. Uh, and imagine for a second, being on the battlefield, you're actively being shot at and what's in your pocket? It's an economist book, an economics book. That's crazy. That's incredible.

• 1:34:39Speaker 00

  Like we just, we, we should demand leaders like that. That would be incredible. We are not getting that crop of leaders.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Trump doesn't have an economy book in his bucket.

• 1:34:51Speaker 00

  No, Trump, definitely not. Definitely not. Trump is not going to find himself on the battlefield either.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  Well, was it shin splits? Uh, okay. This is like a social experiment. Um, this also proves my point that the dead internet theory is real. Don't believe the hype. You are being spun. That was your point. You're always being spun at all times. So a polling firm that came out of nowhere to show that Francesca Wong had a 23-point lead over David Crowley in the Wisconsin primarily, she ended up losing, um, was shut down and said his whole operation was bogus. So media strategies polling discontinued. Median Strategies has concluded its polling project and will not publish additional polls. All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data. Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  examining how purported polling information can enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification. Thank you for your understanding.

• 1:35:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  We popped up, said some people had leads and disappeared and they were on CNN. They were being cited. They were on Main Street news. They were taking and running with it to. To use whatever point that that person was making at the time. So very, very interesting.

• 1:36:03Speaker 00

  I don't know if people are expected to be mad at that. I'm not mad at that. I am glad that somebody did that. So we can see that, first of all, polls almost certainly do influence people in one way or the other. We may not know in which way, but we certainly, meaning if you see that your candidate is ahead, does that mean you go, oh, cool, I can just stay at home? Or does that motivate the other side to get up and get in there? So, but that it does have an influence. Otherwise, people wouldn't be talking about this stuff until the end of time. Also, the fact that people will put something forward because they see a headline, it gets cited by somebody, and then it just spreads through the discourse incredibly rapidly.

• 1:36:42Speaker 00

  This is why I think using AI is brilliant, but you must build a mental model of what the opposite side says. Because if you just go, cool, AI tell me with its own biases and things, you're going to get a very narrow view of this. So what I will spend an inordinate amount of time doing when I'm trying to use AI to research a topic is I'm like, okay, now that I understand what the core arguments are, give me the brightest minds in the world that think this is stupid. What do they say? Then that gives you the next layer of research that you can start doing. Then, once you're like, okay, I understand my side of the argument and I understand the argument against my argument. And here's why I think that's flawed. And you can actually take people sort of down to the metal, as it were.

• 1:37:24Speaker 00

  Now you're in a much stronger position. One, that you're not even tricking yourself, that you're actually able to see things more clearly. Like some of the data center stuff that I'm learning about is very interesting. So it certainly isn't what you're being spun on either side. So it's not the, oh, my God, these things are the end of the world and they use so much water. We're all going to die. It isn't that. There actually is a problem with water. It's not that they're over here making things. They're constantly contaminating the water, but it has happened once. And so there obviously is things that we need to take into consideration when we look at that. There are real concerns with the data centers. They're just not the parts that anybody's talking about.

• 1:38:05Speaker 00

  Because it takes you like a few layers to get down to, oh, shit, it's actually peak water usage becomes the thing that's scariest. Or since all the new propositions are what they call dry cooling, where it's a closed loop system, there's no evaporation. But that takes more electricity. So now what happens when you get into the summer, right? So now you start seeing, oh, this is all the shit that Elon Musk was thinking through when he said, we gotta just put this stuff in space. Because it's like you're going to keep running into the problems here on earth. So all of this stuff is real, but you do have to like go layer after layer after layer. And you have to assume as you go into the research phase, what I'm thinking about this isn't true. That that's like the only thing I know. I'm stuck in a frame of reference. I just don't know which part of what I believe

• 1:38:48Speaker 00

  is going to make contact all the way down to metal and stand, and which part of this is just gonna fall away. If you have emotional friction over being wrong, good luck. You're never going to get out of that system. If you don't mind being wrong, because you know that actual truth has massive amounts of utility, then it becomes incredibly effective. But so often, people just want the answer fed back to them. It's pretty crazy. So anyway, this poll thing being fake, totally for it. Glad that they came out and said that it was fake. But boy, oh, boy, do things sweep through uncritically. This is part of why, so. I'll finish that sentence. This is part of why I like the fact that Drew and Ryan do not see the world the same as I do.

