Civil War Symptoms? Minnesota Meltdown, Alex Pretti, China’s Attempted Coup Drama & Iran on Edge | Tom Bilyeu Show Live

Welcome to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. In today’s episode, Tom and co-host Drew dive headfirst into a rapidly shifting global landscape that feels like "everything, everywhere, all at once." Against a backdrop of escalating unrest in Minneapolis following the ICE shooting of Alex Pretti, Tom and Drew unpack the fragile state of world order—from National Guard deployments and violent protests in the U. S., to economic instability in Japan and rumors of a failed coup in China’s military. You’ll hear sharp analysis on how intertwined global economics, politics, and social forces are driving chaos both at home and abroad. The discussion explores not only the tragic events in Minnesota, but also the deep-rooted ideological battles playing out across America, the shifting power dynamics in China, and the potential for dramatic military action in Iran. Tom and Drew break down complex issues like the ethics of resistance, the role of local government in federal conflicts, and the underlying economic moves shaping the future. If you’re seeking clarity in tumultuous times and want to understand the mechanisms powering today’s most urgent news stories, this episode of Impact Theory is essential listening. Tune in for thoughtful conversation that encourages critical thinking, first principles analysis, and a focus on actionable solutions for navigating uncertainty. Quince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at ⁠https://quince.com/impactpod⁠ HomeServe: Help protect your home systems – and your wallet – with HomeServe against covered repairs. Plans start at just $4.99 a month at ⁠https://homeserve.com⁠ Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at ⁠https://shopify.com/impact⁠ Incogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: ⁠https://incogni.com/impact⁠ Sintra AI: 72% off with code IMPACT at ⁠https://sintra.ai/impact⁠ Huel: High-Protein Starter Kit 20% off for new customers at ⁠https://huel.com/impact⁠ code impact Bevel Health: Visit ⁠https://bevel.health/impact⁠ and use code IMPACT to get your first month free. Ketone IQ: Visit ⁠https://ketone.com/IMPACT⁠ for 30% OFF your subscription order Cape: 33% off your first 6 months with code IMPACT at ⁠https://cape.co/impact⁠ Plaud: Get 10% off with code TOM10 at ⁠https://plaud.ai/tom⁠ Pique: 20% off at ⁠https://piquelife.com/impact⁠ What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:⁠ join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER⁠: ⁠https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show⁠ SCALING a business:⁠ see if you qualify here.⁠: ⁠https://tombilyeu.com/call⁠ Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:⁠ sign up here.⁠: ⁠https://tombilyeu.com/⁠ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,⁠ Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook⁠ —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/⁠ Tik Tok:⁠ https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en⁠ Twitter:⁠ https://twitter.com/tombilyeu⁠ YouTube:⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu⁠ Minneapolis ICE shooting, Alex Pretti, National Guard deployment, violent mobs, global trade war, devaluing the dollar, Chinese military purge, Xi Jinping coup rumors, illegal immigrants, law and order, economic instability, Japanese yen, yen carry trade, US treasuries, Minnesota fraud, Somali community organization, voter registration fraud, coordinated resistance, NGOs tactics, Iran military strike group, protests in Iran, regime change, international oil supply Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Bilyeu Show Live. This was an insane weekend that had me very hesitant to actually begin planning for today's episode. I had been hearing rumors of everything that was shaking down.

• 1:25Tom Bilyeu?

  And yeah, diving into it all at once, it really did feel like a everyone, everywhere, all at once kind of moment where there are so many different parts of the world order, world stability, just beginning to fray at the edges. It's getting pretty wild. Minneapolis is on the brink of total collapse in the wake of the ice shooting and killing of Alex Preddy. Barricades have been set up, agents have been bloodied, and hotels suspected of housing ice agents have been put under siege by violent mobs. Governor Walz has deployed the National Guard at the request of Minneapolis Mayor Frye to help keep the peace. But they're simultaneously calling for continued resistance.

• 2:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Besen signals that he's willing to devalue the dollar as a weapon in the global trade war. We'll see how far that's going to go, but there's so much happening right now in Japan. Rumors are flying that Xi Jinping's most recent purge of the Chinese military has resulted in a failed coup attempt. You heard that one, right? Details are coming out. They are very sporadic and they are very confused. So this is going to be one that not only are we going to cover today, but I imagine we're going to be covering a lot in the future. So keep your eyes on China. Speaking of keeping your eyes on China, Mamdani is making it clear that illegal immigrants do in fact get taxpayer dollars in New York City, and they will not cooperate with ICE because the model playing out in Minneapolis is so wonderful.

• 2:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Why wouldn't you want to mimic it? Drew, this was a, this was a wild one. This is one where I am realizing just how fragile the entire global ecosystem really is. And seeing everything fraying here in the US at the same time that it's fraying everywhere. We've talked a lot about this, this, you, all of these forces are intertwined. They are all economic in nature. But somehow, man, when you hit that black ice and the back end of your car kicks out, you really realize how fast you're traveling and how dangerous things really are. So yeah, keeping your eyes on the dollar, which is going down, Japanese yen, which is wildly unstable.

• 3:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Obviously, everything going on in Minnesota, it's wild.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, and I didn't even mention the fact that a carrier strike group has arrived in Iran. Like the, the list of things to cover is way too.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  It's getting crazy. We need that DJ Khalid button, another one, because ICE just got another one, just another one, another one. And just keep pressing, nah, too soon. All right, let's go.

• 4:04Tom Bilyeu?

  I hate how both funny and appropriate that is, Drew.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  What would you read on Minnesota? Because that's definitely the thing we need to talk about.

• 4:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. It wasn't good, it remains. Not good, but to lay down the facts on January 24th, Alex Preddy, a 37 year old ICU nurse at a Minneapolis VA hospital was shot and killed by ICE agents in the back, by the way, during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis. Bystander videos make it pretty clear and there's so many of them coming out. And they show that Preddy himself was filming the federal agents as they made their way down the street on foot. The situation escalated when an agent shoved the woman to the ground. Preddy stepped in to assist her, putting his arm around her, at which point agents pepper spray and grab him and force him to the ground.

• 4:54Tom Bilyeu?

  While Preddy was pinned to the ground by several agents, video pretty clearly shows the following. We're going to show some of this, but not all of it for reasons that'll be obvious. But Preddy was holding a cellphone in his right hand. An agent finds and removes, that's an important part of this story. An agent finds and removes a handgun from Preddy's waistband, basically tucked in his back. That agent then quickly turns around and walks off with the gun. Very shortly after that, as Preddy continues to struggle, which we will certainly talk about that part of it.

• 5:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Agents fire at least 10 shots over roughly five seconds, killing Preddy right where he lay. And if my read of the videos is accurate, the first shot's going to his back, man. It is horrific. And with the ability to watch the video over and over in slow motion. It seems like Preddy is not only shot after being disarmed, but as I said, shot in the back multiple times. Needless to say, the narrative battle of what actually happened is raging. If you've seen the footage, it is very easy to understand why people are absolutely gassed at this shooting. From where I'm sitting, the shooting is completely unjustified.

• 6:20Tom Bilyeu?

  The man was disarmed and yes, he was resisting, which for my money is absolutely lunatic behavior. However, shooting him full stop is horrific, but shooting him in the back is ghoulish. It is completely unforgivable.

• 6:38Tom Bilyeu?

  But as with so many things, as more and more detailed analysis kept coming out over the weekend, after the ridiculous claims that he was wielding a weapon, that he was aggressively threatening ICE agents with a gun, as all of that evaporated, a new narrative began to gain traction, namely that the gun that was removed from Preddy allegedly misfired as the ICE agent whisked it away, and it was the sound of the first shot that made the ICE officer shoot Preddy, thinking he had a gun and was firing. Now, if you've seen the video, given how clumsy, jittery, and untrained the whole debacle looked, I would not be surprised if that's what happened.

• 7:23Tom Bilyeu?

  That doesn't mean that this is okay, it just means that the horrific, tragic sequence of events may have included the misfiring of the gun. Now, if you watch the video in slow motion, it really does look like the gun may have accidentally discharged. Additionally, there are unverified reports that the gun was a Sig Sauer, a gun with multiple lawsuits alleging that it misfired. Now, at this point, I know the FBI has the gun in custody, so that might have been verified at this point, we'll have to look that up. But apparently, despite the Sig Sauer themselves, the company, denying that the gun has any issues, it is an open secret, apparently, in the gun community, that that particular gun will discharge without the trigger being pulled.

