Trump's Inauguration, Biden's Legacy, Populism, Oligarchy, & The Power of Failure | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Welcome to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu! In today's riveting episode, I dive deep into the transformative politics of the dawn of the second Trump presidency with my guest, Drew. We start by reflecting on the legacy of Joe Biden, discussing his cognitive decline and its impact on his tenure, and scrutinizing the metrics and perceptions that shaped his administration. From there, we explore the populist mandates that propelled Trump back into office, dissecting the challenges he faces in trying to deregulate and revive the American economy, amid deeply entrenched bureaucracy and global pressures. I offer a fascinating analogy of the American economy likened to a turtle burdened by barnacles, emphasizing the need to shed these impediments to move forward. The conversation also tackles the topic of oligarchy, public sentiment around wealthy individuals like Elon Musk, and the role and power of the people in holding leaders accountable. As we wrap up, we reflect on the importance of reframing failures as learning opportunities, using recent SpaceX events as a case study in innovation and resilience. Tune in for an engaging discussion that spans politics, economics, and personal growth, providing valuable insights into the complex dynamics that shape our world. Remember to subscribe and stay tuned for tomorrow's episode with Andrew Bustamante. Until next time, be legendary! 00:00 Biden's Legacy 08:11 The Barnacle Problem 15:20 America's Leadership Challenges Ahead 22:08 Populism vs Oligarchy 29:26 Trump's Schedule F Explained 40:07 Embracing Failure for Success CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Range Rover: Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at https://landroverUSA.com https://landroverusa.com/ Audible: Sign up for a free 30 day trial at https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1 Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com https://www.vitalproteins.com/ and entering promo code IMPACT at check out. Goldback: Goldbacks are currency for now, and for the future, get yours at https://alpinegold.com/shop-precious-metals/ref/impact RoboForm: Protect yourself and get 60% off your first year with RoboForm at https://www.roboform.com/lp?frm=promo-discount-50&affid=tbily https://www.roboform.com/lp?frm=promo-discount-50&affid=tbily 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 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. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** 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?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear.

• 1:11Tom Bilyeu?

  I hope you packed your own parachute because this is day one of the first 100 days of the second Trump presidency. And it is going to be a high-wire balancing act of mainlining populism protectionism while still trying to ignite the economy. We've got a strong man president who was throwing his weight around in the Middle East even before he was elected. And now he's got the full power of the American military and economy behind him. What is he actually going to be able to get done? Only time will tell. But whether you view him as a felon who grabs kitties without permission or the populist savior that's going to stop us from driving off a cliff, it's time. Get ready to rumble, everybody. This is Trump versus the world 2. Drew, channel our community for me, man. What do they want to talk about?

• 1:55Speaker 02

  It's officially the dawn of the Trump presidency. Before we jump into that, we have to say farewell to Biden. How do you think we're going to remember Biden and all his legacy 50 years as a public servant?

• 2:05Tom Bilyeu?

  I can give it to you in a single word: dementia. That's it. So I wish that there was going to be another thing, but man, we literally got to watch that meltdown. We got gaslit by the public about what was happening. It really felt like Bizarro Land for a while. And this is one of those things. People are gonna find out from me, whether I can, because I meet this moment with optimism. I'm admittedly, I'm caught up in the excitement that the American people gave a very clear mandate. And so we're all about to find out whether I can look at what's happening in real time and say, okay, wait a second, but we have KPIs. We know what the goal should be. Are we moving towards that goal or not? And so when it was happening with Biden, I get that that was people's guy and they wanted him to be the one.

• 2:49Tom Bilyeu?

  But if you couldn't look at him and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a problematic level of cognitive decline. You cannot have somebody that has the nuclear football like that. You can't have somebody that can't get on a phone with a world leader and be cognizant, not lose their train of thought. Like dude, he would get disoriented on stage and it was crazy and he would just stand there and freeze. And all the while, we're hearing from everybody, sharpest attack. So much to my dismay, this man's legacy is going to be wildly tarnished by the fact that he declined so rapidly in public. And then of course, that if you're on the democratic side and you're really trying to figure out how you don't repeat this mistake, one of the things you have to say is, you left him in the game way too long. Like if you really believe that Kamala Harris was going

• 3:32Tom Bilyeu?

  to be able to pull this out, you've got to get her in way sooner. Just admit where we're at. Probably should have gotten him out of office. It is crazy to me that even after they said, look, he's too far gone to run. But we're gonna let him keep doing the country. It's like, wow, that that one was legitimately scary. And I was holding my breath to see what would happen if somebody was going to take advantage of this moment. I think there is a what if type, parallel universe where China didn't have a weakened economy and they made a move on Taiwan during this period. And I think it is only the fact that their own economy is in real dire straits right now that they didn't make that move. And look, that's me talking like a sci fi writer for

• 4:17Tom Bilyeu?

  sure. But I

• 4:20Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't think it was guaranteed that that wasn't going to happen. So you cannot have weak leadership. And some of the stuff that we see going on in the Middle East, I think, is a direct result of that. People testing to see what's Biden gonna do. And so I think it's very clear why the hostage negotiations came to pass a week before Trump takes office, when he said all hell is gonna break loose. Biden's administration was not able to get it done. Now, people have heard me say it before. I'm all for giving them their flowers for the fact they didn't stop it. They didn't cause any disruption, not wanting this to be in any way reflective of what Trump had done. But they didn't. They got it through. Of course, they're gonna take credit for it. Let them. I don't mind.