• 1:39:31Speaker 00

  If you guys have studied Abraham Lincoln, he had a strategy that I thought was absolutely brilliant, which is precisely why I have this structure on the show that I have, which is what he called a team of rivals. Now, you're a team, but you see things differently. So I'm well aware that, and Ryan will speak up if he feels differently, but I actually think some of my beliefs are are just really antithetical to Ryan's worldview. And so I imagine sometimes he is choking back the bile when I'm speaking. Now, he's very generous and doesn't flip his desk over and freak out. But it's like that's, I think he and I have more distance than, say, Drew and I.

• 1:40:14Speaker 00

  But we're able to be civil with each other on and off camera, to want to hear from the other, to see how they're thinking about it. It's such a better way to live. Anyway, but you have to want to know where you're wrong. Most people don't.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Interesting news, alleged breaking, story still developing. The US is confiscating Venezuela gold from the UK bank. All of Venezuela's gold reserves totaling 31 tons, which are held at the Bank of England, will be transferred to the United States per el nacional. The value amounts to $4 billion, resulting in the loss of Venezuela's sovereignty over the resources.

• 1:40:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Accusations that the US is stealing Venezuela's gold are going viral, boys and girls. One post reads, and this is a quote, "Breaking, the US is confiscating Venezuela's gold from the UK bank." Now, all of Venezuela's gold reserves totaling 31 tons, which are being held in the Bank of England, will be transferred to the United States. That's what people are asking you to believe. But the reality is that if we start from the the perspective that this is the US stealing gold, then this is, none of this is going to make sense. Because the 31 tons are still in the Bank of England vaults where they've been locked up since 2018.

• 1:41:30Speaker 00

  So what's going on is in England, they have said, long before the US got involved, we don't know who's in charge in Venezuela. We don't know who has the right to actually tell the central bank to do something. So we're going to just park the money, park the gold, excuse me, for a second. Now, what sparked the accusations are that on August 12th, Jorge Rodriguez signed a joint communique with Dinora Figuera.

• 1:41:59Speaker 00

  They are in the 2015 Opposition Assembly. Now, both sides agreed to push for the gold's release with audit and traceability mechanisms for protection to make sure that there's no corruption happening. Because they want to use it to help with the earthquake reconstruction. So back in June, they had that big earthquake, if you guys remember. So they want to use the gold for that. But then this guy, Ramon Lopez, which was one of the negotiators on the opposition side, told Venavision that the proceeds were just going to land in an account administered through the US Treasury. Okay, from that, the theft headline was born. Now, I actually wouldn't be surprised if the gold ended up actually being controlled by the US. But the reality is, right now, it's still in the UK. They have made a decision.

• 1:42:41Speaker 00

  The gold just remains locked up where it's been, again, for a very long time, almost a decade now at this point. Okay, because of the political instability in Venezuela. Now, I get why Lopez might be paranoid. And that leads us to the thing I think people should actually be talking about. Because this, to me, is starting to edge up into scandal territory, which is the Venezuelan oil. That is the real story. There was a January 9th executive order that declared Venezuelan oil proceeds sovereign Venezuelan property, as you would expect. But it was nonetheless handed over to US Treasury custodial control because we came in and snatched their sitting president.

• 1:43:23Speaker 00

  And so that obviously is giving us a lot of potentially undue influence. There's an argument to be made that for, given what's going on between us and China, we had to reestablish our control over South America. I don't expect that to necessarily be a popular opinion with everybody, but I think that it's very easy to make a very compelling argument for that case. So we'll say for now that contested, though it may be, there's a reasonable argument to be made. However, if we're going to do that, we have to understand how dicey of a position that puts America into just, again, looking like the evil empire. So we need to go way out of our way to make sure that if we are controlling their money,

• 1:44:05Speaker 00

  to make sure that the government is doing things that are good for their citizens, that they are not allowing undue influence from China, that they are going to fold into our Western umbrella, then we've got to be very transparent in what we're doing. Now, we're not. We're not being transparent at all. And the first sale of crude oil to, went to Vital and Trafigura. And that generated about $500 million. And it ended up being routed not through Washington, but through a bank account actually in Qatar. Now, for me, I was like, what? Why on earth did that go to Qatar? Now, Rubio called this a logical move, given that there's basically a novel mechanism at play here.

