Can the U.S. Still Win? Iran Strikes, Ally Chaos & The Munitions Shortage Exposed | The Tom Bilyeu Show

ITU: Ready to break through your biggest business bottleneck? Apply to work with me 1:1 - https://impacttheory.co/SCALE Sign up for my AI Masterclass: https://tombilyeu.com/ai-masterclass?utm_campaign=TBS-Livestream&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social The conversation focused on current global political and economic tensions, tackling issues from leaked US battle plans regarding Iran to the complex web of international negotiations and shifting alliances in the Middle East. A key theme that emerged was the growing perception of weakened American influence, particularly as repeated threats and retreats reveal cracks in both military capability and diplomatic strategy. The discussion explored the intersection of military strategy, economic self-interest, and cultural frames of reference—highlighting how divergent worldviews between the US and its adversaries complicate conflict resolution. Several points were raised, including the economic consequences of entangled US-Japan financial relations, rising domestic political polarization, and the ever-shifting narratives used to justify foreign policy decisions. The episode also dove into domestic controversies, such as government spending, the challenges of enforcing sensible identification requirements against political hypocrisy, and the impact of social movements on mainstream politics. Tune in for a deep dive into how cultural battles, propaganda, and policy decisions shape the world stage—and what it all means for the future of American power. Sponsors: 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. Monarch Money: Start your free trial and get 50% off your first year of total money clarity at https://monarchmoney.yt.link/QxOLEVx or code TB50 for 50% Off Monarch Core tier. ATT Business: Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com http://business.att.com Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Surfshark: Go to https://surfshark.com/TOMBor use code TOMB at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark! 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 Bilyeu Show Live. We are indeed coming to you live. And boy, does the world give us plenty to talk about. Trump's attack plans for Iran got leaked, but my question is, does it really matter? General Jack Keane's breakdown of Iran paints a very distressing picture of what's really happening.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  And at least for myself, it is far darker than I thought. Treasury Secretary Scott Beson is sweating the Fed to help bail out Japan. We're going to talk about what it actually means for you. Mamdani is forced to back off his ID requirement for shoppers in state-run grocery stores when people freak out at the hypocrisy of not needing an ID to vote, but needing one to buy staples at the grocery store. Way too much schadenfreude there. For me, more evidence out of New York that taxpayer dollars are in fact going to illegal immigrants. We're going to be covering that. The Senate shoots down the Save America Act, ensuring that voter fraud continues. That's fun. And we've got a big hour three for you guys today. I hope you will all stick around.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  We've got something every investor must watch. We've got a leaked Treasury report detailing massive systemic AI risk. And it has people panicking. We're going to be going deep on that one, so stick around. All right, someone leaked Trump's battle plan, but honestly, it may not have mattered. So on Friday, US officials described the plan to CBS, The Wall Street Journal and CNN. Energy infrastructure, one of the harshest campaigns of the war. Everything going to be wrapped up before markets open on Monday, which by the way, that kind of thing drives me crazy. I don't know what would be worse, the fact that it's all just a big game of manipulation or actually letting it happen and the market's going into actual free fall.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  So I get why they do it, but there's still something so grotesque about it. But nonetheless, so Saturday night, Trump calls it off. He didn't blame the leak, but if you heard him going, basically saying that we have a leaker. There were all kinds of reports that these people should be going to jail. But he did say, and this is the part that I think really ends up mattering. He said Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Iran asked him to hold. Now, what hides in all of this is the thing that as you clear away all of the noise and really get down to, okay, what is the pattern in Trump's behavior? What's actually going on in Iran? Can we trust the people that are negotiating on our behalf?

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Because remember, the vast majority of the negotiations are not between our team and their team directly. Things are going through mediators. Now, this is the fifth time since March that Trump has announced or threatened some major strike on Iran, only to then stand down. And retired General Jack Keane has a theory about why the talks never end up producing anything fruitful that I think is very insightful. And it puts pieces on the board that I hadn't been giving enough weight to. So it'll be very interesting to see what you guys think about this. So let's go ahead and play that clip.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  By our intelligence services, by all the players, that the Pakistanis and the Qataris are compromised because they favor Iran at the expense of the United States. This is historical, this is not new. And yet they're the mediators. So their influence here, I think, has played a part in misleading the United States in terms of Iran's real intentions. The second thing are our allies and partners led by Saudi Arabia. Let us point out and remind the audience here that when we were going to open the Straits of Hormuz forcibly, Saudi denied us the use of our airbase and denied us the use of their airspace.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  And also told the president and discouraged him from doing it because they thought the operation would fail. Of course, they knew nothing about the details of that operation, nor are they qualified to make that kind of an assumption. And what the Saudis are doing here is for the fourth time, they have influenced the president. One is on the Straits of Hormuz. Two other times, it's well known that he was close to going back to major combat operations. And they talked him, as well as other allies in the region, down from doing that. And let's try to make a deal. That is what is going on here. So what's going on with the Saudis? The fact of the matter is, the Saudis are not willing to sacrifice

• 5:38Speaker 01

  to rid the Middle East region of Iran's aggression. That is the absolute fact that we're seeing playing out here. What do I mean by sacrifice casualties and the damage to some of their oil reserves? That's the, that's the reality that's taking place here. They're willing for us to make that sacrifice for sure. They're willing for Israel to make that sacrifice for sure. That's despite the fact that they've been under a nuclear and security umbrella since World War II. Despite the fact that the United States led a coalition to stop Saddam Hussein from taking Saudi oil fields after they took the Kuwaiti oil fields and we liberated them. Despite the fact that after the Saudi government killed Qasri,

• 6:22Speaker 01

  the Trump administration, Saudi wire brushed them for that, but still maintain a relationship with this kingdom. And I think this is shameful that they locked the spine to stand up for their people and for the region here and support the president on what is taking place.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  All right, so to me, one, I think you have to take what he says with a grain of salt. Obviously, this is somebody that understands the military extraordinarily well. However, he is very much looking at the world through his own lens. And this is where I think people confuse America First with America Only. America is the bully, where we go into a region, we make a decision that people may or may not have even been on board with. We start doing things that draw us into a conflict that we don't have an obvious path to win. We don't have an obvious path to get out of. And then we get pissy when they're not willing to play ball in the way that we want them to play ball. So you can only take the, we're going to keep you protected.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  He was talking about them being under the nuclear umbrella of the US since World War II. You can only take that so far when you're showing that you can't militarily defeat Iran, that they're able to use this mosquito fleet to continue to harass ships going through the strait, that they're able to hit exposed airbases, that they will for sure be able to hit the energy infrastructure that is going to be permanently vulnerable to attack. So what does it do if you say, okay, we have nuclear weapons, which we're obviously not going to use to win a conventional war with Iran, especially we're not going to use nukes when they're using drones and much smaller munitions?

• 8:05Speaker 00

  It would be seen as completely unhinged by the entire globe. So that certainly isn't going to play out. So that's going to be cold comfort. They are certainly not going to be inspired by that. And so the fact that the people closest there on the ground, the most exposed to Iran, are telling you this isn't going to work to escalate, lets you know that Trump has really backed himself into a corner. There are so many reports going around that we just don't have the munitions to keep fighting this in the way that we've been fighting it, that we've diminished. On the conservative side, I haven't seen anybody say that we've diminished less than half of most of our like big resources, our long distance, precision munitions. Those are, you hear 50, 60% depleted.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  Now, if you're just talking about Iran, that means that you could continue to wage war for quite some time. But unfortunately, we're not just talking about Iran. Remember, all eyes on China, at least from where I'm sitting. And so now, if you're having to hold some stockpiles in reserve because you know that something might be happening over in China in the near future, now you really are in a difficult situation where you're not going to be able to press your advantage. So now, all of a sudden, you start looking at Trump backing off constantly, constantly giving them a chance to negotiate, even though so far, none of the negotiations have gone well. And when you listen to Trump, when he's decided that he's going to move forward with strikes, that's probably closer to the truth of what the negotiations are actually like

• 9:32Speaker 00

  because they match what the Iranians themselves are saying, which is that we're not even really talking to you guys, we're only talking to your mediators. We are not backing down on nuclear. We are not backing down on controlling the strait. They have said time and time again that things are never going back to the way that they were in the Strait of Hormuz, meaning they are going to be in control. They're happy to work with Oman, but they're going to do it one way or the other. So if Oman chooses not to get on board, so what? Like, they're just going to do it anyway. So they're now having direct negotiations with Oman. They are literally icing the US out. And so when Trump is coming in and saying, these guys are impossible to deal with,

• 10:13Speaker 00

  they clearly don't want to deal, that seems like the actual truth of what's going on. And so hearing General Keane talking about the fact that even our negotiators aren't on our side. Saudi Arabia is, does not have the stomach to push this through. And honestly, can you blame them? If your entire economy is predicated on your ability to get oil out of the region, and there are two options, ships going through the strait and a pipeline that bypasses the strait but is completely exposed to attack. If you know, hey, US, if you guys escalate these attacks, then they're just going to do that. At some point, it is just in their self-interest to say, alright, we'd rather pay a toll.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  And so that is rapidly seeming like the reality here. And at this point, given how many times Trump has backed out of this, I don't think anybody should read his posturing as anything other than posturing. And that if he's got the dual whammy of, um, we're running out of munitions and we know we need to keep some of these in reserves just to keep China at bay, unknown threats at bay, uh, then we've got a limitation on what we can do just from a munitions standpoint. And even if we didn't have a problem with the munitions, we have the allies in the region that don't have the stomach for us to push forward. Now, of course, the GCC nations are not a unified bloc, so maybe the UAE is ready to press, uh, forward.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  But clearly Saudi, which is one of the most important, largest countries in the region, is telling you not to do it, then there's going to be tremendous incentive to not do it, especially if I'm correct, and a lot of this started and continues to be about Trump trying to protect the investments into the US that were promised to him by the GCC nations. And if they're saying, listen, man, if you start doing things that get more of our, um, infrastructure destroyed, then we're gonna have to rescind all of those promised dollars. And now the AI industry is on its own, and I've talked many times about how much wealth has been accumulated in the UAE and earmarked for investments, and the vast majority of

• 12:25Speaker 00

  investment dollars the world over pour into the US stock market. The US stock market is essentially AI. It's just one big trade on AI. So when I talk about AI having systemic risk, and we're gonna be diving deep into this in hour three, when I talk about AI having systemic risk, you think that is in all capital letters, flashing neon signs, uh, Trump is certainly aware of that. And so he is going to continue to be swayed by Saudi saying, please don't do this. So that becomes a question of how many options are left? You don't have the munitions, you don't have the support of the people in the region, and you need their money?

