Global Unrest: Iran Deaths, ICE Confrontations in Minnesota, and DOJ Eyes Jerome Powell

Welcome back to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. In today’s episode, Tom Bilyeu and Drew dive headfirst into the chaos of our current global and domestic landscape. From escalating protests and a rising death toll in Iran, to political drama between Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and dramatic scenes in Minnesota where ICE agents face off with angry crowds—this episode has it all. The conversation starts with Tom Bilyeu setting the stage for these “transitional times” and wastes no time getting into contentious international moves, including Trump’s provocative statements about Greenland and the potential for U. S. military action. We get real-time analysis of the crackdown in Iran, including censorship, mass detentions, and China’s brush-off of international concerns. On the home front, Tom Bilyeu and Drew break down fury over welfare fraud in Minnesota, the legal complexities of freezing federal funding, and the heated aftermath of a controversial ICE shooting. The hosts also tackle the broader implications: are we seeing the unraveling of global order, or just another swing in the historical cycle of power and protest? You’ll hear blunt takes on political ego, the emotional traps driving national policy, and reflections on the future of democracy, virtue, and economic survival. If you’re looking for sharp insight, a touch of gallows humor, and honest debate on where humanity is headed, you won’t want to miss this deep, no-holds-barred conversation. Buckle up—this is Impact Theory at its most unfiltered. 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 Cape: 33% off your first 6 months with code IMPACT at https://cape.co/impact Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Summ: code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20 https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20 AirDoctor: Up to $300 off with code IMPACT at https://airdoctorpro.com Pique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impact Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order NetSuite: Right now, get our free business guide, Demystifying AI, at https://NetSuite.com/Theory https://netsuite.com/Theory Bevel Health: Visit https://bevel.health/impact and use code IMPACT to get your first month free. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show: https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu 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 rousing edition of the Tom, Bill, you show live. Thank you guys so much for joining us. This is such a pivotal moment in human history. It is wild to live in such transitional times. And we are honored that you guys are joining us as we try to make sense of everything that is happening.

• 1:26Tom Bilyeu?

  And speaking of everything that is happening, Trump says that a red line is being crossed as we speak in Iran. As over 500 have been reported dead and an additional 10,000 detained. As massive protests continue to rock the country. Shout out to everybody in Iran that is standing up, man, right now. I can't fathom it as people are getting snatched off the streets. Seen footage of people roaming with guns, just firing at people. It's wild. May we never live through anything like that, Drew.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and as you reported, more than 538 people have been confirmed dead. Another 10,600 have been detained. There have been some fringe reports and tweets that the death toll is actually closer to the thousands. They just haven't been verified yet, but it seems like in their third week, Iran is speeding up and not slowing down. The internet is still cut down, is still cut off and phone lines are still down. But there are even reports from Khamani's leadership that, yeah, we have it all under control. Nothing to worry about here. But it seems like they're just trying to avoid the world stage and becoming the focus of Trump.

• 2:30Tom Bilyeu?

  You don't shut the internet down. You don't turn off international calls. If you're like, no, we have nothing to hide. It's like they literally have everything to hide. This is crazy. So here's the, uh, the uncomfortable truth. So Stephen Miller had said something directly. I forget who he was talking to, but he said, listen, we live in a world that is governed by power and that is the reality and governments start as, uh, basically weak men getting together and saying, we need a way to come together to fight off invading whores, roving bands. I mean, if you go back far enough in history, this isn't organized armies and things like that. It's just the, there's a guy with more weapons than you, stronger than you, better fighter than you, whatever. Uh, and they will just come in, kill you, take your stuff and governments

• 3:15Tom Bilyeu?

  begin to form as a way to, um, give credibility to a certain use of violence, to make sure that violence is only used by certain people to defend, uh, your group. And over time, they tend towards tyranny and it is that human proclivity. This is not something that's being forced upon us from the outside. This is just wired into the human psyche. The proclivity to tend towards tyranny is absolute and history is just a never ending spiral of people getting crushed down by tyranny, only to finally overcome it, only to find that it comes back around. And so we're living through one of these moments where, uh, the sort of subtle

• 3:55Tom Bilyeu?

  tyranny of globalism that led us to the position that we're in now, where you're being molested by bankers is probably the right way to think about it, uh, is now falling apart and we're realizing once again that there are nation states that are fighting for power. And in the midst of all of this is just this incredible moment of destabilization, uh, which is wild. And so if any of you guys are, uh, having trouble sleeping, uh, unsure of what the future brings, boy, do I have some empathy for you. It is a truly wild time. And I think the goal here is to be completely clear eyed about the nature of man. Uh, to understand how I cover this stuff, you really have to understand, I'm trying to present what it is with a gallows humor twist.

• 4:40Tom Bilyeu?

  It's just how my mind works. So I try to find some humor in all of the insanity. But ultimately, I think that looking at humans, the way that they really are, is necessary, not sugarcoating, understanding all of the complexities of what's at play. So anyway, we're doing our best to bring things in that fashion. And that's exactly what you're seeing play out in Iran. You

• 5:07Tom Bilyeu?

  religious extremism, mixing with a grand desire for sovereignty, individual sovereignty at the level of the actual people of Iran. But the destabilization does not automatically mean that on the other side of this is something wonderful that's going to have to be fought for. You've got China throwing their hat in the ring and saying that they don't like to see anybody interfere with

• 5:29Tom Bilyeu?

  a nation's domestic issues. So I don't know what death toll they consider acceptable before somebody steps in, but it might be infinite, given their history. So anyway, that's the moment we're living in. Good morning. I hope you guys are doing great.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  China was like, mind your business. Don't got nothing to do with you.

• 5:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Literally.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Let them do their thing. We don't need nobody getting in other people's countries.

• 5:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Put out that video. Yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  But it bled over to the US. I don't know if you've seen the video from the U-Haul in Brentwood. A guy tried to drive through a protest with signs talking about, we don't want to, no Shah, no regime, US don't repeat 1953. And he was clearly met by a riot. So his front window was smashed. Police had to escort him out. He is detained. No charges have been taken and FBI is investigating. But it seemed like somebody that was just trying to say, hey, don't do a regime change and protesters weren't trying to hear that. So.

• 6:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I'm surprised that he's being detained. This is a guy with a political message. Now, is he being detained? Because I know at one point, he sort of lurches forward over and over and over with the vehicle to clear the space in front of him. But man, anybody that was around for Rodney King, like my car getting surrounded is a nonstarter. They took that guy out of his car. Who is the guy that got beat within an inch of his life? Oh, man.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Wasn't Rodney King?

• 6:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, Rodney King got me by the police, but there was a guy just trying to drive through during the protest in a semi and they pull him out. Ah, somebody in the chat can remember his name. Uh, but they pull him out and cave his head in with a rock. Now, he ends up living, but uh, if memory serves, he was not fully uh, back to normal after that. So anyway, it is super dangerous when people start doing this as they will uh, drag you out of the car.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's literally what they were trying to do. Um, two people were evaluated, but their injuries were minor. No deaths reported so far specifically from this.

