#1448 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Bitcoin Preparing To Burst Into End of Year?!

Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin having one of its biggest months of all-time, where the price could be headed, risks, how the market is changing now that Donald Trump is coming into office, Elon Musk pay package, Joe Biden pardon of Hunter Biden, impact of tariffs, and more. ======================= The Pomp Podcast is powered by BetOnline.ag, the premier crypto-friendly place to gamble on politics and sports, casino, poker and horse racing. BetOnline.ag gives you the ability to use Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto transaction fees, and processing is instantaneous and secure. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use PROMO CODE: POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline.ag is available in nearly every country around the world, making it the top global gaming destination for crypto users. ======================= The future is being built today and the future of currency isn’t dollars, euros, pounds, or yen, it’s crypto. And Gemini thinks that’s a great thing. Because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that’s a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Go where dollars won’t. With ⁠⁠Gemini⁠⁠. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's going on guys? Today I've got an amazing conversation with Polina Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin. It just closed on one of its biggest months of all time. And then we get into where I think the price of Bitcoin is going to go. What is driving all of this? What are some of the risks? And how is the market changing

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  now that Donald Trump is coming into office? On top of that, we then get into Elon Musk's pay package. We talk all about Joe Biden pardoning Hunter Biden and what some of the ramifications are and why I think it's really important for financial markets, not just for politics. And then lastly, we finish up talking about some tariffs and what the impact on both Mexico, Canada, and various BRIC nations might be. This conversation is packed with unique insights and something that will make you think more critically about all the events that are happening in the world today. Once you get done listening, let me know what you think. Jump on Twitter or leave us some comments and have me better understand what you think. What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? It's always helpful for me to get feedback. Here's my latest conversation with Paulina Pompliano.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:50Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Gemini. The future is being built today and the future of currency isn't dollars, euros, pounds or yen. It's crypto and Gemini thinks that's a great thing because of future where money is decentralized, inclusive and globally accessible, that's a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Gemini teamed up with futurists, technologists and designers like award-winning artist Matt Griffin, known for his illustrations for Dune, to craft a vision of the future with crypto at its core. The creative theme "Go Where Dollars Won't" emphasizes exploration, growth and the crypto market's limitless potential. Whether it's going on that Martian safari to capture an unforgettable photo of a herd of woolly mammoths grazing the red planet,

• 3:16Anthony Pompliano?

  or using Bitcoin to pay for your lift pass to go strata skiing down the mountain peak of a breathtaking comet. Whatever adventures we'll be living, one thing is for sure. In a future this fantastic, the limits of traditional currency simply cannot keep up. Financial innovation will usher in this new frontier and so go where dollars won't with Gemini. Go check them out at gemini.com/go-were-dollars-won't. Again, go check it out at gemini.com/go-were-dollars-won't.

• 3:48Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Plin, what's the first topic?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  All right, Bitcoin just had the highest monthly close in its history. It feels like a decade ago, but the digital asset was trading just over 69,000 on November 1st of this year.

• 4:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's going higher. Everyone who's looking at Bitcoin always goes away for a little bit. They pop back and like, oh my God, I can't believe Bitcoin's at whatever price. This asset moves incredibly violently upwards when it decides to go up. If you go back a couple of weeks, you remember I told everyone, I said, the sideways summer is over. The boringness, the lulling you to sleep is over. We're going up in the next couple of weeks. I didn't know when, but here we are. The price is up 40, 50% since then. And the reason is we had that halving all the way back in Q2 of this year. That halving created a supply shock. A supply shock took the number of Bitcoin that was coming into the market, cut it in half, and then you go sideways for the summer. Everyone kind of works it out. But now here we go. There's a lot of people in the market buying.

• 4:47Anthony Pompliano?

  ETFs have over a million Bitcoin. You've got MicroStrategy buying billions of dollars per week. You've got many others around the world who are saying, I need to get some of my share of the 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist. And so you have a supply shock, hit it with a demand shock, bam, let's go. 2020 all over again.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  I know you don't make price predictions, but I read something interesting that Global Investment Manager Vannec has reissued its $180,000 price target for Bitcoin at the peak of the current cycle. Do you think that's realistic?