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Man, that, that is not a good trifecta for us actually being, being able to, uh, get a military victory out of this war. And that means you're now negotiating from a place of weakness, which is certainly not a good place to be in. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. There's a reason Quince sells cashmere for $60, and it isn't the cashmere. It's real 100% Mongolian cashmere. It's the same stuff luxury labels charge a fortune for. Quince just works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. So there's no need for a markup and no logo tax. The $60 goes to the actual sweater, not the fancy name on the tag.

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• 16:46Speaker 00

  the players in this better than I do. But at the same time, when I hear the way that he approaches it, when I hear his tone, this is somebody who has that sense of like, but hold on, bro, we're America. We've been doing cool things for you since World War II. And ultimately, this is gonna be, and this is an old reference, but this is gonna be some Janet Jackson shit. I know you used to do nice things for me, but what have you done for me lately? You've gotten me bombed. You've shown that you don't have the ability to stand these guys down. And I hate to say it, but this is now, uh, exactly what I warned it was going to be like a month ago, six weeks ago, maybe, when I said, this is starting to look like our Suez Canal moment, which many people say, when the British Empire failed to stand down Egypt

• 17:29Speaker 00

  and maintain control of the, uh, Suez Canal, that was the end of them as an empire. You're never gonna know it in the moment when it's happening, but boy, when you look back, you go, yeah, that was the moment that everybody went, these guys can't do what they used to be able to do. And unfortunately, if you guys have ever paid attention to the UFC, when, um, this happened twice, Anderson Silva seemed impossible to beat, and so he was beating people, uh, psychologically before they ever got in the ring with him. And then once he got knocked out, all of a sudden, it was like, oh, he is mortal. And then he basically lost and just retired. Uh, and then same thing with Conor McGregor. He used to beat people before he ever got in the ring, and then you get to a point where you're starting to get a little bit older, them join St. Work in the way that

• 18:13Speaker 00

  they used to, and you lose, and then all of a sudden, it's game over. People just don't lose to you psychologically before you walk into the ring. Everyone since World War II has lost to the US psychologically before they walked into the ring. We have been sanctioning Iran to death, and it, for years, and it hasn't stopped them from, uh, exerting force in the region. We have now been bombing them for months, off and on, more off than on, I'm well aware of that, but we have been bombing them a lot, to the point that we're worried about our own munition, uh, stockpiles, and they just keep pushing forward. And so now, all of a sudden, nobody's gonna lose to us psychologically before they ever get into the match.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  So that is where, as a global hegemon, the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of the battles have to be won psychologically. If you actually have to go blow things up every time there's a disagreement and you can't just muscle your way in, the game is already over. Nobody can afford to actually start launching munitions every time somebody gets uppity. And so, boy, oh, boy, is this looking like the coda to, uh, the, the Old World Order. I mean, I don't see any way around that.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  So, uh, from this being a, uh, far more ominous signal than anybody who wants to see America come out of this ahead, I don't think there's any way to see it than that. This is a very, um, bad sign. Now, you can always pull a rabbit out of a hat somehow, some way, but I don't see any path to that right now.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Um, I, I, it's interesting to me, as the war progresses, the shift in blame keeps like, kind of like zigzagging.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Cause at first, it was Iran is the aggressor, they started this whole thing, then it became, we're only going to war because Israel is about to get attacked. Then it was, no, we're here to protect the GCC and the Strait of Hormuz because those guys are getting attacked. Then it was, we have to get Iran because the Houthis are their proxy group, and if we don't take Iran out, the Houthis are gonna kill everybody. And now it's, we would win this war, but it's Saudi's, it's Saudi's fault because the Saudi doesn't want to get their, uh, cities bombed for the greater good. And I just think in another three weeks, we're not even gonna be talking about Saudi anymore. We're gonna be like, really, it's Oman's fault? Because why are you even over there? You guys should've just let Iran win anyway. So, uh,

• 20:48Speaker 02

  I feel like I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I feel like I'm not even top 10 smartest guys in the room. But I think that if I was gonna go to-

• 20:55Speaker 00

  There's only six of us.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  That's what I mean. There's four other people that might walk in the room. I'mma tell them that they're smarter than me. But I know if I were to go into a war with a foreign adversary, I'll be like, hmm, let's look at the chessboard, right? Like, you just, like, you have to look at, okay, there's other GCC nations, okay, we have to protect them. Are you guys okay if we go to war? Yeah, yeah, we're gonna war. You know, you guys might get some blowback. Okay, cool. Yeah, let's do it. Cool. Okay, then I have to negotiate with them. How can I negotiate with a foreign entity? Let me send my best and brightest. Who do we have over there? Steve Wilkerson, Jared Kushner. So we have a real estate mogul doing our negotiations. And now we're blaming the IRGC and Saudis, saying they're not even negotiating good faith. Yeah, because your son-in-law is here. Like, where's the real? Who's the diplomats? Who was the guy that was here 40 years ago? Where's that guy? Bring him. I know him.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Who's this guy that, who's the baby-faced guy that just bought a hotel two miles east of me? Why is this guy trying to negotiate my borders now? So I think that we just keep talking about one thing, that, oh, yeah, that's not really the problem. This is the new problem, and then this is not gonna be a problem. This is the new problem, and the narrative just keeps moving further and further and further away.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, whenever you're being propagandized, you can expect it to shift and shift and shift. If you've ever had an argument with somebody. So in business, I have a phrase that we've been using since back in the Quest days, which is, "Don't make me chase you." And so what will happen is, you'll get in an argument with somebody, and if everybody puts their thesis forward at the beginning, and you say, okay, so this is what we're arguing about. Yes, this is what we're arguing about. Great. When I defeat your argument there, if you just move on to the next argument, like you just laid out. No, no, no, for real, though. It's actually about Saudi. No, no, no, for real, it's about, and you're just like constantly, actually, it was about this, this, this. You'll see that a lot in business. Okay, an initiative failed. Why did it fail? Let's set our, both of our theses up in the beginning.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Cool, you've said your thing. Yes, that's exactly why this failed. Awesome. Defeat that, then the person moves on to something, then they move on to something, then they move on to something. So finally, I would just say to people, literally, "Don't make me chase you." Tell me what the thing is. Let's have the debate at the thing. And don't make losing the initial argument make you say that something else is actually the real deal. And that is what always happens in propaganda, because people don't want to take the L. So the reality that I think we're gonna have to face is, we are running up against two or three very knowable things right off the bat. Thing number one, we are not the post-World War II America that we used to be from a manufacturing capability standpoint. We do not have the ability to manufacture munitions at the rate that we once did.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  We are a nation that is so buried under debt right now that we can't tap into the, okay, well, let's just run hot for a little while, produce these munitions, which we can just pump off these assembly lines as fast as we want, as long as we're willing to pay for it. Now, we don't have the ability to pump them off the assembly line as fast as we want. And the more that we spend money on this, you've already got a divided nation that is feeling the weight of the abuse that you've done to the economy for the last, I mean, really, since 1971, but we've been abusing the economy for a very long time. You wanna clock it at 30 years, you wanna clock it at 50 years. There's gonna be arguments able to be made on both of those counts. So you've abused your economy, and part of that abuse

• 24:10Speaker 00

  has been sending all of your manufacturing capabilities effectively over to China, which is now your primary rival, who loves that you've gotten into this quagmire with Iran in the Middle East, so that your eye is off the ball, so that they can go do what they want, namely, make themselves a hegemon in Asia. It will start there, and then they'll see how far they can expand. So all of that is bad. Now, one thing that we're not talking about in this, because I think Jared Kushner, it's possible he's evil, I don't know enough about him, but he is extraordinarily smart. And so the fact that we sent him over there to negotiate, that doesn't bother me at all.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  He's very bright, and if he understands how to get what we need, then we're gonna be fine. The mistake I think we keep making is, we think that the Iranians think with a Western mindset, and they don't. This is frame of reference. When you fail to understand how dramatically different somebody's frame of reference is, you will be eternally surprised by how they interpret the world. You have a theocratic regime. So they believe in a way that I think a lot, in a way that Trump cannot even mentally model. They believe that God is telling them to do something, and they must see it through.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  They are also in a fight for their lives in terms of being able to maintain power within their own country, that if they get booted out of power, that that will be an existential exit for them.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  This is the IRGC, you're saying?

• 25:46Speaker 00

  IRGC, yes. So the IRGC is literally willing to fight until the absolute last man for two things. One, God is telling them to do it. And two, if they don't, they'll be taken out of power by their own people, possibly a gun to the head. So that, you're gonna fight in a very different way. So the inability for us to mentally model the way that the Middle East thinks en masse, and the way that the IRGC thinks specifically, is a huge part of this problem. And I know that this has become like a third rail of sorts.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  But when you're talking about an honor culture that is born out of hurting, and then is translated through Islamic doctrine, you are gonna find yourself in a very difficult position, where people do not back down easily. They are not the people that you can scare off the ball. They are prepared to fight. They believe that being martyred in the name of jihad is the, like, greatest thing that you could do. They consider America the big Satan, so imagine, the big Satan comes to fight. You know that the fastest way to heaven is to die trying to stop them. And so these are the guys you think you're gonna be able to bully? It's just, it is a failure to be able to understand the frame of reference that the other person holds.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  And so even though the right answer, and I've said this since we were talking about Israel and Gaza, the right answer is, people have to think economically. Like, if you wanna see Israel and Palestine move forward in a way that makes lives better for their kids through my Western lens, or through anybody's Western lens, then they're gonna have to switch over to an economic way of thinking and saying, okay, this is the land that we've got, now we're gonna make the most of it, and we're gonna make sure that we've got a good trajectory from an innovation standpoint, from a GDP standpoint, to really build something that matters. But that isn't their frame of reference. Their frame of reference is to be coherent with the Word of God. And so that is a very different way of thinking about things, which is why you're going to see continued violence.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  And it's like, you start putting all of that on the table and actually looking at it realistically, and you end up where we are. You can't break them, because you don't have the financial wherewithal, nor the munitions. Even if you're willing to spend the money, you don't have the ability to produce them fast enough. Maybe in 18 months from now, if someone like Palmer Lucky can actually create a new type of weapon that can be produced on automotive assembly lines, and we can spark Detroit back up and just make it a hub of munitions, maybe? But certainly not today.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  I feel like we're getting propagandized. And I think that the same talking points that we're using against them can actually be turned against us. Because we are also fighting this war. We also think God is with us. We also have our backs against the wall, and we also think if we don't get out of this thing, it's gonna be existential crisis for our well-being.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  I would disagree with that. I need you to really define terms.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Everything that you paint, the IRGC, with that their fear that if they don't come out this war unscathed, that their power will be vastly diminished. I would also say that Trump has the same fear, because-