• 5:03Tom Bilyeu?

  I think the world, it's so clear what role Trump played in all of this. I just don't mind. I'm just so glad that we at least have the first positive signal coming out of that region. But yeah, the 50-year legacy is gonna be tarnished.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  It's interesting because as I was watching his farewell address, he listed a lot of accomplishments that we have. We're at historic lows. Inflation is under control.

• 5:28Tom Bilyeu?

  No, it's not. False. Hard stop. Nope.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  I'll keep it going. Let's just let him rock. On paper, historic lows. Inflation is done. Unemployment is lower. For us being a KPI-led organization, on paper, it seems like Biden, it has put the economy in a good place, has put the country in a good place. But the feeling and the sentiment is completely different. So how do we measure that? How do we? What do we expect of Trump? Because it's, to me, it seems unfair that he's gonna change how people feel about the economy versus the numbers, the things that we historically use to track these things are at historic lows, historic highs.

• 6:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, my God. So this is why people say that you can get statistics to say anything you want them to say. And this is the danger of the approach that I lay out, where it's like, hey, KPIs, and we gotta be steering towards them. Because you can spin that story six ways a Sunday. The sobering thing, in a world where you can't just print your way out of it, is you look at it and go, we really don't have the money in the bank account, and therefore, we're in trouble. And that's every other country except America. They actually have to get themselves in a position where their budget is balanced. And they're not just trying to print, print, print now because the entire world printed during COVID. We had this one sort of weird moment where everybody could get away with it because everybody was doing it. But the reality is going to come home to roost and people are going to realize very quickly.

• 6:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Even America is going to run into a wall where they cannot print their way out of this problem. And so that fakery has led people to be able to point on paper and say that we're good. So for instance, you lose all these jobs during COVID and you simply bring them back. But he takes credit for all of those jobs. Also, a huge number of the jobs reports have all been brought back down, but not until everybody stops paying attention, which he's not getting clobbered for that nearly enough. And then also changing the CPI, meaning the things that you put in that basket of goods that you're measuring inflation against, they're literally just lying. And so by changing all of those things, they are telling a very fake story.

• 7:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, the reason that people are still like, uh, supposedly on paper, things are going well, but I don't feel it is the reality of printing money is that you were stealing money from people. They feel that. So they're like, I don't care what you say. I can't afford things that I used to be able to afford. This is insane. And also one thing I forgot to mention about the jobs is a huge proportion of them have also been government jobs. I would just like to remind everybody the government doesn't make money. The government takes money from its people and redistributes it in whatever way the people vote for to other people. And so that, that's not a system that will work. You need people that come in, that innovate, that create real GDP.

• 8:09Tom Bilyeu?

  And what the emotion is reflective of is the reality that we have not been unlocking our economy. We've been tamping it down through ridiculous regulations. And so trust that feeling because that feeling is you encountering the real world.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. Well said. Well said. So what do you see America moving forward? What's next for America? How should we approach this historic moment? What's, what's America 2.0, Trump's presidency 2.0 look like for you?

• 8:38Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't know. I don't know what he's actually going to be able to get done. This is where people have to understand the American system as it was intended. The American system as it was intended, plus, you know, however many 250 years of just stacking regulations on. So we are in a position where we're adding what I call barnacles to the economy. And so how many of those barnacles is he really going to be able to chip off? How much do we want a president going into executive territory, executive action territory? Where instead of doing everything through Congress and the Senate, they're just doing things by decree. And so I have a lot of trepidation about people doing everything by decree and

• 9:21Tom Bilyeu?

  the government becoming that. We'll talk more about this almost certainly. My thinking, and this is certainly not unique to me, but my thinking of the president as the CEO of America, drawing parallels to business, obviously my experience as a CEO for as long as I've been doing it, is going to make that a natural way for me to analogize the government. And I think it's very important for people to understand that once those barnacles begin building up on, and I think a turtle's the right way to think about it. So a turtle collects barnacles in real life. They can get so many that they can't open their eyes anymore, that they're so heavy that they sink to the bottom. I mean, it's just absolutely terrifying. And that, I think, is the right analogy for where we are now as Trump comes in. Okay, so Trump now has this populist mandate. What do I mean by that?

• 10:04Tom Bilyeu?