• 5:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that that's probably a base case for a lot of people. You know, I've previously said that I thought it was going to go much higher. I had what many people thought was kind of a bearish view was I could see Bitcoin going, you know, 150 ish, somewhere in that range. I think that people are very excited right now. They see that they're still from a timeline standpoint, a number of months, maybe nine months, 10 months, 12 months left in this cycle. And so if that is true, then Bitcoin's going to go higher. And the question is just how much higher does it go? And so if I had to poll all my friends, I think that between 150 and 250 is the number that most people would come up with. 180 is somewhere in the middle there.

• 5:57Anthony Pompliano?

  But I also think what's really interesting is that the largest pools of capital are the ones who haven't bought yet. And so this thing can get more reflexive than it has been in the past, but the percentages aren't going to be as big. So if Bitcoin goes to $200,000, if I sat down with somebody and I said Bitcoin's going to be worth $200,000, they'd be like, that's insane. Wow. I'm going to make quote unquote, so much money. But if you actually look at it from a percentage basis, it's about 2X. It's going to double in price. And so what I think you're starting to see is a lot of investors who say, look, I've got Bitcoin. I'm not going to sell my Bitcoin. I'm going to hold my Bitcoin. But 2X, as crazy as it sounds, isn't nearly as attractive of a return as maybe I can get in some of these other altcoins.

• 6:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you're going to start seeing people push further and further out on the risk curve as they think Bitcoin's return becomes less and less desirable.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Now, do you think that this is a result of the halving and it's the cycle, et cetera? Or like the VanEck analysts are saying, it's probably, you know, this increasingly friendly regulatory environment as a result of the Trump president?

• 7:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it's everything, right? So Trump comes in, obviously people get more excited. It's not just a Bitcoin or crypto thing. It's a financial market thing. Everyone wants to invest. Donald Trump's got a magic wand. He's going to waive it. Asset prices are going to go up. I do think that the regulatory kind of relief that is on the way is not going to affect Bitcoin as much. Bitcoin's already kind of through the threshold. We have the ETFs. We've got people who are buying it and kind of it's understood that this is not really caught up in that regulatory unclarity. But the altcoins are definitely benefiting from that. And so I think there's a lot of coins that previously were in the crosshairs of these regulators. As that regulatory relief shows up, then those coins will start to move upwards because people are saying, hey, there's no longer that kind of overhang.

• 7:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And then also, I don't think that people are giving enough credit to the fact that the Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates and we have M2 money supply expanding. And so you basically have kind of the trifecta. You've got the supply shock from a halving. You have Donald Trump coming in with pro Bitcoin and pro crypto policies. And then you've got a central bank that is cooperating and is going to cut rates and print money. And so if you go back, knock, knock. If anyone remembers in 2020, I kept yelling and screaming over and over and over again, saying, this is rocket fuel for Bitcoin in the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2020. Because we were going to get a halving, we were going to get interest rates down and we were going to get printing of money. Trifecta.

• 8:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you can look at history to understand what is likely to occur. The hard part is predicting when it happens and how severe the move is. But obviously, if you had the supply shock, that's now getting worked into the system. You have printing of money. You have interest rates coming down. You have Donald Trump coming in and saying, I'm going to protect this industry. I'm going to make sure that these assets are successful. What do you think is going to happen? It's not like Bitcoin is going to get cut in half. Instead, it is much more likely on a probability standpoint that the price of these assets goes up.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Got it. And also, I read that the chief policy officer at Coinbase is saying that he sees crypto legislation making its way through Congress fairly quickly after Trump enters the White House. What is some of this legislation, do we know?