• 7:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Reginald Denny, thank you, shout out. Uh, he was killed? Are we sure about that? I seem to remember. Nah, it could be a mismemory. So anyway, Reginald Denny, that is correct.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Uh, is this just another case of just suicidal Western empathy? The fact that we're protesting, it's kind of bleeding over to the US soil, um, the Iranian protest?

• 7:38Tom Bilyeu?

  No, so on this one, we're gonna have to be very careful to tease out all the different things that are at play. So uh, I think it is a very reasonable concern to have to say, um, I don't just want to go back to having a king. Uh, I think it's a very reasonable concern to say, yeah, the US created a power vacuum in Iran and uh, they tried to put like a puppet in place. Hey Venezuela, how you doing? Uh, and that didn't go well. So all of that, like those feel like legitimate concerns. And so if this guy is just trying to get people to understand that this is not going to be a simple transition, uh, and that if you're not incredibly careful, you're gonna get um, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And so I think all of that is legitimate and becoming a democratic nation,

• 8:23Tom Bilyeu?

  especially after almost 50 years of uh, repressive religious rule is not going to be an easy thing. And when you look at how long it even took America to um, ratify the constitution, dude, there was almost 10 years between the signing of the Declaration of Independence and when we became America as people know it now. So this stuff is incredibly difficult. Do you have those people in the country willing to fight and die that have the intellectual capacity, the humility, the ego? Yes, I understand the contradiction of those to like come together and make some sort of constitution that people

• 9:05Tom Bilyeu?

  will actually abide by. Do you have people that have enough credibility in their hometown to like get this stuff to stick? And in the age of social media where everybody has a voice and everybody's pulling in a different direction, is it even possible to refound a nation without

• 9:23Tom Bilyeu?

  the strong arm of the law? Like, I don't know how to say it without like a lot of forcefulness. I don't know. And so we're gonna watch all this play out. But I had all my hopes dashed during the the uprisings that happened in the Arab Spring that ended up not really going anywhere. And it's just getting a country pointed in the same direction and getting a culture that for almost 50 years has been going in one direction, whether through repression or not, going in a direction to suddenly be unified in the way that they're moving forward is crazy. It's crazy difficult. And the way that humans will fight over minutia is ridiculous. Look at Northern

• 10:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Ireland versus Ireland and the way that they killed each other over the most minor shit. The Thirty Years' War, same thing, like really minor interpretations, what we would as a modern audience consider very minor interpretations, different interpretations of the Bible, and they start slaughtering each other, killing 20% of some areas of Europe. I mean, just absolutely wild. And so you can get people that in theory should be pulling in the same direction, and they don't. And they go to war with each other. So how's this gonna play out? So anyway, you're seeing a little bit of that here in these conflicts here in the US, just people not necessarily agreeing on how to move forward. But you also have the deep complexities of narrative control. So you're going to see people spinning.

• 10:48Tom Bilyeu?

  You're going to see bots going crazy on social media, trying to make it seem like their side has all the momentum. Which, just a teaser, one of the things we have in Conspiracy Corner is that the global population may be dramatically less. Conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy. I do not know. But it may be dramatically less than people would have you believe because there's narrative power in saying, as a country, we have a lot more people than we do. Or in the US, it could be that we have a bigger population than we think because of a lot of illegal immigration that people just sort of try to be hush, hush about. So anyway, narrative control is a real thing. It is extremely effective. And so we're going to be seeing an information war play out, which goes back to why this stuff is being locked down.

• 11:32Tom Bilyeu?

  So suicidal empathy is real. This just doesn't strike me as an example of that. Copy that. Taking a short break, but there's more Impact Theory after. Stay tuned. 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. That's why everything they make runs 50 to 80% less. And it's not just the cashmere. I ordered a few things myself, their fleece joggers,

• 12:17Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:01Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:46Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for staying tuned. Now, let's get back to it.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  And then if we're going to the other side of the world, China's response to the Iranian that you queued to earlier. But all in all, do you think that China has the right tone of this? That some countries need to be left alone and let them kind of figure it out?

• 14:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Everybody needs to be aware that they are drenched in their own biases. I am drenched in anti-communist, anti-authoritarian bias. So when China puts forward a like, hey, you need to let like people determine their own thing. And then OPS, by the way, we starved 45 million people to death in Tom Bilyeu's lifetime. Sort of, I was at the tail end of it, but anyway. That's where I'm like, ah, like that, that one's hard for me. Because you guys have a history of saying that almost no matter how many people you have to kill to keep stability, it's better to do that. And I just have an absolute philosophical disagreement.

• 15:06Tom Bilyeu?

  It is far better for your country to spiral into madness, but people have their own freedoms than the other way around. I don't expect that to be popular. I just. If you look at America and Americans willing to fight and die for that right, you can put me in that camp. Like I individual freedom for me is everything. It comes at a cost. There is no doubt, but I am far more willing to pay the cost of, oh man, we do dumb shit and it bites us in the ass. Then I'm willing to pay the cost of, I'm not going to let you do something that I perceive to be dumb shit. And I will kill literally 45 million people to make sure that you don't do it like that. That to me is just a hard line in my value set.

• 15:50Tom Bilyeu?

  So I hear this through the lens of that. I know that Xi is swinging way back in the Mao direction. Mao was the guy that starved everybody. So yeah, I am extremely skeptical. So China is not like Trump. Trump just pops off at the mouth. And I think Trump has authoritarian tendencies. I think a lot of what he's doing right now is just ridiculous in the extreme. And we'll get to that later, but nonetheless, I'm very grateful that he cannot help but reveal himself every time he opens his mouth. And so this is the exact opposite of that. This is hyper controlled.

• 16:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Every word has been chosen very specifically for a certain psychological impact to frame things exactly the way they want it framed. And so I my distrust of Chinese statements being propaganda is basically a hundred percent.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's interesting. Martin Maldon in the chat said, that's mago 101 Drew. That it's supposed to be America first. Let's not intervene in any interventions. Let's keep, let's get America right before we start going to other countries and all these other things.

• 17:00Tom Bilyeu?

  That's not what Trump means when he says, America first. America first is, uh, you have resources that we need. We're going to have to take them. You're critical to our national defense. We are going to control your country. We are going to rob you of your sovereignty because it matters to America. So America first is taking on some like Scythian Darth Lordy. Like, man, shame that we just found. A bunch of oil in your country. You guys were fine until then. Shame that we've got the national debt that we've got because we're gonna have to come and take some of your shit. So, uh, that, this is one of those where you've got to be able to look at what America is actually doing.

• 17:45Tom Bilyeu?

  With eyes wide open and either say, yeah, cool. I'm willing to do that because the consequences of not are so dire. Um, namely that the Citi's trap says China's on the rise, America's on the decline, China will make a move. China has told the world it's going to move on. Uh, I'll say it this way, China has said very publicly that by 2027, they're going to make a move on controlling our way, our advanced technology. And AKA, we're gonna move in on Taiwan.

• 18:15Tom Bilyeu?

