NICK BRYANT | Are Americans Helpless?

You've been told the Epstein case is closed. It's not. It's a blueprint - for how blackmail, sex, and power get used to buy silence at the highest levels of American government, and why the people who could stop it never do. Today's guest has spent decades chasing this story further than almost anyone alive, and what he's found doesn't end with one dead man in a Manhattan jail cell. Nick Bryant joins me to talk about the Franklin Scandal, the CIA's fingerprints on decades of cover-ups, why the "uniparty" protects itself no matter who's in office, and what it actually looks like to draw a line in the sand when the people meant to hold power accountable are the ones compromised. If you've ever wondered why nothing changes no matter who you vote for, this conversation is the answer you didn't want but need to hear. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - The Epstein Justice Fight 03:22 - Why Mainstream Media Shut Him Out 06:19 - Nick Bryant's Personal Story 11:27 - Political Division and CIA Blackmail 16:05 - Iraq, Government Lies and No Accountability 24:00 - How Politicians Are Compromised 28:40 - Arrogance, Sex and Greed 35:57 - The Uniparty and Political Corruption 41:35 - The Epstein Cover-Up 45:45 - Sean Combs, Clive Davis and Powerful Networks 49:40 - The "Conspiracy Theorist" Label 52:27 - The Franklin Scandal and Hollywood 56:50 - Bringing the Right and Left Together 59:28 - The Education System Scam 01:00:20 - The Disappearing American Dream 01:03:36 - Inflation, Money Printing and Healthcare 01:05:37 - Why Americans Can't Afford Homes 01:08:48 - Poverty, Food Insecurity and Homelessness 01:10:40 - Homelessness and Cognitive Development 01:19:43 - Drawing the Line 01:20:51 - Fighting for Epstein Justice Battle Planners: Pick yours up today! https://store.orderofman.com/products/order-of-man-annual-battle-planner Order Ryan's new book, The Masculinity Manifesto https://www.amazon.com/Masculinity-Manifesto-Establishes-Influence-Credibility/dp/1684513316/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1665048672&sr=8-1. For more information on the Iron Council brotherhood https://orderofman.link/iron-council. Want maximum health, wealth, relationships, and abundance in your life? Sign up for our free course, 30 Days to Battle Ready https://orderofman.link/battle-ready-0

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We're gonna have to make sure that our politicians aren't compromised that way. It's not difficult to compromise politicians. I know that for a fact. And nothing makes people stupid like arrogance and sex. And our politicians have both those in spades. Greed is also a mechanism, and greed is something else that makes people really stupid.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Hey Nick, so good to see you again. Glad we could make this work. I know we had some technology issues yesterday. Technology is amazing until right up to the point where it isn't, and then it's just frustrating.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  When it doesn't work, that's a problem.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  It's great to be with you, Ron.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, speaking of not being able to work, what in the world is going on with the Epstein files? I know that's a really broad question, but it's kind of an interesting thing because it's something that I think is so important, and yet I also believe that as a society, as a culture, there's a little bit of burnout on it. And I hope that we don't burn out to the point where we just give up the ghost and let it kind of fall by the wayside. But that's kind of what it seems like to me. Would you agree?

• 1:25Speaker 00

  I would not. I do not think that there's burnout. I think that the mainstream media has completely moved away from touching it. And I don't believe that's because of burnout. I believe that it's because of protecting the system.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  If you go to social media sites like Twitter or Facebook, the Epstein files are alive and well.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Really? And okay, so that's interesting. Well, it is interesting because I had this thought over the last couple of days, that media crafts the narrative, right? So I think I had seen a story, and I can't even remember what it was about. And it was on social media, and I was like, whoa, I've never even heard of this story. It must not be a big deal. That's the thought that went through my mind. But then I started thinking about it. I'm like, oh, no. The only reason I think that is because the mainstream media, legacy media, isn't covering it. So do you think the media is protecting the system?

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Or do you think they're basing their discussions on what society is interested in, right?

• 2:40Speaker 00

  No, the media always takes the lead, and the media creates the excitement. And I've been following Epstein for a very long time, and I'm not aware of one major media outlet that has demanded justice. They're very good at digging up salacious dirt, but they don't demand justice. And our system is a cesspool. It's perfidious. And I believe that the media is an extension of that perfidity.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would agree. Is it malicious, or is it just... Well, it's malicious for sure, but is it malicious in the way that it's vile, right? For example, protecting pedophiles, let's say? Or is it malicious as in, hey, we're just trying to make money?

• 3:33Speaker 00

  I'll give you an example. There was a tranche of documents that were released before this latest tranche. And CNN, I put Epstein's black book and flight logs up on the internet. So CNN wanted to have me in studio, I live in New York City, and talk about it. And I was texting with the producer throughout the day. And then I said, I'd like to talk a little bit about Epstein justice. And then about five minutes later, I get a text saying, we're gonna go another way, Nick.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  So, and I've got other examples of that from my personal experience, where we're gonna go another way, Nick. It happens to me repeatedly.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Is it, do you feel like it's because they're protecting people within the organization? I mean, these are kind of the highest echelons of cultural and political commentary. Is that why? Like, there's no exposure for legacy media who might be involved? Or like, what's the reason? I don't understand.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Well, one thing that the Epstein files has shown us is that people at the apex of our society are involved with Jeffrey Epstein. So why would that include the media people?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think these are the most powerful people out there. So because they have the eyeballs and the attention of the average citizen. That makes you very, very powerful and very, very influential.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  And with the mainstream media or legacy media, I've completely been shut out of Epstein. And I don't, there really isn't a reason why I should be shut out. I mean, people in the mainstream media don't even want to write about articles about Epstein justice. And we're the only organization that's trying to get justice on behalf of the Epstein victims. There's another one called World Without Exploitation, but I wrote an article about them, and you can find it on Zero Hedge. And I say some very unbecoming things about World Without Exploitation.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  What is your, what's your...

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Why do you have so much skin in the game? Like, what is it that is so important to you? I mean, there's the obvious, and so I'm not trying to make it sound like, hey, we don't want justice for the underage children who have been victimized at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and I think her name... What's her name? Gisele? Giselle? Yeah, I couldn't remember it. Sure, obviously, we want justice there. But what is your skin in the game on this one?