• 9:10Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a bunch of different things that people are trying to do. I don't want to get into each individual detail because people are debating even what should get put forward, what's not, what's pro crypto, what's not, what seems like it's pro crypto, but it's really a Trojan horse, whatever. Put all the noise aside for a second. When the President of the United States runs on a campaign promise to be pro crypto, pro Bitcoin, everyone else falls in line. And especially when you have such a sweeping win. A Republican won the popular vote. It is a mandate to go and implement your plan. Whether it works or not, we're going to find out. But it was a mandate from the American people to implement the plan. A key component of that plan is to be pro Bitcoin and pro crypto. And so now you have all this legislation that people have been trying to kind of work through the system and they're going to go push it through.

• 9:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Another thing that people are now just starting to understand is there's not even necessarily legislation that has been a barrier in terms of let's get clear legislation and clear rules. But also, there's a bunch of just nonsense that's been going on that people have been having to deal with. So for example, the Operation Choke Point 2.0.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, explain that.

• 10:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Huge problem. Nick Carter has been all over this. He's the one who coined the term. He gets full credit for kind of being ahead of this. I can speak from our own personal experience, right? We have a number of businesses. I cannot tell you how much time and energy we have spent talking to various banks, not just one bank, many different banks, where they try to prevent us from opening bank accounts, they try to remove our bank accounts, they tried to kick us out of various banks, et cetera. I understand where the individual bankers are coming from. They work inside of a corporation. That corporation is trying to de-risk in a lot of scenarios. And so they say to themselves, okay, the regulators don't like this stuff. And if we go and we start banking a bunch of these companies, then the regulators are going to give us a hard time. They may fine us, they may make our lives miserable, whatever.

• 10:59Anthony Pompliano?

  So instead of fighting the regulator, let's just not offer services to this type of business.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  And this type of business being a business that has...

• 11:08Anthony Pompliano?

  That's involved in crypto in some form or fashion.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Now, we've learned over time how to kind of position the businesses, start the businesses, et cetera, where you can kind of be related to crypto, but also make sure that you're not being stopped from opening a bank account. What is... That's kind of like the nonsense. What is, I think, unconstitutional and gets kind of a step further is when you have a bank that receives federal funding that is actively de-banking people. So not like, hey, we don't know if this business really fits, but they are specifically going after founders and they're saying, without any cause, without any reasoning, you're no longer welcome here. It begs the question, well, why are you no longer welcome here? What is the problem?

• 11:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I do think that a private company should be able to offer their services to whoever they want. But if you are a private company that accepts federal funding, or you accept some other form of kind of economic gain, now all of a sudden, you're kind of private, but you're kind of not. And then it steps into the game of, well, if the regulators cannot de-bank you, or the legal system cannot de-bank you, because it would be unconstitutional, but they simply apply pressure to a company to get them to do it, isn't that company just acting as an extension of the government? And so again, there's loopholes and everything. There's all this stuff. I'm not smart enough to

• 12:37Anthony Pompliano?

  figure this out. There are lawyers and many other kind of constitutional experts, et cetera, that are going to go figure all this stuff out. But what I do know is that when you have a pro Bitcoin, pro crypto president that steps in, the regulatory apparatus changes and a lot of this nonsense is going to stop. And so now all of a sudden, it's like, you know, you basically were trying to fight in a boxing ring with one hand tied behind your back. Well, what happens when you get both your hands? Now, all of a sudden, these founders, these companies, they don't have to waste time and energy. That's been my biggest thing is, again, the de-banking is pretty black and white to me. And I think that the course we have to figure that stuff out, it's the gray area of if

• 13:16Anthony Pompliano?

  they are able to simply waste time and energy of entrepreneurs and businesses in America, what is all that productivity loss? It's immeasurable. You can't go and say, that's how much it cost me. But I went back and I looked, I mean, we have email threads of tens of emails about one bank account. It's crazy. Phone calls, meetings, you know, all this stuff.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  I mean, now, do you think that that happened, all of that, you know, I don't know.

• 13:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Nonsense.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Nonsense around these companies because of scandals and schemes like FTX.