• 1:44:50Speaker 00

  This is a short-term thing that we're doing. And part of the reason is that the offshore structure allows the money to be parked in US institutions, or sorry, if it were parked in US institutions, it can be grabbed by Venezuela's creditors. Okay? So the mechanism that's basically keeping Venezuela from getting a hold of its own revenue also just shields that revenue from immediately going to people that Caracas owes money to. So if you're trying to make sure that that, those oil profits go to the people of Venezuela first, and that as the US, you're going to come in and be the moral army, and you're going to just make sure that the Venezuelan people are being taken care of, you don't want the creditors to be able to insta-snatch it. So I get that.

• 1:45:33Speaker 00

  However, the profits keep rolling in, and the question of who is paying attention is yet to be answered. So the Financial Times counts roughly $13 billion more have been generated since that initial sale, and that number's likely to be growing still. About 300 million has been publicly traced back to actually going to Venezuela. Okay, that still leaves a whole lot that's outstanding. And the State Department's transparency portal only lists a single transaction. So the whole reason to put it up, hey, don't worry, everybody can be able to see what's going on. No one's looking. And so the quarterly audits that were promised in April have not arrived.

• 1:46:13Speaker 00

  And Besen had agreed back in February that he was going to produce the statutory authority for all of this. So it was like, hey, we're going to talk about why we have the right to do this, what we're doing. You guys are going to be able to see it. But six months later, Congress is still asking and there's no response. So that to me is what we should be talking about. This is like one of those times, America, America, I love you so much, but holy hell. You can't run around the world bombing everybody, looking a fool, acting a fool. And then the one place where you had a victory, you just like quietly start taking the resources. You want to, you were talking about the DSA can't beat the rap of they're a bunch of overproduced elites. The US is not going to be able to beat the rap that we're an evil empire. Like, what the fuck are you doing? This is where you've got to be a moral arbiter.

• 1:46:58Speaker 00

  I get it. China's got to go. Cool. Smart. Very wise. We need a cooperative government in Venezuela for what's going to be good for the whole Western hemisphere. Got it. Great. But it can't just be that, hey, nice oil revenue that you got there for me. I'm going to take that. Like that we cannot do. So we need the transparency. People need to be banging the drum about that. We don't need fake headlines. What we need are, hey, there's a real thing. It's actually a real problem that people should really be talking about. So that one is what I want to see rectified. That we've got to start building a reputation of being able to be trusted.

• 1:47:39Speaker 00

  Otherwise, the entire world will rightly race away from the US and the US dollar.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  And this is from the Reuters, their Venezuela branch. About half of Venezuela oil output now goes directly to the US. And for those oil buffs in the chat, this is directly the crude. We have built specific refineries in Texas to import that type of Venezuelan oil. So this is stuff that we're now using, refining and using at home.

• 1:48:05Speaker 00

  Here's the thing, there is a really gnarly way to read that, which, hey, we've confiscated it. We're going to sell it. We're going to take it all. Fuck you. If we're doing that, fuck us. That's terrible. If it's, hey, guys, we're going to partner with you. We're going to make sure that the oil gets flowing. We're going to help you up your production, your refining, so that we can get your economy booming again. We want to help reintroduce the private ownership of the industry. Cause when you guys made it public, you fucking destroyed the whole industry. So we want to get this going again. And that would be great. And if that's what's happening, wonderful. As long as the proceeds are actually going back to Venezuela.

• 1:48:45Speaker 00

  If we're taking the normal fees that you would take as a refiner, if there's some sort of administrative fee that's reasonable, okay. But if we're just like snatching it, that's crazy.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  Wild work. Okay. Another wild news. Cyber leak. I don't know if you guys heard, he has dropped a bunch of GTA six leaks. The total amount, this is from his website. He has a teaser video. He has a couple of random videos, a full map, a basketball video, three map sneak peeks. I'm not playing any of them because everything is getting copyrighted off the internet.

• 1:49:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, do not. Yeah, also they're talking about suing people. You want to talk about the fastest way to kill this episode.