• 8:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Obviously, very rare, but seems to happen. Now, regardless of whether the shooting ends up being incompetence or malice, it's shaping up to be the spark that lights all of the dynamite bundled up in Minnesota. And I am expecting things to continue to escalate from here, especially all the things that we've seen with the coordination, the instruction manuals on how to track and disrupt ICE, all of the signal groups that were infiltrated, so we see just how much coordination there is. If I can bring a little Mike Benz to all of this, Mike Benz's read that NGOs have been specifically using tactics like this.

• 8:49Tom Bilyeu?

  First, it was the CIA doing this kind of stuff abroad, now NGOs bringing this in to domestic use.

• 8:57Tom Bilyeu?

  So all of that is going to be coming out as well, but this is an unmitigated disaster. And ultimately, it's going to be up to all of us to slow this down, to try to find ways to deescalate, to hopefully convince Trump that you cannot just keep pushing this forward. You can't keep escalating, you can't just keep hammering people until morale improves. Like, that isn't going to work, especially not if this is an organized resistance. And I understand, there are going to be people on the right whose inclination is one of emotion, that you just, you can't let people get away with this, that you have to hammer them down. You absolutely have to get law and order back in place, there is no doubt about that.

• 9:41Tom Bilyeu?

  But you've got to get law and order on the back of cooperation with local state government. I think the reason that we're seeing all of this pop off in Minnesota and not elsewhere is multivariate. We're going to be talking about the depth of the fraud and all of that. But I think a big part of the reason that you're seeing this escalation in Minnesota is because we don't have that cooperation. And if the federal government makes the mistake of having an only up escalatory response, then the people are going to be justified more and more for pushing back. Remember, we have a second amendment in this country for a reason. We had a founding father who believed and stated very clearly

• 10:25Tom Bilyeu?

  that liberty is secured, or must be watered, I think was the exact quote, must be watered by the blood of patriots and the tyrannical alike. So this is one of those things where you've got a nation with a history of using weapons to stand up against tyrannical governments, you have it baked into our DNA. And so if you just use the hammer, then you're going to see further and further escalation, and people are going to needlessly die. So while I think it is insane to resist arrest, at the same time, I think it is insane to send a roving band of...

• 11:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Angry young men into these situations without the necessary level of restraint or even feeling of safety so that they can in a coordinated fashion calm these things down, but that's not what's happening. And so I certainly don't agree with Minnesota's response, but I don't agree with the current federal response, which is only making things worse. 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

• 11:49Tom Bilyeu?

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• 12:29Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:14Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:01Tom Bilyeu?

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

• 14:04Speaker 01

  It seems like on the surface level, this is, you know, ICE is a gangster killing civilians and they're unmasked men terrorizing communities. But do you think that this is deeper? Like, is this the our modern day civil war? Is there something, you know, is it an insurrection? What's kind of your general read on the the totality of what's going on, not just in Minnesota, but in America, period?

• 14:24Tom Bilyeu?

  We are a strange species. And once people understand that we are evolutionarily shaped to be a social creature. And that I believe the way that you achieve balance in a social animal is you have to have different roles and different people keep things in check. So everything from chronotype, why some people want to stay up late, why other people get up early. Well, if you put us all together as a village, the late night people stay up for ages. And then the morning people wake up really early and you've more or less got 24 hour coverage. When you think about the left and the right divide, something that I've talked a lot about, you've got people that really believe in compassion,

• 15:08Tom Bilyeu?

  incredibly beneficial to social cohesion. And then you have people that believe in social responsibility. It's the way that you deal with the game theoretic of you'll get the bottom feeders that are going to do nothing and just reap the rewards of. The compassion, and so they won't contribute to the group. And so all of that stuff becomes incredibly important to getting human civilization to the point that it's at. But it has all of these weird ways that it manifests. I say all of that because I believe that for a very long, I believe that humans are such that there are always elements that believe that the country, whatever country, is balanced in the wrong direction and they are trying to undermine that country at all times. This is what you see going on in China.

• 15:54Tom Bilyeu?

  So here you have the Reds win. And I liken Mamdani to China because he has the same impulses that this needs to be top down. We're going to take care of everybody. Don't worry if we have to like break some things, no big deal. It's how you get stability. I think that's inherent to humans. I don't think that's inherent to China or America. It's just humans have this bifurcation. And this is why you see these debates over what type of society we should have. So within America, for a very long time, there have been people that want to see capitalism destroyed. And modern technology has allowed for a level of cooperation that we've never seen before.

• 16:35Tom Bilyeu?

  And so I think that the slow march through the institutions, as they call it, which is a very Marxist idea, has been going on for decades. And we're now seeing it manifest in the extreme in Minnesota. And I think that there are a lot of things tied from people that believe that borders should be open because this is stolen land and nobody's illegal. And so therefore, it, anybody should be welcomed into this country. They're wildly economically illiterate. They have no idea, but I'll even grant them that they really mean it, that they're really coming from a place of compassion. You've got that. Then you've got people that understand, oh, I can use that chaos to gain power.

• 17:19Tom Bilyeu?

  And I think that you're certainly seeing that in terms of who's more likely to vote for me? Let me get a bunch of people in here that are going to vote. We're now seeing, in the same way the Doge was like, hey, there's a lot of financial fraud and people are like, no, there's not. And now we're seeing that there really is like an obscene amount of fraud. You're seeing the same things with voter registration. So, hey, there's voter fraud. No, there's not. Don't be ridiculous. Oh, we found one voter. That's like comical. And now, I forget which state it was, but there was a report that came out that there's a state that has 33% duplication rate.

• 17:53Tom Bilyeu?

  And so you're, I think you're going to see more and more things like that coming out where we realize, yeah, like if we know that game theory says any element of the design of a system that can be exploited, will be exploited. When you see people say it is now illegal to run an ICE operation around a polling booth, you have to ask, why would illegals be near a polling booth anyway? That should be like the dumbest place to go look for somebody illegal because they would never be there because they can't vote. And so if we're trying to set up laws that say you can't enforce immigration around a polling place,

• 18:35Tom Bilyeu?

  you should raise your hand and say, no, no, no, that, that is clearly meant to abuse the system. That to me is just like if you said, you cannot enforce child sex trafficking laws around schools. You'd be like, hold on, of all the places that we should want that to be, that would be one of them. Of all the places, everybody should just be like, yeah, you can't have illegal immigrants going into a polling place. We're all good with that because it shouldn't be happening. We don't think it is happening. And so if they want to put, you know, they want to waste their dollars and put them there, cool, no problem. But that's not what you're seeing. You're seeing them specifically say you can't run ICE enforcement around these polls. And they're trying to get that passed through the legislature.

• 19:21Tom Bilyeu?

  So it's like, I have a feeling you're going to see that what's really going on underneath is a coordinated effort of a populist left and a populist right, both trying to fight for permanent power. They both want to be in power forever. And so the very thing that we have to watch out for are the techniques that the left and the right, they will be different techniques, same goal. The techniques that they're each going to be using to try and remain in power forever. And so.

• 19:53Tom Bilyeu?

  I will ask the eternal question once again, do you prefer your fascism in a left flavor or a right flavor? Because right now, in a moment of populism, clearly, that's what you're getting. That's what rises to the top. So I look at this and see basically two elements of fascism clashing. And there, it's horrific. And trying to reach into the soul of America to say, okay, how do we begin to back out of this? It's people that have to be aware that the human mind is governed by something like the laws of physics. And that's why, over historical time periods, we are so predictable.

• 20:35Tom Bilyeu?

  And if those things are predictable, then there are actions that we can take to unwind that. So the shock of all shocks of aerodynamics is that if you want to take off with an airplane, you don't fly with the wind, you fly in to the wind. And that's the very thing that allows you, through aerodynamics, to jump up into the sky. And so, we have to find a way to recognize, okay, there are ways to calm this all down. They are going to be largely economic. But at this point, things are, from a psychological perspective, the two sides are racing away from each other so rapidly, that we have to get people to start running a thought experiment, basically, of where does this lead?