• 13:51Anthony Pompliano?

  The companies that were doing the fraud weren't the ones being de-banked.

• 13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So, no, I don't think it has anything to do with that. You were de-banking all the good actors and you let the bad actors just run around like they were in Disneyland, right? What the hell are we talking about? And so it goes back to this idea of, it's kind of like KYC, right?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Know your customer.

• 14:13Anthony Pompliano?

  KYC is so onerous, so crazy. And if anyone's ever dealt with KYB, know your business. There are things that we deal with on a day to day in our businesses, that if I explained in detail to people, they would literally just bash their head against the wall, right? I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten a message from our operations team, or finance team, or somebody, and they say, hey, we need a picture of your driver's license, your social security number, your this, your that, whatever, your personal address, all this stuff. What? And they say, oh, one of our businesses is doing a deal with another business. Not like a, it's not a merger, it's not an acquisition. It's just their, their customers, their vendors to each other.

• 14:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And this other business needs to know every detail about your personal life because they claim their bank or their regulator, whoever knows it. What is that stopping? What is that addressing? Nothing. It's just this bureaucratic cloud that hangs over business that ends up, one, reducing privacy, two, being a pain in the ass of entrepreneurs and business owners. And then three is it creates a massive amount of expenses? Because we're wasting money on it. The company that is becoming our customers wasting money on it. The banks are wasting money on it. Now there's companies that got created to help service this stuff. They're wasting money on it. Sometimes you need lawyers or accountants. They're wasting money on it.

• 15:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it goes back to this idea. If KYC was so good, why don't they stop all the money laundering?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Okay. I mean, this may sound a little crazy, but I don't. It sounds like there are too many issues to solve in this world for one administration to take on. I mean, I understand like creating a blueprint for some of this stuff and like the regulatory stuff and the legislative stuff. But in crypto, things change, not even day by day, hour by hour. Do we really think the Trump administration is well-equipped to handle and navigate all this like a little startup? Or is it going to be harder than we think?

• 16:19Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a report that recently came out. I believe it's the House of Representatives put out their big COVID report. And in that report, they basically say three things in there that I think are pretty noteworthy. One, they say they pretty much now believe that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan. Internet was right. The second thing that they say is that there was immense damage done to both individuals and the economy by having to prolong lockdowns. Internet was right. But the third one that blew my mind is they now are admitting that they believe that $200 billion worth of fraud occurred. Through all the relief programs.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  PPP loans.

• 16:57Anthony Pompliano?

  PPP loans, all these different programs, all this stuff, whatever. The internet was right on that as well. But here's what's crazy. I, or a business I have, or a business I invested in, or the people who are watching this who run a business, have to go through more hoops to simply operate their business than the people who are receiving funds from the government have to do. How is it that $200 billion of relief ended up through fraud? Now, I'll flip around the table and argue the other side is they tried to get the money out as quick as possible to help people. And so they probably knew that there was going to be some portion or some percentage of fraud that was going to occur. $200 billion is a pretty big number, though. And so it goes back to this idea of it's never black and white. Right? There's always a trade off.

• 17:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And so if you want to get the money out fast, you got to be comfortable that people are going to trick the system. If you want to make sure there's no fraud, then you're going to be a little bit slower. And so they try to find this balance. And I'm not saying that I or anyone I know has a better solution. But what I am calling out is the hypocrisy of the United States government. Think about how much money we've handed out in the last five years. Handed out the PPP stuff, handed out all the COVID relief, handed out all of the different programs in the Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, all that kind of stuff. How many hundreds of billions of dollars have we sent to proxy wars around the world? Is anyone in a country that is under a proxy war going through KYC?

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Okay, but you didn't.

• 18:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Probably not.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  My question.

• 18:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Which is?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Do we think that the Trump administration can navigate the volatility and the rapid change of information in the crypto world so quickly? Where they institute proper ledger?