  The people have spoken. The thing that is popular was to put him in office. Now, the two populist leaders that we have are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. It's utterly fascinating to see both of those. They represent the right and the left. I mean, just from an evolutionary standpoint, if you want to understand the right and the left and that friction that I say you need, you want, you don't want to get rid of one or the other, but seeing how people can just as easily get behind what Bernie's talking about from a what's popular standpoint and what Donald Trump is about and what's popular standpoint. So those are all, I'm gonna make your life better. Okay, uh, forget all the foreign entanglements. I'm gonna make your life better. Hey, I, that's why I refer to it as populist protectionism. So it's America first.

• 10:49Tom Bilyeu?

  It's, we're gonna take care of you. But the fascinating thing that we're gonna see is people don't define America first in the same way. And so you're gonna see a schism where it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Trump, you've been saying America first. And I've been hearing that, um, I'm an American citizen. I was born here and you're gonna take care of me first. You're going to eradicate all of this offshoring into India and into China. You're gonna bring everything back to America. My dad was a steel worker. I was a steel worker. You're gonna bring that back. You're gonna reopen coal mines. Like, obviously I'm making that stuff up, but I'm just using it as an example of what I think a lot of people hear when they hear America first. That was the H1B visa debate. Then you have people, and I'll put myself in this category, where it's like, you have to rank order these in priority.

• 11:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Priority number one has to be America on a global stage remains the most dominant economy by as big of a margin as you can get it. And we are already peers with China. China has snuck ahead of us in some areas of the economy. And so it's like, whoa. The, the globalist agenda led to us not having this friendly relationship with China. It was, and I'm oversimplifying, but it was China being a fast follower. So America, you do the innovations, we'll take what works and then we're going to refine it. We're gonna get very good at operationalizing all of your maverick, crazy innovations. And we're not going to create that kind of culture, but we're gonna create a culture where we move as one unit under authoritarian direction.

• 12:15Tom Bilyeu?

  And we're gonna get deeply efficient at doing all of those things. So there's AI models that you can compare where we create AI essentially. And then China goes, okay, but I can do it for one one thousandth the cost. Again, a fake number, but is directionally accurate. And so, um, uh, Caifu Lee is a guy that you wanna pay attention to there where he's like, bro, you're not paying attention to how efficient we're getting over here with these models. And so. That's where globalism actually led us. Okay, so the American middle class begins hollowing out because of printing money, globalism. And so now people are like, wait, wait, wait, I need you to protect me from that. But that's again, that has that two tiered system. Is this simply hire somebody because they were born in America, they're an American citizen? That's one version.

• 13:00Tom Bilyeu?

  The other version is America first is about collecting the smartest people the world over and making sure that they come here, they innovate and America gets to control these markets, especially if you're talking to me, especially AI. Who wins that race is going to matter a lot. But another thing that's going to matter is robotics and I will very actively include drones in that. And then the third leg of this is manufacturing because a lot of people, I think, want to believe as we ratchet up the cold war with China, they want to believe that the game that we're playing is the World War Two game. And if China should be so stupid as to go into Taiwan, we'll treat it like we did Pearl Harbor where now we just bring on our manufacturing base.

• 13:45Tom Bilyeu?

  And like the Japanese said, I think we just awoke a sleeping giant or dragon. I forget what he's, I think giant. And we're going to pay the price for that. Right? Absolutely incredible. Ends up being true. We turn on the American manufacturing base. We just make battleships and tanks and everything faster than anybody could have possibly imagined. An incredible moment in our history. We are not there. We have absolutely gutted our ability to manufacture through all of the globalist stuff. I don't want to say agenda, it sounds so Alex Jones, Alex Jones. Yeah. So, but there was an agenda to globalize things. And so it has a consequence and the consequence is we can no longer manufacture. So it would take us quite a bit of time. So we're China to make that move.

• 14:28Tom Bilyeu?

  I think we would very rapidly run into a problem where we realize, oh, modern warfare is all about drones. It's very inexpensive. It's all about volume. You make just thousands of these things and you can inundate an aircraft carrier, whatever. If you take a thousand drones that can simultaneously drop a thousand bombs that can do real damage, none of them are massive. No one of them is going to sink that ship, but a thousand of them? Like now you're really in trouble and you just send these swarms. And so China's way ahead of us on a manufacturing base. So if I can get people to rank order America first by first be the strongest economy, because that gives you power the world over that you can't imagine, including remaining the world's reserve currency.

• 15:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Next is yes, if you live in this country, we have a massive obligation to each other. We've got to make sure that opportunities, okay, because it's just handing out money is not going to do it. But creating opportunities for people that are here that are citizens, I think is hugely important. Uh, I think there is inevitably going to be a racial component of this, just because it's so easy to look at somebody and be like, you're from India. That's ugly. Oh my God, must that be avoided? That will tear us apart from the inside, which is like the playbook. Uh, if you want to see America fail. Okay. So that's this moment. We've got all these barnacles from regulation. Uh, we've got a populist mandate that's split. We've got people screaming oligarchy from the top of the rooftops, which I think we're going to get into.