• 29:04Speaker 00

  There's a very big difference between, I'm gonna get Gaddafi'd, and I'm gonna get voted out of office and maybe imprisoned.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  I don't think they're gonna get the Gaddafi, though, because we just, we're seeing by this war that they don't have the internal, they don't have the internal beef that we thought they have. There's not that much dissent in their country. Because if they have, we've been trying, we already tried to arm the people that are on the ground, the Kurds. That initial attempt didn't happen. It wasn't enough people that would start the internal revolution. We've been announcing that we're trying to revolutionize them. We'd be talking to the GCC states around them to try to get some type of dissent. And that dissent hasn't happened. So unless they're just a very underground, which is like the nuclear bomb, millions and millions of people, which I don't think is accurate, I don't think that they're in as much trouble as we are projecting onto them.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  And yes, I know that they killed 10,000 to 40,000, depending on the numbers, but that wasn't enough to spark the revolution that I think that we assume that they would have.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, that one, I can't say. I don't know what the level of resistance is within the country in terms of, are we actually facing some sort of coup within the country? They're, for a minute, it looked like they were. It's always hard to tell. Is this a very small minority of people that are making a lot of noise? You kill the 40,000 people, and that's just game over? And it was like, those are the 40,000. And hey, like, in a country of 93 million, that's just completely irrelevant. We shut that shit down. We don't have to worry about anything. Or is there more of, more destabilization, both within the IRGC and the broader scope of the country? My gut instinct is, when you kill, the amount of leadership that you've killed,

• 30:47Speaker 00

  that there's far more destabilization than we think. But I'm even willing to set that one aside and say, cool, I'll concede that that's not an issue at all. Now you get into the, when you look at the way that the Supreme Leader Khomeini originally came into power in 1978, 79, I can never remember, one of those two years. When he came into power, that he did it off the back of a more traditional reading of the Quran, a more orthodox reading, that might be a better way to say it. Certainly a more extremist reading, and was like, you guys are not pious, you've completely lost your path. And so he comes to power on that.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  Yes, we want that. Yes, the Word of God. Yes, we're gonna follow this to a T. And then it's been nonstop indoctrination around the idea of, we have to get rid of the influence of the infidels. We have to kill the little Satan, Israel. We have to kill the big Satan, America. And some people will ask you to read that as like a political kill, but-

• 31:55Speaker 00

  I'll say that they are fighting the way that you would expect a true believer to fight somebody who really believes in their cause at a deep level in a way that America certainly does not. And I don't know if we need to get into a theological discussion of that, but I will say this. I don't think Trump believes, this is one man's opinion, I don't think Trump believes in I must do the will of God in the same way that a country led by a cleric believes that they need to do the will of God. That would be my take.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  I don't think their will of God is to go to war with America. I think their will of God is to respect their homeland and to fight for their territory. And if we aren't knocking at their doors, and they're not, the "Death to America" chants have been going on around the region, not just specifically in Iran. And every time a "Death to America" chant happens, a little girl's school got bombed 24 hours earlier. Every time a "Death to America" chant happens, we just destabilize the region 30 miles to the west.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  I feel like we're not talking about the same thing.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  I'm gonna just say one line. You're saying that the reason that they are saying "Death to America," that's the guy that's leading this charge, and he's on a warpath with America is because he needs to kill the little Satan and the big Satan. That's what I heard you say.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I'm saying something slightly to the side of that, which is, I agree with you that they're fighting for their homeland. I very much agree with you that we have started the act of aggression in this moment. What I'm saying is, Trump will back off. He'll back off because he's more concerned about the economics, he's more concerned about his legacy. These guys will not back off because they are not concerned about that. They are actually concerned with getting into heaven. And the person who is like, "If I die in this fight, I go to heaven," they're going to fight in a way that the person who is like, "I just need to make sure the economy's good and that I'm remembered well," is not gonna fight. Like, it's just two radically different things. And so, what I'm, what

• 33:54Speaker 00

  the picture I am specifically trying to address right now is, hey, if you want to understand why Trump keeps backing off, why he is, in my opinion, why you should share my opinion that he is growing weaker by the day in the way that he is prosecuting this war, is entirely because he does not have the veracity of his beliefs in the way that the Iranians have, the veracity of their beliefs. I think Trump is far more concerned with personal legacy and the economic stability of the United States, and quite frankly, that people back down and acknowledge his power. That's what's motivating him, and that's so much weaker

• 34:37Speaker 00

  than "I will be rejected or greeted into heaven based on how I do this." That's what I'm trying to get people to understand. This was me trying to explain the frame of reference that you're encountering at the negotiating table. One side is like, "You're asking me to do something that goes against the will of God." And like, but really, really, not as like a statement that you use to rally people behind you, as a thing that you believe to the core of your existence, you're entirely dedicated to this, you're willing to suffer decades and decades of sanctions, you're willing to be a global pariah, to be isolated and on the outside. It's the same thing, I think, when I look at Palestine, is like, "Bro, at some point, like, take a lesson from what happened in Cyprus." Cyprus had

• 35:21Speaker 00

  a very similar thing happen to them, except far more abrupt and done by a military. And they just, they wept when their land was stolen from them, but then they just moved the fuck on. And that happened more recently than what happened in Israel-Palestine. So even if you take, Israel just came in and occupied this in the most imperialistic, sinister way possible, as Turkey did to Cyprus, you look at Cyprus and it's now a thriving economy and people grow up, normal middle-class existence. And while, yes, you can still find people who are very, very sad about what they lost, as a country, they're just moving on. And so, when you look at Palestine, it's like, "Bro, you were offered a state, I get, you

• 36:06Speaker 00

  didn't want it, but you were offered a state multiple times, rejected it because you're like, 'Nope, like, we have a vision of what we're gonna get, we're either gonna get that or we're gonna reject everything.'" And then you go, "Oh, that's why, literally, generation after generation after generation, they keep making the same decisions." And they are treating this as a military, that there is a occupying military force in the name of Israel that has stolen their land from them, and it's unjust, and they're not going to back down. But you can literally parallel that to Cyprus, and the responses have been so different. And I think it is because, partly, not entirely, but partly because

• 36:47Speaker 00

  of it being an honor culture, and partly because of the theology. And if you're lacking those two things, you're, the way that you play this out will be very, very different.

• 37:00Speaker 00

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• 37:44Speaker 00

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• 38:16Speaker 00

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Nice. We didn't really capture, we didn't really talk about the leakers, but to your point, it might not matter.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that's my thing. It's like, some people are saying, "What do you mean, it's not even a leak? Like, this was like, announced." Other people are saying, "No, this was a leak, and these people should be charged with treason." So it's like, listen, was he gonna go through the attack anyway? And my point is, no, he wasn't going to go through with that attack. That attack was never going to happen because Saudi Arabia is gonna tell you, "I'm not giving you the dollars that you want. They're going to strike our energy infrastructure. This is gonna be bad for the economy. This is gonna be bad for our partnership. You're already losing a ton of bases in the Middle East." I forget the number, but something like, we had 13 bases, and I don't know if all of them have been destroyed, but they've largely been degraded or destroyed. And so, now you've got your allies who are like, "Yeah, I'm not sure how much on your side, I really

• 39:06Speaker 00

  am, so I'd really like you to not do this." You're losing your bases rapidly over here. And so, it's just one weakened position after another, and the question becomes, "Why?" And I'm saying, when you pit these two things together, the frames of reference, it becomes very clear that America does not have the stomach for this, for a whole host of reasons, mostly economic, mostly a loss of faith in us, not faith, a lack of, like, belief in us as the rightful global hegemon, and just obviously not wanting to deal with the financial consequences of that. And then you're going up against a religious theocracy. And I'm even in this, I'm not asking anybody to believe that they're not right. You can believe that

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Islam actually is the word of God, or isn't the word of God. It literally doesn't matter. I'm just saying, what does it do to somebody when they believe it? And what we're watching play out is the, I'm just gonna be really blunt, the weak-willed going up against the strong-willed, who can use asymmetric warfare, and you're going to lose that every time if you're not willing to go to total warfare. And even though Trump has said, basically, "I'm willing to go to total warfare," meaning, his exact quote was, "These strikes are gonna be bigger than anything since World War II." So I'll say, that's him nodding to, "No, no, no, for real, I'm going all the way to total warfare." He said back in March, "We're gonna wipe a civilization off the map." He's never gonna do it. That's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen for all the reasons that I just laid out.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  So I hear we are being propagandized. Every word choice is a bit of propaganda. So even the things I'm saying is propaganda in that I have a frame of reference. I'm communicating from my frame of reference. But the thing that I'm trying to get people to understand is this is the collision of two frames of reference that almost nobody ever talks about. It's never part of the discussion. We're talking about the munitions, which is great. You've got to talk about it. But there is a far more predictive story, which is the collision of wills that are informed by very different things. And once you start mapping what's going to happen based on those frames of reference,

• 41:17Speaker 00

  I think you will understand that Trump is gonna try to bully every time at the negotiating table. He is never going to get what he wants because he's up against a theocratic regime that believes that this is their path to heaven, is to stop you from doing this. And so they are going to, as you said, defend their homeland, for sure. That is what they're doing. But they're doing it with a tenacity that we will continue to underestimate at our own peril because of that theocratic background. I mean, just look at how we steamrolled Venezuela. Partly because Venezuela is a far weaker country just economically because they're much... They were just completely eroded by socialism. But I think they also just don't have the belief that God wants them to do what they're doing in the same way.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  They're not willing to die for it in the same way that the Iranians are.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  We got a lot of Call of Duty fans in the chat. They just want us to drop a nuke and just like level it.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  Do they really? Like, if people are actually saying those words?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, let's just blow like the Middle East up. Let's stop playing. Let's just like... Yeah, we keep saving them.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  They're just trolling?

• 42:21Speaker 02

  No, no, they're serious.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Okay, well, then let's address it.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, how do you feel about that?

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Here is precisely why that is obviously the wrong answer. What the US is doing right now is it is rapidly eroding its ability to be the global hegemon precisely because you have to win the vast majority of your battles through psychology. So people have to love you. They have to want you to win. They have to feel like you're the just benevolent ruler. And yes, you are sometimes harsh on the bad guys, but you're only ever harsh on the bad guys. And because you're so strong, because you're so prosperous, because you've exported so much media that makes me, as this person in, you know, insert whatever country around the world that you want, I actually admire America and I'm, you know, I consider myself a foreign-born American,

• 43:06Speaker 00

  or at least I wish that my country had a similar Bill of Rights. I wish that my country had similar freedom of speech. Like, I think that what you have built as a country is very admirable, and so I'm pro-America. Or I may not be pro-America, but I really am in awe of your technological prowess. And you are so much more technologically powerful than I am that I'm going to accept that you rule the world and I'm not going to challenge you, okay? You have to win. I'm talking like 99.999% of your battles must be won like that. Okay, if you drop a nuke, then everybody goes, "You're evil. You are an evil empire."