  They've also made it very clear that they would never, uh, attack America like they're not trying to take over other countries. And to be honest, I believe them. I think the way that they plan to take over is administrative. They plan to use debt in the same way that America did. So if you're like, nah, I'm not prepared to be number two. Okay. Well, then you might be clapping for, uh, Trump saying that we're gonna take over Greenland and all that stuff. But, um, I for one, I'm trying to retain a very clear eye about what we're doing. The parts that I like, the parts that I'm terrified by, uh, and what the second and third order consequences will be over the next 10 to 20 years. So, um,

• 18:54Tom Bilyeu?

  everything has a consequence. Everything is a trade off. And so the way that Trump is behaving right now is going to have massive trade offs, good and bad. But they're gonna be trade offs.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Good and bad.

• 19:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Um, speaking of the way Trump is behaving, Trump's DOJ has threatened to investigate Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell. Um, and this was his statement being transparent and bringing this story to life.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public rather than following the preferences of the president.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  I have served at the Federal Reserve under four administrations, Republicans and Democrats alike. In every case, I have carried out my duties without political fear or favor, focused solely on our mandate of price stability and maximum employment.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats. I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people. Thank you.

• 20:13Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, let me give you guys a full rundown of what's going on. Trump's DOJ is threatening a criminal indictment against Fed Chair Jerome Powell as tensions clearly between the Trump admin and the Fed are continuing to escalate. Powell revealed in what we just watched. Powell revealed Sunday evening that the Department of Justice served the central bank with a grand jury subpoena and explicitly threatening a criminal indictment related to his June 2025 testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. The probe centers on alleged misleading statements about the scope and features of the Fed's ongoing $2.5 billion renovation of its historic headquarter buildings in Washington DC. It also includes claims of

• 20:56Tom Bilyeu?

  perjury and false statements to Congress. Now, I think that Jerome Powell is right that this is a political game being played. They have not passed down the indictments yet, so this is just a threat. I don't think mathematically there's any way that we don't end up lowering rates more throughout 2026. We're going to be covering this later. In fact, we might as well get into it now. So, the, what cell is this? Our interest rate payments have gone up 5% this year. In the last four years alone, we have, I think, doubled our interest payments. Like, it is completely wild. So, yeah, US government

• 21:39Tom Bilyeu?

  payments, US government interest payments are now up to an annualized record of $1.47 trillion. This comes as federal interest payments rose 5% year-over-year to $1.2 trillion, which is an all-time high. Federal interest costs have doubled over the last four years.

• 21:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Fiscal dominance. We are in a position where Powell doesn't have an option. The debt is growing so rapidly, it is going to consume an ungodly amount of the federal budget. If we don't lower the rates so that we can refinance the wall of debt that is coming due in 2026. This is a thing that a lot of people aren't paying attention to, is that 2026 is a unique year. Like, if you look at the graph of how much debt has to be refinanced in 2026, it is massive. So if we don't lower rates, we have to refinance that at the higher rates and it will escalate

• 22:37Tom Bilyeu?

  rapidly, or accelerate, I should say, the race towards insolvency of the US government. So we're not going to do that. It's one of those, like, they'll bluster, they'll posture, but in the end, no matter who is president, you have to lower rates. Now, that's a trade-off, and it will have consequences, for sure, and I've done a deep dive on that, and you should go watch it. But the reality is that all of this is political theater. And so I think it's good that Jerome Powell has stood strong for as long as he could, because raising the rates is a trade-off, a massive trade-off. We should be, sorry, lowering the rates is a massive trade-off.

• 23:22Tom Bilyeu?

  We should be raising the rates, it would also be a trade-off, but for the reasons that I just explained, we're not going to be able to do it. But getting into all this tit-for-tat, the two of them should just be working together to do this in as thoughtful a way as possible. But I think both of them are playing a political game. Trump obviously has midterms to worry about. He obviously wants to drive the rates down, not just to refinance the debt, but to make him look great, because it will burn the economy extremely hot, which in the short term will feel awesome. But the bad news is that over time, it creates the K-shaped economic

• 24:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Horror show that is people with assets get wealthy and people without end up struggling because inflation is just eating away at them. So anyway, would I love to see the two of them just say, listen, we're in a very difficult position. Fiscal dominance is a brutal place to be, but here we find ourselves. And so we are going to do this is definitely as humanly possible. Yes, I would love to see that. Are we going to see it? No, we are not. It is not Trump's style. Trump, we got to come up with an abbreviation for this. Grab them in the whatever those letters are. That's his method of doing everything. So that is precisely what he's doing here with the Fed. It needs to be done, but it doesn't need to be done like this. So.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  You said both of them. What's Jerome Powell's motivation?

• 24:44Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't know, man. I don't know if he is just Democrat by nature, but the fact that he lowered rates at the midterms when he didn't need to however many years ago to ensure that the Democrats look good in the midterms. I know this guy will move rates.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel like we're projecting a motive on something.

• 25:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Not we, me.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, you're projecting.

• 25:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Call me out.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  You're projecting a motive on something that's not quite there because he just lowered rates in ahead of midterms now. And it's going to go down another basis point. So isn't he doing what you just said he did for the Democrats?

• 25:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, that's what I'm saying. He, well, so we're too far out from midterms for him to be doing it specifically for that. What he's doing it for, I believe, is that he understands that 2026, so much debt is coming due. It isn't possible to hold the line. So here I've got a guy who, because I'm more on Jerome Powell's side than I am on Trump's side. Trump, in my opinion, is just being reckless. It has to get done, but not in a reckless fashion. I think Trump wants it more for what it will do for Wall Street and how it will create all this investment, create all these jobs, hopefully drive wages in the short term. I think he's doing it for that reason.

• 26:00Tom Bilyeu?

  I think Powell is being more sensible in terms of we have to hold off, we have to hold off. But the two have allowed this to become a pissing contest politically. So instead of them, and look, I get it, the Fed has to be so careful with every word out of their mouth. But in my fantasy land, like these two would get together and they would just say, look, we understand what's going on. We may not be able to message it publicly. I understand what's going on. The rate cuts are going to be coming barring, you know, whatever unforeseen thing happening. But we need to hold off as long as we can because this is what's going to happen to the economy if we don't. Now, I have a feeling privately Besant would agree with that. Maybe not, we'll see.

• 26:42Tom Bilyeu?

  But Besant understands the economy and he understands that the rates have to come down for us to refinance the debt. But it also runs the economy hot. It is essentially inevitable that it's going to drive inflation. And so the card that Trump and maybe Besant are keeping in their back pocket is, no, no, no. If you let me run the economy hot like that, I'm going to grow our way out of this. And it's you're playing a game of chicken. And so that's where I'm like, it, this does not feel like two rational adults who are like, hey,

• 27:15Tom Bilyeu?

  I want this, you want that, we disagree. This feels like two people where it's like, we both know the rates are coming down. And so still like we're going to privately remain so antagonistic towards each other that we can't even like give each other the wink to be like, bro, chill, like this is coming. So anyway, that's where my read of this situation is, and I'm not a mind reader. So I don't know that that's true. But when, the way that I approach the world is always as a writer. And I say, what would need to be true for this character to be acting like this? And For Powell to not be back channeling to the Trump admin and saying,

• 27:57Tom Bilyeu?