• 15:52Tom Bilyeu?

  So I won't fractal on that right now. Uh, and Trump is going to come into that and it's not going to be as easy to get things done. As you would think from the party that we've all been having between the election and today, when he's coming into office. Uh, now that you're in office, now all of a sudden you realize, oh, getting a whole group of people focused on the same thing and moving in lockstep is excruciatingly difficult. And so this is, um, this is going to be where the rubber meets the road. And I think it is so, so, so difficult, um, even to build a company. I think a company is far more simplistic than a country. And so this is going to be hard.

• 16:34Tom Bilyeu?

  And if people turn on him, uh, because remember even with the margin that he has, it's pretty slim. So you only need 10 or 15% of the people to be like, nah, I thought this was going to be better. And now all of a sudden you're back to gridlock and nothing is getting done. So, um, he's got momentum. Can he carry that momentum through these first hundred days to really make magic happen? Uh, that's going to be the question. And so I think, and sorry, because I know you have a flow, but, um, I'll be very interested to see how Schedule F, I think is what it's called, uh, plays out because I don't think he can pull off what he wants to pull off. Unless he can start firing people that are tripping up his agenda or are just incompetent. And I'm far more worried about incompetence than anything else.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  No, a hundred percent. And we'll definitely get into Schedule F, but you did something I want to kind of double in on. You talked about populist and how that's a movement, the Bernie versus, uh, Trump side of it. But oligarchy has now become kind of the next dirty word. So I just want to break that down. So people kind of know, understand what oligarchy is and how we can understand it in the context of this conversation.

• 17:39Tom Bilyeu?

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• 18:24Tom Bilyeu?

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• 19:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, let's pick up where we left off.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  So I just want to break that down so people kind of know, understand what oligarchy is, and how we can understand it in the context of this conversation.

• 20:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so an oligarchy is a minority ruling the country.

• 20:08Tom Bilyeu?

  People right now, what I think they mean is a wealth-based oligarchy, or a tech-based oligarchy.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, Elon, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Trump are ruling the country.

• 20:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Exactly, so they've both got the technology. So you take someone like Elon, I think the thing people are most worried about Elon is X, in that he can control discourse, and that he has so much influence over the public discourse. And so I think people are looking at it very much like, well, we didn't like it when we thought it was Russia meddling in our election, and we really don't like it now that it's Elon. I still think this breaks along, how people think about the people they think are dumb. And if you're a nanny state person, and you think people can't think for themselves, and whatever Elon says, people are gonna go along with it, then I'm sure this is a very terrifying moment. I take a different view on this, which is I think Elon can short-term sway what people think, and long-term, absolutely not.

• 21:03Tom Bilyeu?

  And so, in the final analysis, things either work or they don't. And the reason that Elon has gotten to the point that he's gotten to, is he's able to assemble people that can do things in the real world. And so whether that's give birth to the first new car manufacturer in like 60 or 70 years, I mean, some just ridiculously long time. Then also rockets. Gravity cares not about Elon's politics, or how Elon talks, or whether Elon's on the spectrum. Gravity's just like, "Yeah, you beat me, and well played, and this works, and it didn't blow up." We'll talk about the one that did. But, the way that he's able to iterate, because he is so tied to what works and what doesn't. So, is oligarchy real? Oligarchy as a threat is real.

• 21:47Tom Bilyeu?

  We are not living in an oligarchy. You don't have to do very much research to find out, "Oh, this is what a real oligarchy looks like", where it is just corruption from top to bottom. You just suddenly disappear if you vote against the minority that's in control.

• 22:02Tom Bilyeu?

  That sort of people get killed, they disappear, they're poisoned, that kind of stuff. It gets that far. It gets that ugly. We're not there. I think it's good that people know what it is. I think it's good that people hold all of our financially elite people to a standard of what they say, how they act, what they're pushing for. The thing I will say about Elon is he talks openly all the time. And so there will be a question that has to be answered of, is there a public face? That he's so good at modulating that it's all a lie compared to what he does behind the scenes?

• 22:43Tom Bilyeu?

  We'll have to hold him accountable for that. And that's where, I mean, his own thing of we are the media. People are gonna go after him, man. There is no way, even if he owns a platform, there's no way for him to silence everybody. It just isn't possible. Even the government tried. The closest we've ever been to that was COVID, where it really felt like, shut the fuck up, say what you're supposed to say, or we're gonna unbank you, we're going to remove you. But I mean, look how hard they tried with Trump, and he still got elected president. So shout out to the American people. You can certainly push them around, you can temporarily make them quiet, but we have a spirit. Good luck. You're just gonna build up so much pressure in the system, it will explode back on you.

• 23:24Tom Bilyeu?