• 21:18Tom Bilyeu?

  And if people want a civil war and they believe in that, then we have to understand that, okay, from a first principles perspective, if people believe this ends in civil war, and that's what they want, and it won't be a north-south divide. I don't understand people who are like, oh, how would that even play out? It will play out, literally what you're witnessing now is, if civil war is a spectrum, you're already on the path. So it will look like this. It will be violence encouraged by the local state government to fight for the left or the right. And so, right states will do right things, and left states will do left things. And whoever's in power, they're going to fight against it.

• 22:03Tom Bilyeu?

  And when it's your side, it just feels just. When it's not your side, then it feels like people trying to decohere the country. But It's really the same phenomenon. And so people have to go, okay. Are we at that point where now I'm prepared to use violence? Because be very clear. If these things continue to ratchet up regardless of the state, the federal government has to act. And if a state tries to secede from the union, I don't think that will be met peacefully. That will be met with violence.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  That'll be suicidal though.

• 22:41Tom Bilyeu?

  So what is that? Certainly hasn't stopped us historically, and I don't see anything in the human character that would stop us.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  I think historically, we at least had more economic bandwidth to do that. I think any state other than California would do that, but I wouldn't even put it on California because they rely on federal funds for the budget shortfalls that they do have. So I think seceding is is talk, but go ahead.

• 23:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Let me run a scenario for you.

• 23:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Forget seceding from the nation. Take Minnesota. Minnesota, right now, I promise you, in private conversations, it goes something like this. Immigration has become a burden on Trump. Used to be a signature policy, not anymore. It's now a liability. Keep this up. We have to make sure that he loses the midterms. Once he loses the midterms, we impeach him and then we arrest him. We arrest him, we arrest J D Vance, we arrest Cash Patel, Pam Bondi, and we're gonna put them in prison. Then we're gonna regain power and we are going to do, they won't call it an inquisition, but we're gonna do an inquisition. And we are going to arrest and jail

• 23:48Tom Bilyeu?

  everybody that we feel was creating this problem. And so it will be a, call it soft power coup, where it's just blue states coordinating with blue states to resist all what they view as a red federal government doing these things. And then when it flips, it will be the opposite. And then it will be red states doing things to stymie blue leadership. And even just look at the way that Trump is responding. I don't, the Supreme Court will almost certainly strike this down, but.

• 24:27Tom Bilyeu?

  He's going to do something like, I think he already said, as of February 1st, no dollars go to, um, I don't remember if it's like they won't cooperate with ICE. It's something like that. That's close enough. It's directionally correct, even if it just serves for the thought experiment. But if he starts doing that.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Cutting off funds to blue states.

• 24:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Correct. You're, you're already in economic warfare. And so now, if you're a blue state and you can't balance your budget because there's no federal dollars coming, what do you do? You escalate. You don't just go, okay. So now it becomes, what does that escalation look like? Is it all underground? Is it above ground? That I don't know. And time will tell how this plays out. But the goal will be, just like with, um, Israel, Palestine, the goal on the Palestinian side was make Israel look as bad as humanly possible in the eyes of the world. And they've really flipped the way that people look at Israel.

• 25:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Israel went from historical home of victims to, no, no, no, they're just a bunch of evil victimizers. So, I mean, just an absolutely incredible, uh, global mindset shift that they were able to pull off. And so you're going to see that kind of battle. And then at the federal level, we're now, as far as I can tell, I don't see anything that stops this. We're on this escalatory path of if Trump doesn't start arresting people, which he's getting harangued daily for by a lot of people.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  To arrest people?

• 26:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, a hundred percent. People want to see Obama perp walked. People want to see Clinton perp walked. People want to see, God knows, James Comer. I forget some of the names, but like you guys have all heard them, like they want to see all those guys locked up. And if Trump doesn't do it, then the next administration will. But if I'm right, that, meaning the, if the Democrats take power, they will.

• 26:34Tom Bilyeu?

  If I'm right, that this is two sides trying to create a, we're permanent, like Republicans are in power for the next 30 years.

• 26:46Tom Bilyeu?

  That's how this is going to play out. You have to punish the other side. And so we went from, remember, we went from in the seventies, economic woes. So of course, everything is popping off. And you have a president who gets caught being openly corrupt. And he resigns, man. Like, he's in office. He resigns. This is Nixon. And do they prosecute him? No. Why don't they prosecute him? Because they say it's not good for America. We need to be looking forward, not behind. And America dusts itself off, regroups, eighties are a boom.

• 27:26Tom Bilyeu?

  You're not going to get that this time. Because we're in a totally different place. Both from the long march through the institutions to radicalize people and bend them towards left-leaning Marxist-style causes has really worked. And you now have a socialist mayor of the economic capital of the world. I mean, just like, let that one sink in for a minute. So all of that is playing out. The attitude is being exacerbated because on the right, you have these draconian immigration enforcement policies that will just give any sort of independent person watching this is like, this is horrible.

• 28:11Tom Bilyeu?

  And so now it's like, yeah, you become very easy to paint as the villain. And then that gives a side that wants to see you locked away the ammunition to say, we're really coming for you, which then makes this existential on your side. So now what are you willing to do to make sure that you maintain power? So I don't think this is a, oh, well, we're just going to go in and say, peace out, we're no longer a part of America in the way that Alberta seems to be doing with Canada. But I do think it's, we're going to do our part to make sure that we get to an all-blue House, Senate, Supreme Court, executive branch.

• 28:56Tom Bilyeu?

  And then we're gonna run our game. And so if people think that Trump is as bad as it gets, they need to understand Trump is a step on the spectrum to total.

• 29:11Tom Bilyeu?

  War between the left and the right.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  You put out a lot of things there, so I kind of like lay it down and map it out. So, right now, ICE is happening in Minnesota, but it's happening across the country. There's ICE raids in every, mostly every state. Earlier this year, we talked about when Trump brought ICE to California. They did that whole military exhibition through La Merck Park with the tanks and all that other stuff kind of driving through. That happened, and then there was pushback, there were protests, they then withdrew. What do you think is making them double down in Minnesota?

• 29:49Tom Bilyeu?

  So if you look at Minnesota, there is, there is a question that needs to be asked. I want to be very clear, I don't have any more information than anybody else. I'm watching the same news segments that other people are watching. But there, there are two things to note in Minneapolis. One is the just systemic refusal of the governor and the mayor to cooperate with ICE. So they are making it as hard as possible, including asking people to put their bodies on the line, to literally go out and protest. Now, they say peacefully, I want to be very clear, they're not telling people to rock up with their guns. But they are telling people to keep making the noise, keep going out there, keep doing what you're doing.

• 30:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so that gives people a permission structure. They're calling off the police, obviously, the police are not assisting ICE at all. And so now you have this antagonistic relationship between the government, local government, state government, and the federal government. So that's huge. And so they are persistently escalatory. Now, I think that Karen Bass was also on that spectrum, so that isn't the whole of this. The other is, this didn't turn deadly until the fraud was uncovered.

• 31:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Once the fraud was uncovered, then it started really to escalate. And so I don't think you can remove from the table the fact that you've got all of this fraud that is looming in the background. You have a governor who, when the fraud came out, stepped back and said, I'm not going to run for reelection. And so it is unknown exactly what that number ends up being, but you obviously have a permission structure for some absolutely insane things going on in Minnesota, full stop, without this. Now, when I look at California, is it possible that California is just so much bigger, so much more diverse, so many different interest groups, that it's just harder to get momentum going here? Maybe, I don't know. We'll see.

• 31:52Tom Bilyeu?

  I think there's also something to, in Los Angeles or in California, this is hypothesis, hypothesis, but in California, some of the strongest pushback against illegal immigration comes from Mexican immigrants. And so you've got Mexican immigrants who are like, bro, I did this the hard way. I did this the right way. I got here legally. I've done the thing. I've worked my ass off. I've been a part of the fabric of this city and this country for, you know, in some cases, decades. It's like I've raised my kids here. I wanted a better life for them. I wanted them to be American. So there's less like momentum that you're able to get by whipping them up into a frenzy in the way that you can.

• 32:36Tom Bilyeu?