• 18:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think it's a crypto thing. That's my point, is that what you're basically trying to do is you're trying to take the crypto world and plug it into the legacy world. KYC is not a crypto thing, that's a legacy thing. KYB is a legacy thing. All this banking regulation, all this is all legacy world stuff. Right? And so if you go and you look at the crypto world, the crypto world has one thing that nobody else has. We have a public ledger. You can see every transaction on the blockchain. And so if you were designing a new regulatory system from scratch and you said we Now have a public ledger that you can see anything that happens on there. You probably don't need to do as much upfront stuff and cause as much headache and friction and lost time, money and energy. Because you can say, we can now look at every single transaction that occurs on the blockchain.

• 19:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm, I'm not a believer that every single transaction in the world is going to move to a blockchain. But for those that do, there's probably a lot of things that you can do that end up actually being pretty effective. Now, the other thing that ends up becoming pretty important here is there's things like tornado cash. Which, again, I'm not an expert on the case, but I am trying to follow as best I can. And understand that the government came in and said, hey, this is bad. We have evidence that people are laundering money. 99.9% of people that I know, they don't want money laundering to occur. They don't want bad actors to be able to move freely around the world and move their money and do all this like, like. I call like common sense views on things like this.

• 19:59Anthony Pompliano?

  At the same time, the entrepreneurs or the software engineers are saying, wait a second, we created a decentralized system. We have no clue who these people are. Privacy is built into the system. And so how are you going to hold us accountable for building a system? If we aren't necessarily approving or disapproving who's using the system? And so a court stepped in and said, hey, look, actually, these kind of decentralized, software-based systems. They are not susceptible to some of the things that the government thought they were. Now, one of the takeaways I have is this, the beauty of the American system. Is that people hire lawyers, both the government and individuals that go into a courtroom and they argue it out, they debate it. And the judge, jury, whoever makes decisions and tries to implement the law. Do they always get it right? Absolutely not.

• 20:43Anthony Pompliano?

  But do they tend to try really hard? Yes, I do believe that, especially in kind of corporate law situations. So it comes now down to, because of the regulatory overhang in this big cloud. Is it going to force more and more entrepreneurs to say, wait a second? I have to build my tech stack in a certain way so that I am immune from having to deal with all of this stuff. Because it's become such a big overhang that it is actually stopping me from being successful in operating A, B, C, D things.

• 21:14Anthony Pompliano?

  That but I do think that there's entrepreneurs who are starting to ask that question. And rather than that be the solution where now they start to operate outside of the system. Instead, I think that we should try to create a regulatory environment where people are excited about building companies. And they feel like the regulators are helping them, not hurting them, not getting in their way. And part of that is reducing regulation, part of that is, you know, literally deregulating. But some of it is also removing the bloat. Right. Trying to reduce costs in the government, all these different components that they're going to try. I have no clue if they're going to be successful or not.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  And one thing that the viewers may not know, because I'm just now reading it, is that Trump's administration may actually include a White House official specifically to oversee crypto policy. It's unclear just what this person might do, what sort of budget or staff they may command, or just how much authority they will wield. Nevertheless, there are discussions about creating a crypto czar or something like that to oversee policymaking or liaise with policymakers. What?

• 22:15Anthony Pompliano?

  This is a good idea.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay, moving on. MicroStrategy just bought another $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin last week. My God, just over a month after announcing plans to raise $21 billion through stock sales to help fund additional purchases of Bitcoin. MicroStrategy is already almost halfway to its goal. What do we think about that?

• 22:40Anthony Pompliano?

  This strategy is working currently. Will it always work? We're going to find out. I think that public companies who have lots of trading volume, who trade at a premium forever, have sold shares. They have raised capital. That is part of being a good capital allocator is when your stock's overvalued, you sell shares. When your stock's undervalued, you buy back shares. The difference here is that the selling of shares is not going to cash in the balance sheet or to buy back shares later. It's going to buy Bitcoin. And so there's some things that are old strategies, some things that are kind of new twists on those strategies.