• 6:30Speaker 00

  So I had a difficult childhood. I wasn't molested, but I had a difficult childhood nonetheless. And I had a violent stepfather. The first time I ran away, I was 12.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  And even before I got into writing about child trafficking, I'd written quite a bit about children's issues and how the government, our government, doesn't adequately look out for children.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  And then from 2002 to 2007, or actually from 2002 to 2009, I spent researching child trafficking network. That's exactly, Epstein is, the book is called The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Power Brokers, Child Abuse and Betrayal. And Epstein is a kind of a carbon copy of The Franklin Scandal. If people read The Franklin Scandal, they'll understand Epstein much better.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  But the exact same things cover up by state and federal law enforcement.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  Victims flown around the country, hidden cameras. And one of the pimps in the Franklin network was certainly a CIA asset. So I wrote this book. I spent seven years writing this book. And I was what... And then I went to Florida in 2011, and I got Jeffrey Epstein's black book. And I had a really hard time getting a platform to publish it. But finally, I did in 2015.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  During Ghislaine Maxwell's trial, I put together, and this was kind of the nascent beginnings of Epstein justice, I put together a protest because I knew that what was going on in that courtroom was not justice. Ghislaine Maxwell was indicted on one count of child trafficking, and she was the only one that was indicted. And I knew that whatever was going on in that courtroom was all bullshit. And I put together a protest about that across the street from that courthouse. Now, I was the only guy who decided to put on a protest.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, I tried to conscript Me Too and other organizations into protesting this, but they didn't want to do it. So

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Isn't that the point of the Me Too movement? It's crazy.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I was very disappointed by Me Too and whatever Me Too is, I don't, I don't know what it's morphed into. But as I said, Epstein Justice is the only organization that's looking, that wants justice for Epstein victims. We want two things, actually. One, we want an independent congressional commission to tell us why the government covered up child trafficking, and we want the perpetrators to be prosecuted. Now, if Americans are completely cool with our children getting molested with impunity and the government covering up

• 9:49Speaker 00

  child trafficking, um, you know, I, I'd walk away from it completely. But I don't think that Americans are completely cool with it.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Well, I hope not. I, I don't think Americans, Americans are cool with it, but I also think they're worried about the cost of their groceries, right? So I think, I think that's the, that's,

• 10:13Speaker 01

  I'm not saying it's a bigger issue. I'm saying it's an issue that's more at the forefront of Americans' minds. And so it's really easy to be distracted. I mean, we have, uh, you know, this thing going on with Iran, uh, we've got grocery prices, there's burrito gate, you know, $20 for a burrito. Uh, there's all these other issues, unfortunately, and I'm not saying what you're doing is, is not worthy of attention. It certainly is. That's why I wanted to have you on the podcast. I just think we're fickle. I, I do. I, I think we're more concerned that the burrito costs $20 than we are that our young daughters are being trafficked and molested and raped. And I don't know what to do about that because

• 10:58Speaker 01

  of how we've been manipulated and how we've allowed ourselves to be manipulated through legacy media, social media, and the like.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  I think there's two variables that play. The first variable is Americans don't think that they can affect change. And you, you kind of, you kind of alluded to that. Americans just don't think that they can affect change. We've been conditioned that way. And then the second variable is the polarization of the left and the right. People on the right think that people on the left are mentally ill, and people on the left think that people on the right are mentally ill. And it's Sung Soo, in The Art of War, I think it was published

• 11:45Speaker 00

  25 years ago, talked about divide and conquer. And this is the way that the right and the left, the Democrats and the Republicans are polarized, is a perfect example of divide and conquer. If something really negative happens, the right will blame the left and the left, left will blame the right. And I believe, and I've written three books about CIA honey traps, blackmail, I believe that many of our politicians are compromised. And I think that that's how we've ended up in the state that we've ended up in. But it not only affects groceries, I mean, if you look at the wealth polarization over the last 40

• 12:29Speaker 00

  years, it's been exponential. The middle class is eroding. And I think that that's what gave people an idea to vote for Trump, is because Trump said that we can make America great again. But as long as we have the political system that we have, the rich are going to get richer and the poor are going to get poorer. And I haven't seen Donald Trump assuage that at all. And I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat, I don't, I don't have a dog in that fight.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack here. I mean, I'm, I'm a conservative. I wouldn't say a Republican, but I'm a conservative, probably, actually, probably more lately, leaning more towards libertarian, if I'm being honest. Um, when you said, hey, Trump hasn't done anything to, to fix that, I actually don't think his, I, I don't want him to fix it. I don't want the government to fix anything. I want the government to leave us the hell alone and to protect some basic rights chartered by our founding fathers, and to make sure that all of us have a level playing field, an equal playing field. I, I'm, I'm not about

• 13:45Speaker 01

  any sort of restorative justice or, or anything like that. Like, what's done is done. I just want to make sure that everybody, whether it's your sex, or your age, or your skin color, or whatever, we have the, a level playing field. And I think that's the only purpose of government. And then to bring people to justice, like you're talking about.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  But we don't have a level playing field. That is why the rich are getting richer. If, if you look at many of the laws that have been passed over the last four decades, they enable the rich to get richer, and ultimately, it's a zero-sum game, and then the poor get poorer. So

• 14:24Speaker 01

  How, like, what, I, I don't disagree with you, but I just, like, what, what are the rules? I mean, you said, if you just look at the system, what, like, what specifically would be an example of that?

• 14:36Speaker 00

  NAFTA.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Perfect example of it. And the last time Trump was in power, his tax bill was a perfect example of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. There's all kinds of legislation that has gone on that have eroded the middle class. And I don't think, you've got, what happened under Clinton, Clinton and Larry Summers, Jeffrey Epstein's good buddy, repealed Glass-Steagall. And Glass-Steagall was a law that prevented commercial banks

• 15:19Speaker 00

  from speculation. And once that was repealed, the, the world became the largest casino we've ever seen. With, and the people in the finance world pumped out derivatives, and then there was credit default swaps, there was all kinds of things.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Was this like 2008, to that, I mean, Clinton's a little before that, obviously, I think, 2000, early 2000s, but

• 15:45Speaker 00

  The, the law was repealed, I believe in 1999, 1998.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  And then after the world became the largest casino,

• 16:00Speaker 00

  we went, our economy went belly up, and millions of Americans were destroyed. Millions of Americans lost their, their homes. And nothing happened. No heads rolled because of that. I mean, all these Americans lost everything they had and their homes, and no heads rolled. Two or three years later, well, actually, a little bit longer, the Bush administration says that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. And you could almost know in real time that Iraq doesn't have weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq

• 16:42Speaker 00

  has nothing to do with al-Qaeda. al-Qaeda and, and Saddam Hussein were vehement enemies. But yet, we were plunged into a war that has costed America billions and billions of dollars on lives. And once, the, the media sold 80% of Americans to, on that war, but there was a point where it just flip flopped, and where 80% of Americans were against that war. And nothing happened. The war continued.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I went, I went to Iraq as a result. In 2005, 2006, I was in Ramadi, Iraq, as a result of that. And, uh, 20 years later, two decades later, yeah, I knew this a long time ago, but two decades later, here now, I'm like, what are, what are, what are we doing? We lost thousands and thousands of our sons and daughters over nothing. And it's infuriating to me that I had to spend a year in my, a year and a half of my life, part of, part of that, the shenanigans, for lack of a better term.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  It was lies. Every, that war was predicated on lies. And then Snowden comes out and shows us how the government is illegally spying on us. And again, no heads roll. Covid, 60, 66% of Americans believe that Covid came out of that Wuhan lab. We know that that Wuhan lab was funded by the CDC and USAID, and, and I, I think NIH too. No heads roll. So

• 18:21Speaker 01

  I mean, even Fauci's on the stands now. I mean, he's been the last couple of weeks. And this is what makes me mad, Nick, is, is you see these guys like Senator Hawley, Brandon Gill is another one. They have these like really meme-able videos and whatnot on social media, and they play a lot of really cool gotcha moments. And so what? I don't, and then what? Nothing. Like you're saying, nothing happens.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  So this is where we have to draw a line in the sand. Americans have eaten a lot of shit for many years, and we've been lied to. And we've lost, Covid, how many Americans lost everything during Covid too? Americans have eaten a lot of shit. And we just have to say, this is the line in the sand. You cannot molest our little girls. I mean, it's very simple. You cannot molest our little girls. You can destroy our economy, and we'll bail you out. You can spy on us illegally, and we'll be cool with that. The NIH, the

• 19:31Speaker 00

  CDC, and USAID can fund a lab in Wuhan that was possibly, possibly the progenitor of Covid, which wiped out, and, and no heads rolled. Fauci, how many times did he take the fifth? I mean,

• 19:49Speaker 01

  140 something times?