  The Somali population, who's newer here, who if is true, is coordinated and acting like a block, there's far fewer of them. There was an estimate that I saw that there's only 130,000 illegal immigrants in Minnesota compared to millions in California. So it, again, hypothesis, easier to organize, easier to get them to move as one unit, more clear leadership, hypothesis, allegedly, no idea if this is true, but Ilhan Omar as the sort of like top person that's able to coordinate the community.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I'm trying to coordinate because I feel like there's a lot of things there. So are you saying that it's happening in Minnesota because the Somalis are organizing the protest?

• 33:17Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't, I don't. Believe that they are organizing the protests. I think that's down to the community organizers.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  You're just saying they they as a voting block?

• 33:25Tom Bilyeu?

  They move as a block. So you've got a group of people who are like, okay, we need to act in a coordinated fashion. Then you get community organizers, members of the government, whatever, coming to them and saying, okay, cool. Here's the playbook. Like in the Signal chats, there is.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Can we just close it and restart?

• 33:42Tom Bilyeu?

  There's at least one member of the Walz administration that is a part of these community organization groups that are pushing back against ICE. So does that mean that Tim Walz is involved? No, it does not. But does it mean that there are members of the government that are involved? Yes, it does. So now, again, I don't have any information that other people don't have, so I want to be very clear about the level of speculation here. People need to be very careful. But that is one potential reason why this is happening in Minnesota in a way that it's not happening elsewhere. And so the question becomes, if

• 34:20Tom Bilyeu?

  there is a similar level of systemic fraud happening in California, will it suddenly create the same kind of pushback as that begins to become uncovered? Or does California just have too many different constituencies pulling in too many different directions and it's harder to get something coordinated? I don't know. So we'll see how that plays out. But that level of coordination seems to, it makes sense. It has internal logic. Whether it ends up being correct or not, we will find out in the fullness of time. But it means something that you have 50 states that have immigration enforcement happening in them. You have states that have way more, like orders of magnitude. In fact, can you pull up the, there's a heat map

• 35:01Tom Bilyeu?

  of the US that shows that Minnesota is like in the middle in terms of how much immigration enforcement has been being done there. And it is nonetheless got a level of pushback and violence that is orders of magnitude larger than other places. So option number one, ICE is being unusually draconian in Minnesota because Trump hates. Walls and wants to punish him. It's possible. Okay, I won't deny that that could be what's going on. The other interpretation is that there's deeper coordination to push back against federal

• 35:43Tom Bilyeu?

  law enforcement coming from Minnesota, potentially related to the fraud, potentially related to the Somali group being more united and more willing to act as one cohesive block. Taking a short break, but there's more Impact Theory after. Stay tuned. You're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in. An intelligent AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before every call, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief.

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• 38:06Tom Bilyeu?

  thanks for staying tuned now let's get back to it

• 38:10Speaker 01

  I just feel like we're having the accountability on the wrong side of the conversation I think yes resisting is bad but I use this analogy before let me just put finish my point land of plane then you can jump in I think I have a buddy in Atlanta who just became a beat cop he got his a letter of approval from HR last week he's not going to be on the street writing tickets until August writing tickets traffic tickets till August ICE agents get 12 days of training and a pat on the back and a Capri Sun and then now we're saying that the victim should have had his composure should have been kept up when the reason that the victim was even involved in the first place is because they pushed the woman and pepper sprayed her so he jumped in the middle to kind of help the woman then they have him back he's on all fours they're on his back and you're saying that he's resisting if I don't like

• 38:54Speaker 01

  we got a UFC fighter in the room I don't know how how much more tame you can be in that position so again the guy who we're saying he should have done he should have done it doesn't matter his accountability is he's dead so he that's what happened but I just want to say in the in the law of court in the land of the free in the home of the brave and the justice system that we all hang our hat on that we're not like the all these other third world countries where we're civilized we're a progressive organization because we have justice we have courts we have law and we have order he didn't get his day in court he didn't get his day in front of the judge he didn't get his side of the story we have a bunch of people looking at videos from different angles saying he had a gun he didn't have a gun it was his phone he shot a gun there was a misfire all these other things that are happening it doesn't matter what you want to say about

• 39:36Speaker 01

  him because he's dead so whatever whether he did it right or wrong he's dead it doesn't matter now the ICE agents just killed somebody a couple weeks ago where was the accountability where was happening nothing you can act with impunity don't worry about it just do your own thing so now they Killed somebody else and what's gonna happen after this one? It's not, it's cool. You're right, they're wrong. Go get the illegals. Cool. So then this is gonna happen again. So we can spend 20 minutes talking about he should have did this, he should have been in all fours. He should have been in the fetal position. It doesn't matter, he's dead. Let's talk about the ICE agent that killed him. And let's talk about the other ICE agent that killed that other person. And let's talk about how these things are now starting to be tied up together. You're a businessman, you're an entrepreneur. Everybody knows about the 80/20 rule. You're spending 20% of your time. You're spending 80% of your time trying to go after 20% of the illegals.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  There's a million illegals in California. There's a million illegals in Texas. If Minnesota is not even cooperating, withdraw from Minnesota, just like you withdrew from LA. Sue them, law, order them, say you're impeding progress. Put Governor Walz in jail. Do these things that the legal process is for. The country was founded on a bunch of lawyers. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence is a bunch of people arguing in the courtroom. That's how these documents got formed. So Trump wants to call like lawfare and all these other things to throw the people that don't vote for him in jail. But when it comes to what he actually should be like suing for? He should be suing Tim Walz. Tim Walz should be in front of Senate and they already did that. So, okay, get Tim Walz in front of Senate. Have him accountable. Are you gonna help him? No, you're not. Okay, now you're held in contempt of court. Now we could throw you out.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  I did the same thing that we want, because it's all about end goals. The end goal is to get illegals, right? So you can get the illegals two weeks from now after you done subpoenaed all these people. You get the illegals two weeks from now when you go and actually cooperate with the jails. They're not even in the jails yet. They're started in the streets. I thought we were going after the bad and the criminals. Why are we in the streets and not in the jails? You get what I'm saying? So again, I felt like we spent a lot of time with the guy and what he could have done and should have done and caught, uh, gun and not gun and all that. He's dead. It doesn't matter what he should have, would have done, because he can't undo that. Now let's talk about the ICE agents and what they can do better going forward. Let's talk about this administration and how they can execute their goals going forward without another loss of an American citizen.

• 41:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so that feels like an argument for somebody other than me, because I-

• 41:46Speaker 01

  The reason I jumped in on that, because you were saying he shouldn't have been resisting, he shouldn't have been all these things.

• 41:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Here's how I mentally map you, and if you think I'm incorrect, let me know. It doesn't matter how much I say about the wrongness of what Trump is doing, which I covered extensively today, the wrongness of the guy shooting, which I've covered extensively today, the second I say, "These guys really need to stop resisting," no matter how unjust the police coming after them is, "They need to stop resisting," the second I mention that, you're gonna have a problem with that, which is fine.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  It's not that that's what I'm gonna have a problem with, it's just in the totality of things where it's false equivalency.

• 42:25Tom Bilyeu?

  But I'm not making them equivalent. So I'm saying, "Hey, if you, you, right now, you have a government that's acting tyrannically, they should stop immediately, in no uncertain terms. This is a problem. Trump is rationing this up, he's marching us towards civil war." My whole opening thing was, "You cannot keep using the hammer, he's got to stop." Now I'm saying, "As a PSA, for the love of God, if you find yourself in this situation where you were trying to peacefully protest, you, you have to stop resisting. And if you don't, now you're gonna find yourself increasing the likelihood you get shot."

• 43:07Tom Bilyeu?

  You don't drop it to zero because these guys are acting tyrannically. So I'm just saying, I, that's where I do not understand how people are mapping this situation as if we don't have people who are showing up to, like, they are so antagonistic towards ICE. And that is coming out in these moments of confrontation, where they try to run, they try to resist arrest, and it is, it's just increasing, increasing, increasing. There is a reason that the ultra-successful movements, what Gandhi did in India, what the black community did in the civil rights movement, was always like, "You've gotta be beyond reproach peaceful." And that's not the message now.

• 43:52Tom Bilyeu?

  The message now is one of resistance. The message now is protest peacefully, but have your gun on you.