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:24Speaker 00

  But we can talk about what's going on. So here is the thing that I find really, really interesting about all of this. This fits into the larger movement of what's happening in, I'll call it primarily millennial and older gamers. They, they have a very strong culture and they have been rebelling against AAA games, monetization strategies. As a game developer, you can imagine I pay very close attention to this. We actually brought on the guy that started Stop Killing Games, the Stop Killing Games movement. Brought him on the live. He was one of our first guests, if not our first guest to the live. Shout out to him. He's doing really interesting work, trying to bring light to some of the changes that have happened.

• 1:50:04Speaker 00

  With the fact that as we move into a new era of gaming, you, it's falling into the you'll own nothing and be happy vibe. And so people are paying for a game that back in the day, you would have just had forever. But these are online games that have to connect to a server. And so when the company decides to stop supporting it, it just goes away. Okay. So that's the larger context and there's way, way, way more than that. But that's the larger context of consumers in gaming culture really feeling like they're being taken advantage of by the gaming industry as a whole through predatory monetizing practices. Okay. With that, an account called Cyberleak has posted two minutes of Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay.

• 1:50:48Speaker 00

  Did it on August 18th. Jason DeVal, who's the main character in the game, you see him shooting baskets outside his house. You've got Jason beating a delivery driver with a wrench. And all of this is happening, what, nine days, I think, before Rockstar's official reveal on Netflix. So they're obviously not loving that. And he's doing this very specifically on purpose. And he essentially gave us a manifesto. So Cyberleak is saying that the trigger was the way that the game is being sold. So physical retail copies of GTA VI were going to ship with a download code in the box instead of an actual disc. And so what he's saying is, okay, hold on, I will not abide this. And he's issued what he's calling commandments.

• 1:51:34Speaker 00

  And his big beef is that, okay, back in the day, when you guys had to print a box, you had to print a disc, there were real costs to you. And so you are going to only print a certain number of copies. And so you would ask people to pre-buy them so that you knew how many to publish. And that way, the people that really wanted it on day one and didn't want to run into a shortage, you know, maybe they couldn't be standing in line to get it. So they wanted to preorder. It's good for the publisher because just like in the film industry, the reason that you would roll out slowly across countries is you would use the money from the sales typically in America to then be able to make the prints that you would take to England, for instance. And so you would roll out that way.

• 1:52:15Speaker 00

  And then if you found that it wasn't being successful, you just wouldn't keep rolling out to additional countries. So you had the same thing with pre-orders in the games industry. If it was popular, then you could make more. And if you didn't get pre-sales, then you kept your orders tight, gave people a way to manage their cash flow. But now, once it's digital, there is no such thing as selling out. So why exactly are you doing these pre-orders? So his Cyberleak's idea is that the reason you're doing this is it's just a predatory practice. So you're giving people something very small in order to get the money ahead of time. Now, there have been rumors that part of what set all of this off is that the game was secretly going to be delayed.

• 1:52:56Speaker 00

  And so now you had people that had already paid for the early purchase and then the game was being delayed. I could not see that backed up anywhere. So I'm going to assume that that, that's just rumor. It's not real, that you can still expect the game to come out in November. But that was the beef that he was really going against. Okay. So what he's, in his commandments, what he's saying is that you're going to end digital pre-orders until independent reviews are out. Physical pre-orders can stay. So if you're going to print a physical disc, a box, he's not going to keep hacking you. So let, let us do, keep in mind, this is blackmail. But nonetheless, you're going to stop charging for a single player DLC that already ships with the game.

• 1:53:39Speaker 00

  So if it's, if the content is already in the game and you're just gating it, that is in his world, not acceptable. And Cyberlink calls those demands the floor, not the ceiling. All right. He wants also a public statement and an apology. So no private negotiations, no settlements, buying closed doors. Until then, he said the leaks are just going to keep on coming. And he's obviously picking Rockstar on purpose. They are the absolute fucking biggest behemoth in the world. And his message to everybody else was behave or be the next target. This is wild, man. So now Rockstar hasn't publicly commented, however, they are DMCA striking everything.