• 43:48Speaker 00

  There is no difference between you and Stalin or you and Hitler. And so now, longtime allies go, "Yeah, we can't touch you with a 10-foot pole." And all of a sudden, you find, long before we even did that, they're not letting, Europe is not letting us use their bases. Now imagine that we've just dropped a nuclear bomb on the Middle East when they had not done an overt act of aggression against us at all. You're never going to convince the world that them doing roadside bombs and stuff like that or working through their proxies means that we had to drop a nuclear bomb on them. So they're just gonna say, "Yes, there was a horrific attack on October 7th."

• 44:33Speaker 00

  And yes, sure, Hamas is a proxy of Iran, but that was an attack on Israel. Let Israel do its own defense. In fact, Israel's already responded so disproportionately that that's already crazy. So the fact that you're dropping a nuke now is because you were losing. And you were losing because you were a fool. You were underprepared for this. You have a narcissistic psychopath in the White House. And so the fact that he dropped the bomb, you guys have no moral authority whatsoever. I would much rather China run the entire world than you psychopathic assholes. And so now, everybody's against you. That would be to the detriment of every human on Earth, first of all. And then, second, a detriment for sure in the extreme to every American who will instantly become the pariah the world over.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  You will be hunted in the vast majority of countries you go to. If somebody hears an American accent, you are likely to be hassled at best, assaulted or killed at worst. Dude, it would be so crazy. That is a patently ridiculous statement. Whoever launches the first nuke loses. Period. End of story. Even fucking Putin hasn't launched a nuclear weapon yet, and he's really getting into a dangerous situation in Ukraine. So, bro, like, that is the most self-destructive shit I've ever heard in my life. If you actually believe that, you have no sense of self-preservation. You are so interested in people backing down to you that you actually will drop a fucking nuke on them. That is some wild-ass shit.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  Now, I can make a very strong case for America dropping nuclear weapons on Japan. It actually worked out tremendously, even if you think that it was an absolute moral disgrace. And it shows that America has no soul, whatever. Cool. You can say all those things. But the actual outcome of that was extremely positive. Now, the outcome that you would get today if you did that is a universe away from the outcome that you got then. People now debate, like, should we, should we not? But remember, America only entered that war because of Pearl Harbor and the fact there was already a war waging like crazy in Europe.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  And we understood the beginnings of some of the atrocities that we would discover more and more later. But it felt like a completely justified war. And as you dig in, Japan really did train every person in Japan to be basically willing to fight to the death. And they had them all ready to be like kamikaze soldiers, no matter where you found them. And they have to be in an airplane. And so one of the things, and you guys know, I've asked you a million times to go research Japan, what you see is that even before the nukes were dropped, there was a deep sense of fatigue because people believed that their life was about to end. They believed that they were going to have to fight to the death and that each and every one of them was going to die in some bayonet

• 47:28Speaker 00

  scene in the streets of Japan as the armies invaded. That was their mentality. That's where they were like, "I mean, fuck, this is the end." They weren't thinking about the future. They all thought they were going to die. And so when the nukes dropped and it was like, "Yo, we have unconditionally surrendered", there was a sense of relief, as reported by the Japanese. Like, thank God, bro. Like, we were all caught up in this crazy shit. There was no sense of future. You guys are giving us a future. We may be an occupied nation. We may have just lost. We may have had to embrace defeat. But it's better than embracing that we were about to die. And keep in mind, they were already malnourished by the time the US gets them to unconditionally surrender. So they were already in the process of being starved to death.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  I mean, it's just like, it was so different. And if you can't build a mental model of what it would be like to drop a nuke on Iran now versus what it was like then, dude, that's wild. So I choose to believe you guys are just trolls because, dude, that would be so self-defeating.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  That was an abrupt way to end the sentence.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  I mean, look, I can loop again, but that's it.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  There were just some civilian targets killed in Ukraine right now. And I think this is a very great place to ground it because when you nuke somebody, you can't just nuke the IRGC in their household and not anybody that is around them. So there was 44 people have been reported injured in the mass Russian strike on Kiev and Kiev region. Another 17 people tragically were killed by condolences to their family and loved one. It was a heavy strike, 24 ballistic missiles, four Zircon Onyx missiles, and another 115 drones, a significant number of them jet-powered. The main targets of the attack were warehouse facilities belonging to civilian businesses. There were also strikes on infrastructure and a railway station. These facilities have nothing to do with the war, a brewing company, construction materials warehouses, and a civilian logistics facility.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  This is also in response to, I know Ukraine started to bomb Russia's like Amazon equivalent. So then Russia started to say, "Well, we're gonna take our gloves off, and now we're bombing civilians too." And this is just that death spiral of trying to one-up the other person. And before you know it, it's just death on both sides.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Yes, and this is where the moral authority comes in. So Russia was the aggressor. And so the fact that people are backing Ukraine more than they're backing Russia, I think, makes perfect sense. So, yeah, you don't want to position yourself as the aggressor. America is clearly the aggressor with Iran. And so to continue to exacerbate that is a fool's errand. Now, as I've said many times, if we had the munitions, conventional munitions, I would want to see us win this war because we were stupid enough to get into it. Because of our global standing, our allies are gonna realize we're weak if we have to end up backing out of it at this point. And that is going to be extremely costly.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  And so into that vacuum of power will be a lot of people jockeying for power. You'll have Iran jockeying for power in the region. You'll have China feeling like they have a much better green light to do whatever the hell they want. In Asia, keep in mind, they're already pushing out into the Pacific Ocean, trying to see, is the US going to push back? Or are they going to now be able to control the Pacific? So, yeah, I know that there are people that bang the drum and say that what we want are multiple hegemon. And honestly, I thought about it for a while and I was like, would we benefit from that? And the answer is, you will only benefit once there is stability.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  But as there is a battle going on, you are certainly not going to. And if we end up in a Cold War that is as...

• 51:22Speaker 00

  Vicious as the Cold War that we had with Russia where we're in constant proxy conflict in a bunch of different places. We got spies everywhere. I mean, that is just not something that I want to see people live through now. That means that, and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. What we, the drum we should have been beating for a very long time is for America to maintain its moral authority. But unfortunately, that ship sailed a very long time ago. So, yeah, I don't know that there's any way to be a global hegemon and maintain your soul. I'm just not sure.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Okay, we have super chats? Nope, no super chats. Oh, y'all don't like us today. Forget y'all. Forget y'all too then. I'm just joking. You guys are so generous. Thank you for your time.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  Obsessively generous.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  That's the most important thing, your attention. Okay, let's talk about Mom Donnie in the grocery store ID thing. I'm gonna pass you to Mike Tom, but I have to say that the ID that Mom Donnie required is not the same ID that the SAVE Act requires, because it's just a driver's license. But SAVE Act requires it to be a citizen's verification, which is a passport, a birth certificate, or things like that. So it's not like he wants people to show up with passports to the Mom Donnie grocery store.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Well, I'm very glad that you handed me with that caveat, Drew. So what's going on right now is Mom Donnie is running smack into the reality that when you create an incentive structure, people are going to abuse that incentive structure. The grocery stores that he wants to create, create an incentive structure for people to come buy things cheaply and then go resell them themselves. And so he knows we're gonna have to wall this off somehow. There are gonna be some people that are allowed in and other people that aren't so that we can keep control on this. Now, what Drew is trying to say is, well, listen, we were being too draconian with the SAVE Act, and that's the problem. It's not that we don't want an ID for people to vote, it's that we just want a sensible ID. And if that's

• 53:22Speaker 00

  what the left were saying, then I would be all for it. But it isn't what the left are saying. They fully recognize that they've created an incentive structure to bring in illegal immigrants and then make sure that they have every conceivable possibility to vote that you can give them, so that some of them will, that people are going to follow that incentive structure, and they're going to vote, whether it's ballot harvesting, which is shocking, but nonetheless legal, but happening like crazy here in California, or whether it's just outright fraud, which we've seen more and more examples of, and you're gonna keep seeing investigations being done. And I have a feeling, it's just a feeling, but I have a feeling you're going to uncover a significant amount of voter fraud in due time, as you realize that people will take advantage of this stuff. The reason that

• 54:06Speaker 00

  this conversation about Mom Donnie is so important is because what you see is him realizing, oh, people do abuse the system. So all I'm trying to get across is, yes, motherfucker, people abuse systems. When you put a system that has an incentive structure, people will follow the incentive structure. If people have an incentive to vote illegally, they will vote illegally. If people have an incentive to go to the grocery store, snap things up that are 30% below market value, they know that they can go sell them elsewhere at market value. This is how black market economies work. There's just no way around this. And so now he's caught in this trap of shit, we can't give away the game over here and admit that we're just trying to make sure that the incentive structure is as aggressive

• 54:51Speaker 00

  as possible for immigrants to vote, even when they're not allowed to, by requiring some sort of identification to stop people from abusing our system over here. Now, the good news for Mom Donnie is that he has the backstop of federal tax dollars. He does not have to run, sorry, not federal, state tax dollars, he does not have to run the grocery stores at a profit, like all of his competition does. He can simply bleed taxpayers. And to the tune of millions of dollars a year per store, he can just keep going, it doesn't matter to him. So if he has to make that sacrifice on behalf of you, the taxpayer, then he will, to make sure that he doesn't have to give up the game over here by saying,

• 55:34Speaker 00

  oh, yeah, shit, that's right, requiring ID is bad mojo. He already got beaten up over this when he required two forms of ID to shovel snow and get paid for that. And he realizes, I'm just gonna create another weakness for everybody essentially on the left, in the DSA specifically, who want to eliminate borders, and certainly don't want people to be required to show ID to vote, and by the way, want illegals to be able to vote, which they have said in no uncertain terms. So, yeah, you can, I hope, see right through exactly what's happening. And this is one of the reasons, if you guys saw the footage, I think we have the clip, he doesn't say it himself. When asked about the ID situation,

• 56:17Speaker 00

  he hands the mic off to somebody else on his team, so that the memes are not of his face, they are of her trying to explain. Here we go.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  People from taking advantage of that, you know, that deal, basically, and is there gonna be a limit on the number of items that someone can take that are discounted at that level from that essential basket?

• 56:38Speaker 04

  So our RFP makes very clear that this is a program for New Yorkers to be able to put food on the table, not a program for people to be able to make a quick buck through reselling. I'm gonna pass it over to our EDC head, G-PAC, to add some additional details.

• 56:51Speaker 05

  Yes, if you look at our RFP for the operator, we are looking to make sure that we target New Yorkers, whether it be at sort of a library card-esque, and also we manage who's buying, and that is focused on everyday New Yorkers. So we are mindful of that. And so we're gonna make sure that we have all the things in place to make, ensure that that does not happen.