• 44:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Organize, try to impede, like there's, there is another layer of that. And I'm saying that layer, I'll just speak at the individual level. Dear person who is trying to make your voice heard in America, you have every right to say the government's become tyrannical and I'm going to pull my gun out. But just know that when you stand for that, that it could mean prison forever. It could mean you get shot dead. And so it better be that place for you where you really believe this is the right play. If you don't, and he didn't take out his gun, he did not reach for it in any way, shape or form. I think he's beyond reproach in that way, from where I'm at.

• 44:42Tom Bilyeu?

  You had a guy who was in, in that moment was a hundred percent peaceful until they took him to the ground. And then he's resisting and ratcheting things up, up, up, up, up. So it doesn't even necessarily mean that it would play out any differently. But he's in a much better position. If he's not fighting back, pulling, resisting, making them yank harder, trying to shove them down. Like that's where all of this stuff goes crazy. And if I were saying, dude, the government's playing this perfectly. This guy's the problem. I would get why you're saying what you're saying. And I'm not saying that.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Well, in lighter news, while America's on fire, China got some problems too. Yeah, let's go China. Welcome to the club. Um, so there's a bunch of different like takes coming in on this. Level set us with the China stuff because I'm not going to lie. I shouldn't have been as excited as I was to hear this news. But I'm like, oh, is this drama? Cause there was whispers a couple of months ago, we talked about it briefly on the show. It was unconfirmed, all these other things. And now we're starting to get more analysis in that actual like shots were fired and stuff like that happened over this weekend. So.

• 45:49Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, everybody. Rumors are flying that Xi Jinping's most recent purge of the military has resulted in a failed coup attempt, guns being shot, the whole night. Now those rumors. Reputable outlets like Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN, The Wall Street Journal are all reporting on a major military purge initiated by Xi Jinping, including investigations into top generals Zheng Yaohua, who's the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, for serious violations such as corruption, undermining party authority over the military, and in Zheng's case, allegations of leaking nuclear secrets to the US. Now, I want to be very clear, these are all rumors. Nobody knows what's happening right now.

• 46:34Tom Bilyeu?

  This is a big question mark. Some reports are like, ah, it's no big deal, this is just Xi doing more purging. Other people are like, whoa, they've arrested thousands of people, including these generals, including their families, so it's unclear at this time what is actually real. But these reports frame it as part of Xi's ongoing efforts to consolidate control and root out disloyalty in the People's Liberation Army. Now, for anybody keeping score in China, you will know that you had Mao, a horrible, destructive, evil figure that killed tens of millions of his own people, would make light of it. I think he killed his son and his wife, or sent them to die is probably a more accurate

• 47:19Tom Bilyeu?

  version of this. Like, this was just a very bad dude. And then, you had Deng Xiaoping, who is the, like, when you really think about China's miracle about using the free markets to pull so many people out of poverty, it was Deng Xiaoping. Now, you've got Xi Jinping, who is more Maoist in his tendencies. So he's trying to consolidate power, he's violating a lot of the norms that Deng Xiaoping had put in place, and he's going back to more of an iron-fisted rule in the way that Mao did. So...

• 47:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Who knows where this is gonna go, but as new details emerge from official Chinese statements, or even just stuff corroborated by multiple high credibility sources, we'll keep you guys updated, things could shift, but right now, the violent coup narrative is being amplified all over social media, but I would read that as speculation rather than actual journalism, but there, what'd you say, the keys jingling, somebody says something about keys jingling, it's like, yeah, these are the, was it LeBron? The, you've got, the noises coming out that tend to be a little bit early, and then, call it, two months from now, six months from now, something like that, then we'll start to see like, the official impacts of whatever's happening.

• 48:37Tom Bilyeu?

  However, if he's Mao in nature, he's gonna be tough, man, he's gonna be tough, and anybody that thinks Xi Jinping is not smart to do what he did, to go from, China was moving in the opposite direction, they were becoming, not democratic, but they were becoming more of a party that didn't have emperor, and he managed to reconsolidate power, make himself emperor for life, doesn't call himself emperor, but, he's an emperor. So, very impressive guy, very politically astute, very good at consolidating power, and very willing to kill, disappear, imprison his enemies, and so when you have somebody that's prepared to do that, don't expect that to turn over quickly.

• 49:21Tom Bilyeu?

  So, I would say you have a far bigger chance of something happening in Iran that's in America's interest than you have something happening in China that's in America's interest. So, I would not hold your breath for that one.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  So, on paper, you know, I'm making jokes about celebrating and stuff like that, but this, does this increase their paranoia, and now he turns into like a crazy dictator? Do you think it?

• 49:46Tom Bilyeu?

  He's already in crazy dictator territory, he's been purging for years, and when you read purge as imprison, kill, concentration camp, like it's, this is not like, Bob, you're fired, this is, not a lot of Bobs in China, but somehow that felt safer.

• 50:05Tom Bilyeu?

  You, it is a violent, fear inducing consolidation of power that will put him in a position where he'll be isolated inside of his own party, where he won't know where the attacks are going to come from. And so like Putin, he has to be incredibly paranoid. He runs the risk of not getting real information because people are terrified to tell him the truth. Because you see, oh, the people that speak truth, often those messengers are killed. Not literally, but you know, they're disappeared, not listened to, booted, out of the CCP, that kind of thing. So for your livelihood, it's just better to go along and get along. And so you'll occasionally get people like, oh God, who was the guy in Russia that had like a splinter

• 50:50Tom Bilyeu?

  military force and they like marched almost all the way to Moscow? Oh, we don't even remember his name. They blew him up in an airplane. It was like, oh my God, please, somebody look this up. I cannot chat. You must remember his name. What was his name? For the love of God. And he was like, he marched on Moscow with his fraction of the, the military. Progrosion? Was it Progrosion? I think it was. Yeah. So, um, thank you, chat. So you end up getting guys in the military that will go against you. But I still can't believe that, that, did he really think that Putin wasn't

• 51:28Tom Bilyeu?

  going to get him? But he backs down. They negotiate, shake hands, all's, all's well, all's forgiven. No worries. And like six weeks later, he's on an airplane that blows up midair. Who could have guessed? Who could have guessed?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  How convenient.

• 51:45Tom Bilyeu?

  So, yeah, it's wild.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  There were, there are some rumors that Zhang, who led the coup, was a government asset from the CIA. He was leaking nuclear secrets to the US. So to your point earlier about foreign agents doing things on local soil, it could be that is what started the coup in the back.

• 52:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. So remember, we're in an information warfare landscape. The odds of that being true feel low, but that's just a feeling. Feelings don't matter at all. So we'll see what ends up playing out over time. But if the US really has assets that high up in the Chinese military, because it's my understanding that that general in question, Zhang, was like really close. I've heard reports that they were like childhood friends. I cannot verify. I don't know that that's true, but that people are saying that they were very, very close. So for that guy to be the guy that's betraying him, again, speculation, early conjecture. So I would not expect any sort of immediate crumbling in China, but this does signal that there might be far more tension

• 52:48Tom Bilyeu?

  within China than we think. And if there really is this kind of dissent in the military, you can imagine them making a move on Taiwan in 2027 goes down in likelihood because you doing air, land, sea invasions, when you don't know if you can trust your general, that becomes a much bigger question mark. Now, many people have been speculating that China is going to use an administrative takeover of Taiwan. So we'll see. They're trying to get their candidates into office and hey, that sounds familiar. So you, it doesn't necessarily have to be a military invasion for them to still come in and take over. So we'll see what happens there. But I would say from a poly market standpoint, I would be surprised if the odds of a 2027 invasion didn't just go down on this news.

• 53:32Tom Bilyeu?

  So we'll see. I haven't checked.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, that's bright side, glass half full. Staying in international politics, we're getting mighty close to Iran, and it seems like we're in striking distance now.

• 53:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I mean, no, seems like this one's crazy. So the question all of us should be asking is, is a major military operation about to go down in Iran? That is truly the right question that should be on everybody's lips as the USS Abraham Lincoln just arrived within striking distance of Iran, and the US media is using that phrase over and over and over. And so when you remember that basically everything is an asset ultimately of the government's propaganda war, they want Iran to recognize that they're within striking distance, which matters only if you're prepared to make a move. The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group.