• 1:54:24Speaker 00

  So stuff is being taken down. You probably wouldn't see DMA strikes if this wasn't legitimate stuff. Now, people are debating whether this is old stuff or new stuff. I guess one of the images of the maps that he showed, everybody's saying that's way too simplistic to be a final map. Some people are saying that the footage that he pulled is from 2023, so it's probably going to look better. But there's a lot of question marks at this point. To me, it's like, I get why gamers are frustrated. But games are now more and more finding success out of indie developers precisely because when you have the AAA industry doing bad things, that creates an opportunity for other people.

• 1:55:02Speaker 00

  So for me, I would much rather see this play out in vote with your dollars and more and more money go to indie developers. Now, obviously I have a dog in that fight as an indie developer. So Lord knows, I want to see more people turn to indie developers. And when I look at this stuff, I go, oh, those are all the things that the AAA industry is doing and people hate it? Great. I'm going to do the exact opposite. This is exactly why I wanted to talk to the people at Stop Killing Games. I want to know, like, okay, cool. What do I do to make sure that people are super enthusiastic about what we're doing? So whenever the big companies do the dumb thing, that creates the opportunity for the small companies.

• 1:55:42Speaker 00

  So I'm not a fan of seeing somebody hack somebody else because they don't like what they're doing. Because inevitably, there are going to be people that are hacking that feel like, oh, we can get away with this. These are the gamer version of what crimes of necessity. So yeah, vigilanteism, I get the impulse, but I think it is a very bad idea. And boy, do I worry that this guy is going to get tracked down. So. You know, be very careful out there, boys and girls. Doing things like this may seem like it's not a big deal, but especially if this kind of thing has a big negative impact on the share price of Rockstar, it's not Rockstar Games. What's the parent company?

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  Interactive.

• 1:56:24Speaker 00

  Two, thank you. So then it's like they've got real financial incentive to make a statement by going after this guy. So anyway, just be careful out there, boys and girls. Vote with your dollars, find people that treat you the way that you think you deserve to be treated. Seeing their praises from high heaven, please let people know that you love those indie games, everybody. But yeah, this is not the right way to go about it, though I do certainly understand why people are pissed.

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jay, I know.

• 1:56:53Speaker 02

  Oh, I was gonna, he already added it. I was gonna say the 2023 edition, because it is like you were saying, it's all footage ripped from 2023's build of the game.

• 1:57:01Speaker 00

  That's confirmed.

• 1:57:02Speaker 02

  From all the insiders, like none of it's fully confirmed, but from all the insiders who follow like all this stuff.

• 1:57:07Speaker 00

  Every detail.

• 1:57:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like pretty positive it's a 2023 build, because they're doing the previews of the game right now with the media, which is also where people originally thought it was a current build. But people are saying it might even end up looking better because they think it's that 2023 build that.

• 1:57:22Speaker 00

  That's interesting. Well, here, let me give a curve ball that I have no data for whatsoever. This is me way out over my skis. Imagine he's doing the 2023 footage, but they know what files he's accessed. So they do know he accessed it. They confirmed that. At least that's my understanding from what I read. And if they know what files he's accessed and what has been downloaded, they know what he has access to. And so if he's saying, listen, the leaks will continue, and they're like, okay, he hasn't leaked anything that would really like deflate the enthusiasm for the Netflix thing.

• 1:57:53Speaker 00

  They might be more prone to try to make something happen. But it is very interesting that he's like, I'm not doing back channel negotiations. You're either gonna apologize or I'm gonna keep doing this. It's wild, man. It's wild.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  Take two stat currently unaffected at the moment.

• 1:58:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's GTA 6. It's a behemoth at the end of the day. Like, this is going to be the game of all time.

• 1:58:11Speaker 00

  Point is like you want to play it, but yeah, it, I wouldn't expect merely doing early leaks to impact the

• 1:58:24Speaker 00

  like enthusiasm for people who want to play the game, but it will deflate some of the marketing hype.

• 1:58:31Speaker 02

  I think what deflated it more, though, is the, oh, sorry.

• 1:58:34Speaker 00

  No, please.

• 1:58:34Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, I think what deflated it more, though, is the fact they're not doing physical discs. I mean, this all came off the back of the PS5 saying by 2028, we're not doing discs anymore. And even though there is a small percentage of people who still buy physical, those are your gamers, like those are the consumers that they need to be marketing towards. And so I think what hurts the marketing more is the fact that, hey, we're not releasing this game on a physical disc ever. And I think that's where people lose their minds.