• 57:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is just reality. Like, you are now making contact with reality. But again, they will hide this. So if they decide to go forward with no need for any identification, there's no database or something like that that's able to track who's supposed to buy it and who's not, then they'll just throw taxpayer dollars at this. The odds that he lets a signature campaign promise go unfunded is effectively zero. And what he's gonna say when he comes to the budget again, when he has to do it next year, I guess technically these don't come on board until, what, 28, 29, something like that? So he's got some time before it actually shows up in the budget. But what you're going to see is he's just

• 57:56Speaker 00

  gonna say, the rich aren't paying their fair share, we need to keep taxing the rich to keep closing the budget holes. And he's going to run into the real question of, how much do you erode your tax base with all of these anti-wealth taxes? He's now starting to lose people on the left. So Prof G, if you guys saw that, was none too pleased to be doxxed in the Pia de Terror database that was put out there. So we'll see how long people go along with this, but that's gonna be the question. Where can he actually find recurring revenue that closes the budget shortfall, which, remember, the budget shortfall every year is growing. So every year, he's gotta find things to do, one-time taxes,

• 58:40Speaker 00

  deferrals, or just increased taxes, unless he can do something that is self-sustaining, either cutting the budget, or taxing people so much in a way where you actually recoup those tax dollars to permanently close the budget. He has gone in the opposite direction. He has made the gap that he will need to close next year bigger than the gap that he had to close this year. So, and by the way, he's missing still a ton of his signature policies. So that gap is likely to continue to grow under Mom Donnie. So we'll see.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, we also have, you pulled this link, says more taxpayers are going to illegal immigrants. I pulled up the link, but it's the ICE thing. Was that tied, or was there a different?

• 59:21Speaker 00

  The thing that they were talking about with that was, oh, God.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, the judge blocked that New York can't do it. And then he's sending out a rally call that says, there's an immigrant support helpline, they can call in.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is it. Play this video.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  It's not a video, it's just a link to New York Times.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  What's he say? Let me just read this. Public safety does not come from masked, armed agents taking people off our streets to immigrant New Yorkers. You belong in this city, and this city stands with you. If you need legal support or immigration, legal support hotline is free. Yeah, confidential and available regardless of your immigration status. So what I'm getting at is this is a series of things that Mom Donnie has done, where he says, this is a taxpayer-funded initiative, and we're going to take care of you regardless of whether you have legal status or not. This is a part of his, is he calling it daycare, childcare, or whatever the name of the pre-K stuff that he's doing, the two-year-olds, that is regardless of immigrant status. There have been several

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  things like that. The DSA has talked specifically about other housing-related initiatives tied to that same phrase, it doesn't matter what your immigration status is, we're gonna help you. But these are all taxpayer-funded things. And so if you guys remember back in the day, it was like, no, no, no, you guys are ridiculous, don't be crazy, these are all right-wing conspiracies, that these things help illegal immigrants. And now, they're just directly appealing to illegal immigrants, saying, it doesn't matter what your legal status is, these things apply to you. This is not just Mom Donnie, by the way. This is in, you see this coming out of Minneapolis, Seattle, you're going to

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  hear this kind of stuff more and more and more. And as the DSA continues to gain power, which they most certainly are, you're going to see this in any of their sanctuary cities, that it is, it's all taxpayer-funded. So anytime you hear them signal to undocumented illegal immigrants, they're saying taxpayer dollars are going to go to you. And if you look- At the actual draw, because the next argument you're gonna hear, and I did a deep dive on this, you guys can go check it out. The argument that you hear is, well, illegal immigrants are actually net contributors to the social systems. It just isn't true. So when you look at them over the long run, they are net draws very substantively, and not just in America, by the way.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  You see the same thing in Nordic countries. If you look at the Nordic country pushback on immigration, yo, it's real talk. Because unfortunately, when you get people to come to the country, not because they want a better life by contributing and by getting their shot at adding value, building their way up, instead, coming for the federal dollars that they're able to get through social services programs, then they just end up taking from the social services programs. And so this is one of those things, you can't both say, the government spends way too much, and we're getting this K-shaped economy as a result of all this inflation, and, oh, by the way, we don't want borders, and we want everybody to come here and be able to be taken care of,

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  and there will be no requirement for ID, and this applies no matter what your immigration status is. It is just mathematically not going to work. And this is where, if you actually want to make things better for people, then you have to say, okay, we've got a finite number of people that we're going to take care of, and now we're going to get aggressive about taking care of those people. You can't create the incentive structure for people to flood in and then take care of all of them as well. It just doesn't work.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I want to kind of pivot into the DSA more, because Bernie Sanders was on CNN talking about the red wave. At first, I thought you meant like Republicans are turning to current Democrats.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, a very different red wave.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  But now you're talking about the hammer and the sickle red wave, so that type of red.

• 1:03:09Speaker 06

  To give you an example, one of the more controversial ones is that Piker has said America deserved 9/11. Are you comfortable with that association?

• 1:03:19Speaker 07

  No, I am not. I think that's a dumb statement. On the other hand, he has a whole lot of followers, and there's a lot of things that he's saying that are making sense to a lot of people. I think, you know, we have to get above cancel culture. You know, when you're doing radio, whatever they do, podcasts, three hours a day, you say dumb things. I suspect if you go back over your career, there may be one or two things that you've said that you may have regretted. But I think what we have got to do is look at the totality of where people are coming from, and go forward.

• 1:03:48Speaker 06

  So when someone like James Carville says he doesn't want to be in the same political party as Hassan Piker, which one are you gonna take?

• 1:03:59Speaker 07

  Well, that's not much of a choice. If Mr. Carville doesn't want to be in my party, the party that I belong to, that Piker, that El-Sayed belongs to, he can start his own party. But I think...

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  So, wait, is that the end?

• 1:04:13Speaker 07

  We need a big tent.

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  Ah, there it is. I knew it. Yeah, so Big Tent is our whole thing now. Everybody's saying, we gotta make a Big Tent, we gotta welcome these guys in. Now, listen, I'm actually politically empathetic. You're going to watch Democrats all start sounding like DSA members, because the energy is in the DSA. And, listen, as a PSA to all the young people out there, you get the world that you are willing to build. And so young people ultimately become the people in power, and they take over, and they really will run this thing. And old people, there is just something about looking at somebody who's old as fuck, telling you how you should live, people just reject it instinctively. I certainly understand that. I remember when I was young, thinking, ooh, man,

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  one day I'm gonna be old, and I'm gonna be the person that just, everybody's like, oh, that guy's fucking old. And that is the reality. That's the trajectory. And young people should rise up, grab the bull by the horns, and do the thing. My thing is, I really want young people to understand, cool, you guys should wrestle the world away from the old people. That's how it's meant to work. That is how evolution saw fit to set this up. I don't begrudge young people that at all. I would just say, make sure that you actually do something that's going to be good for you. That's gonna be good for you, that's gonna be good for your kids. Have your eyes on that prize. You don't owe deference to anybody, as I don't owe deference to you. I'm not going to defer to anybody because they're young, or because they're female,

• 1:05:44Speaker 00

  or because they're a racial minority. I don't give a fuck. This is a battle of ideas, and I'm gonna come at you with my best ideas, and I expect you guys to do the same. But you have youth on your side, and there really is something powerful about youth as an aesthetic. There's something powerful about youth as an energy. There's something powerful that nature made sure that young people come in and stop the society from ossifying. However, you can come in and change things, but not change it for the better. So, I love the energy that young people have. It's absolutely phenomenal. So come in and change things, but make sure that you set a point on the horizon. You say, we're aiming at this, and this is why this is better. Because right now, the DSA has set a point on the horizon, and that point on the horizon is communism,

• 1:06:27Speaker 00

  and we have seen that play out, and it plays out, it is an absolute, it is a quite literal bloodbath. It's not what I want to see for you guys. And you are going to get the world that you want. And so if the world that you want is that bloodbath, you will suffer the consequences far more than somebody like James Carville, who's already knocking on heaven's door. So it's like, that's just the reality of age. He's gonna tap out, and you guys are gonna be left to actually deal with that shit. And so I would say, be very careful about what point on the horizon that you're aiming at. So, I get why Bernie is on this side. This is him finally being vindicated with energy for something he's been fighting for for a long time.

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  But when you see somebody like Newsom, starting to say things that sound very DSA-ish, don't be surprised. You're gonna get more and more of that. It is where the energy is in the party. And by the way, even though the more I study him, the more I absolutely hate his messaging. Shout out to Hassan Piker. Holy fuck, that kid has made himself important. Like, goddamn. And I will say, in person, that kid was lovely. He was super nice. Now, the shit he says is absolutely unhinged, and if you go along with his vision of where you're gonna end up, it is not gonna be a good time for anybody. But nonetheless, he is a very potent voice.

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  Now, the fact that people talk about Hassan Piker, and they constantly quote the US deserved 9/11, that is like some basic bitch shit that he says. He has essentially screamed into a microphone that people should be out killing capitalists, that the streets should run with their blood. I mean, not things like that, literally that. And people don't bring that shit up. That's where I'm like, what the fuck? Like, he has advocated for the murder of, I think, a senator or congressman.

• 1:08:17Speaker 08

  That was clipped out of context.

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  No, there's no context in which you can say the words, if you actually want to improve things, go kill Rick Scott.

• 1:08:24Speaker 08

  That's not what he said.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  That is a direct quote, motherfucker. Pull it up right. No, stop.

• 1:08:28Speaker 08

  I can tell you what the clip said.

• 1:08:29Speaker 00

  Pull the fucking clip up and play it.

• 1:08:31Speaker 08

  So the whole clip...

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  No, no, no, just pull the clip. You can play it.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  I'll pull the clip up.

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  If this wasn't bad TV, you could play it for an hour, but...

• 1:08:38Speaker 08

  Like, I agree, it's stupid phrasing, but the clip is clearly taken out of context, that Rick Scott one.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  Play the clip.

• 1:08:48Speaker 09

  If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott. Okay? You wouldn't make Rick Scott, former governor of Florida Rick Scott, you wouldn't make him the current, what is his current office? What is he? He's the Richard Lynn Scott, as an American Attorney, Businessman, Politician, Navy Veteran, serving as the Senior United States Senator from Florida, a seat he has held since 2019. And also, I believe, this past election cycle, he was literally the...

• 1:09:15Speaker 00

  I'm waiting for the part where it makes it, okay.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  It's the beginning.

• 1:09:18Speaker 00

  Did we already hear it?

• 1:09:18Speaker 08

  It's the, it's...

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  If you cared about Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott.

• 1:09:23Speaker 08

  So what happened here, and this is why I'm trying to be precise, because this happens to a lot of creators. I'm sure this happens to you. I'm sure as we get bigger, it's gonna happen to you. He said something very hyperbolic, right? And he was making a joke in response to a conversation that some, and he watched a clip of, I forget if it was a senator or a congressperson, who was basically like, fraud this, fraud that, all this Medicare fraud. And Hassan was like, if you really cared about fraud, you would kill Rick Scott. Terrible phrasing, but what he's trying to get at is, Rick Scott committed Medicare fraud. Like, he committed fraud. And what happens is, and this is like what Drew was saying earlier...