  So I'm not super worried about that as long as people are willing to talk to power. Some won't, some will crumble. But man, we've, we've got a, a long track record of not going quiet for too long.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  No, there's something to that. Could we pull up that Mehdi tweet? Mehdi Hassan kind of retweeted something that Elon said, and I think that it's, it's very, you kind of hit it on the head, like, the people are the ones driving this. It's not, the we are the media was kind of funny in that moment, but we should have accountability. So it's not that we voted these people off. Now we're on the sidelines, we have no control, but there should be kind of this fear of the American people. We talked about a couple of episodes.

• 24:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I think you're trying to trigger me with this tweet. So I had beef with this tweet big time. So not the Elon part, but the Mehdi Hassan part. So for those just listening, Elon said, those who break the law- We'll be arrested and that includes mayors. I'm pretty sure this is about the California fires. And he was talking about Mayor Karen Bass presumably. And then Mehdi Hassan said, nothing to see here, just a world's richest man, technically still just a private citizen, threatening to arrest democratically elected officials. This is what oligarchy looks like. So this really bothers me because one, there's this idea that because somebody is rich, they're suspect and you should already be like looking at them sideways. This is Elon's, listen to what he said. No one is above the law.

• 24:45Tom Bilyeu?

  No, no one is above the law. And are you saying that the, like, he specifically called out that he's a private citizen? Are you saying that the government shouldn't be afraid of its people? That's crazy. And I don't mean living in fear of their lives, but I mean, living in fear that you have given me a mandate to govern in a certain way. I campaigned, I told you what I was going to do. And then there are laws and I'm either sticking to those laws and my promises or I'm not. And if I'm violating the law, then of course, there should be consequences for that. And if I'm violating my campaign promises and I can't give you a compelling reason as to why, there should be electoral consequences for that where you vote me out of office. So, yes, the government should be afraid of the people. They should be listening to the people.

• 25:27Tom Bilyeu?

  They should remember always and forever that they represent the will of the people. And I think it should be from a, this is where we're trying to get. So this is our goal. This is where we're trying to end up and I'm working backwards. So I'm going to change my mind. There are going to be campaign promises that I'm unable to uphold because I've hit gridlock or whatever. And the political, the way that politics works is it's a big game of compromise. So everybody should be very comfortable with, hey, these are the things directionally that I'm telling you that I'm trying to do, that I'm quote unquote, promising to do when I get into office. There's no way that we're going to be able to do all of them and nobody that's thinking expects 100% with that. But if they bait and switch you on where we're trying to end up, now you should have beef. So, yeah, I absolutely despise the way that some people embrace an ideology of.

• 26:17Tom Bilyeu?

  There is right think and there is wrong think. And this to me is an example of that. They just think that

• 26:26Tom Bilyeu?

  because he is wealthy and is calling out a political official that they believe that this is undue influence, that this is somebody that's trying to manipulate the government behind the scenes. But the reality is the one thing, at least as far as I can tell with Elon right now, he just cannot stop himself from saying what he believes is true. And it has gotten him into so much trouble. I mean, an unrelenting parade of difficulties. And he keeps doing it. This does not feel like somebody who is super calculated, that has a bunch of PR teams, is like trying to craft his messages. He just can't stop himself from talking. And I would much rather be in that position than this energy of like, shut the fuck up and get on board with right think.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  It's a weird dynamic because I feel like we want our elected officials to do what we say. But then they also have this level of protection, or at least what we're getting from Mehdi Hassan right here is that you're not allowed to kind of critique democratically elected officials. Like, no, we should be able to. So I just don't see the background of that. I don't see, using the term like oligarchy can then scare people to think that, okay, when rich people criticize a government, it's worse than when we criticize a government. He has that same power. He has just, and if we scroll through his Twitter thread, I'm sure there's other officials that he was critiquing. When Ron DeSantis was doing what he was doing in Florida, I'm sure he had a lot to say. So it seemed a little bit disingenuous in that way.

• 27:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, so I, I, this may be a flaw in my thinking, but I rarely approach anybody right or left as being disingenuous. Even though, look, I get it. People are trying to say things in a way to control the narrative. I understand this, the very thing that I rail against. But I don't think in any one moment, the place to start is with the assumption that this is disingenuous. So let me step inside of Mehdi's worldview. And his worldview goes something like this. Wealth is this very unnatural thing that you, when you acquire too much of it, power ends up corrupting you. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This man has an unhealthy amount of money. Because of that money, he has undue amounts of influence.

• 28:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Is why they constantly say things like world's richest man, rich, wealthy billionaire. Like they they use it as a slur. They are trying to indicate. I think a sincere worldview that this is a corruptive force. This man is corrupt by the nature of having all of this money and influence. And therefore, here's what I think. Cool. So step into that. So my beef isn't that he's calling out. This is what an oligarchy looks like. My beef is that the thing he is tying that to is incorrect. So one, people should be paranoid of America becoming an oligarchy. Okay. Because we've created this massive disparity between the rich and the poor. That's a really dangerous position and history tells you the second you get this kind of split between the rich and the poor, you better fix it or heads literally.