• 54:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Has moved like the whole shebang over into the region from the Asia Pacific and it is in that fleet. You've got three guided missile destroyers, the USS Frankie Peterson Jr., USS Spruance and USS Michael Murphy. The fleet has squadrons of F-35C Lightning 2s and FA-18EF Super Hornets. And just to keep things extra spicy, the US has also deployed F-15E Strike Eagles to Jordan and B-52 bombers to Qatar. So they are ready at all angles. Now, if you guys are going, why exactly are we doing this? The primary driver for the move is obviously in

• 55:08Tom Bilyeu?

  response to the massive wave of nationwide protests in Iran that began in late December of 25. Now, accurate numbers are exactly impossible to pin down, but Iranian security forces have engaged in a violent response against these protesters. You've got some people claiming that the death toll is over 40,000. That would be insane. And to give you a sense, in Gaza, it took, I think, almost two years to hit that number. So the fact that people are so quiet about what's going on in Iran is pretty wild. International monitor and activist groups estimate the death toll has at a minimum exceeded 5,000 people and that tens of thousands of people have

• 55:53Tom Bilyeu?

  been detained. So President Trump has made it abundantly clear that mass executions would be a red line that would trigger massive US intervention. So when I look at this, I'm like, okay, it's a little bit sad that the time it takes to move the assets into the region are what they are because the resistance seems to have mostly died down and not necessarily for good reasons, probably because they were cracked down on ruthlessly. But nonetheless,

• 56:20Tom Bilyeu?

  the atmosphere is arguably declining in its urgency. And so having the group out in the region, I'm guessing is more just from a deterrence perspective. So even though things are more Volatile than they've been since June of 2025. Strikes, uh, when we did the strikes on the nuclear facilities. Ah, it seems like the odds of the US actually doing something unless Iran makes some sort of horrific move first are very, very low. Currently, the US posture is officially being described just as deterrence. So the goal here is to prevent the further violence. Um, not to do some sort of preemptive strike.

• 56:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, there has been an arrival of a THAAD missile defense battery in Israel. And the carrier's group position is within striking distances, we talked about earlier. So that means that maybe the Trump administration is trying to do a transition from, hey, bro, we're just watching to being ready to actively hammer them. Uh, but that seems unlikely if one of Trump's red lines isn't crossed. But we'll see, the instability there continues, certainly at a geopolitical level, even if not on the streets of Tehran itself. Wild times.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Even they're gonna do like a Maduro style, like black bagging of like the regime?

• 57:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Mm hmm. Definitely not. So, um, do I think they want to see it fall? Yes. Do I think that the US wants to try to run the government there the way that they do in Venezuela? No, I would be very surprised. There's too much connective tissue between other powerful countries that I don't think would smile upon that. If the supposedly the UAE and a couple of other countries are gonna supply air space to the US if they make a move, and that's a change in reported posture, whether it's a change in behind the scenes posture, I don't know. But if a bunch of countries were like, yeah, would you just go like take them out? Then the US would probably do it because they're so oil rich and we could strike such a blow to China.

• 58:23Tom Bilyeu?

  But without that.

• 58:26Tom Bilyeu?

  I can't imagine it, but if we could, because China, I think, I forget what total percentage of Iran's oil goes to China, but it's meaningful. And so if you were able to take control of that, not only would Iran have to jump dance to your tune, but you would deal another economic blow to China at a time where they've already got enough problems. So it's like, I get why the US would have an itchy trigger finger on this one, but I just don't think it's, I think it's so high risk and so likely to be unpopular in the region. I doubt it's gonna happen, but we'll see.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  I mean, to your point, we cut off their oil supply with Venezuela, Russia's

• 59:07Tom Bilyeu?

  There being China?

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there being China, yeah. Iran is another one. If we did make topple that regime there, that would be two of their significance, I would say more than half, and then Russia will be kind of their sole provider. And Russia last weekend just had to sell some gold reserves in order to keep funding the war. So they're kind of on their back foot, too. This could be the, I don't want to say the death punch, but it could be something that can at least cripple China for the next couple of years if we were this aggressive. I think there's at least one general in Trump's ear whispering that.

• 59:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I think that they're probably stronger than we give them credit for, because what you would be doing, you wouldn't deal like some sort of like gut punch that is likely to take out China. You just make energy costs a little bit higher, but there, look, energy is at the foundation of everything, but nobody on planet Earth is doing a better job of spinning up new power than China. So China's way too smart, way too disciplined. That the thing that's gonna, if something were to really damage them, it would be that the continued global pressure on China as the US moves away from them, begins to do

• 1:00:16Tom Bilyeu?

  things at home, as the US pressures other people like Canada not to build direct relationships with China, that there you could see like a just slow erosion of Xi's power, and then somebody comes into China that is more, I mean, look, you could get somebody who's Times worse. Let's be very clear about that. That's why this is such a dangerous game to play regime change. But if you got somebody that was more Deng Xiaoping in temperament where it's like, yes, we'll shoot a bunch of people in Tiananmen Square. I think that was Deng. Don't home into that, though. But at the same time, we also understand that the free market is really the godsend. And so

• 1:00:58Tom Bilyeu?

  it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. But I'm not expecting, just as I think for all of the turmoil happening in America, there's, I don't think anything acute is going to break America in the next 18 months. My time horizon is more like 10 years. Over 10 years, as you race towards bankruptcy, you, the pockets of violence grow into something else, unless we can grow out of it. So we'll see. And I would put China in the same basket. They've got plenty of time to correct course, figure things out. At least that's my hope. I may be being overly optimistic both for America and China, but that my gut instinct is that.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  All right. I know we got some super chats. We're gonna hit those. But first, this story I know is gonna take a while because you're gonna have to break it down for us. But I want to cover the Japanese yen trade. Because there's a lot of different things on the table. I see US is now buying, apparently he's gonna buy the yen and take the dollar. Besen saying that's a good move. I don't know if this is the same thing we did with Argentina that we're just temporarily backing them. So kind of give us the lay of the land when it comes to this Japanese yen trade and how America's getting involved.

• 1:02:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, uh, this one has a lot. I'll kind of speed run it. Uh, and then, uh, depending on community questions, we can drill down on something. Okay, so Besen is signaled signaled is the important word here. This is always how the financial system works. They signal things so that the market can re-app sort of react. In a measured way first, but they can see like how things are playing and then they can like back off or push forward. It's utterly fascinating. But nonetheless, Besen has signaled that he's willing, get ready for this, to devalue the dollar as a weapon in the global trade war. We will almost certainly want to talk more about that. If this is true, this would allow the US to use the dollar's value to help allies and hurt enemies. So like, we could batter China.

• 1:02:46Tom Bilyeu?

  We could help Japan. In that vein, reports have been flying that the Federal Reserve conducted what's known as a rate check on Japanese yen on Friday. Again, this is all about signaling. Historically, when this kind of rate check has been done, it's been a precursor to direct currency intervention on behalf of the US to help Japan halt the yen's rapid depreciation. I don't think people understand, because Japan is like relatively small, but their economy is amazing. Sort of, in the way that it's plugged into the US economy for sure, and by proxy, the global economy. So it's very important, even if they've been in stagflation for like 40 years, which is crazy.

• 1:03:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Apparently Besen has a 160 yen per dollar threshold that he says, when we hit that, it's time to take action. I think they were like 158 or something, very, very close. Following the rate check, the yen surged roughly 3% over two trading sessions. And by this morning, today, Monday, the currency was back to about 153.81 yen. And that's down from a Friday high. Okay, this is the number, 159.20. So woo, got close to that 160. The question is, what exactly is Besen trying to accomplish with this? He's indicated that he's concerned that the sell-off in Japanese government bonds, which I'll sometimes read as JGBs, which is normally how people refer to it, but that just means Japanese government bonds,

• 1:04:11Tom Bilyeu?

  was going to spill over into US Treasury market, driving up American borrowing costs. When Japanese government bond yields spike, like they did just recently, hitting a 27-year high, by the way, following Japanese Prime Minister Takeichii's tax cut proposals, it creates a mechanistic vacuum that sucks liquidity out of the US bond market. Now, there are likely three things that Besen is worried about right now. First, Japan is the single largest foreign holder of US debt, owning roughly 1.1 trillion.