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  We've got your context now.

• 1:09:59Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  So Medicaid fraud, if you cared about it, you would kill the person who perpetrated Medicaid fraud. Now, how would you feel if I said, if you cared about social services fraud, you would kill the woman that just got convicted for the Leering Center? Here's the thing, it is a different thing in that regard. It is somebody who committed fraud, and I'm saying if you cared about that fraud, you would go kill her. Okay, I think we just disagree on the clip then. That's fine. It's fucking insane. And what I'm saying is, if this weren't, so keep in mind, Hassan Piker, there's video footage of him receiving Mao's Little Red book, and him being just like, oh my god, this is incredible.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  And the guy with him, he didn't say it, but the guy with him said this book, some say this book is more important than the Bible. And Mao killed 45 million people. So this is a guy who admires and one of, if not the, greatest mass murderer ever to walk the earth. And then he says, oh, if you cared about this thing, you would go kill that person. Now, I get it, he's saying, if you cared about that. Now, flash forward, and he's talking about killing capitalists, led the streets, roam with their blood. And I think somebody even, like, in his chat tries to tell him to chill, and he just, like, fucking presses the gas pedal. Now, do I understand that he's a shock jock? Yes, I do.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  So I'm not saying, arrest him for inciting violence. Not where I'm going with this. What I'm saying is, if you're trying to show that his mentality is anti-American, you do not have to go to the rather tame, America deserved 9/11. Because that, you can actually put policy prescriptions behind it and explain why there's gonna be retaliation. So that one, I was always like, okay, fuck you, but never got to the point where I was like, this is just murderous. Now, what is outlandishly murderous is basically simping for Mao, saying, if you cared about fraud, you would kill the perpetrators of fraud. That's crazy.

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  You don't even have to insert a person, just the statement, if you cared about fraud, you would kill perpetrators of fraud. That's wild. And so I'm just saying, this is somebody that has a totally different mental map of the world and how to handle problems, who does not have a problem with violence, as long as he's the one perpetrating the violence. And so that's where this gets crazy. So I'm merely trying to say, if you actually want to know what makes him, as a purveyor of ideas, somebody who I think will lead young people to a place that will be bad for young people, it is the ideology that's aligned with communism, which actually does use violence to get its way.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  And so he has a history of saying, if you had this problem, you should turn to violence. And I'm just saying, woo, that is not something that I think we should be getting behind. That's it.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  I think that we're at a very pivotal moment right now. I've been following politics since George Bush passed. To, uh, not, uh, No Kid Left Behind, because in one year, tuition rates increased 15 to 25%. And I lost, like, four or five friends at, like, my college, who couldn't afford school anymore, because the tuition increased, because everybody was getting forced to graduate, and student loans was free, and everybody was just taking them and going and going to school. And at that point, I was like, okay, well, politicians' past actually, like, in fact, like, impact my life, so I'm gonna, like, pay attention to this a little bit more. And I think it's interesting where we are right now, because what the DSA is doing to the Democrats is very, very, very simple, and very, very, very

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  almost identical to what the Tea Party did to the Republican Party.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  Or the Bolsheviks to the Mensheviks.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  Yes. Uh, I'm talking about America, because I feel like it's a very specific system.

• 1:13:57Speaker 00

  I think they're actually running the other playbook, but go ahead, I want to hear the full point.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the full point that I'm saying is that where, where a party starts, there's fringe ideas. The entire birther movement was based off of Obama's not really an American, and he's taking over the country, he's gonna lead communism here. The communist revolution never came, um, I guess they were wrong about that.

• 1:14:17Speaker 00

  Were they?

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  But the birther movement.

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  Didn't it?

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  And it was Obama's fault, Hassan is Obama's fault?

• 1:14:22Speaker 00

  I'm not saying that.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  What are we talking about? I've, I've struck that down. Remove that from the record. We have better arguments than that.

• 1:14:27Speaker 00

  Meaning you take back that communism never arrived.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  No, we have better arguments than that. Come on, we're not gonna get into that pitch hole. That's a distraction. Um, but the birthers led to the Tea Party. The Tea Party teamed up with Occupy Wall Street, because this was right around the time that the economic downturn happened. So the economic, the Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party were like, hey, the establishment hates us, we need to go anti-establishment. That party out, like, grew together, then Trump came and was like, ooh, there's a bunch of people who are very, very mad, and want to drain the swamp. I could drain the swamp. Hey, guys, I'll be the leader of this party. And he took the Republican Party, and he's been taking it ever since. What I am fearful of is that I do think Hassan Piker, being the face of violence on the streets, I think that that's not really true. I think he's a streamer. Streamers are supposed to say dumb shit.

• 1:15:12Speaker 02

  We have the people on the left who say dumb shit. Glenn Beck says dumb shit to Republicans, um, at that point. So we have talking heads, Laura Loomer is saying dumb shit now.

• 1:15:22Speaker 00

  Our president says dumb shit.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  We have people who say dumb, we have people who say dumb things to rally up their base and get people going. So I'm not gonna say that Hassan Piker is the face, but what I am going to say is that Hassan Piker cracks the door open to the DSA take over the Democrats, and then there might be some charismatic leader who's like, oh, there's a bunch of people who are anti-establishment that wants a one-party system, let me take it over, and then I will become that big bad guy that actually is going to come. So I do give you credit there, because I do think that they are less, they are setting the seeds for a charismatic asshole to take over and become Mao. Yes, that is true. I give it to you, I give the concession. However, I think that what we're doing right now of, let's just talk about young people, let's say that they're being distracted,

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  let's address what they believe and not how they feel or their problems, I think is amiss right now. And I think where politics is right now, we're discussing streamers, we're discussing whether somebody said what they said three years ago versus actual politics, actual policy, actual laws being passed, actual bills being passed. We need to have more C-SPAN and less CNN. We need to have more Senate and House floor and less Twitch stream recaps. And I think that that's something that we should encourage our audience to do as well. I don't want you to say what you got from another podcast to own me. I'm not trying to own you. I think we should actually read the appropriation, though, that we all passed, because it passed without none of us being mad. But every time the SAVE Act gets struck down, we spend 30 minutes on the SAVE Act.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  But we don't talk about the bill that allowed the, the bill that allowed Morocco to have a claim over North Africa and allowed the, um, that, that fueled the Moroccan government to say, okay, you can take over Suweta, and then now we're talking about Suweta as this Islam immigrant takeover, but we didn't talk about the steps and the seeds that the government plants before they do that big thing. So I would just ask everybody respectfully, I love everybody, I want us all to win, I want America to be a great place. I don't have a few money, Tom, I'm not about just hopping in a jet and leaving and let America burn. I will be here, holding my kids, trying to not burn in, in the process. But I think that we need to all just come to the terms that we're all being propagandized, we're all being lied to.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  There are immigrants who, yes, want America to burn, and there are Republicans who don't give a fuck about America and just want to make as much money as possible. All those things can be true at the same time. I think us as American citizens need to realize what actually is important, and focus on what actually is important, and let's just stop trying to dissect the 30-second clip to see what he meant and what it can possibly lead to, and let's talk about the mechanisms in place, like money and politics, that actually leads to these

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  perversions.

• 1:18:02Speaker 00

  Okay, all of that was absolutely brilliant. If you can just confirm that the feed is correct, because on my side, it just went super weird. Um, that would be great, Eric. I see people. Yeah, mine's working. Mine is not, which is very strange. I see the replay. Do command R. Anyway, if you guys are good, I'm good. Um, okay, so here is what I'll say. You, I'll look at you like a policy wonk, and you have this rebuttal many times where I'm going down a path, and then you're like, but hey, we're not talking about, like, housing improvement and things like that. Okay, so um, you're the policy wonk of the show. Uh, for people that don't know that term, it's people that are obsessed with, what does the actual policy say?

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  I think that's great, and I love that, and I think that you, um, while I don't love it as a reorienting mechanism, because I think you're wrong to do that, I think that you're right to make sure that those things get covered. I think that's brilliant. Now, here's where, um, I think you have made a, um, hmm, yeah. You're, you're doing something that makes you valuable, because it's different and it's good to have another voice. Here's why I completely understand what you're saying and believe that the thing that I am obsessed with in this moment is far more important than the policy wonk thing.

• 1:19:23Speaker 00

  And that is, when you said, the, the very thing you said, I want to strike from the record, and we've got better arguments, is where I think you're making a mistake. And it goes like this. Politics is downstream of culture. So who has a better bill of rights than America? Russia. Uh, under Stalin, their bill of rights was extraordinary. And it was like, you can't, if anybody even tries to suppress your free speech, they're gonna be dealt with. Okay, we know the reality of that is what's known as a parchment guarantee. Meaning, it might be on paper, but it isn't what they actually enforced. And what matters is what actually gets enforced.

• 1:20:08Speaker 00

  And there, uh, Justice Scalia did a whole talk about this, actually quite brilliant. I think he's dead now, but uh, anyway, his videos live on, and you can go look at them.

• 1:20:18Speaker 00

  So, understanding that you have, when you fight for the soul of a country, you're actually fighting for the cultural beliefs. You're not fighting for the policies. The policies only matter if the culture is aligned with them. And so what I'm saying is, no, no, no, the very thing, especially in a populist moment, the very thing that you have to do if you want to win the soul of young people is really the most important thing, is you have to address, like you were saying, what do they feel? Where are they trying to go? What is the world that they're trying to bring in? What did we break? Or not fix, because it was broken before we got here, but hey, we just rode along with it, that is now making their life worse. All of those things have to be addressed.

• 1:21:03Speaker 00

  But if we don't understand that, I don't know that there's any causal link, because I was not paying attention to politics at this time. I don't know that there's any causal link between Obama and the DSA. But what I do know is that if you're telling me that people were saying the communists are coming, the communists are fucking here. And so I'm like, whoa, I literally, until you said that, I've never heard that before. I never heard that anybody was saying back in the Obama days, this is going to lead to communism. So now I'm hearing that live for the first time and I'm like, holy shit. We have communism. So if people were saying, this is going to lead to communism. Now I'm like, fuck, what the hell? Like, I'm gonna have to go back and, did we start planting seeds? Because I always saw the rise of the DSA as being this totally separate thing

• 1:21:47Speaker 00

  that had to do with youth culture, finding their way to communist ideas because of the long march through the institutions, which started a very long time ago in the West, born out of France, comes over here, they literally say, this is how we're going to win. And we start doing this, and I've said many times, the long march to the institutions is a phrase. It's not like Tom trying to be descriptive. It's a phrase, because it was known, because they documented it and said, this is what we're going to do. That's what I thought gave us the DSA. So if people are saying, well, Obama was actually a product of that, he's a step on this continuum that has now led us, I'll need to look at that. But that is not something to turn away from. And man, I get it. We all have a thing that we respond to.