• 29:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Start rolling. It is a terrible fucking situation and we absolutely must fix that. I'm saying that as somebody who's wealthy. You you need a thriving middle class. You need a thriving middle class. Now, I would very much like people to articulate, why don't we have a thriving middle class? And when dumb asses say we don't have a thriving middle class because these people are making too much money, that's just false. The question to ask is, why are those people making so much money? And I'm telling you right now, it is a twofold function of capitalism allows for the aggregation of capital when you add enough value. Yay, that's good. We should celebrate it.

• 29:50Tom Bilyeu?

  And then the big problem is you have this thousandfold accelerator of this disparity. Because of the way that money works. When you print money, you steal from everybody, everybody. You steal from Elon Musk. You steal from the single mother working three jobs just to keep her kids in public school. Okay, uh, you're stealing from all of them. Now, needless to say, if you steal from Elon, it's not going to hurt as much. Because let's say that you stole 90% of his wealth. He's still rich. You steal 90% of that single mom's wealth and she's literally homeless. Okay, so obviously going to hurt the poor people way more. Then the far more, not far more, the the element of this that makes it such.

• 30:36Tom Bilyeu?

  crippling problem to print money is that the way that you get the money into the system. You get money into the system by buying assets, bonds, very specifically treasury bonds. Okay, just to really put a fine point on it. So the Fed gets this fake money into the system by buying treasury bonds. So the people that hold treasury bonds, yay, that's why they call it a risk free return. You held that thing, that's gonna be safe and they say you're closer to the money printer. And so also you don't buy treasuries from everybody, you're gonna buy them in specific ways. And so you can actually get quote unquote closer to the money printer by knowing where they're gonna buy these treasury bonds from and being one of the people that they buy them from.

• 31:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so now the average person doesn't understand investing, gambling. And so they don't own those assets, so they don't, they get stolen from, but they never get money back. And so just over time, you get this massive gulf that opens between the rich and the poor. And so it isn't capitalism that creates that fucking problem. Now capitalism does aggregate capital into the hands of people that if you want to buy something, you say, I want to buy that thing. And so now that person, if they're doing it profitably, they are aggregating capital. Yeah, I get it. But that's not the insidious part. That's not the flywheel that just runs amok. The flywheel that runs amok is when you start fucking printing money, stealing from everybody.

• 31:59Tom Bilyeu?

  And then you're only redistributing it back to the people that understand how to get close to that nozzle. And that's the problem. And because it's just complicated enough, people don't understand it. So Mehdi, yes, please keep telling people what oligarchy actually looks like. But oligarchy does not just look like somebody getting wealthy. And it certainly doesn't look like somebody getting wealthy, somebody who happens to be wealthy is saying, nobody's above the law. Okay, and so that's what drives me crazy. We need to worry about oligarchy. Elon Musk is definitely in a high risk group because he's so wealthy and runs a media company.

• 32:38Tom Bilyeu?

  But what he's saying there is true, is real. And is exactly one of the things that everybody should be banging that drum is, hey, elected officials, you're not above the law. You are a servant, you serve the people. And if you're doing things that are illegal and lead to devastating outcomes, you will be held responsible.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Full stop. I like how you broke that down because that's a common misconception that you, once we kind of put in context, it makes a lot of sense. And I think that's the perfect segue to our Schedule F discussion. Because to say this in layman's terms, Schedule F is an executive order that Trump did on his first term that removes certain job protections. It's basically making government employees at, government officials at will employees similar to your job. I can fire you if you do something bad. Of course, you're protected by your race, your creed, your religion. Those still classifications are there. But some people are just, a new Republican would come in, they might fire all the Democratic officials, so they implemented this protection. So that way you don't get fired based off of your political parties. But you have a different take on it and why it's important to have Schedule F as a mechanism in Trump's back pocket.

• 33:46Tom Bilyeu?

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• 34:30Tom Bilyeu?

  already using Pipe Drive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. There's no credit card payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started. Again, that's pipedrive.com/impact and you can be up and running in minutes.

• 34:52Tom Bilyeu?

  We're back. Let's dive right in.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  But you have a different take on it and why it's important to have Schedule F as a mechanism in Trump's backpocket.

• 35:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Back to barnacles. So you've got to be able to fire people that are not doing a good job. As somebody who runs a company, I have a very strong view influenced by knowing how hard it is to run a company, and that is dwarfed by how hard it is to run a country. This is why people hate the deep state. Is you get people in, they're terrible at their jobs, they may work actively against you. We were in our last episode joking about that guy, the James O'Keefe.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, Taylor Day.