  "We understand that that debt can't be refinanced at those levels. We understand that." "So you guys have to give us breathing room. You have to let us drive this decision-making, "in terms of timing and things like that, because we have an insanely difficult job to do."

• 28:15Tom Bilyeu?

  "And then Trump, obviously, is not prone to being reasonable. He's prone to just pushing until he gets what he wants, "ought to be saying, 'Yeah, I get it.'" And Besen should be whispering in Trump's ear, saying, "Listen, you need to hold off on this as long as we can." "It's possible," again, as a writer, "it's possible that both Trump and Besen are in the just, "well, we'll grow way out of it, and their behavior would remain consistent." "Powell's behavior, though, only makes sense when I'm like, 'This is a guy who's mad.'" "And so he's just going to be stubborn. He's going to delay. He's going to push it off. He's not going to signal..."

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Are you thinking that Powell should have lowered rates sooner?

• 28:57Tom Bilyeu?

  I think Powell should be communicating to the Trump administration that he's obviously going to lower rates, "and that they don't need to keep hammering him."

• 29:04Speaker 01

  We don't know that he's not doing that, though. We just know that Trump isn't excited, "as Trump isn't happy about the pace in which he's doing it."

• 29:11Tom Bilyeu?

  I have a base assumption that there would be signaling to the public "that those conversations are happening, and there's not. There's no signaling of any kind." "So now, he may," again, what could be true, "he may be thinking, "I can't even signal that, because that's going to signal something to

• 29:31Tom Bilyeu?

  "the traders," for lack of a better word, not traitors, traders, "who are then going to move in the stock market too rapidly." "Yeah." "But when I look at how these two interface with each other, it isn't that."

• 29:46Speaker 01

  All right, let's start at the beginning, because we came in on this through DOJ threatening "an investigation based off of the renovations. Do you think there's anything..."

• 29:52Tom Bilyeu?

  We came into this long, long ago, when Trump was saying, "You need to lower rates." "And they were saying, 'We're not going to lower rates. Inflation is fine,' even though inflation was 50% over "what they want. Sorry, that's Trump banging that drum. Inflation is fine, even though it's 50% over." "But Powell..."

• 30:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Having made the move for the Democrats to lower interest rates when he shouldn't have, coming into the midterms locked in Trump's mind that this is a guy that does this stuff for political reasons. They start battering each other, I'm sure publicly and privately. Then, over time, Trump has been just like pressure, pressure, pressure. Powell has, in my opinion rightly, been slow to do it. But now, obviously, has to. His hand is forced because of fiscal dominance. He's gonna have to lower the rates. So the fact that these guys are getting in this big of a pissing contest is, my only read is that either Powell

• 30:59Tom Bilyeu?

  is signaling it to him privately, and Trump is just like, fuck you, either do it now or I'm just gonna keep smashing you, which is all too possible. Or they're continuing to have a pissing match. So we're now up against what are my biases, what are my proclivities to, how have I mapped the human mind? How have I mapped Jerome Powell? Jerome Powell is a political animal. Jerome Powell, like so many people, just has a blanket disdain for Trump. And even though it is self-evident that he's going to have to lower the rates, he's going to make this as difficult and drawn out in terms of the comments that he

• 31:40Tom Bilyeu?

  makes about Trump publicly. So that tensions between the two remain as high as humanly possible. I understand that this is incredibly complex, and I hope that I have sufficiently confessed that we're now just up against how I map the world and how I map Powell. But if I were in this situation, given that I know I have to lower rates, I'm not going to make this a political pissing match. I'm gonna say things like, I understand Trump's drive to want the rates to come down because we have a wall of debt coming at us at the Fed. We're obviously looking at that. We're going to be very thoughtful. We're gonna be very careful. We have a balancing act to do. I'm certainly, I wanna work with the administration

• 32:24Tom Bilyeu?

  on it. Like, none of those words are being said. Now. Please understand, Trump speaks like a lunatic. If I have not made that clearly enough. The grab them in the pussy methodology of everything, I fucking hate. But nonetheless, that's where Trump's at. So I admittedly have written off Trump. He's never going to be reasonable. So my only hope is that I can get some reasonableness out of Powell.

• 32:53Tom Bilyeu?

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• 33:31Tom Bilyeu?

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• 34:01Tom Bilyeu?

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

• 34:05Speaker 01

  I think that's a crazy assertion. I think at the beginning, first and foremost, Trump appointed Jerome Powell. So this is his appointee. Barack Hussein Obama was the first time Jerome Powell was hired. Donald Trump hired him again. Joe Biden renewed him and then now Trump is his fourth. So that's the four administrations he's talking about. Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump. In 2022, when he was presiding for the, when Democrats were in power, that was when he was hiking rates. That's not when rates were dropping. So this, the narrative that you're saying that he dropped rates for Democrats, but wouldn't do it for Republicans makes it seem like he's like cutting political favors. But in 2022.

• 34:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Pause, let's take this one step at a time. He hiked rates. Do you know what our inflation rate was?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  25% over the four years.

• 34:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. Do you, do you know how economically devastating that is? That that's like unprecedented. You are spiraling out of control. We have done untold damage to the economy. Trump is horrific at spending. Biden was horrific at spending. Call them equal. I'm not singling out either one. I don't think Trump is good with money at all in terms of he has an absolute willingness to spend. But you've got Powell raising rates in a moment where if you don't, you go off a catastrophic cliff immediately. It just, you absolutely cannot do that. So of course. Now, honestly, we should have raised rates even further.

• 35:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Biden was never gonna do that, so he was all too happy to just let inflation keep running. Trump came in and while he isn't doing it through fiscal responsibility, he is doing anything and everything that he can to reduce inflation in other ways.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  But yeah, Biden or Trump don't have power to reduce or increase inflation because the Fed could, yeah, the Fed could.

• 35:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Of course they do. So this is where you have to think of the economy as a biological organism. So yes, the Fed is hugely influential in terms of what they do with the interest rates.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Are we still talking about inflation as a, as defined by the percentage of the money supply?

• 36:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Inflation is definitionally inflation of the money supply.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if that's the case, the Fed is the only people that control the money supply, right?

• 36:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Thank you for making me be very precise with my words. So when people think of inflation, they think of it as prices going up. Technically, those are two separate phenomena. Inflation is, as you just said, increasing the money supply. Prices going up, that is a thing that can be influenced by other means other than just economic policy. So you've got Trump doing a whole bunch of things, trying to get the cost of things down, including invading Venezuela. So there are all kinds of things that he can do to make the average person at home go, ah, inflation as I, the average person, think of it as prices going up. He has had a tremendous impact on that.

• 37:05Tom Bilyeu?

  So Trump is doing other things to try to drive that down. Powell is only responsible for the actual monetary policy of the government. And so Powell is going to go in and pull his levers. Now, again, to be abundantly clear, I think it's good that Powell has held off as long as he can. I have a feeling that the reason that this is escalating in the public as much as it is and getting down to the indictments is, A, Trump is unhinged and just bullies everybody. And so he's just trying to bully Powell to do it faster because that suits his whims.

• 37:45Tom Bilyeu?