• 1:22:31Speaker 00

  And the thing that I respond to, because of the way that I'm wired and because of the reading that I've done about history, I, I am absolutely the alarm bell for people to understand that communism is the single most murderous governmental style that humanity has ever brought to bear. And that if we want to debate, we don't actually want communism. We want the free market authoritarianism that China does. We can have that debate separately. But these guys are openly celebrating Mao. They are openly saying we need to get rid of borders. They are openly saying that we need to get rid of the police. And I promise you, what will replace the police is the Cheka. Look it up. And so this is one of those things, I, I am that alarm bell.

• 1:23:16Speaker 00

  And I will sound that alarm bell out of moral obligation. Because remember, anybody listening to my voice right now, I think what I'm doing right now is bad for business, not good for business. This is the worst thing that I could be doing when I'm trying to launch a video game. The only reason that I don't stop doing it, it isn't because I don't have the money. It is because I literally will not be able to look myself in the eye if I get on a private flight and I flee and America burns behind me and I felt like I didn't fucking do anything to try to stop this. I could have, and instead I was following my passions and building this game and pretending that I couldn't see or hear what was happening around me. And so literally, we had a meeting yesterday where the partnerships team was expressing, hey,

• 1:23:58Speaker 00

  now they were actually very open to letting me go and I appreciate that very much. It is hard to find partners as good as they are. And, but they were saying, listen, there are some things that you cover that create a problem for us economically. We have lost deals because of the things that I have said. We literally had somebody say, because of things Tom has said about Islam, I am now taking your advertising dollars away. And my response is, I get it. I'm not gonna stop saying it, but I get it. I understand. They need to do what they need to do. So none of this is anything other than me going, holy shit. Like, America was good to me, really good to me. And it was good to me because of a set of structures that can be repaired.

• 1:24:43Speaker 00

  And so I need to help people repair those. Now, there will be a policy wonk side of this, which is why I love that you represent that. But to diminish that we do have to have the cultural battle, that we have to talk about the, the like biggest soldiers in the march to communism, which right now is a one-two punch of Mamdani and Hassan Piker. That, that's your one-two punch. They are two of the dream team. There are going to be more. And we are absolutely going to have to say, here is the idea that they're putting forward, and this is why it's a terrible idea. And I want to reiterate, he is a shock jock. He needs to say things that are provocative.

• 1:25:27Speaker 00

  It is an extraordinarily good strategy if you can stomach it emotionally. I cannot, I can only say what I believe to be true. But it's an extraordinarily good strategy if you're willing to say things you don't necessarily believe in, to get people's attention. And so he's done a phenomenal job of building a very large audience and animating them with this kind of rhetoric. To soak the streets with the blood of capitalists and things like that. Hey, I get it. I'm not saying he is instigating violence. I know many people make that argument. I think in totality it does. I think that it actually creates a milieu in society where people want to be violent. But my belief on that is, you've got, unless he actually said, go kill Rick Scott,

• 1:26:13Speaker 00

  then to me, total pass. I've got, I'm happy to be in the war with ideas. I am using that as, that example, not to say that he called for people to go kill Rick Scott. I'm saying that there's, in my opinion, there's no excuse for saying, if you believed in actually fighting fraud, you would go kill Rick Scott. Because I think you can put enough together to see that he actually does think that violence is the right answer for certain problems. He said it over and over again. And so when you take it as a gestalt, I'm not saying go arrest him. What I'm saying is, these are terrible ideas. Do not buy into these ideas. As a culture, this is absolutely piss poor.

• 1:26:55Speaker 00

  And instead, and this honestly, I have a feeling I'm gonna be saying this a lot. And boy, do I feel weird as somebody who doesn't even believe that God is real. This is going to end up being a collision of what is, you've got certainly radical Islam, you can just say, this is about the, the concept of jihad, of waging war. Let's assume it's an analogy. It's a very potent analogy. And if everything that you come at, you do with the like, we've got to do this in the spirit of waging war. Then you've got Christianity, which is the spark of the divine is in the individual. And if you take my coat, let me give you my shirt. These are just very different metaphors. And the metaphors will echo. Now, the great irony of my life is, I'm more of the war metaphor guy.

• 1:27:39Speaker 00

  I'm far more drawn to that rhetoric of, ah, ah, ah. But when I look at like, ooh, we're in a time where the war rhetoric gets a little hairy, doesn't mean I'm not gonna use it. I find myself incredibly drawn to that, so I can see it like slipping out of my mouth. And then somebody playing this clip back. It, it is that I find myself being like, oh, actually, we need to be reminding ourselves, there's a spark of divinity in each of us. We cannot be pushovers. Absolutely, we must draw the line. And, and I used to wear this shirt called the Lord's Gym. And it was like a picture of Christ fucking bloodied and pushing up and the cross is on his back and it's big and fucking heavy. I can't tell you how much that shit speaks to me. But we have to find a way to be both like, this is what America is, this is what it stands for, and I'm not gonna back down.

• 1:28:24Speaker 00

  I'm not going to ease off of what I believe. And be very careful about our rhetoric and the vision of what we're trying to paint for people, both where we want to get and the method we're going to use to get there. And so maybe I am a voice that will never be able to, to capture the spirit of this moment. That's fine. I'm here to earn my own respect. But I think it is very important that we fight the cultural battle. We cannot simply go, oh, but we need to talk about housing policy. We need to talk about housing policy. That is incredibly potent. But what we don't want to do is say, oh, this is a ridiculous waste of time

• 1:29:03Speaker 00

  to address something that one of the most influential voices in America is saying. Because politics, those policies are downstream of culture.

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  Heard. Culture is important. I concede that point. I do want to clarify, though. Obama wasn't the lead to the DSA.

• 1:29:25Speaker 00

  Thank God. Love that.

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  Okay, I think those are two separate issues.

• 1:29:28Speaker 00

  I have, dude, as somebody who was just old enough to be completely swept up, I wasn't paying attention to politics, but when he got elected, I was euphoric. So I want him, upon analysis, to be extraordinary. I don't know. I've never looked at it.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  DSA doesn't like him, though. They call him a war monger. Because he was the OG droner. Y'all forget, Obama told y'all how this drone thing works. He blew up everybody.

• 1:29:55Speaker 00

  Hey.

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  All right, let's jump over to Japan, or I should say Washington, because Treasury Secretary Scott Besen is urging the Federal Reserve to help defend the Japanese yen after the US Treasury's intervention failed to stabilize their currency. Besen wants the Fed to expand its FEMA dollar lending facility, allowing the Bank of Japan to support the yen without selling US Treasuries. Analysts warn the move could spook markets, deepen concerns over the yen, and test the Fed's independence.

• 1:30:22Speaker 00

  What Scott Besen is doing is not going to save the yen. Let's be abundantly clear about that. And this is a systemic risk that could end up impacting all of your money. And that is what Besen is actually trying to deal with. I don't think he secretly cares about the yen at all. But let's get into the facts. Tuesday, Besen told CNBC it's reasonable for the Fed to consider upsizing the FEMA offering for Japan so they can further defend the yen if needed. Now, if you don't know what FEMA is, FEMA is a different FEMA from the emergency response. This is F-I-M-A. It allows countries to borrow against their US Treasury holdings. So you've got a bunch of US debt. Cool, we're gonna let you borrow against that, so you can raise cash without having to sell your Treasuries.

• 1:31:07Speaker 00

  Now, in the case of yen, they're trying to do that so that the Japanese can defend the yen without having to sell their Treasuries. They are the largest holder of US Treasuries. Now, Besen said the purpose of these facilities is just to protect the US economy and keep volatility offshore. I think that's bang on correct. I think he's right to be focused on that. I think that you're gonna need the Japanese bubble to deflate slowly. You do not want this to burst overnight. It will be way too traumatic. Now, when you take that as his actual objective, then all of this starts to make more sense. And Besen, right now, is talking warm and fuzzy about Japan, but as a reminder, and I hate that this is true, this is certainly not my vision of the way that the US ought to be, but we have had our highest diplomats say this in the past.

• 1:31:52Speaker 00

  This very famous quote, I think from Kissinger, but the quote is roughly, "The US doesn't have allies, it just has interests." So when I hear Besen talk warm and fuzzy about Japan, and I see him almost holding hands with the Prime Minister of Japan, they were sort of shaking hands, sort of holding hands, it was very interesting. What I see is somebody who is an economic shark. Remember, he made an obscene amount of personal wealth off of breaking the back of the British pound. So this is not somebody who is known for thinking about the welfare of other countries. He's somebody who understands the economic machinery, and he knows how to leverage it. So with that in mind, I think we need to look at this through that lens.

• 1:32:37Speaker 00

  Now, we're making sure that the economic stress that the Japanese are feeling right now doesn't spread to the US because if we ignore their economic stress, even though I think they're doing things that don't make sense, I don't think they're going to be able to defend the yen through anything other than economic growth. But if we don't create this facility through FEMA to allow them to borrow against their debt, to defend the yen, they will sell that debt. That will create a gap in our own ability to raise debt, which, remember, we have a $2 trillion roughly deficit every year. And so we don't want to be in a position where there isn't appetite for our debt.

• 1:33:19Speaker 00

  The less appetite there is for our debt with money that's already out in the world, the more we have to print money to buy our own debt. And so we don't want to see ourselves in that position, which is, by the way, the exact position that Japan is in. They own, I think, 50% or more of their own debt, which is absolute insanity. But nonetheless, that's Japan. They're gonna have to deal with that. So it makes sense from that perspective. But there are going to be realities to be faced because I think Japan is going to keep attempting and failing to defend their currency. And so that's gonna put us in a very difficult situation. The 10-year Treasury traded above, this is in the US, traded above 4.7% last week.

• 1:34:04Speaker 00

  Now, if Japan raises intervention dollars the normal way, it sells its Treasuries, that yield is going to climb. And so that obviously would put us in a bad position. We have to roll over a ton of debt this year. And so we want people to believe that, you know, interest rates are nice and steady, they're not gonna be going up. Ideally, they'd be going down. So Besen is pushing for more FEMA so that it would stop that specifically from happening. So the real lens is that Washington is defending its own bond market, and Tokyo is just getting the currency support as a side effect. The Fed, so far, has declined to comment about whether they're gonna make more funds available or not. So remember, you've got the Treasury, you've got the Fed. They are separate, okay?