• 35:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, where he's basically saying, you know, we've got all these think tanks that are trying to find ways to quote unquote, "protect people from Trump," the sitting president. And if Trump can't come in and say, "Oh, this person's not good at their job," or "they are actively working against my agenda," then you can't make progress and you are stuck. And the deep state will thwart you over and over and over and over. Or just call it bureaucracy. It will thwart you over and over and over. So if you're trying to run a company and you're trying to change the direction and you can't fire your employees, that is literal madness. Those are laws that are put in by people that have never tried to run a company. They do not understand. These are laws put in place by people who can print their way out every problem,

• 36:13Tom Bilyeu?

  not realizing, "Hey, fuckwit, you're the problem. You're the reason that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer." In fact, forget the rich getting richer, because that, I think, is going to derail people. You're the reason the poor are getting poorer. Okay? Stop fucking stealing from them. Immediately. Stop. From a moral standpoint, stop. It's disgusting. So if we could get people to realize the cause and consequence of all of this, we would be in a way better position. The problem is the economy is very complicated. And of course, there are going to be people, hopefully, in our own comments that understand this stuff even better than me, and they will keep pushing me and they will keep helping me, update my thinking. All I care about is where thinking meets the real world. Okay, so.

• 36:59Tom Bilyeu?

  What I want to see from this perspective is people to understand Trump is going to use language that I consider high risk. And that is loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty. Now, the reason I think loyalty is a high risk angle to approach this from. So Trump is doing a thing that I like. Let me fire people. But he's saying words that make me very nervous. Loyal, loyal, loyal. Now, what do I mean by that? You and I, before we will go live on an episode, will often argue about things. And the thing that I'm always begging you, because I understand there's a power differential. I can fire you, but you can't fire me. I get it. So I have to work really hard to make sure that you will tell me the truth.

• 37:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Because the community, the YouTube algorithm, does not give a fuck that I can fire you. They're just asking people based on their behavior, and I'm asking algorithmically. Did you like Tom's content? Because if you do, I'm going to show you and other people more of it. If you didn't, I'm not. I'm going to show them less. And then that obviously hurts my business. So, oh my God, the last thing I want from you, who's trying to help me understand what the community would like to hear about, I'm not going to be audience capture and tell them what they want to hear, but I want to know what they want to talk about. I want to understand my retention graphs, all that stuff. And if you tell me what you think I want to hear, we'll tank. So I need you to be honest and tell me the things that are true.

• 38:24Tom Bilyeu?

  So to be loyal to me means that we agree on what our goal is. Okay, Drew, we agree on this, yeah? We, we get what we're trying to do. Yes, cool. Okay, now I will assume every word out of your mouth has nothing to do with agreement or disagreement with me. It has everything to do with whether you think if we follow what I'm doing, we'll move away from the goal. And if we follow what you're saying, we will move towards the goal. That's loyalty to me. Now, if you're undermining me in the company because I've said, hey, I've heard you, I understand your position, I can articulate it back to you, I disagree, and ultimately the buck has to stop with me, I am the, to use Bush's words, the great decider, and this is the direction that we're going to go in, this is what I think will take us to our goal. Now, let's say you really think that that's just a mistake. At that point, I expect you to disagree, but commit.

• 39:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, if I find out that you're going behind my back and telling people, okay, don't do that because I believe that I'm right. And so do it this way, then I'm going to fire you. And in that moment, I might say that you're being disloyal. I might make the mistake of saying you're disloyal to me. But what I mean by that is we agreed on a goal. We agreed that the dynamic is that when we can't agree that we're going to go with my decision, and there are going to be times where I'm like, I don't trust myself. So let's go with your answer. But ultimately, it's my decision to make. And I'm the one that carries the responsibility to make sure everyone's payroll gets paid and all that good stuff. So that seems very reasonable to me. So if Trump were thinking of it like that, and he were more careful in his language, which is, I, Tom

• 39:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Bilyeu, am a very big fan of the way that Lincoln ran his government, which is what he called a team of rivals. So he wanted people that thought differently. He wanted people from both sides of the aisle to bring ideas and battle them out. But he absolutely insisted that, hey, once I make a decision after hearing you guys out, we are going in that direction. And I will not tolerate insubordination. Cool. It's nuanced. And it's hard to have that conversation. And Trump is anything but careful in his language. So if this really means, I want you to tell me what I want to hear, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. He will drive us off a cliff. You cannot want that in people. But if it's, hey, this is what we've decided, and this government is a very complicated thing. And so you're seven layers away from me, and you're now the guy, what's his name? Manini? Manino? Whatever the guy?

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Jamie?

• 40:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. What's his name?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Marina? Manina?

• 40:43Tom Bilyeu?

  I think it's Manina.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Manina. M A N N I N A.

• 40:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Great. Jamie M. Let's think of that. So that kind of thing is insubordination. That's somebody immediately terminate, finish, done. That I think is critically important. But I worry that what He's either actually meaning, hey, tell me what I want to hear. Or he's in careful in his language. But given, I'm going to be optimistic right now. I don't yet know what's true, but I'm going to be optimistic. For four years, I believed that Trump was an unhinged lunatic. And that he did not understand any of these things that he was talking about. And I was just a headline reader. Now I've gone way deeper into actually going and listening to the words that he says directly. Hearing what other people say about him.