• 1:04:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Million dollars in treasuries for years JGB yields were near zero. So Japanese pension funds and insurers, they had to buy US treasuries to get any return to make good on their promises to the people that hold their products. But if JGB yields rise towards the three and four percent that we see them moving towards now, while the yen is strengthening, those Japanese investors no longer need the hassle of US assets. So they would just repatriate their cash by selling US treasuries and buying the Japanese government bonds. The massive selling of US bonds would drive US interest rates up, making mortgages and car loans and things like that more expensive for Americans.

• 1:05:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, the second thing the best and is most likely worried about, something we've talked about here before, the yen carry trade. That unwinding would be a problem. So this is the borrow cheap, invest high strategy that we've talked about. So the trade goes like this, borrow yen at say 0.5% interest, sell it for dollars and buy US tech stocks or treasuries yielding 4.5%. It's magic money. It is an infinite money glitch, of course, until it's not. Now, the crisis, if the yen suddenly gains value or the Japanese government bond yields rise, the cost of that cheap borrowed yen skyrockets. Investors are then forced to fire sale the things that they've bought with that borrowed money.

• 1:06:14Tom Bilyeu?

  So they'd have to dump their US assets effectively all at once to pay back their yen before they're wiped out by the rising interest costs. This, by the way, is the same reason that you know that America, the Fed is going to lower rates because you see that cliff of debt coming. You're like, you have to do something. In this case, you sell off your US assets and pay down your loans. And in the US case, you devalue the dollar. So, all right. The third thing that is probably worried about is the volatility spillover. So markets do not exist in silos all around the world. Understanding how interconnected we are right now is very important. And when the world's third largest bond market Is the Japanese government bonds because of that low interest rates.

• 1:07:00Tom Bilyeu?

  When that market has a heart attack, it triggers automated selling in risk parity funds, multi-billion dollar funds that automatically sell assets when volatility spikes. Analysts at Citigroup recently warned that Japanese government bond volatility could force funds to dump up to $130 billion in US bonds purely to manage their risk profile. So that's regardless of how healthy the US economy looks, things could be fine on our side, but they have covenants that they have to meet around risk. And so it would force them to sell things off. Now by signaling Fed support for the yen, Besen is essentially trying to lower the temperature of like all this instability. If the yen stabilizes, the fire sale stops.

• 1:07:42Tom Bilyeu?

  So he's effectively protecting the US Treasury market from being the liquidity ATM, right? So the yen is declining in value, everybody's panic selling, and now you, because you have to raise rates to stabilize everything, and now you are selling off in the US to get the money that you need, and that ends up hurting the US economy. So the last time the US and Japan engaged in a major coordinated intervention to support the yen was June of 1998 during the Asian financial crisis. In that instance, the joint effort was designed to prevent a regional devaluation war and restore stability to global markets after the yen hit 147. So we're higher than that now.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  When I hear this, my initial thought is like, okay, well, if they're holding 1.1 trillion dollars in debt and you have to sell it, that's good for us because we'll get that money and we can pay down our debt. Or like they're selling the notes. So where does that money get sold to back to US, right? Do I have this wrong?

• 1:08:40Tom Bilyeu?

  You do. So here's where, okay, can I do a quick PSA? This is so important. If, by the way, if you're thinking about starting a business, join Impact Theory University. I teach this idea over and over and over and over. The reason you can ask me any question about your business and I can give you an answer. I don't need a gazillion years of context is because if you understand the mechanisms, then you understand cause and effect. Once you understand cause and effect, industry doesn't matter anymore. So the big thing that's going on here is when you understand the mechanisms of how this kind of stuff works, then you, it's like, oh shit, okay, I get it. So for instance, when people are selling things off, then there is a, so

• 1:09:24Tom Bilyeu?

  bonds are sold on the private market as well as initial auctions. So they'll do an initial auction to get the thing into the system. Hugely important how that goes, what price willing people are willing to pay, how much of it goes before they have to raise rates, all this stuff, very, very important. But when people talk about the bond market, what they're really talking about are people selling things that they already own constantly all the time. And so as people gain faith, lose faith, they buy and sell at different prices. And the fixed return of a bond is determined at the time of issuance. However, when you sell it, if you sell it at a lower rate, you know what it pays out at. So if I buy it at a lower like cost and I know it pays out at that much, then we would say the yields have gone up.

• 1:10:06Tom Bilyeu?

  If everybody thinks that it's going to be stronger, then it's like you can drive the cost up. And now people are like, okay, I feel really good. This is stable, but my yields are going to be smaller. So when yields are going up, it's actually a sign of a problem. It's people saying, oh, I don't have faith that this is going to work. So I'm going to lower the price, give you a way bigger potential return. So you'll be the sucker that gets drawn in by greed. You hold that motherfucker for 10 years, we'll see what happens. So that, those are, it's happening all the time. And that has an impact on the appetite for bonds. And if the appetite goes too low, then the treasury is going to step in and buy those things. Now, the treasury doesn't want to do that, but they know that they'll have to.

• 1:10:48Tom Bilyeu?

  So as the bond market starts getting crazy, that's bad news for them because they may have to print money and buy a ton of that stuff just to keep the economy going. And for the reasons that we've talked about eight trillion times in the show, printing money, bad news. So you don't want to see major sell offs. You want to see.

• 1:11:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Everybody have belief that the long tail bond rates, oh, it's gonna be great. You want that rate low. And so people are like, yeah, the 10 year rate is low. Great. That means that people believe it's nice and stable. You don't have to entice people to come in and buy it. And so as those rates climb, which is exactly what's happening in Japan, everyone starts to panic because if you want to borrow money, you know, to build something, you don't want to borrow it for 90 days. You want to borrow for 10 years. And so as those numbers go up, now you're running into trouble. Now you're getting into the position where you're in a expensive debt position.

• 1:11:50Tom Bilyeu?

  And when debt is expensive, the economy cools down.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Got you, got you. Do you think this is something that now that because the number cooled down, this was just him signaling, kind of dipping his toe in the water to try to give people ease? Or do you think there's an intervention that America will need to do?

• 1:12:09Tom Bilyeu?

  This, to answer that question, it comes down to the fundamental. What do you think about 1913? Do you like there to be creative destruction? Or do you want there to be no creative destruction? It's a set of trade offs. So Scott Beson is a very clever man, who has made billions of dollars off of understanding currency moves. And remember, he was the guy with George Soros that broke the British pound. It's wild to think that people can do that, but they did. And so he understands how this stuff works. He understands that if we stop the bleeding, we stabilize the global markets.

• 1:12:49Tom Bilyeu?

  But we also keep the zombie train running because it's people from the top saying, I'm going to devalue the dollar by making more of it. I'm going to punish anybody who saves money. I'm going to punish anybody that doesn't understand assets. I'm going to deepen the K shaped economy. I'm going to rev up populism, but there won't be a acute depression.

• 1:13:14Tom Bilyeu?

  And so if you're like, bro, I'll let you shove me to the bottom of the cave shaped economy all day. Just don't put me in a depression. Okay, great. You would rather that. And like, remember in the depression, flour companies, like I bake bread with flour, flour companies. Their sacks were printed designs because people were so poor. They would make clothes for themselves or for their kids out of the flour sacks. And instead of your kid running around in a burlap sack, they wanted him running around in a sack with flowers printed on it. So that's a depression. We've never seen anything like it. And we've never seen anything like it specifically because we steal from everybody that holds dollars.

• 1:13:57Tom Bilyeu?

  And we just say, yeah, we're going to kill you slowly, but you're never going to have to wear flour sacks. And if you would rather be in that position and say, I don't mind that the billionaires run away with all the money in the universe. Via assets, to be very clear.

• 1:14:17Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't mind not being able to make ends meet. I just want to make sure that there's never an acute moment of despair like the 1929 crash that led into the Great Depression. That's a trade off. And so, yeah, depending on where you fall on that side determines whether you think this is a good move or a bad move.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Do you, which side do you fall?

• 1:14:38Tom Bilyeu?

  You have the system. So right now it's a good move, but you should be looking to get out of this system.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  As in get away from Federal Reserve in general?

• 1:14:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I mean, listen, here's probably where I'm gonna end up on all of this. And it's, oh God, I hate that this is true.

• 1:14:58Tom Bilyeu?