• 1:59:00Speaker 00

  And I, if you have data, definitely challenge me. But here is what I think the reality is. And I've heard game reviewers talk about this. They're like, yeah, it's terrible. You guys shouldn't, you like, keep doing physical discs. You should do that. Like, that's the right thing. I don't buy them and haven't for a decade, but like they should exist. These businesses are looking at it and going, you guys don't give a fuck. You care about it at the level of like bang the drum, hack our servers, but you don't actually buy physical copies.

• 1:59:29Speaker 02

  I'll say I buy every single game physical if there's a physical option.

• 1:59:32Speaker 00

  Do you think you're like a really small minority? Or do you represent like?

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  Well, but I did just say a minute ago that I, it is a small statistic of people. I think the PS5 stat is like 4% of sales in 2025 were physical. But what I'm trying to say is that is your core audience. Like even though it is the smallest number, right? Like, let's look at GTA 6. That game's an everyone game. Everyone's playing that game, right? So the disc argument can kind of collapse there. But let's say Devil May Cry 6 comes out in the next couple of years. Who's buying Devil May Cry 6? Not the casual gamers. It's gonna be that 4% who would buy physical, right?

• 2:00:07Speaker 00

  I will disagree with you. Now, again, if you've got data, definitely tell me. Here's what I think is.

• 2:00:11Speaker 02

  I mean, it's not a per game, I think, yeah.

• 2:00:13Speaker 00

  Here's, here's what I have learned.

• 2:00:17Speaker 00

  There are people who like to collect. And then there are people who like to play games, like to invest, whatever. They're, they're just, it's a very different thing. And so if collectors like to have physical media, I get, and I don't know if you feel that you identify as a collector and that's part of why you like the physical media, or if you're like, I don't trust these guys. They've got to have a physical. But I would put forward that the majority of people who buy, and this is just instinct, but the majority of people who buy physical are people that want to see it on their shelf. And that's what I call the collector. They want the visual representation of that thing. And I'm a massive collector. Like, I literally at one point used to buy games just to display them on my shelf.

• 2:01:01Speaker 00

  I never planned to play them. I was like, I like the box art, or I just, I'm a collector. So I like to have the physical thing. So I'm like the guy you're pitching the ball to on if there is a physical. I used to read books digitally and still buy a physical copy because I like to collect the thing. But if it's actually collectoriness that drives that, the world has already spoken and it's only whatever, 4%.

• 2:01:27Speaker 02

  I think it's more ownership, and I actually think Yellow Knight points to, because I wouldn't classify myself as a collector. Yeah, I think Yellow Knight's actually, although he's kind of joking on part of this, I think he is pointing to the real situation, which is most gamers these days are on PC, which they buy on Steam. There's no physical copies for a PC game, right?

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  That's what I was gonna say. Once PC like really proliferated, like the physical games argument kind of died.

• 2:01:49Speaker 02

  Right. But now, like if you actually go into the gaming community online, like most gamers who will play everything, because that is such a small subset of people. Not everyone plays everything. Most people stick to their free to play games. Free to play is what increased gamers' numbers across the entire country, right? That's why then we had the debates of, well, Candy Crush is a video game game, you know, that kind of thing. Majority of hardcore gamers who monitor the titles, watch all the showcases, those are the ones buying physical, is I guess what I'm getting at.

• 2:02:18Speaker 00

  Where, do you have just intuition? Like, what makes you say that? Because I only have intuition on my side, so whatever.

• 2:02:24Speaker 02

  To me, it's, I'm very in on the gaming space. I, a lot of my friends are also to the level I am where we play every release. I mean, this is like, it's like the film industry. Like, as much as I'm a, I'm a film guy, I think I'm more a video game guy ultimately. Just because of how into that world I am. And like,

• 2:02:43Speaker 02

  it goes back to the size of the game, I think, plus the platform with Steam, like the chatter was saying. So honestly, most of my games, yeah, I do buy off Steam. But if it's a game I'm buying for console, it's physical. And I think that's what most people do.