• 23:19Anthony Pompliano?

  What I find most interesting is, one, is there a percentage of Bitcoin that can be held by a publicly traded company? That people begin to think is too much?

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 23:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know. I can argue both sides. On one hand, you want a free market where anyone is available to buy as much Bitcoin as they possibly want. And regardless of how much Bitcoin you own, you get to use the network no differently than anyone else. You don't get extra control, you don't get extra voting, you don't get extra anything, right? So that would be an argument for it's a race. Whoever buys the most Bitcoin, good on them, knock yourself out. On the other hand, there is, there's an argument that if somebody owns too much Bitcoin, and let's say they own 5, 6, 7%, now all of a sudden, they become a proxy for speaking for the industry.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And so regulators, governments, right, you know, all that kind of stuff. Now all of a sudden, they start to really put a lot of weight on words, actions, et cetera. I think that's a pretty hard argument to make, is that even though you don't have outsized control, there's loud voices today, not because of how much Bitcoin they own, just because of they were early, or they've had, you know, unique thoughts, or whatever. I would even argue there's politicians who don't own Bitcoin, but they have become an important voice in the debate, whether they're pro or con. So it's kind of this weird dynamic where you probably can't own too much Bitcoin, but I think people will critique it anyways.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And then the second thing is, the more that this works, and micro strategy stock goes up, the more fast followers, the copycats will show up. And we already see people starting to do this around the world. You've got Summer Scientific, Meta Planet, you've got DeFi Technologies, you've got companies like Hut8, Marathon, et cetera, that are all doing this. And then you've got companies that are doing this for non-Bitcoin assets. So you've got Soul Strategies, which I'm involved with and a shareholder of in Canada. And I think you're going to start seeing more of these kind of show up and say, hey, look, we're going to be the micro strategy for name another asset. At the end of the day, if you don't want somebody to buy too much Bitcoin,

• 25:31Anthony Pompliano?

  go buy it yourself, right? Like, it is available to anyone. It's been available to anyone since 2009. And so the beauty of the industry is for 15 years, anyone with an internet connection had equal access to go and try to buy this. MicroStrategy has just figured out a way to get more capital than everyone else that wants to go do this. And so really, the innovation is on the capital side, less so than, oh, we have some secret, you know, deal with Satoshi that we can go buy Bitcoin and no one else can. It's, anyone can go buy it. It's just who has the conviction and the ability to go big. MicroStrategy is really proving that, you know, that there's benefits to being able to do that.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yep. Okay, something non, non Bitcoin. President Biden decided to, he sent shockwaves to Washington on Sunday night when he issued a pardon of his son Hunter, a move he previously vowed he wouldn't make. Can I give you my thoughts on this first before, okay? So, as a leader of the free world, probably not the best decision after you've said you would not meddle there and do that. But as a parent, I kind of get it. And also, I saw that you did a poll on Twitter and you were like, if you were president, would you pardon your son? And it was like 60 or 70% of people said yes.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  And I don't think that the issue necessarily is that Biden pardoned Hunter. I think the issue is that he pardoned him after saying he wouldn't.

• 27:04Anthony Pompliano?

  He lied.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Right, but, but politicians lie all the time, right?

• 27:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, that's why it's not surprising.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Or he changed his mind, right?

• 27:10Anthony Pompliano?

  He could have changed his mind, sure. What do you call it, lying, changing your mind, whatever? I 100% agree that people have more of a problem with the fact he said he wasn't going to do it and he did it, than just doing it. Guess what? If it was my son, I'd pardon him too.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  I remember a long time ago, you were like, before Biden leaves office, he's going to pardon Hunter.

• 27:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course!

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Because imagine having all that power and not doing it.

• 27:31Anthony Pompliano?

  The, my bigger point was... For the country, the better thing to have happened was Biden left office and Trump comes in and then Trump pardons Hunter.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Would he have done that?

• 27:43Anthony Pompliano?