• 19:52Speaker 00

  I, I'm not even aware of any gangsters that took the fifth that many times in their,

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Well, he didn't even need to, because he was pardoned by Biden. He didn't even need to take the fifth. In fact, there's debate now that says you don't have the right to take the fifth, because you've been pardoned for everything leading up to what you're pleading the fifth about.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  So the one thing that Americans can agree on, or the vast majority of Americans can grant, is children shouldn't be molested with impunity and the government shouldn't aid in about child trafficking. It's pretty simple, but this is where we have to draw the line in the sand. We're not going to take it anymore. We've, we've, we've had enough. We've been, our government has been duplicitous. Our government has caused millions of Americans to lose its home, to lose their homes, uh, to, to lose their finances.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  We, we, we have to, we have to stop it at some point. We cannot let, our, our lawmakers, right and left have gotten away with this with impunity, I should add. We got to stop it somewhere. And this is the, this is where we can stop it is with, with Epstein. This is where we need to stop it.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  What, what does that look like? You say draw a line in the sand? I agree. I agree with you. Um, what does that look like in practicality? Cause that's what everybody says, right? We're all like, oh, we were, we won't stand for this. And yet we see the same hearings and we see the same excuses and we see the same nonsense and bull crap.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  And so we talk a big game, but like, what, what does that actually look like drawing that line in the sand for, for, for the average citizen?

• 21:39Speaker 00

  The Oversight Committee is ostensibly investigating the Epstein scandal. And they're letting Epstein, they're calling Epstein's co-conspirators to testify, but they're letting them lie. And it's very strange. Les Wexner, who provided Epstein with a lot of his finances, was called to testify, but the government, the Oversight Committee didn't go to, or about Wexner didn't go to DC. The Oversight Committee went to Columbus, Ohio, which I thought was very strange. But Wexner said that, I mean, Wexner told a myriad of lies. I'll, I can explain two of them. Uh, he said that the last time he and Epstein

• 22:24Speaker 00

  talked was 2006. There's emails between them, uh, from 2008. And then I, in 2011, even the New York Times reported on this some years ago, Epstein gave Wexner $56 million. Now, regardless of how rich you are, you're not going to forget about $56 million. But, okay, so we know that the Trump administration says that Epstein and Maxwell had no co-conspirators. We know that. They're not going to indict anybody. But the Democrats can at least put in referrals for indictments. If you lie to Congress, it's a felony. It's punishable by up to five years. So the Democrats aren't even putting in referrals for indictments. Here's how justice will look. With an independent congressional commission, that is our only

• 23:08Speaker 00

  hope. And that couples the Epstein investigation from partisan politics. Independent congressional commissions have been called for various things over the years. And the independent congressional commission that we're proposing would have two very simple objectives. We'd like to know why the government covered up child trafficking and we'd like the perpetrators to be prosecuted. So, and, and that, an independent congressional commission is the only legislative mechanism that we have to get out of, because Epstein has been a bipartisan

• 23:49Speaker 00

  cover up. The Epstein cover up, well, the FBI was notified in 1996, but we know that George Bush too, started the cover up and then it was Obama, then it was Trump, then it was Biden, then it was, and now it's still Trump. So we've got both the Republicans and the Democrats covering up these little girls that were molested. The cover up has been a bipartisan effort. That's why we need an independent congressional commission that will decouple itself from partisan politics and just look for the truth. Now, if we can do that, I guarantee you that we can, our government will get cleaned out.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's why it won't happen. Like, I mean, that's the, that's the reality. But this goes to the point you were saying is like, there's nothing we can do about it because, yeah, I, look.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  I just explained something that we can do about it though. I mean, I just explained it. If we had a third of Americans that bought, if 10% of adult Americans would be 30 million people. If we had 10% of Americans go to Washington DC and say you can't molest our children with impunity, something would happen. All, I, I think just, yeah, if 10%, of Americans would mobilize.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a good point. Cause I mean, you, you look at even the revolution. What, what is it? The 3%, right? 3%. We, we had 97% of people on this continent who were loyalists and you had 3% who are what we would, what we would call patriots. 3% changed the world. 3% of people changed the world.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  I've, I've been told it was, I've read that it's been, was higher than 3%, but it was definitely a minority for sure.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  And they just said, we're not going to take it anymore. Like we have to say, we're not going to take it anymore. And I think because I've been writing about political blackmail for so long, I, I believe in, in researching it, I believe that there are many people in our government that are compromised. And I think that when the political system becomes as compromised as ours is, you wind up with people in office that really shouldn't be in office.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I was just talking with somebody just a couple of days ago about this. Um, I, I think the reason why we all, not we, but politicians will pat themselves on the back and, you know, massage each other's shoulders is because Nick, if you're a politician and I'm a politician and I have dirt on you and you have dirt on me, well, that's mutually assured destruction. So let's just not do that. And I won't share the dirt I have on you and you won't share the dirt that you have on me. I actually think that's part of the game. Like get these politicians as dirty as you can, get them, get them as corrupt as you can, because the more dirt I have on you, the more that you can be my pawn

• 27:04Speaker 01

  and vice versa. I, I believe that's part of the game.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  I got to a blackmail photographer when I wrote the Franklin scandal. Kind of an unsavory guy, but he gave me a lot of information that I was able to corroborate. He also lied to me too. But given his former vocational requisites, veracity wasn't on the top of the list. But anyway, I asked him how he, how this worked. I was, I was trying to get my, when you, when I jumped into this, it wasn't, nobody had written a book about it before. And I was trying to understand it all. And he gave me a great analogy. He said, once you're compromised, it's like you're on a yacht and it's a beautiful

• 27:52Speaker 00

  yacht and it's a beautiful day. And you can have anything you want on the yacht. But if you decide to get off the yacht, the people on the yacht are going to make sure that you drown. That's how it works.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  They're going to make sure you're what? What did you say? They're going to make sure you're gone? Is that what you said?