• 2:02:55Speaker 01

  Couple stats, AI, so it does have a tendency to hallucinate, but what we have so far. US milestone, only seven total PlayStation games across both PS4 and PS5 have managed to sell more than 100,000 physical disc copies. Year to date, weekly sales, only two PlayStation titles sold more than 10,000 weekly. Digital sales now make up roughly 82 to 85% of full-time software sales.

• 2:03:19Speaker 02

  Backs up. Now, here's an interesting thing.

• 2:03:21Speaker 00

  PlayStation.

• 2:03:22Speaker 02

  That backs up the 5% for PlayStation that I was saying. But look up the top games for the last month on the PlayStation Store. It's Madden, it's NBA, it's Call of Duty. And so what happens is these, these numbers, these digital numbers are inflated because of these casual yearly games where most of the audience is. Because as much as people dog on Call of Duty year after year because they're mid games and they don't put a lot of effort into them, they still sell the most every single year on PlayStation.

• 2:03:47Speaker 00

  I mean, welcome back to why, why from a mathematical standpoint, they are going to put less company energy into those people, even though they may be the most hardcore gamers. The reality is hardcore gamers aren't the people that are paying the bills. And to make it even worse, that they think a lot more about people who are influential than they think about people who are hardcore gamers. I know that's hard to hear because there really is something about when you give yourself to a game and it becomes like a world that you inhabit. Like, I, I used to be Destiny was like the game I played and then into Destiny 2. And so as they started making decisions that didn't feel good and it stopped being fun to play, I was legitimately irate.

• 2:04:32Speaker 00

  Like, there were things where I was like, bro, you broke like the thing I love doing. Like, this is crazy. I can't. And there was some part of my brain that was like, they don't have the right. And it's like, I remember also when George Lucas made changes to Star Wars. I had a very similar feeling of like, who does this guy think he is? I was like, it's his shit, man. He's the guy. Like, that's the one that gets to do it. And given how much time and energy I put into Kaizen, if at some point people were like, yo, who do you think you are to make that change? I'd be like, bro, I'm the one that like the own, I poured so much money, so much time into this thing. And yes, it has to be something you want to play for sure, but I have to protect the long-term longevity. I have to make sure that the business is here, that it can support it. Like, you guys will hopefully play, but it's like you're gonna come and go. So

• 2:05:18Speaker 00

  yeah, this one is, is sort of high tension for me on both sides because I get it. And as the one that wants to take advantage of this opportunity and like, oh, physical games? Like, dude, the second I heard people wanted physical games, I was like, doing the math. Oh, is it real? Because if it was real, I would love to make physical games. And because I can afford to print games, I was like, oh my God, like that could be my in. And then I looked at the numbers. I'm like, nobody gives a shit about physical games. Like, that's all hype. Nobody gives a fuck. Now, if they did, trust me when I say I would do it, try to get a leg up for sure. But I'm really looking, you know who the real competition is? These guys should all be worried. Exactly one company. Roblox. And Roblox, nothing physical.

• 2:05:59Speaker 00

  These kids don't interact with anything physical. You're gonna have an entire generation of kids that are like, physical games? I don't even know what you mean. So it's not like this is 85% now and it's gonna be 85% in five years. It's gonna be 85% now and 92% in five years. And whether they stop doing it or not, because every kid that graduates into that next generation, that they won't have any experience of going to a game store and buying a physical disc. They won't think to shop for it on Amazon. It just won't be, they won't even think about it. It is heartbreaking to me that the world changes like that. The world changes like that.

• 2:06:34Speaker 02

  Pose it, this is just an interesting thought experiment. Video games going all digital. Do you think there is any world where those options, there should not be any physical options? Cause we look at movies, we look at music. There's always been physical options.

• 2:06:47Speaker 00

  My thing is every company should shoot themselves in the face as they see fit. If people actually care about physical games, then let PlayStation shoot themselves in the face and let me scoop up all the people that actually care about physical games. But I bet if somebody did a, like, I won't put me, cause no one trusts me as a game developer. But if you put somebody in that's like, oh, they've done like a couple of titles. We like, get it. We know what they're about. Hey guys, we're gonna do a physical disc. We have to preorder it. People would be like, nah, it'll do like a few hundred units maybe, but it, it'll, the amount of time and energy to find somebody to make that disc for you, to have to create all the additional art, the, like, the back and forth proofing, learning about printing.