  We don't know. We don't get to run that experiment, right? But if that had occurred, I think that it would have drastically cooled the partisanship

• 27:52Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 27:52Anthony Pompliano?

  in American politics, because they would have said, wow, this guy did this thing that we didn't expect him to do. Now, the counterargument to that is there's no way in hell that the Democrats were going to give Trump that win and let him have the opportunity to do that, right? Because they're basically seeding a political point to him. So again, it comes back to, forget all the politics and strategy and like, you know, all this like Monday morning quarterback. If you're a father and you've got the ability to help your son, there's very few people in the world who look at it and say, you should let your son suffer.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, doesn't mean that your son was right.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Doesn't mean that smoking crack and hanging out with prostitutes is what every dad should want their kid to do. Doesn't mean that bags of cocaine being found in the White House and no one knows where they came from aren't necessarily tied to your son. All that stuff, again, it is what it is, but you can only deal with the hand that you're dealt. And if you're the President of the United States and your son is potentially going to go to jail or whatever, and you've got the ability to pardon him, I think that more than 60% of people do it. I think it's cute to vote on a Twitter poll.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:02Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think that it's more like 90% of people say, I'm not going to let my kids suffer.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Right. I, um, I was actually more surprised by the Democrats' opinion of the situation than I was the Republicans.

• 29:16Anthony Pompliano?

  You want, just real quick?

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, why?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Why?

• 29:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Well, A, because they were surprised that a politician lied or changed his mind, but B, because I actually saw more Democrats speaking out against it than I expected.

• 29:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, because it's all, it's like, uh, a lot of people who were critiquing it want to play the like morality game.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Nobody's above the law.

• 29:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, sure. Well, you know what else I think Trump should do or Biden should do? Here's one, uh, put your brain in a pretzel.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Let's, let's.

• 29:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that President Biden should pardon the January 6th,

• 29:55Anthony Pompliano?

  people who are convicted.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Why?

• 29:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, cool the tensions. Because, and also, from a strategy standpoint, if Trump is talking about doing it, you take the spotlight away from him to doing it. Correct. And I do think that Biden's got an element of just like, throw the middle finger to the establishment. You guys want to push me out of the race?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  If I was Biden, I would burn this shit down.

• 30:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, I mean, look, and to a degree, like, maybe that is what happened, right? Like, I, look, I actually don't even really like talking about all this politics stuff, but I do think it's very important for financial markets. But one of my questions that I've been talking to my friends in private about is twofold. One, do you think that Joe Biden and Jill Biden voted for President Trump?

• 30:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:37Anthony Pompliano?

  I would bet a lot of money they did.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  No way.

• 30:41Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't wear a red jumpsuit on election day?

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Ivanka wore a blue one.

• 30:45Anthony Pompliano?

  On election day?

• 30:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think so.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  It was like, I don't know.

• 30:50Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I don't think so.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  When Trump won, she was wearing a blue.

• 30:52Anthony Pompliano?

  So that's, that's one. Second is, do you think Donald Trump and Elon Musk are still friends in four years?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know.

• 30:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So like, like, those things are interesting to me because, again, it goes back to, politics has a very big impact on financial markets, especially if you get the leader over the last four years of one party, who is basically saying, I'm going to revolt against the party because I disagree. And he starts doing things to eat at it.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Well.

• 31:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And so was the pardoning of Hunter Biden a middle finger, a little bit to the Democratic establishment? Well, if you're going to continue on that track, what is the thing that you could do that would really stick it to them?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:28Anthony Pompliano?

  As you're leaving office? It would be the January 6th. Again, I'm not saying that he's going to do it or whatever. I'm just saying like, that track of what are the things that one could cool partisanship in America? But also, too, fall in line with this narrative that like, Joe Biden feels, you know, he needs to get revenge against the people who pushed him out of office. That would, that would be a pretty big F you to them.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  When I read about the pardoning of Hunter, my first thought was, I wonder if he always wanted to do that, but at the time when he said he would never do that, I wonder, he was still looking to be reelected as president. And I wonder if the pressure for him to say that was against his own wishes, right? So now that he's clearly not going to be president, he's like, I'm gonna do whatever I want. But

• 32:17Anthony Pompliano?