• 28:12Speaker 00

  They're going to make sure you drown.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Oh, drown. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, yeah. I, I don't, I'm not as well versed in this. I'm not as deep as you are in this stuff, but I mean, that makes total sense to me in a, in a very twisted, disgusting way. But yeah, if, if, if you leave the yacht, you're toast. And that's all there is to it.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  And if we're going to have a chance at restoring our country.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  We're gonna have to make sure that our politicians aren't compromised that way. It's it's not difficult to compromise politicians. I know that for a fact. And nothing makes people stupid like arrogance and sex. And our politicians have both those in spades.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Is that the is that the main mechanism arrogance? You said arrogance and sex is is is when you say arrogance, I would imagine. I would have said power and sex. Maybe you mean something similar. But is that what you're talking about is that we give these these, you know, 535 people or whatever, the the level of power they have, and then we we expose them to endless amounts of insanely beautiful women and sex and game over.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  And greed too.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Greed is greed is also a mechanism and greed is something else that makes people really stupid. So our politicians have this psychological alchemy of arrogance and sex and greed. And they're very easy to compromise. I can give you a couple of examples.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm curious about this. Let's say I was gonna say I'm a young senator, but I'm not so young anymore. But let's say I'm a young senator. I'm an idealist. I really believe that my voice matters. I can make a difference for my constituents. And I start to get into the halls of of politics. How how would I potentially be compromised?

• 30:30Speaker 00

  The parties that I'm aware of, the parties that I wrote about in the Franklin scandal, there was a mansion in DC that was owned by a CIA asset named Craig Spence. And the parties would just start out as and and everybody went to these parties. The upper echelon of the Reagan and Bush administrations, the upper echelon of business and the upper echelon of the media, much like we see with Epstein. And every room in that mansion was wired for audio visual blackmail.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 31:12Speaker 00

  And the parties would start out as political parties. It would Washington DC cocktail parties. And people would be drinking and talking and drinking and talking. And then maybe at 10 o'clock or 10:30, at some point, something would happen, some type of sexual acting out, or someone would break out coke or fire up a joint, something like that. And then people that wanted no part of that would leave. But those that stuck around for the real party, they would be compromised.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Audio and visually, like you go into a room with a with an attractive young woman. All of a sudden, there's video recording, audio recording, and now you're their puppet.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  I'll give you an example. Larry Craig was a very conservative senator from Idaho. And he was in Washington DC for 25 years, first as a representative and then as a senator. And I wrote a book called Confessions of a DC Madam, The Politics of Sex, Lies and Blackmail. And it was about Henry Vincent, who had the largest gay escort service that's ever been uncovered in DC. And Craig was getting escorts from his escort service. He was also getting escorts elsewhere and male escorts. And he had one of the worst records of voting for gay rights.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  And he was a family values guy. And keep in mind, he's a senator now. He's in a bathroom in Minneapolis. And there is a signaling system for gays in bathrooms. This one slaps their foot on the the ground when you're in the stall. And then if the other person is hot to trot, then, you know, they they do their thing. So a vice squad cop in the airport was slapping his foot on the stall next to Craig, and Craig engaged.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  And he was arrested. And then he ultimately, that was the end of his his senatorial life. But how hard would it be to compromise that guy?

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Oh, easy.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  A guy that's trying to pick up somebody in a bathroom. That's a senator. I'm from Minneapolis and I fly. I go back to Minneapolis at least by a week or two every year. And I was sitting on a commode in the bathroom in a Minneapolis, in the Minneapolis airport. And and someone next to me was slapping his foot on the ground and

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Really?

• 34:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. I thought that it was a neurological disorder. But I'm really glad I didn't say, can I help you?

• 34:25Speaker 01

  He's like, yeah, as a matter of fact, you can. That's wild. That I, yeah, I didn't. I didn't know of that story. But I imagine it's a lot more common than than people people believe. And then all of a sudden, if you're like, hey, you know, I can destroy your life with this story. Unless you do vote, vote for this thing or or, you know, support me in this or or get your donors to back me in this. It seems like a not a not a real tall order at that point.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  Craig is trying to pick up guys in bathrooms. How hard would it be to compromise him? A kid with a smartphone in high school for extra credit probably could have compromised Larry Craig.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  And he's just one of many examples that I know about.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Do you think, do you think that people come into politics? This is one of the frustrating things for me. We talked a little bit about it a second ago, the these idealists. And, you know, you gotta love them for it. I I I think that there's plenty of people who come into politics believing that they can actually make a difference. This goes back to what you said earlier, like, how much of a difference can one politician make? And then Americans feel deflated, like they can't, they can't make a difference. Do the people who who run for politics generally, do you feel like they do it because of the greed, the power, the sex, the access? Or or is there a cadre of of idealistic

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Americans who actually believe they can make a difference? I mean, we get the lowest of the lowest, it seems like.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  I think a lot of people get into politics to make a difference. But then I think a lot of people are corrupt. I know of someone who became a senator. And he was the mayor of kind of a sleepy town in New England. But I believe that he was compromised very, very early. And he ultimately ended up to be a senator too. So I think that, and there are people that do get into politics for idealistic reasons. But it's very hard at the national level. I think that we see democracy at the local level. And I think we see democracy a lot of times at the state level.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  But once you get to the federal level, the Republicans and Democrats kind of come together as to a certain degree as a uniparty, even though the media and the politicians have tried to explain to us that they're completely, that there's no common ground between the right and left. And that is what makes this issue so dangerous. And that's why the mainstream media is is steering away from it. And we're not hearing a lot about it in from our politicians. Because the right and the left are so polarized right now that children being molested with impunity and the government covering it up,

• 37:37Speaker 00

  that's probably the only issue that can bring the right and the left together. And that's why this is a dangerous issue. Because, as I said, it's probably the only issue that can bring the right and the left together.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  I kind and I've heard this analogy before. I feel like when you talk about the uniparty, like you're saying, I feel a little bit like I'm in the midst of a of a Batman movie. I mean, what what good is Batman without the Joker? Nobody would care, right? And what good is the Joker without the Batman? And I feel like that's you. You can say which party is which I don't care. But the Democrat Democrats can't exist without the Republicans and the Republicans can't exist without the Democrats. And so there's this, from where I sit, this love hate relationship. I mean, it absolutely polarized by design. We we have to be diametrically opposed because that's what riles people up.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  And that's what gets people involved. And and I don't think the government really cares. You coming through the the liberal perspective or the conservative perspective? Doesn't matter. We got you now.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  It's like professional wrestling, essentially, where

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  the combatants vehemently state how much they dislike their opponent, but they're being paid by the same people and they're hanging out afterwards and having drinks and whatever. So I I believe that our politics is is very much like professional wrestling.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Many of them have the same master, regardless if they're on the right or the left.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Well, so that's a good point. When you say the same master, this kind of gets into the territory of, oh, they're they're doing this. They are this. They are that. Who who? Who is they? Is there some? Is there some, you know, wizard behind the curtain? Or is it just a collective understanding?