• 1:34:49Speaker 00

  Supposedly, the Fed is independent. Now, I secretly think that that's probably the exact opposite. I think Tom's feelings, this is, you're gonna hear this denied until the end of time. But I think Waresh and Trump met, again, this is me prognosticating, I don't have any information to this point. But I think that they met, and I think Trump was like, "Listen, bro, there are things that I need to get done, and I need to know that you're the guy that already believes and wants these things." So we're not colluding, we're just on the same page. And there was some talk about, "I do, but listen, I think there's gonna be a ton of deflation from AI. I'm gonna have to do things, especially in the early days, that may seem counterintuitive to you. I'm not gonna lower rates right away, because it's gonna make it seem like you actually are telling me to do things,

• 1:35:32Speaker 00

  when we both know you're not telling me to do it, it's just that we both agree on the long-term vision of where we need to end up." It was something like that. Way too many winks and nudges and nods, but enough plausible deniability that if somebody were secretly recording the conversation, it would have been fine. Again, that's just my speculation. I am making this up based on what I believe to be true about humans in general, and these two specifically. So that is roughly where we are. Now, again, they haven't commented yet, so the Fed, this is what we're talking about, they haven't commented on expanding FEMA, and it would require an FOMC vote, and the committee isn't even scheduled to meet until mid-September. So that's all a big question mark. Now, turning our eyes to Japan,

• 1:36:12Speaker 00

  Takeuchi's cabinet approved a $21.3 trillion yen stimulus package, which is the largest since the pandemic. 11.7 trillion yen for cost of living relief, 7.2 trillion yen for 17 strategic sectors, including AI, semiconductors, and shipbuilding. And she's saying this is just responsible proactive fiscal policy. So hey, yes, we're going to have to incur all of this debt, but it's a good idea because, quite frankly, things are destabilizing with China. We're gonna have to take care of that. Inflation is hitting us, so we're gonna have to deal with that. That's the cost of living stuff. And then just make sure that we're taking care of infrastructure so that we can be,

• 1:36:55Speaker 00

  certainly with AI, a technological superpower, which Japan has historically been, until they hit this malaise where they're just now riddled with these zombie companies that aren't actually innovating. For yet another one of the reasons I want to keep government out of industry, because when the government is just pumping you full of cheap money, then these companies can, by artificially holding rates low, these companies can stay in business effectively forever because all they have to do is clear the hurdle of the interest, the ridiculously low interest on their loans. They don't actually have to be a profitable business. It's crazy. They suck up all this talent. The talent, much like the government during, under Biden, was sucking out all of the talent out of the normal economy.

• 1:37:39Speaker 00

  You want to get these people out of these zombie companies and into truly innovative companies. Okay, this is all from Japan's perspective, all something part of what they call Abe-nomics. So their previous Prime Minister is a guy named Shinzo Abe. He ended up being assassinated, by the way. But he had a particular playbook, and Takeuchi came up under him. Now, Abe ran, basically, the Abe-nomics experiment for about eight years, had three arrows in their quivers, they always talked about. So Arrow 1 was easy money, Arrow 2 was government spending, and you fire them, like, constantly. And then Arrow 3 was structural reform. The problem is, the structural reform wasn't working. So they were doing Arrows 1 and 2,

• 1:38:22Speaker 00

  but it never actually got the structural reform. And the question becomes, why? And the fact that they didn't get the structural reform is what all eyes need to be on, because this is why trying to borrow money against their US Treasuries to defend the yen, I don't think is going to work in the final analysis, because the only thing that's actually going to shore up the yen long-term is people wanting to buy assets in Japan with their yen. That will keep a strong appetite. Because as Japan raises their rates, what ends up happening is people start liquidating the Japanese yen carry trade, and they're getting out of yen. So you might see a temporary spike,

• 1:39:04Speaker 00

  but then there's just less demand for yen over time, because people aren't taking those loans out. And so as the, every time the government of Japan defends the yen, people become more convinced that Japan is in economic trouble, which means that they're not a place to invest. So, very ironically, the more they try to defend the yen, the weaker they actually make it, the more they have to defend it, which makes it even weaker. And what they should be doing is just saying, alright, look, this is gonna suck and the yen is gonna drop in value, but that's going to allow us to actually do the real structural reforms, get rid of all these zombie companies, which means they will have to die, which means that employees will become unemployed, which means we then have to find a way to actually grow our economy.

• 1:39:47Speaker 00

  And the problem is, they don't have any great ideas. Now, spending the money on the infrastructure, at least for AI, saying, look, AI is gonna be part of the future and we cannot be beholden to all these other countries. We can't be waiting for China to do the free models. We can't be beholden to the US for their very expensive, but cutting-edge frontier models. We need to control our own destiny. That, that has to be the playbook. And looking to somebody like SoftBank, which has been sending money all over the world with these insane investments that have actually paid off, but just an insane amount of capital that's gone elsewhere. You want the incentive structure for that guy to be investing internally in Japan, given that he is Japanese. So, you've got to deal with that kind of thing

• 1:40:30Speaker 00

  to create those incentives so that the money flows into Japan because that's the right place for the money. You're not doing it because you have some obligation to Japan, which is what I fear they're going to do. I fear they're going to pull a gun out and tell people, hey, you're Japanese, you're gonna be investing your money here, even if it's a terrible return. We'll see. We, there have been these mystic, mysterious tweets that have been happening on X to that effect, but Japan actually hasn't taken any policy action like that yet. So, we'll see. But if they don't fix the growth of their economy, this is never going to work. So, we are now in a wait-and-see strategy. But I don't love that the global markets, especially the US,

• 1:41:15Speaker 00

  are so tied into what Japan is doing. So, we are going to have to unwind this carefully. So, I understand why Besen is getting involved, but dear investors, you need to pay attention to this and react accordingly. Don't keep trying to eke out every dollar of the yen carry trade. This obviously is not financial advice. But I would really think through, what are the mechanisms at play here? What is Besen really trying to signal? What is really going on? And then what does that mean for your money? It's gonna be consequential.

• 1:41:46Speaker 02

  For some reason, I'm less apprehensive about this. Again, cuz Scott Besen, I got the, I got the paper. Treasury Secretary has done it time and time again. And I do think that I am team, I want the stock market to collapse so that way the housing market can collapse right behind it. But I do feel like Japan has been holding us down. And I feel like Japan is who we think Israel is. Cuz as we've been giving them money and they've been saying all this, we're your number one ally. Japan has been paying us for years and we bombed them. Like, Japan could have been petty and not inflate our currency and not participate in capitalism, as everything they've done. They could have been very vindictive and because of where we started to how we are now. So, I'm less like, I, I feel like we need a stronger Japan

• 1:42:31Speaker 02

  to make America, like, I'm okay with that tie. Am I just being like distracted and that?

• 1:42:36Speaker 00

  No, no, not at all. You're, you're giving a, like philosophical, emotional answer. And I would say, I love a strong Japan. Japan's a tremendous ally. The more you research Japan, I think the more you'll be excited by, oh, I love that the US and Japan are allies. And this is like the greatest example of, okay, we had real beef.

• 1:42:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:56Speaker 00

  And we managed to get over it. They became an extraordinary country. We have benefited economically. We certainly benefit by having a very strong ally right off the shore of China. So, there are a lot of great things. And China, or sorry, Japan is the great exporter of culture right now. So, our kids, whether we want to believe it or not, are being wildly influenced by the Japanese. And so, oh man, I want this to work out well. I certainly do not want the stock market to crash to get your housing prices to come down cuz that certainly isn't necessary. That would be a replay of 2008, which was absolutely devastating. And I don't think we've recovered even yet. But on the housing thing, we should definitely want to radically end NIMBYism. We should, we have to break people's mental model

• 1:43:42Speaker 00

  for a house is the way that you should be thinking about getting rich. It's not gonna be easy cuz it's the only asset class people understand. But nonetheless, we're, we're gonna have to put in some work there. So, yeah, I wanna see that come through, supply and demand. Just build more houses. Anyway, with the Japan, the reason that you're right and we should all want this to play out well for Japan and for the rest of the world, is that Japan has sort of unintentionally sacrificed for the rest of the world. They thought by keeping the Japanese yen artificially, sorry, their interest rates artificially low, that Japanese investors would get these cheap loans and grow these extraordinary companies. And it did not happen. But then they were trapped and they had no way out of it

• 1:44:27Speaker 00

  because if you just let the companies fail because everybody is, you know, under all this debt, you're gonna be in trouble. And then Japan started buying so much of its own debt that it now needs to keep rates low because if the rates start going up, Japan itself has to pay the interest rates on that stuff because they are just having to soak up so much of their own debt to keep that market going. So, they're like, damn, we don't want the rates to go up. But for them to restructure and get back to a positive inflation story because they're going to use inflation as the mechanism, then they have to build companies that innovate so that basically wages are going up, companies are growing,

• 1:45:12Speaker 00

  workers are able to demand better wages because they're offering so much power to these companies. And then that creates a positive inflation story. I'm put positive in quotes. But they are creating not a printing-led inflation run, but instead they're creating an innovation, power of the worker inflation, which puts you in a much better, my quality of life is actually going up. People can afford more, people charge more. And as long as that ratio is better to you, you're getting richer over time and not better to the, um, the asset class because inflation is driving asset values up over time and then everybody's getting poorer. That, we wanna see them get into that situation, given the, the way that things are.

• 1:45:55Speaker 00

  To do that, this needs to be a slow and orderly transition where everybody who actually took advantage of the carry trade, basically Japanese people, but then they sent the money out and then people all over the world who borrowed in yen and then sent the money out. We need them to nice and slowly bring that money back. But that's gonna need to play out over years, not months. So, I'm really hoping that people are just reading the tea leaves and are willing to leave some money on the table. She probably won't even say that sentence. I'm like, oh, God. But leave some money on the table to remove risk. And it's certainly a trade I make every day, but it is not a trade that most people make.

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  Somebody said, we need Japan to be good. Otherwise, we won't get our Gundams, so.

• 1:46:42Speaker 00

  A, facts. B, like, we, we haven't talked about this yet, but they announced a Neon Genesis Evangelion continuation, which I was just like.

• 1:46:54Speaker 02

  I still love that cuz you've, yeah, you've been banging that drum for a while now.

• 1:46:56Speaker 00

  It's so good. But it's one where you're gonna be like, wait, kids were watching this? Yeah, it gets pretty intense. There we go. All right, guys, thank you so much for joining us today and every day. You guys are incredible. Thank you for the super chats, the support has felt very deeply. I am doing today my AI masterclass. If you wanna see the positive side, the utility side of AI, I'm gonna be talking about that today at 1:00 PM Pacific. I'll show you how to launch a company using AI. Remember, I'm using AI daily. My company is using AI daily. We know exactly what's real and what's total bullshit. And I'm gonna walk you guys through how to distinguish between the two, how to use AI in a real way to build things you might not have thought possible to do by yourself. It really is now possible.

• 1:47:38Speaker 00

  It's for free today, 1:00 PM Pacific. The link is in the description. If you wanna sign up, you can still sign up right now. Join me 1:00 PM Pacific today. It will be live, so you can spend more time with me. Let's go. All right, guys, thank you again so much and we will see you on Friday. Love you guys and until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day.

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