  That's being a little unfair, but nonetheless, if you read the situation like that, yeah, I think that's completely reasonable. So in terms of my read on Powell is pretty minor. I'm more in Powell's camp than I am Trump. If you were going to force me to pick who's your champion in this fight, Powell, Powell is handling himself far better than Trump. So I don't want this to seem like anything other than a very simple statement. If you strip the politics out of this, this situation doesn't look like this. I don't think you have this situation the way that you're having it without ego. This is political theater. This is ego of two extraordinarily powerful men that just don't want to seem weak.

• 38:28Tom Bilyeu?

  They both want to seem like, it's like when, God, this has been in countless movies. Somebody is desperately tired and they want to sit down and their boss tells them to sit. And they keep standing long past when they want to stand because they don't want to look like they're just doing what their boss tells them. So then finally they'll sit down and they'll say, hey, I'm not sitting down because you told me to. I'm sitting down because I want to. And it's like, Jesus Christ, sure, look, we've all fallen into that trap. So I'm just saying that trap is real. I think that Powell is in that trap. Powell is by far the less of the, my problem is far less with Powell than it is with Trump. But seeing this level of dysfunction makes me very sad.

• 39:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Full stop. Now, I think you've made your position. You think I'm misreading Powell. You think I, some variation of this is exactly what he should be doing. And Trump is bullying him and he needs to stand up.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yes, because I think charges being thrown at the Fed chair because they're not raising the interest rates as fast as you like isn't okay. And I think that Trump is trying to bully everybody, including federally Senate confirmed appointed like government official. There should be a line somewhere.

• 39:38Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think my stance is on that?

• 39:40Speaker 01

  I think that you don't like it, but I think that there's a lot of they both need to, and they both need to. And I think Trump is the one that is kind of pushing Powell to this position. I don't think Powell releases that statement that he's being investigated if Trump doesn't threaten the DOJ over him. I don't think Powell even says anything about the administration or politics if Trump isn't calling him too slow Fed Powell. So.

• 40:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, what did you hear me say in the last 10 minutes about Trump's current strategy?

• 40:07Speaker 01

  That Trump is the grab him by the pussy strategy. You don't condone it. You think it's terrible. And although that that makes you sad, you gave a pope on him. You're hoping that Powell could be the one that signals that he's trying to work with the administration.

• 40:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Very, very close.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:21Tom Bilyeu?

  So, yeah, I think that what, in terms of policy,

• 40:27Tom Bilyeu?

  you push off the lowering the rates as long as you can. Trump should absolutely stop pushing. And I would like to see, i- if I map why this is being escalatory in the way that it is, it's a pissing contest. And I'm just saying, I'd really like to stop seeing pissing contests everywhere I turn.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 40:46Tom Bilyeu?

  So, full stop.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  From the chat, people are asking why you're playing both sides so much. Uh, is there a reason that you don't just directly say this person's right, this person's wrong in my view?

• 40:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, and.

• 41:00Tom Bilyeu?

  I really hope for your guys' sake that you don't live in that world. Eric, could we get three set? You want to be in a position where you understand the fullness of how people end up in the traps that they end up in precisely, so you can avoid being in that trap. I will often, once it gets down to decision-making time, I will speak in binaries. I will speak in this is shit, or this is amazing, even though nothing is ever shit or amazing. It's usually just a whole bunch of trade-offs and you're trying to figure out which one has less of a trade-off. But when I'm trying to map a situation, I'm trying to lay out all of the things that are at play, so I don't become, this is gonna be old language, but I don't become a mimeograph

• 41:45Tom Bilyeu?

  of a mimeograph of a mimeograph of a mimeograph, where you're just constantly thinking in these binaries all the way down and you don't actually understand what's happening. And I think most people do that. I think most people steer by emotion and they make really fucking stupid decisions as a result of that. To understand how I parse the world, I am constantly looking at where I, in my own life, am getting trapped in my emotions. I am extraordinarily distrustful that other people aren't trapped in their emotions. I think they all are. And so when I'm looking at a situation like this, where there's such obvious exit ramps from the political bickering, then I start going, okay, what are the emotions that these guys are tied up in?

• 42:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, if you want to come after my position, the obvious answer is, okay, hold on, because Trump acts the more lunatic, you just give him a pass and now you're focusing your energy on Powell? And I will say to that, that certainly isn't what I was attempting to do. I think Drew hated my framing, and so we ended up zooming in on something that made it sound like I was defending, or saying that Powell was the one to blame here, which I'm very much not saying.

• 42:59Tom Bilyeu?

  What I'm saying is, this is human nature. This is how humans collide. They get in these emotional states and they cannot pull themselves out of it. But it would be a very fair critique of my stance to be...

• 43:13Tom Bilyeu?

  That I am so hopeless that Trump will ever act in any way other than the way that he does. That I'm often just like, okay, yeah, well, Trump's doing that thing. Is there, please, an adult somewhere in the room? That can de-escalate this. So anyway, that would be certainly a fair criticism. Beyond that, I have said all the words. Powell should be as slow as humanly possible to lower rates. In the real world, we need to be raising rates. Trump is being a bully. He absolutely should not be pursuing Powell with a federal indictment. That is fucking insane.

• 43:52Tom Bilyeu?

  And at the same time, this is what happens when people get stuck in their feels.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  We had a lot happen in Minnesota. I'm trying to see where you want to go first with it. You want to jump into the Renee good? Video or do you want to jump into the Somali welfare outrage?

• 44:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, let's start at the beginning. So let's show the footage. If people haven't seen the new footage. It's pretty clear that she does indeed. Oh, yeah. So this is if you go to the time marker that I put in the thing. So the horn honking you hear is her. And she at one point starts honking the horn rhythmically. And then they pan to her. Is this it? Yeah. So if you're looking at your screen, you'll see she's honking and dancing, like doing a shimmy in her car. To the rhythm of the honking horn. All while you can hear like the tear gas grenades or it's not, it's like pepper spray.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Canisters.

• 44:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I don't know how to explain it. If you see it, it's like a cloud gets poofed very aggressively in somebody's face over and over and over. They're doing it to a bunch of different people. So that's the popping that you hear.

• 45:00Tom Bilyeu?

  So later in the video, the ICE agents are going to walk up to her and instruct her to get out of the car, which she does not do. You'd have to skip forward. It's just a bunch of honk, honk, honking for several minutes. But they walk up, they tell her to get out of the car. I think this video ends like right as she's about to pull off. So you don't actually see the confrontation, but you do see them walk up, tell her to get out, so on and so forth. But.

• 45:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that so you're never going to get people to agree on whether or not this was justified. So let the debate rage there. What I think becomes the next thing to talk about is if the legal experts are right. And that regardless of sort of popular opinion, because my opinion has not changed. He should not have fired. The question is legally, will it be considered a bad shoot or not? And legally, I'm not the guy to turn to for anything other than an assessment of aggregating like what legal experts are saying. The legal experts that I have heard speak are saying, yeah, okay.

• 46:09Tom Bilyeu?