• 39:35Speaker 00

  I believe that there is a malignant corner of our intelligence that compromises our politicians.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  We know that, but I know, but let me ask you. Let me just clarify a little bit. So when you say intelligence, so for example, I might say, the school system, the public school system is is broken. I I'm not talking about individual teachers who I think the majority of are there to serve the children. So like, what what do you actually mean? Is it? Is it that everything's corrupt? Or is there's one person at the top? Is it just the system? That's what I'm getting at.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  We've seen this with Jeffrey Epstein. And I'll I'll tell you how much power I believe this cadre has.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  The Department of Justice went after Jeffrey Epstein very hard in 2007. And an 80 count indictment was drafted. And one of those counts was child trafficking, which is a heavy system, which is a heavy sentence in the the federal system. It's 15 to life. But Epstein was looking at 60 various counts. And the FBI had found 40 underage victims.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  The Department of Justice was getting ready to put Jeffrey Epstein in prison for a very long time, if not for the duration.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  And Alexander Acosta was told to stand down because Epstein was intelligence. But and and he's since denied saying that. But early on, he never denied saying that. But here's the thing with that.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  I don't know who that is, Nick. Can you?

• 41:22Speaker 00

  Alexander Acosta was the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida that was overseeing the Epstein investigation.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Got it. Okay, keep going.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  So a US Attorney and and they put all these resources, the FBI and the Department of the Southern District of Florida, put all these resources into drafting a 60 count indictment against Jeffrey Epstein. And Alexander Acosta was told, obviously told to stand down. And the only two people in the government that can tell the US Attorney to stand down is the Attorney General and the President. And the Attorney General at that point was Alberto Gonzalez and the President was George W. Bush, Bush II.

• 42:13Speaker 00

  So that's the kind of power that was deployed to cover up Jeffrey Epstein.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  And do you believe that Bush was compromised? Or I can't remember his name, the AG you just mentioned. Do you believe those two individuals were compromised? Which is why, hey, we're not going to peel back the curtain on this?

• 42:33Speaker 00

  It's entirely possible that he was. I mean, his father was head of the CIA. And also George Bush one was head of the CIA and involved in all kinds of nefarious activities. So I don't know if George Bush two was. But for him to cover up a child trafficking network,

• 42:59Speaker 00

  why if Jeffrey Epstein was had no affiliations to the government, there's no way that orders would come from the President and the Attorney General to let Jeffrey Epstein off the hook. There's no way.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  When you say that he was intelligence, Epstein was intelligence,

• 43:21Speaker 01

  what do you mean by that? Was was he just basically, as they say, a useful idiot? In that, hey, this guy's going to collect blackmail for us? Or is there something more deliberate and intentional that he was? He was tasked to to do?

• 43:40Speaker 00

  When I'm talking about intelligence, I'm talking about a dark part of our government that allows people like Jeffrey Epstein to operate. And it's covered up by the President and the Attorney General. With Jeffrey Epstein, he was much more than a useful idiot. He was trafficking children. He was blackmailing people. He was laundering money. He was working out arms deals.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  If you're Team Evil and you're you have a first round draft choice and actually the first pick overall, I think Jeffrey Epstein is probably going to be your the first pick overall. I mean, he was a multi talented nefarious character. Not a useful idiot. I mean, when it came time to take him down,

• 44:31Speaker 00

  he was another another blue collar guy from his family is blue collar from Coney Island. And and that's also what happened with the Franklin scandal with King and Spence is that they were both, they both lived high. I I mean, they they were they lived like millionaires. But both came from working class families. So there was nobody that was going to go to bat for them when it was time to take them down. And the thing about Jeffrey Epstein and also with the Franklin pimps, there was too much media on him. And if you're a blackmailer and there's that kind of media on you, you're going to lose your ability to blackmail.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Hmm. So do you think that's what happened in the end? It's like, okay, well, you no longer have the power and leverage to do what we need you to do. And so you're going to take the fall, not us. Is that kind of what happened in the end?

• 45:28Speaker 00

  I do believe that that's the case. Yes.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Is that is that similar to, you know, Sean Combs, for example? There's there's a lot of talk and allegations around he being some sort of intelligent asset.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  The the amount of dirt he had on very, very powerful people in politics and entertainment. Is is that similar or is that a different case?

• 45:54Speaker 00

  I think it's very similar. Sean Combs got away with all kinds of stuff.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  For him, I I think of his sentence was four years. If you look at the lawsuits that had been leveled against him, there was there were all kinds of kids, minors, that were either sexually abused by him or trafficked by him. And it was the Homeland Security that executed the search warrant. And yes, there were there was all kinds of discs. Sean Combs also had hidden cameras. So I have a tendency to believe that Sean Combs was part of that dark machinery, too. I mean, the for him to only be in jail for four years is really a miscarriage of justice.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  But you know, his mentor, Clive Davis, he started Bad Boy Records with Clive Davis. Clive Davis was a malignant character. He was busted in the biggest payola scam ever. And payola is when record companies give money to radio stations and disc jockeys to play their songs. That's against the law. He was busted repeatedly ripping off the IRS, filing false tax returns. And then he was, I I think it was ABC Records.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  When he was head of that company, I think it was ABC, he set up shell companies. And he was funneling money to those shell companies. And his partner was Pasquale Falcone, who was in the Genovese crime family, who got busted for and and how that happened is Pasquale got busted for a bunch of heroin. And they started to dig into him. And they came across these shell companies that he and Clive Davis had set up. And you want to know how much time Clive Davis spent in jail?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I'm assuming you'd say zero or a year or some absurd amount, but I don't know.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  Zero.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Zero. And I've talked to people that know how the government works and they've all told me there's there's no way that this dude wasn't an informant. So that's how Diddy got into business was via Clive Davis.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Hmm. It's so, it's so crazy. Okay. So kind of a, kind of an interesting little, little conspiracy, conspiratorial tangent here. Who is Palm Beach Pete? Help, help me, help me understand this guy. Cause this is a crazy story and I'm actually not somebody who generally navigates towards conspiracy theories, but this one is an interesting one to me.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  I haven't spent any time really looking at it. So I know, I know the premise of it, but I've got other things to do. So I have.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Well, I, I actually appreciate that because I think, um, no, I do. I appreciate that because I think when you start getting into this territory, it just makes you sound kind of kooky. And I think it undermines the real effort of what you're trying to do.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  In 1967, the CIA came out with what was a quote unquote, a dispatch. And there were a lot of Americans that didn't believe the Warren Commission. Because the Warren Commission is very problematic about regarding JFK's assassination. And the dispatch said, we're going to take people that don't believe in the Warren Commission, and we're going to call them conspiracy theorists. And then it had a list of the negative things that would be attributed to conspiracy theorists. And what I find amazing is the New York Times and the Washington Post use that term maybe once a year.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Prior to that dispatch, but after that dispatch, the term conspiracy theory and the term conspiracy theorist was used exponentially. Whoever cooked that up in the CIA should be getting, their families should be getting royalties. Because that term has really hurt people like me.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  I'm sure.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  A friend of mine was having dinner with a television personality who's got a talk show. And my friend said to him, have you heard of Nick Bryant? And this guy's got a national talk show. He knew who I was, but he said, oh, that guy's a conspiracy theorist.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  And he's never read anything I've written.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  But that's the kind of beating I've taken on the internet. If you, if you look at the, at the Franklin childish allegations on Wikipedia, it's nonsensical. And myself and, and others have tried to introduce sanity into that Wikipedia page. But there are editors that will not let you touch it and it's locked down. And Larry Sanger, who was the co-founder of Wikipedia, who was a really good guy. He came out recently and said that, and, and I'd known this because he and I had talked about this before. But the CIA was attracted to Wikipedia immediately.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  And before we got really exotic with IP addresses, the IP addresses that were, that were, a lot of them were from Langley, Virginia.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Hmm. IP addresses for what?