• 41:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Certainly that's a mixed bag. Uh, but there is a narrative that I'm choosing to believe right now. Until I see evidence that it isn't true, which is that he really does understand systems level thinking. Um, and that he actually wants prosperity for America. He wants us to remain the number one global superpower economically, militarily. Um, that he really does want to protect Americans, to lower our income tax tariff people. I've in other episodes, I've already talked about that. So we don't have to fractal on that now. I'm not saying that out of ignorance of how this works. Um, so my hope is that he is just speaking incautiously as he is known to do.

• 42:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, because their loyalty to the mission, yes. Never undermining the president. Once he has decided this is where we're going, a thousand percent. Tell me what I want to hear. Danger, drive off a cliff.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like the dangers of yes men. Like you never want to have a bunch of yes men around you. And we have a bunch of rappers entourages who could tell you all those dangers that that has cost.

• 42:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Yup.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Um, moving on SpaceX had a, I love this like, could we go to the SpaceX tweet? I don't want to mess it up. They had a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

• 42:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Such a brilliant way of saying it.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  That's a really complicated way to say that they exploded. Now it was a beautiful explosion if we could pull that up too. Uh, it was a beautiful tweet. Everybody, it was from the Caribbean to North America. We've seen a bunch of videos and TikToks of people just seeing these lights shining through the air. Yes, it's a tab to the left.

• 43:06Tom Bilyeu?

  It is beautiful.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  It's, it looks nice.

• 43:08Tom Bilyeu?

  It's a very expensive piece of art. Very, very expensive.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  But I think that this is like a bigger thing, and I know you always talk about how we need to reframe failure. And I just love that this is what it looks like to not hit the mark. And instead of him internalizing it, it's kind of having this kind of poetic spin and this expensive piece of art. Like, how do you contextualize this like beautiful failure?

• 43:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, so frame of reference is everything.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:32Tom Bilyeu?

  And meaning, everybody has a set of beliefs and a set of values. And that covers, colors their entire perception of the world. And it changes what you look at and it changes what you see. So if you look at this and you think, oh, my God, if you were a part of it, oh, my God, I'm an idiot. I'm so dumb. I suck. I'm never going to be any good. Look at this. What a catastrophic failure. I just want to get out of this. I never want to feel this way again. Okay, that's how most people live their lives. If instead you look at it and go, hmm, I wonder what we can learn from this. Because failure is the most information-rich data stream on planet Earth. Nothing will ever teach you more than something going wrong, partly because it hurts,

• 44:16Tom Bilyeu?

  which then triggers areas of the brain for memory. So you're going to focus on that. You're going to remember it. You're going to not want to repeat it. You're going to be more careful next time. But also, I mean, they've got all kinds of sensors and stuff, so they're actually going to find where the weakness was. And ultimately, to do something that complicated, you just have to constantly find where are all the weaknesses and improve them, shore them up. Most people, they don't try things, and so they're never able to get into the nitty gritty of what works and what doesn't. And things that seem like they're going to work intellectually on paper, they then don't work. But if you can get the feedback of like, this is why that thing didn't work, then it's like, oh, then I can improve that. I can improve that. I can get better, better, better, better, better. And that's exactly how you end up doing what they're doing is SpaceX was just patently unafraid to blow things up so that they could get the lesson and move on.

• 45:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, they do get laughed at. People will mock them and they'll go through a cycle of embarrassment where people are like, this guy's a fucking idiot. I told you he was dumb. And you're going to get ragged on way harder when you mess up than you will get celebrated when you do the thing right. And so I get why people crumble emotionally. But I am just here to tell you, if you want to do something grand in your life, it is a battle with you and your emotions. And I've long believed one of my- My superpowers is I can be embarrassed longer than the next person. I don't mind people pointing at me and laughing, not that I don't mind, that that that's not going to make me quit. And so I know if I can stay emotionally stable, learn the lesson, that that skill will stack. And as Kobe Bryant said, booze don't block dunks. So now I'm like, people can hate me as much as they want, but I can get so good at the thing that people can't stop me.

• 45:45Tom Bilyeu?

  And so that's exactly what Elon and SpaceX are doing is even though a big part of their loop is that sometimes these things blow up. They're not crying about it, curling up into a ball.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  It doesn't stop them.

• 45:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, they're like, why did it blow up? And as they get that much smarter, then they move forward and their rate of progress speaks for itself. So, um, look, as somebody who really does want people to have a joyful life that they want for themselves. I'm telling you right now, progress is a foundational pillar to human happiness. Shout out to Tony Robbins, who gave me that phrase. And if that's true, then you need to be making progress towards something that matters to you. And the only way to do that is to actually get in the mix, do the thing, fail, survive the embarrassment, learn the lesson and get better. And it's in that moment of getting better after the failure that you make progress that brings that satisfaction to your life.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Love it. Love it. That's all I got.

• 46:40Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and remember tomorrow, Andrew Bustamante's episode drops. Hopefully I will see you there. Until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.

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