  So first of all, the car, a car is considered a deadly weapon. A car hit him before he fired the shot. It's very clear from the video. And historically, things like this, the person has gotten off. It's not considered a bad shoot. So now it becomes a question of, okay, the populace is gonna debate this till the end of time. But how do they react if this guy, there's just, yeah, legally, it's perfectly fine.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  If he gets off, yeah.

• 46:42Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you have a take? What do you think is gonna happen?

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Uh, he's gonna get off.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Twelve year old got shot by police and he got off. So at that point.

• 46:51Tom Bilyeu?

  But do you think, cause what I see going on in Minnesota is it is ratcheting up like, I don't know how much the mobs showing up around these ICE raids represent Minnesota as a whole. I literally have no sense and I know better than to believe just because the footage makes it seem like, oh, my God, it was so tense. You zoom out and it could be like, no, no, no.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Just that one thing.

• 47:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, they needed to back up like a hundred yards. And then there's like a huge ICE presence. I have no idea. So I certainly don't want to just get sucked into the way that anyone video makes something look. But it does seem like there's an escalation of anti ICE sentiment in Minnesota, where people are willing to. To take action. I'll be very curious to see if people actually do make good on their threats and start showing up with guns. It would not be the first time in recent memory that people show up with guns to protest like this. Who's the guy that?

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Kyle Rittenhouse.

• 47:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Kyle Rittenhouse, exactly.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Got off and he tweeted, should I go to Minnesota? And it was him.

• 47:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Did he really?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  He did with his AK-47. But he got off, so it didn't matter, right? Cause.

• 47:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, so first of all, but now it's like, this is why I say be careful with your policy. So now it's like, yeah, if you're in the anti ICE camp and you believe this is, this is where the government has crossed the line. This is where a well-regulated militia with weapons needs to stand up. I want to be very clear. Individual Americans are already making that decision on their own as to how far they're willing to go to, step across the law. So there was a guy who, he was a little too outragey swear-y. So I didn't pull the clip, but I'll summarize it here. A guy that claims to have gone to hundreds of protests to have been arrested. He may have said thousands, but to have been arrested dozens and dozens of times.

• 48:40Tom Bilyeu?

  And he says, the reason I'm still here and I don't have any Taser marks. I don't have any scars from being beaten with a baton. I haven't been killed is because I comply immediately. He said, when you're a protester, you're stepping across a line, a legal line. You are violating the law and you understand I'm doing this because I believe that it's righteous to violate the law. And we as Americans have the ability to do that. And so, but it comes with consequences. And he says, I get arrested routinely, but I comply immediately and I do what I need. I go for my day in court and I make my case there. I do not try to make my case on the street. Right now, we've got a lot of people that are making that decision that this is the time where I need to resist a tyrannical government. But they're trying to bring the court of law right there. And they're putting themselves in this, from my position, this insanely dangerous situation.

• 49:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Where you're saying, nope, I'm going to resist arrest. I'm going to, I really hope it doesn't get to this, but in some cases, we've seen attacks on ICE that are violent. I'm going to resist violently and. People need to understand, you'll be met with deadly force. So it's like you better really believe in the thing that you're doing because it is so dangerous. But I feel, pure emotion, I feel like this is escalating towards that. You've got an administration that is not going to back down. ICE is obviously being told not to back down. The people in Minnesota, at least in these videos, clearly are not backing down. People popping off on social media, that's always very different than real life, but

• 50:09Tom Bilyeu?

  popping off saying, we're gonna bring weapons to this. You've got Kyle Rittenhouse, who's already done it, and would be a total moron to do it again, but nonetheless, having that energy, that this feels like it's going to escalate into something that will be tragic.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Chrissy Noem said they're sending more DHS officers there, more ICE officers will be there, they'll back them up, and I'm sure the National Guard is on high alert. So it's only a matter of time. There's gonna be a lot more military, a lot more guns, and a lot more bulletproof vests. Let's see how many more protests pop up.

• 50:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. Yeah. So, gonna be distressing.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  All right, staying in Minnesota, the fraud keeps frauding. So on one side, a federal judge has admitted that the Trump administration cannot block federal money for childcare and other social service funding to five states for now. This is an ongoing story. People are having mixed reviews about this. Trump, for those who need catching up, was trying to cut off funding to California, Minnesota, and three other, I think Illinois, I don't know what the other two states are, but five blue states in order to block alleged fraud.

• 51:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep, here we go. U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, not the easiest name to say, issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration's attempt to freeze or block federal funding for childcare and related social service programs in certain states, at least for now. Now, to be very specific, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the HHS, announced it would pause roughly $10 billion in federal funding for childcare. Care subsidies and social services in five states partly in response to the apparent massive fraud in Minnesota that went hyper viral when Nick Shirley posted his expose.

• 51:59Tom Bilyeu?

  HHS said it had reason to believe the funds were being misused, including by people in the country illegally, but apparently they've not shown sufficient evidence as to why only those states are being targeted and that seems to have created this legal weakness. In response, five Democratic-led states, California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York filed a lawsuit right away, arguing that the freeze was not legally justified. It disrupted essential services for low-income families. The government lacks authority to withhold funds Congress has appropriated without valid legal reason or due process. The judge in the case granted a temporary restraining order requiring the administration

• 52:44Tom Bilyeu?

  to continue releasing the funds while the legal challenge plays out in court. Now, he did not decide on the ultimate legality yet, but found the states likely met the initial legal requirements to maintain the status quo while arguments continue. It's important to note that this is not a final ruling on whether Trump ultimately can or cannot permanently withhold these funds. It's also not a broad constitutional decision. It's just a temporary order to keep the funding flowing while the case is being litigated. It doesn't resolve whether fraud allegations have merit or not. And for any of you thinking that the Supreme Court recently ruled that the federal judges can't stop the executive branch with injunctions like this, you are incorrect.

• 53:26Tom Bilyeu?

  What the Supreme Court said should not happen is where a single district judge is able to block a nationwide federal policy for the entire country. The injunction in this case is a case-specific temporary restraining order that, like I said, I think becomes possible because Trump targeted individual states. If he had put a moratorium, I guess, on the entire nationwide thing, which of course he's never going to do, then he at least it would have gone all the way to the Supreme Court and a federal judge wouldn't have been able to stop it. But because he singled them out, at least this is my To the situation, they were able to get the injunction as that has not been ruled on, at least as far as I know in the Supreme Court yet. So we'll see how all of this plays out.

• 54:08Tom Bilyeu?

  I think that it is very distressing in the age of social media to feel like you have evidence, all the evidence that you need, that the case is settled, that the fraud is happening. However, as a, I guess, old person at this point, I beseech you to remember that we have three branches of government for a reason and that you actually want these kinds of judicial slowdowns so that we can actually figure out what's going on. I totally understand the frustration that people have when you feel like, oh my God, like we're hemorrhaging all this money and nobody has banged the drum harder than I for budget deficits. However, letting the legal process, letting the legal process play out is the right thing to do, in my opinion. So

• 54:52Tom Bilyeu?

  let's hope that it happens quickly, but it should happen.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Do you think that this, first off, are you aligned with blocking of funds due to allegations? Cause I was gonna get have a next question, but I wanted to level set.