• 51:54Speaker 00

  For people, of people that were putting stuff on Wikipedia.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Oh, got it. So what you're saying is the CIA is basically populating Wikipedia is what you're saying?

• 52:06Speaker 00

  It jumped on it really quickly. It saw that this was going to be a way that it could influence people.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, control the narrative, right? And then, and then make, but it's, it's like the movie, Beauty and the Beast, where Gaston and his mob tried to convince everybody that the father is this crazy, kooky, weird, you know, just so they could fill their own, their own narrative. I, I feel like that's what's happening, if, if that makes any sense.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  I, the Franklin scandal was optioned for three years, three and a half years by a, by a studio.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  And they really tried to do something with it.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  And they couldn't sell it. They've produced many movies, but they couldn't sell it. And I was having lunch with the president and he loved the book and believed in me. But he said, as long as that Wikipedia page is there, you're never going to be able to sell this in Hollywood.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  And I was in LA a number of years ago, trying to sell something on the Franklin scandal. And a friend of mine knew some, a couple of hot shot executives.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  And I gave the, I met with one, I gave him the book and, and, and about three days later, my friend sends me an email that's a dialogue between these two Hollywood executives. These two young hot shot, and they're saying, what is true in my book and what is not true? And they've never read the book. I mean, so that's what we're dealing with. Well, as far as Hollywood, I mean, a lot, a lot of them just take themselves out because they're, they, they've been indoctrinated by Hollywood and they're, they're idiots.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  How is this, how is this work for you impacted your own life personally? I mean, you're, you're talking about being shut out. You're talking about probably some, some, um, financial opportunities no longer being available. Uh, have you ever received any threats? Have you ever been threatened to be, you know, imprisoned or some sort of punitive, punitive retaliation, anything like this?

• 54:38Speaker 00

  I had a death, I've had one overt death threat.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  By, by a random civilian or a member of intelligence or?

• 54:48Speaker 00

  I mean, it's not like they, they have like a name tag. Hi, I'm a member of intelligence.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  I know. Yeah.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  Actually, it was delivered by a woman. And, uh, and then although this hasn't happened much lately, I used to get really crazy phone calls.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  And

• 55:10Speaker 00

  I've felt at times that my computer was really not a great computer. Although here's the thing about me, I don't drink, I don't do drugs. I, you know, I'm, I'm older now. I, I mean, I, if I was going to go out with a woman, she would have to be much older than. So approximately my age, there's nothing that I can be compromised about. It has hurt my writing career for sure. But what's amazed, what, what, what has amazed me is

• 55:48Speaker 00

  although I've been branded as a conspiracy theorist in the mainstream media, I've still been able to make a living as a writer. I'm kind of amazed by that. I mean, there were some really tough years, but I never stopped writing. I, I kind of felt if I stopped writing, my adversaries have, have won. So I, I never stopped writing and, but I, I've lost a lot for sure. But someone had, as we were talking about earlier,

• 56:22Speaker 00

  someone has to make sure that the government is accountable for these little girls getting molested with impunity.

• 56:31Speaker 00

  We talked about earlier, we, the Glass-Steagall repeal, the lies about Iraq,

• 56:38Speaker 00

  the, the financial meltdown, Snowden's revelations about how we're being spied on, COVID. There's so many things. Americans have eaten so much shit. And this is, I think the reason that, that, we were talking about this earlier. They've been conditioned to think that they cannot affect change. And the right and the left have been very polarized. I, I, I think that this is the issue that can bring the right and left together. And as Americans, we have to stop eating shit. We, we just have to.

• 57:12Speaker 00

  If our government is spying on us illegally, which it is, we have to make sure our government doesn't do that. If our government has caused a bunch of people to lose their homes, which it has, then the government should help them out. I'm, tendency towards libertarianism myself, but if the government destroys people, the government should help them out. If the government lies about wars, uh, weapons of mass destruction and gets us into crazy wars where

• 57:47Speaker 00

  billions of dollars are spent and thousands of American lives are lost.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  We, we have to stop that.

• 57:56Speaker 00

  Or else our leaders are gonna take us off a cliff. I really do believe that. The way the wealth, we talked earlier about the wealth polarization. I mean, that's, that's a fact. And the middle class is eroding. And that was one thing about America is we had a very flourishing middle class. If kids, kids getting out of college now can't even buy a home.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I mean, to be fair, I don't know that they could 20 years ago either. Like a kid getting out of college should probably not buy a home. I'm just trying to be fair. I think we have this entitlement attitude where it's like, well, I graduated college, so now I can buy a home. Well, no, hold on. It probably took your parents an extra 10 or 20 years to get their first home too. So I'm not saying you're wrong. I just, I'm very, I'm very cautious of leaning towards this entitlement mentality of like, well, I'm a kid, I should own a home. No, not necessarily.

• 58:57Speaker 00

  When I went to the University of Minnesota, my tuition was $2,000 a year.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Uh, fair, totally, fair.

• 59:05Speaker 00

  And I got student loans. But they weren't exorbitant. I mean, there are kids getting out of college. People better themselves through education. I, I believe that. Had I not gotten an undergrad degree and gone on to graduate school, there's no way I could have gotten the breaks that enabled me to become a writer. And that's what I wanted. I wanted to become a writer. So education is really important, but it's another scam now. Uh, the way that it's so expensive and colleges and universities don't tenure professors like they used to.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  They become adjunct professors where they can, you can get rid of them anytime you want. And a lot of times you don't have to pay for any kind of benefits. So as education has become more expensive, universities have become very draconian as far as tenuring professors.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's wild. I, I was, I mean, I've had a couple of good conversations the last several days. Um, one conversation I had just yesterday, I was with some buddies. We went to lunch. A couple of guys I hunt with, there was about six of us and we just went and grabbed a bite to eat. And we were talking about, you know, when I, when I graduated high school, I'm a little bit younger than you. So I graduated high school in 1999. And I remember thinking, man, if I could just make a hundred thousand a year, I'm, I'm elite. Like I, I've made it, you know, if I could make six figures, I'm the top of the top. And we were talking about, that's, that's breadcrumbs right now. Like, one of the guys said, and I'd have to verify this, and I'm curious about this, but he said that

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  the, the, the median household income for mid, average middle-class families is $220,000. A quarter of a million dollars. It's, it's why, it's, it's asinine to me.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  Okay, let's, I, I've got Dr. Google right in front of me. Let's see.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, pull it up. I'm curious. You know, while you're doing that, Nick, the other thing that I was thinking of is anytime the government gets involved in any of this nonsense, you know, it's the college, for example, um, academia, medical, you know, health, everything becomes more expensive, uh, years and years ago, this is probably 10 years ago at this point. But my ex-wife had found her, her grandfather passed away and her grandmother as well. And we were cleaning files out and cleaning their house and helping the family get things organized and straight. And she pulled out this receipt and it was a receipt of when her mother was born.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  And it was her grandfather, her grandfather's receipt. And, and it said, you know, birth certificate or what, I can't exactly remember what it said on it, but birth certificate and had a signature. And it was like $500 or something. And he just paid cash and gave it to the hospital and they gave him a receipt for what he paid. And then, and then, you know, I've got four children. $500 would be a dream. I mean, the, the exorbitant amount just to bring a child into the world. And that's a result of the government getting involved in health insurance scams. It's insane.