  You know that meme that's like dumb guy says midwit says something different. And then smart guy says the same thing as the dummy. Bitcoin is your life raft, says the dummy. Midwit is like, bro, like, that's crazy. You shouldn't be forcing people into an alternative currency. And then smart guy goes Bitcoin's your life raft. It and by Bitcoin, I mean gold Bitcoin, like things that are

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Alternative assets.

• 1:15:27Tom Bilyeu?

  They're they're not easy to inflate. I say not easy because gold does inflate every year, but it's not easy to inflate. Um, it's decentralized. Gold is a decentralized reserve currency. Bitcoin, same thing. Um, I want to save everybody, but time and time again, life teaches me it's not really possible. Between people not having the time or the inclination to think from first principles or they're too stupid. Either way, you end up in a system where no empire in history has ever avoided printing money into oblivion. So we're not going to avoid it.

• 1:16:07Tom Bilyeu?

  So, yeah, the only reality is I can make moves to protect myself and then yell into a microphone for anybody who will listen to go protect themselves. But that's it. I don't see any other strategy.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  I feel like if you were the Secretary of Treasury and like, let's say you weren't politically affiliated, you were actually the Secretary of Treasury and your one job was to make America long term better.

• 1:16:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  I feel like you would probably go away from the Fed. I'm assuming.

• 1:16:33Tom Bilyeu?

  No, I would do something totally different. You're making me think about something I haven't thought about, but what popped into my head is um, I would be running the uh, strategy that they're sort of flirting with, but I don't talk much about. Where you're making sure that every American is invested in an intelligent way. And you create a system where the smartest financial minds in the world desperately want to work for the government. Because they get rich as Americans get rich. And they they don't get a management fee. Fuck those kids. You get money only if Americans are getting money. And if Americans get money, you get money and go get fucking rich. And so if you could create, that's it, bro. We have financialized the world. We're about to financialize outer space.

• 1:17:17Tom Bilyeu?

  And so, uh, let those like, America stopped manufacturing and started financializing. So. Put like if you're really trying to do this thing, it's like, just make sure all Americans benefit from that financialization. So, and they're not gonna like be the big swing winners. You, you want an all-weather strategy. I only want people that are like, this has gotta be stuff where we're never gonna go bust, no matter what happens in the world, like we're planning for all contingencies. So, uh, but something like that, oh my God, like that, now you get a hundred percent of Americans own stocks. Now, if you wanna do something like some percentage of it is in your hands and you can do whatever you want, and then

• 1:18:00Tom Bilyeu?

  you just let people YOLO and like flame out, whatever, uh, freedom has consequences. Maybe, like I'd really have to stop and think about that, but something like that where it's like, now you're not gonna get that insane K-shaped economy, because the very thing that's driving the wealthy is now driving the average American. And because they don't understand it, you, you can't just be like, well, go figure it out. We, we've already answered that question. 10% figured it out. Everybody else is fucked.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Got it. I thought you were gonna go in a different direction. I thought you were gonna say like, well, to be in a great depression for 10 years, figure it out, then after that will be prosperity.

• 1:18:33Tom Bilyeu?

  That sounds like an absolute disaster. So, I get the pull towards, so if you're trying to unwind a system, like unwinding it all in one brutal step is almost never the right play. You wanna do something far more surgical. You wanna give people time to adjust and reallocate and let things happen far more smoothly. Um, jumping without a parachute is about velocity. It, it is, it isn't even about distance, which is why you can jump from the same distance, and if you have a parachute, you can land safely. The reason that you die on impact without a parachute is you hit terminal velocity, and now you're going so fast that the internal organs just splatter. All of your bones turn

• 1:19:17Tom Bilyeu?

  to dust, your internal organs splatter, and you're just mechanistically, you're dead. So slowing the descent matters a lot. It's just that we don't have an answer for slowing the descent right now. So, um, we are headed towards bankruptcy, and that will be a cliff, and we'll suddenly fall off of it. Uh, so my thing would be, okay, you've got to engage people in the part of the economy that's working assets. You've got to, um, balance your budget, and then use the devaluation of the dollar as a mechanism to deploy, um, tools to stop anything super acute from happening. And then if you can drag that out over 20 or 30 years, now it's like people see their wealth going up

• 1:20:02Tom Bilyeu?

  because of the stocks. You've got a mechanism where they can pull that money out at certain intervals. You'll have to deal with what happens to people that don't have to work. So I think you do want them working. But anyway, there are ways around that problem.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Got you. And then last thing on this.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  What would be the impacts to like the everyday people if we were to intervene in the Japanese market?

• 1:20:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, so historically, the impact has been stabilization. It's worked.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:32Tom Bilyeu?

  But it works by devaluing the dollar.

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  What does devaluing the dollar like mean practically?

• 1:20:37Tom Bilyeu?

  So in, I think it was 1985, we did one of these things and it devalued the dollar by 50%. Now, I'm so glad you're asking this question. Drew, thank you, because I would have forgot to talk about this. Okay, so the fascinating thing is Besen, smart guy, is saying, I'm ending the era. He hasn't said this explicitly, but his actions speak to this. I'm ending the era known as King Dollar. And I think it was, I want to say a Clinton era advisor or someone in the Fed. I don't know. Anyway. He coined this phrase and his whole thing was the thing that is in the national security interest of the United States is a strong dollar, period.

• 1:21:21Tom Bilyeu?

  We do strong dollar, low inflation, strong dollar, low inflation. That's it. All y'all bitches get in line. And the problem is that you then export your manufacturing because you can't compete with places that can do it on the cheap. Also, exporting becomes very difficult because everything costs a ton when it's made in America and it's very cheap when it's made in China and then brought back to the US. This is why we started doing tariffs because this is like, well, you're just undercutting us. We can't justify manufacturing here because it'll be too expensive. Everything you do is cheap. So what Besen is saying is, oh, no, no, no, we've got a tool. I'll print the shit out of this money. I'll devalue it. It's going to make the debt easier to pay back. It's evil from where I'm sitting.

• 1:22:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, for reasons I've explained, but it is effective in terms of geopolitical wielding of weapon, where it's like, oh, China, in a bit of a precarious situation, are you? Oh, it'd be a real shame if 20% of your current manufacturing came back to the US because we lowered our prices by driving the util, not the utility, the value of the dollar down. Hey, China, you know that game you've been playing for the last 30 years of devaluing the yuan and constantly being right on the edge of where we consider an act of economic warfare? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, instead of coming after you with sanctions and some other bullshit, we're just gonna lower the value of our dollar. And so now our shit is cheap and we're gonna flood the market, fuck you. And so it's like, but now Americans are like, wait, I don't own assets.

• 1:22:47Tom Bilyeu?

  This is terrible for me. So you get into that, but it's somewhat balanced out by if we're devaluing the dollar, manufacturing comes back to the US, then theoretically you could start getting things cheaper here. That one is not a guarantee, so I certainly wouldn't count on it. But it's like, that's one of the other plays. But given how cheap China could make it, also just not tariffing the shit out of China would have the same effect. So that, that one's a bit of a wash. But that's the game that Besen, I think, is playing on an international stage. She's like, yeah, this might be bad for certain parts of the US economy, but it's great for other parts.

• 1:23:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Brings back manufacturing, makes us more competitive on the global stage, allows us to hurt certain allies, to help Japanese. Cause if we're devaluing the dollar by buying yen, then you're in a position where you stabilize their economy, they love you, you stay very tight with them, or you do things like what we did with Argentina. That was a little bit different because technically we made money off that, but same idea.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, and that is time.

• 1:23:55Tom Bilyeu?

  There we go. All right, everybody, thank you guys for joining us. These times are wild. I appreciate very much that you guys are here to be a part of the sense-making apparatus. It means a lot. We will be back on Wednesday again. If you have not already, please do subscribe to the channel. It matters a lot. The YouTube algorithm is Brutal to get around, same on X, same on Kick, wherever you're watching from. Guys, subscribe, please. It helps a lot for us to reach new people. And if this brings any value to you, would you please share it? That would mean the world to us, and I mean it. If you're thinking of launching a business, join me in Impact Theory University. I teach about applying these principles, the first principles, thinking, cause and effect to business. And with AI on the rise, it's going to be a bigger and bigger thing.

• 1:24:40Tom Bilyeu?

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