• 55:07Tom Bilyeu?

  So if you want to know what I, Tom, do you want to see happen? A thousand percent.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Blocking based on allegations?

• 55:14Tom Bilyeu?

  For sure.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna stop everything, then I'll get the full story, then we can turn this back.

• 55:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep, it's gotta be credible. It's gotta be something that a reasonable person would look at and go, we have essentially the equivalent of probable cause. However, as I've said many times in this program, I'm prepared to abide by the structure of the United States. And so if the setup that we have right now says that a federal district court judge can go, no, you can't do that. Cool. That's the system. Go ahead and try and change the system as we did with the Supreme Court ruling that you can't do a nationwide injunction. Awesome. Love it. But yes, I still want to use the setup that the founding fathers put in place. I think it was very shrewd. I think that we are.

• 55:59Tom Bilyeu?

  The system that is best designed to protect against tyranny. I think that no matter what you think about Trump right now. I think that ambition grows in the Eden and the more success he has acting dictatorial, he'll just keep going. And so if he isn't ultimately checked by something, then that will become a problem. And so, again, do I think that some of the toddler behavior is useful for disrupting a potential corrupt world order? Yes. Do I also have tremendous fears that America could become the next contestant on let's get a dictator in power? Yes, I do. So I understand that humans tend towards tyranny. I understand that governments are problematic by their very nature.

• 56:43Tom Bilyeu?

  And so I for one am very okay with things getting slowed down like this. So even though I want it and I feel like I completely see and I understand it, yeah, like I, we're, I would make a terrible dictator because I do not trust myself nearly enough. I know how likely I am to get caught up in my own emotions. I know how likely I am to be wrong. So, um, yes, I, while I do have a strong opinion that fraud is just happening all over the place, not just in Minnesota.

• 57:17Tom Bilyeu?

  I also don't want to sidestep the structure of the United States.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  It's, it's a crazy timeline indeed. And it's things like this that just make it even more funny because the Trump Greenland thing is not going away.

• 57:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Bro.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  EU is really drawing that line. Um, so I'll, I'll tee it up to you. I'll get some of these clips ready, but it seems like Trump is very much not letting this Greenland thing go and the EU is not having it themselves.

• 57:43Tom Bilyeu?

  So not at all. Tensions continue to escalate over Trump's insane push to acquire control of Greenland. The easy way or the hard way? That's essentially a direct quote. Trump says the U.S. needs to own Greenland because you defend ownership, you don't defend leases. These, again, almost direct quotes. Greenland is strategically vital due to its location in the Arctic. Conclusion of vast mineral resources, including rare earth elements critical for technology and defense as well. And this, I think, is one of the biggest ones. A melting ice, or a bunch of melting ice, is revealing new potential shipping routes amid climate change. So for anybody that thinks that's not real, Trump also maintains that

• 58:28Tom Bilyeu?

  if we don't take over Greenland, China or Russia is going to do it. Now, it's important to note that the US already maintains the Thule airbase there under the 1951 Defense Treaty with Denmark, which allows American military presence, but not sovereign control. As Trump has called out, both Russia and China have increased Arctic activities, including military exercises and resource exploration. And all of this comes in the middle of hypertense, broader geopolitical strain, including our recent lightning invasion of Venezuela, threats against Cuba and Mexico, and a promise to hit Iran where it hurts if they continue to slaughter civilians.

• 59:11Tom Bilyeu?

  All of this has dialed up global concerns about aggressive American unilateralism that Trump says is only constrained by his own morality. NATO's unity is obviously under strain already, and an attack on Greenland, which is Danish territory, for those keeping score, would technically trigger Article Five collective defense responsibilities, potentially pitting the US against its European allies. And you've certainly got pundits in Europe saying that they need to be prepared to take on the US militarily. That's known as war, boys and girls. Now, I get the energy, but bitch, please. Europe does not want smoke with the US, not while they're already dealing with Russia.

• 59:56Tom Bilyeu?

  But it has to be said, Trump's blunt-force-trauma diplomacy is rapidly alienating the US from traditional allies. Maybe it's a stroke of genius, or maybe it's just as unhinged as it seems. Let's ask Greenland. Greenland's government, led by Prime Minister Moot B. Aggeti? Forgive me if that is just wrong. On every conceivable way, but he has firmly rejected any transfer emphasizing self determination and stating American? No. Local parties stress they do not want US oversight citing environmental and cultural concerns. The island's economy relies on fishing, mining, and Danish subsidies. Maybe something that nobody wants to talk about. They basically

• 1:00:39Tom Bilyeu?

  just pay them to be a country. But independence aspirations have started growing in Greenland. No formal US offer has been made public, but Trump has suggested compensating residents or Denmark financially could be in the future, but he has also said he's not thinking about the money right now. He's just thinking about doing this the easy way or the hard way. Wild.

• 1:01:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you really think he's gonna go after Greenland? Yes. Do I think he's going to invade militarily?

• 1:01:12Tom Bilyeu?

  I think he's going to, um, God, what do I really think he's going to do? It may be a failure of my imagination because I have a very hard time believing that he would do something like a strike. I could certainly see him just like Thule Air Base suddenly becomes like Grand Central Station and he's just got like everything going through there. Um, I can certainly see him like constantly threatening, threatening, threatening, but not actually making a move and increasing the diplomatic pressure over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Um, I could definitely see that. So yeah, I just really can't see a strike, man. Not, not with what it would do to your allies. Like that is so wild. I also think he's really

• 1:01:54Tom Bilyeu?

  gonna lose a lot of at-home support because listen, how do you boil a frog? Slowly. Uh, Trump went from I'm the president of peace to I'm the president of lightning strikes. Now, for anybody keeping score, I use the word lightning on purpose.

• 1:02:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Fans of history will know exactly why I use the word lightning.

• 1:02:19Tom Bilyeu?

  So I just.

• 1:02:23Tom Bilyeu?

  I just don't want to see it. And because I don't want to see it, I am maybe removing an option that he's being sincere about off the table, but I don't think he is. I think it's bluster. Please, Jesus, let it be bluster. Now, he may know things about Russia and China that I just have no clue about. And maybe if I was in his position, I'd be like, holy shit, like, we really got to move on this. So I want to leave that on the table. But with the current things that I know. This level of aggression is. Whether he intends it to be or not. Is going to accelerate the.

• 1:03:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Not global hegemony, but the global cooperation that we've seen. Now, everybody heard, anybody that was here, I guess, at the time, heard my spiel on. Maybe we need to. Maybe all of that global government shit is super corrupt and we need to back out of it. But he's ejected out of, I think, 66 international treaties, organizations, whatever. He clearly is not afraid to bully verbally longstanding allies. And when you. Go in and snatch up dictator or not, you go in to snatch them up, you violate Venezuela's sovereignty.

• 1:03:44Tom Bilyeu?

  If he does on the ground strikes in Mexico to stop drugs or otherwise, he will have violated their sovereignty. So this is, and then obviously if he makes a move on Greenland, it's like, whoo. It becomes a unignorable pattern that will force people to hunker down and go. The world's policeman that made all of this possible is now the one raiding coffers. And so we've got to, at a minimum, be cooperative. We've got a, you know, maybe it's most favored nation deals. Colombia certainly has changed their tune after Maduro got snatched. So it's.