• 2:07:31Speaker 00

  Now, keep in mind, I'm a guy, I printed physical comics. So I had to go through the rigmarole of, I don't know how to print. Now I know how to print. Dude, it's a fucking thing.

• 2:07:40Speaker 02

  But if that's the case, why would Rockstar still release a physical case with no disc? You're still spending the money on those resources.

• 2:07:48Speaker 00

  Because they know some people want it on the shelf and they're only spending part of the money and they don't have a problem with all that stuff.

• 2:07:52Speaker 02

  But those don't sell well though. Like those, those boxes with codes never sell well. I think that's just that the thing is not an argument of...

• 2:07:59Speaker 00

  It's almost certainly going to be tied to distribution channels. So we have distribution partners that we make certain amount of money with. We want to make sure that they have something to hang up in their store. We want to keep them happy. Those partners are in lobbying Rockstar and saying, hey, guys, please, please, please. Like, we've done so well with you guys forever. You guys maybe have merch, we're gonna sell the merch in the store. All, all the behind the scenes stuff when you run a business is like, this is a much bigger thing. They'll have a hundred reasons why they want to put something out, uh, but they want to reduce the cost, not have the disc, or they might know that the disc is a pain in the ass because you've got to do this. I'm just guessing now, but like, that there's firmware updates you're gonna have to do, that that is locked in time in the disc and oh my God. Whereas if we just send them to the latest file,

• 2:08:42Speaker 00

  their very initial install is a better install. So they might know failure rates, where you're going from disc with outdated drivers and all that shit. So, uh, there will be many, many reasons why they want to do it the way that they're doing it. But there's only, like, the great news is you only need to trust them to be greedy. They're just looking at the math and going, the math just isn't there. If they're wrong about it, then it's a sledgehammer to the face. Now, they may just be wrong about the psychology and people like, I'm never gonna buy it, but you better fucking offer it. And then, okay, maybe they just have to. Uh, or it's going to allow the Valheims of the world to be like, oh shit, we're about to hit our 1.0 release. Let's give people a physical copy. Same with a Pal World, right? Indie dev, fucking lightning in a bottle.

• 2:09:27Speaker 00

  And they go, hey, we're the developer of the people. They, they scored huge win by keeping their costs down. They could have easily justified raising the price tag. They had told people back in early access, this is an early access price. When we go to 1.0, we're gonna raise the price. And they didn't do it. Oh, confetti falls, people are fucking ecstatic. They go back to number one or almost number one on Steam charts. An absolute Cinderella story. So if there's actually appetite, these guys will go, cool, we're gonna make the physical disc. But I bet they're not going to, cause there's just no money.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  Music industry. They're the canary in a coma. So CDs are done, vinyl for very niche people, but there's no vinyl equivalent for games, so.

• 2:10:07Speaker 00

  Preach.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, unfortunately, I'm with you. I think it's mass, I think it sucks, but just like with the music industry, just so.

• 2:10:14Speaker 02

  Retro gaming is kind of like vinyl for, cause retro gaming saw a rise in 2020s. I could talk video games all that.

• 2:10:20Speaker 00

  We're, we're now abusing our poorer, uh, audience here. All right. Thank you, guys. This is a big one. Appreciate you guys being here very, very much and excited to see you again on Friday. By the way, we have a new ITU AI masterclass. I hope some of you joined me yesterday. I did, we, it was low key, we didn't promote it here. Uh, I will do better about that next time, cause it was a killer masterclass, uh, for people that actually have high functioning businesses, how to level it up. But our next one, this is an AI, it's free masterclass, Thursday, September 10th at 1:00 PM Pacific. Links in the description now. I'm gonna show you guys how to launch a company using AI. I know there's mixed feelings about AI. I'm telling you, it does some things incredibly well, some things very poorly. But the reality is, the things that it does well, it does very well.

• 2:11:04Speaker 00

  And you guys should absolutely avail yourselves. I'll walk you through the differences on Thursday, September 10th, 1:00 PM Pacific. Hope to see you there. All right, everybody, we'll see you Friday. Love you. Till next time, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water and you're done.

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