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  I agree with you 100%. HMOs are, if, there was an extraterrestrial that came to earth and I was talking to him. And I'm not saying there are extraterrestrials, but if, and I, I said, well, you know, our healthcare system, I pay this company money and then for my healthcare, and then it deprives me of my healthcare. I mean, so.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and, and look, if, if I'm a, if I'm a physician, let's say it's, you know, Ryan Mickler physician and I'm a private practice and you come in, you're not feeling well, and you come in and it's gonna be a hundred dollars if you pay me cash. Or, or you come in and I start taking Medicare, Medicaid, fill in the blank, and all of a sudden, you know, I'm making a hundred and eighty dollars instead of a hundred dollars. Cool for me, but who's subsidizing that additional money? Well, the taxpayer, right? And so the government has basically just found a way to participate in the market, which legally it cannot.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  But they're trying to find a way to participate in the market and because they're participating in the market, they're driving up the cost of literally everything because they have not only the power of the US dollar, but they also have the power of printing money. Which, wouldn't that be cool? If I need a hundred dollars, I can run over to my printer and just print out a hundred dollar bill. But of course it doesn't mean anything, but we don't recognize.

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  HMOs are ridiculous. And we've seen that the people that run HMOs are, get 200 million dollars a year. I mean, it's insane.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. What'd you find from, what'd you find from Google?

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  Eighty-three thousand.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Oh, as a medium, medium household? All right. So it's less. So it's less. So this guy was bullshitting me. But.

• 1:04:36Speaker 00

  That happens. I, I knew it was lower than that. Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Well, 220 sounded extremely high, but even still, 83,000 just doesn't go as far as it used to, right? And I think that's the real measure we need to look at too.

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  Eighty-three thousand, if you look at what it costs to raise a family. And that's probably both the husband and the wife working, or a lot of times it's the husband and the wife working. So.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  I mean, I remember when I got married, um, 20, about 20 years ago, we were doing our budget. And I remember saying, hey, we've got like two to $300 a month for groceries. If I tried to do that now, I'd be eating beans and rice. So it's, it's always interesting too, how the government manipulates, um, uh, the inflation rates. Like they won't include gas, for example, or the, or the price of milk. It's like, okay, well, those are the things that people actually use. So maybe calculate that into the equation.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  So we've got a median income of 83,000 and according to Dr. Google, the average home sale price in the United States is 500,000.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  And when I was talking about earlier.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  How's that gonna work?

• 1:06:07Speaker 00

  Well, that's what I said. Kids can't afford to buy homes. The American dream has dissolved. And when I was talking earlier about the wealth polarization, the reason why there's been that wealth polarization is because of the laws that our legislators have passed that have enabled that. And I believe that a country like the United States of America, with their tremendous wealth that we have, should at least have a social, a, a safety net for people that fall through the cracks. And there are a lot of people that fall through the cracks.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what, okay, but what would that look like? I'm not, I'm not entirely against that. I'm like 80% against that. Um, because I don't think we have a right to a safety net. I think people have the right to make decisions, good and bad, and then we live with the consequences of it. But what, what, what do you mean? What would a sa-? Cause you might say that we have safety nets now. So what would that actually look like?

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  I believe that. Okay. So let me just put in one more figure. The average cost of college in the US ranges from 21,000 to 65,000.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  So education has become a scam. I think that people should be allowed to have education. I, I really do. At least, uh, the community colleges started out that way, very, very inexpensive. And I think that people can, should be able to have that. Should, there are millions of children in the United States that experience hunger at least once a month. Should, should we deprive them of hunger? There are families with children out of the fast-growing segment of the homeless population.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, but do you, do you think we are though? I mean, like, I don't, I'm not well-versed in this. So I'm, I'm, I am speaking a little bit ignorantly, but I was thinking about it. Um, I was recently, uh, traveling and, uh, we were talking about the homeless population because we were downtown and these people, these people, it's not a housing crisis, for example, like there's probably, and I don't know, I could look, but there's probably five shelters within a 10-mile radius or less that they could go to, but they're choosing not to. And, and, and it's the same thing. I mean, we have SNAP benefits and I think it's called EBT benefits.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Like who's starving out of not having options?

• 1:08:59Speaker 00

  Let's see.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't disagree with you, but I'm just saying like, I think those things are already built into the system. And maybe I'm wrong. Again, I'm speaking from ignorance, but I think it's worthy of having the discussion.

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  So according to the USDA, 13.7% of US households, approximately 47.9 million million people, experience food insecurity.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  And there's approximately 1.5 million children who are in public schools who are homeless. And when you start superimposing trends upon one another, I wrote a book about lower socioeconomic children in America before I got into writing about all this other crazy stuff. As I said earlier, I've written a lot about children's issues.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's good.

• 1:09:55Speaker 00

  There was a researcher, his name is Greg Duncan, at the University of Michigan. It was either the University of Michigan or Michigan State. And he found that if a child is born at a low birth weight, and generally children are born at low birth weights because the mother doesn't have prenatal care.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, malnourished, potentially drug abuse. There's a lot of reasons, I'm sure.

• 1:10:22Speaker 00

  But if a child is born at a low birth weight, and subjected to five years of continuous poverty, if they're white, their IQ is going to be 90. And if they're black, their IQ is going to be 85. So that right there is taking them out of the game. The best that they're going to be able to get is a menial job. And nothing, and what I found out when I wrote that book, nothing destroys cognitive abilities in children like homelessness. It's really striking.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Do you think, Nick, is there, I don't, this is actually fascinating, we might need to do a part two on this, but do you think, again, I don't know, I'm asking you genuinely because I don't know. Can you increase IQ, for example, cognitive ability through, I imagine, the biggest thing is probably mindset, right? Scarcity versus abundance. Like, I grew up in a low, middle income household. My mom raised me and my sister primarily on her own. But she just had this incredible abundance mindset. And I'm sure the mindset

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  that she adopted and embraced in her life through osmosis and teaching and experience was relayed to me. But does that change IQ?

• 1:11:58Speaker 00

  I think IQ is like a rubber band. And we're born with a certain, but it can be augmented, for sure. But I think a lot of it is innate. But as I said, the child that's born at low birth weight, that's subjected to five years of continuous poverty, if they're gonna, if they're white, they're gonna have an IQ of 90. Now, that could have been prevented, for sure. The mother could have had prenatal care, and the kid wouldn't be subjected to

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  poverty. I mean, so, yes, I believe that IQ can be increased, but a lot of it is innate.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  I don't know, I just don't know if I agree with that assertion. I like what you're saying. I like the idea of it. Again, I'm not well versed in this. I don't know if I agree with the assertion that if we, let's say, for example, in this hypothetical scenario, gave a single mother with a brand new baby, a home, and all the food that she needed, and access to education, that would solve the poverty problem. I don't, in the micro? Absolutely. Tonight, for sure. Full bellies, nice mattress to sleep on. But over a period of time, I'm not sure that is what solves the problem.