• 1:04:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, this this sends you into an era of nationalism. Maybe that's a great thing. Maybe him accelerating it is wonderful. I don't feel like I see clearly enough. What's happening at the global level to call whether this is good or horrific. But I do know that it feels acting the bully doesn't feel good for me. So if you have my temperament, don't love. So I'm a fan of put the incentives in the right place.

• 1:04:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Get people on your side, seduction. It's just, yeah, I.

• 1:05:04Tom Bilyeu?

  With what I know now.

• 1:05:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Even though this is to the advantage of my country. I think that it will have trade offs in the long term. That will be. A less.

• 1:05:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Enjoyable world. And when I think about, okay, wait, we need to. We have to undo the K shaped economy. We have to make it such that you don't have to be any more clever than saving your money and getting your kids educated. To be class mobile, that that is a must for me.

• 1:05:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Do we have to destroy the entire world order to get there? So if your base assumption is yes, we do, then yeah, this cool. He's accelerating that. If your base assumption is no, we don't. Then it's like, bro, you've got to calm the fuck down. And so again, ambition grows in the Eden. So every one of these that goes well, he's emboldened. And then you boil a frog slowly by first saying, I'm the president of peace. And then it's like, you just keep like dipping your toe into more and more militaristic stuff. So, yeah, we're gonna see, we're gonna see.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  With EU driving such a hard line about this, though. I feel like that should have been the deterrent. Like, it's one thing when he was like, yeah, Canada's gonna be a 51st state. It was him and, you know, a couple of the Canadian PMs going back and forth. But when you have EU and NATO and Macron and people in France really standing up and saying, if Trump makes this move, we're gonna take this as an act of war. You're alienating NATO, and NATO will essentially not exist anymore if Trump moves there. And to your point, those second and third order consequences would be dire, especially when it deals with the Ukraine-Russia situation. Um, is this not worth the blowback? Or?

• 1:06:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Let me paint a picture for you.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's say that you're in a relationship with your girlfriend.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:01Tom Bilyeu?

  It's been bad for a while, but you're still, like, your Facebook page still says you're in a relationship. That's the oldest shit ever.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  In a relationship with, I remember that.

• 1:07:08Tom Bilyeu?

  And, uh, she boils your bunny.

• 1:07:12Tom Bilyeu?

  And your daughter's in tears because your bunny got boiled. And you know she's crazy. But it hasn't come out yet that she boiled the bunny, or people aren't taking it seriously for whatever reason. But that, like, changed how you look at your girlfriend.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:25Tom Bilyeu?

  And you're like, yeah, look, I don't give a fuck what my status says. Uh, you're dead to me. You boiled my daughter's bunny. That is the craziest shit ever.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:35Tom Bilyeu?

  And by the way, I ran on, I'm gonna protect this bunny. I'm gonna get this bunny out of harms way on day one. Maybe even before I take office, that bunny's gonna be safe. If I'm right, and Trump maps Europe as wanting the war in Ukraine to continue,

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:51Tom Bilyeu?

  and that he's got a Putin-Europe problem, um, then it's entirely possible that to him, he's already like, whatever, Europe's dead to me. And they've already done the crazy thing. Boris Johnson stopped this from going through, he's out, I thought we were gonna be able to get this done. I realize these fucking assholes want this to keep going. I don't know that this is what he thinks. I just know he's made comments that make me think he might think that. Uh, so if he's looking at that situation and going, oh damn, like these fools actually want to keep fighting, um, then whatever, fuck them. And, but that means NATO, get the fuck out of here. Like, I can't be a part of that. You guys are acting like lunatics. Uh, I've

• 1:08:33Tom Bilyeu?

  got Russia and China encircling my safe zone of Greenland. Uh, can't have it. Um, and so, yeah, we're still the world's most powerful military and China's been racing ahead of us. Can't have that. So, America is, under my leadership, going to get strong again. And he really believes, fuck all y'all. I'm gonna hit the gym and, uh,

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Get strong.

• 1:08:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Show these bitches what it's about. And he, he doesn't think of it as getting strong, I don't think. He thinks of it as, we are strong, but you don't have to look farther than, oh, PS 2027, 1.5 trillion dollars in military. I guarantee, he's sitting in that room, watching all this shit happen, and they're like fucking coming in with like, uh, COD heads up display, fucking taking people out, using sound waves and all that shit. And he's like, that's what I do with 900 billion? What could I do with 1.5 trillion? Y'all bitches are in trouble. That, I guarantee that's what's going on. That's ambition growing in the Eden. That's somebody who's like, ooh, I don't need anybody, man. I got this.

• 1:09:39Tom Bilyeu?

  So, uh, yeah. So, that is one possibility. I do not know that I have accurately mapped his thinking on that, but, ooh, it's got internal consistency with the behavior that I see.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  From the chat, somebody said, this is how the Japanese empire fell. They needed resources, alienated their allies to get those resources and poked the wrong bear. We're about to rhyme with history.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  There you go, Skidder with the banger.

• 1:10:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I mean, so, we are not Japan, in that Japan is a tiny ass little island,

• 1:10:12Tom Bilyeu?

  um, that had a history that told them, we are the baddest military around. And if you know that they thwarted the Mongols, who did not meet a country they couldn't take, they thwarted them twice. And they were like, you guys can get the fuck out. So... And then they just ran over China. So Japan thought, all right, we're the toughest people ever. Like, we got this. No problem. But they didn't have resources. They're a tiny fucking island. Look at the map. When you look at how powerful Japan is, and you're like, wait, what? So that one, they were in a far weaker position. So America is not in said same position.

• 1:10:55Tom Bilyeu?

  So on that front, we are far better off than Japan was. If you want to liken us to anything, it would probably be more like the British Empire, where your empire is just so fucking expensive. And so you're thinking, well, we're gonna get all the resources. But you just can never quite make it work, because they stymie you all the time. They won't stop fighting. You fucking Gondies everywhere. And so it just becomes this nightmare pain in the ass, where the colonies won't just do what they're told. And now the world's watching. You can't just fucking chop hands off anymore and shit like that. Like, you know, the Spanish sending fucking, what's his name, Columbus over here was like, you're gonna get me some gold, or you're gonna be without hands. Homeboy was ruthless, ruthless. Hands, feet, tongue. So like, Chop, chop, chop.

• 1:11:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Damn. Like, when you got cameras everywhere, you can't run the world like that. And so now it just, empires are expensive. So debt, debt, money printing, these are your problems. This is how empires collapse. So yes, will we put ourselves in that position because we want to go control everybody's resources? We want the petrodollar to stay in place? Maybe.

• 1:12:02Tom Bilyeu?

  But just being overextended. So anyway, there you have it. All right, everybody, that's time. Thank you, guys, so much for joining us. We understand this is a wild time. We appreciate you joining us. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe, if you would. It really does go a long way. And we are here Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7:00 AM Pacific Time. Thank you for joining us, and we will see you on Wednesday. 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.

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