• 1:13:28Speaker 00

  Well,

• 1:13:31Speaker 00

  you know, the, we have to have priorities in our society. And I think that our children should be our most precious resource.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  I agree with that.

• 1:13:45Speaker 00

  The United States spends approximately $954, $960 billion on the military. Do you know, let's take $5 billion off that, and apply it towards children that are experiencing hunger and children that are experiencing homelessness. I think that we would, that would be

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  I think that's fair.

• 1:14:11Speaker 00

  That'd be the end of the problem.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  I mean, we can debate where it comes from, but I think, I think that's fair. I wouldn't pull it from the military, but there's plenty of programs that we could pull it from, for sure.

• 1:14:23Speaker 00

  Those programs have been whittled down pretty badly. Starting with Clinton, actually.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  This is actually one of the reasons, and people might not know this about the way I think on this. When, when we have the, just the extreme amount of, of American citizens sitting in prison cells right now, I'm a huge advocate for, let's educate them. Like, I don't, and you might say, well, they're going to get free education, but they're criminals. Yeah, yeah, true. But I would rather educate those individuals, teach them how to start a business, teach them to, how tax works, how money work, like, educate them, please.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  Because I would much rather those individuals come back out into society, and they probably will, for the most part, at some point. And, and at least have some skill set to be productive members of society. So yeah, there's a lot of things that I agree with. And some things I don't, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot to discuss here.

• 1:15:33Speaker 00

  We have got, I think, 400,000 people that are incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses?

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  How insane is that?

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's insane, because how many people are just, you know, smoking a joint, for example, on the weekend, and, like, although I don't agree with that behavior, I don't care. If you're not bothering anybody, you're not driving around, you're not hurting people, and you do what you want, it's fine.

• 1:16:05Speaker 00

  So, we have this huge problem. We've got 2 million people that are in our prisons. And they were getting educated. Prisoners did have an opportunity a long time ago to get Pell Grants, to go through, but then there was uproar about that. And so that kind of ended that program. But I had a friend who was in prison for a while, and I made a resume for him once, and he had a lot of correspondence classes. So, but he was, at

• 1:16:44Speaker 00

  that point, he was able to get an education in prison, and he never went back. So, that's a very important thing.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  I'm with you. I think, I think education is the answer. I really do. The more people who learn things, whether it's, you know, a specific trait like engineering or medical, or just how to have a better mindset, how to, how to add value to the world. Like, the more people who are educated, the better off we'll all be. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind about that.

• 1:17:16Speaker 00

  And I was wrong. There's, there's 350,000 people, 360,000 people that are incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses in the United States. How crazy, how crazy is that?

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  You were pretty close. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one. You were within an 8% margin, or whatever it was.

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  So, the median income of Americans is 83,000. The average cost of a house is over 500,000. Tuition is easily $20,000, $25,000. Can you see how this is whittling away at the middle class?

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  No doubt. Yeah, I mean, inflation is rampant. But again, the housing thing, here's another example. The government getting involved, 2007, 2008, 2009, subprime mortgages, you know, letting, letting people who have no business owning a home, backing it with insurance. Every time the government gets involved, things get less effective and more expensive.

• 1:18:24Speaker 00

  Well, that was a scam. I mean, when Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall, I mean, that's why we ended up in 2007, 2008. It was, that was designed, I mean, this is my personal opinion, that wasn't designed to give people houses. That was designed to turn the world into the world's largest casino. I mean, that's

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  Before Glass-Steagall was, the reason why Glass-Steagall was enacted was during the Great Depression, when you had commercial banks speculating. So that's why Glass-Steagall put a wall between those two types of banking. And when it was repealed, we just got Act Two of Glass-Steagall, which played a significant role in delivering us to the Great Depression in the late twenties and early thirties.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  I mean, just, just look at fractionalized banking, for example. You know, I turn a dollar in, they can loan it out 10 times if I want to borrow it back. They're like, yeah, we'll do that at 7%. It's my own money and you're fractionalizing it, loaning it out at 10 times the amount that I gave you. This stuff's crazy. Like, it is absolutely asinine. It's hurting us so badly.

• 1:19:41Speaker 00

  You won't hear me argue with you about the Federal Reserve at all.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's wild. It's wild. Well, Nick, I think we need to do a part two.

• 1:19:49Speaker 00

  That's another area where Americans are being taken advantage of. The Federal Reserve.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Like, fiddle with our money. See how that works out. Like, try to control, and then you have rent freezes and this, what do they call it? The, oh, I'm gonna mess it up. It sounds French. It's like, owed a tax or something in New York. I can't remember what it's called, for people who don't live there full-time. Like, keep it up. See how that works out for everybody. It's so frustrating. I think we need to do a part two, because we're talking about some completely different things, but man, a lot of stuff to address here.

• 1:20:32Speaker 00

  And the Federal Reserve charges interest to banks.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:39Speaker 00

  So, and it's not federal. It's federal like Federal Express. So, this just is in another category of Americans eating more shit. So, we gotta stop it somewhere. We have to put the line in the sand somewhere. Why don't we put it, the line in the sand is, you can't molest our little girls with impunity. And

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Seems reasonable.

• 1:21:12Speaker 00

  And then let's start from there. That's what I believe.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  Well, Nick, tell me, tell me where to connect with you, learn more about what you're up to. Epstein Justice is your movement and what you're doing. I would love to direct the guys who are listening to some resources, to opportunities to contribute financially, like, whatever way we can help. So, where do we go from here?

• 1:21:37Speaker 00

  EpsteinJustice.com. And there's a lot of things that you can do if you go to EpsteinJustice.com. You can sign a petition that has 93,000 signatures. You can join our Facebook group, which has over 15,000 members. If you really want to get involved, you can give us your email. We put on monthly webinars. And there's a lot of things that you can do if you decide to get involved with Epstein Justice. And, of course, we need donations, too.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Speaker 00

  We are, we are so, there aren't billionaires giving Epstein Justice any money. So, we could always, and I'll give you the links. And my website is NickBryanNYC.com.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Well, Nick, we're gonna sync everything up, get this out to the guys. I appreciate you. I think we need to have another conversation about some other topics as well, because it sounds like we can have, it sounds like we agree on a lot of things and maybe see things a little differently, which I think makes for a really, like, just a really good conversation, where we can actually hash things out in a respectful way, which seems to be a rarity these days. But I would love to do that, if you're open for it.

• 1:22:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thanks, Nick. I appreciate you. We'll get this out. We'll get this to the guys. Thanks for your work, and let's see what we can do to administer some justice here.

• 1:23:05Speaker 00

  Thank you, Ryan. Have a great day.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  You, too.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be? We invite you to join the Order at OrderOfMan.com.