  It's possible.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  The reason that I said that I was surprised by the Democrats. So just some context for the people. Biden's pardon for Hunter is the most sweeping presidential pardon in decades since then President Ford issued a blanket pardon for former President Nixon. So it has, something like this hasn't been done since then. And then,

• 32:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you're talking about like the dates?

• 32:40Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 32:41Anthony Pompliano?

  So the pardon goes from January 1st, 2014 to present day, I believe. And it's kind of a weird date to pick. January 1st, 2014, like why 2014? Yeah. Oh, see, look, you're learning something right now. Let me break your brain. Ready? In, I believe, March or May of 2014 is when Hunter Biden joined the Ukrainian Business Board of Directors. And that's when a lot of the conversations about payments and, you know, 10% for the big guy, all that, all of the, maybe in the best way to describe it, questionable activities and behavior started to occur. And so if you go back and

• 33:22Anthony Pompliano?

  you start January 1st, 2014, it covers all that activity outside of the gun charges and drug charges. So if you give them a pardon for that, they can't come after them for anything else. And again, it goes back to whether that's true, not whatever, just like the easiest explanation is the most likely. A father had an opportunity to protect his son and he took the opportunity. You cannot fault him for doing it. The problem is, he said he wasn't gonna do it and then he did it and that's what pissed people off.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  So Democratic governor of Colorado Jared Polina said on Twitter, "While as a father, I certainly understand President Joe Biden's natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation."

• 34:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Stop it.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  That's ridiculous, like grandstanding of...

• 34:18Anthony Pompliano?

  This is the same, uh, the same political party who said, uh, Joe Biden is a hero because he, uh, put the country above his political aspirations by stepping down, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Spun this whole little cute fairy tale story and then it comes out that they literally threatened him and they basically pushed him out and it was like a, you know, a hardcore, uh, like, uh, essentially coup or whatever. Right? So you look at that and you say, wait a second here. Take away all the, the nonsense, all the descriptive stuff, whatever, just what are the facts? And at the end of the day, a father is gonna protect the son. And, and actually I would argue even a step further is, uh, do we want someone to run the country?

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Who wouldn't?

• 35:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Who would not protect their kid?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 35:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Again, does it make it right, wrong, whatever? Everyone wants black and white. There's a ton of gray here, but I just don't think anyone should be surprised by it.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  I just think people love their like moral high ground of BS.

• 35:14Anthony Pompliano?

  These, listen, half the people who are critiquing him are the same people when their kid gets detention at school. They show up and they're like, let me see your supervisor, right? Nerds. And, and so like, you, you wanna save your kid?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Putting family above the country.

• 35:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Come on, stop it. Um, and, and so again, it comes back to this idea of, uh...

• 35:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I also think people don't look at like what the crimes were, the gun charges, the prostitution stuff, the like drugs, like all the bullshit, whatever the videos, the laptop, all stuff. It's all bad things that are illegal, obviously, but as far as we know, caveat, uh, it's not like Hunter Biden was like selling state secrets to, you know, some like, you know, foreign government or something. Now, there might've been some access stuff that allegedly occurred. And so that's where they're kind of this pardon, you know, people start to talk about that stuff. But here, here's, I think the bigger thing is my biggest takeaway from all this. And again,

• 36:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I look at it through an investor lens. The current president of the United States has 40 to 50 days, whatever the exact, you know, days are. If he's in a F it mood, there's some uncertainty and some chaos and some volatility that could pop up. We've already seen now two things that suggest to me that the current president of the United States, until Trump is sworn in, is in a mood and a mindset that's going to introduce a lot of volatility.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Did Trump ever talk about what him and Biden were like laughing about, being so chatty about?

• 36:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Nah, but I did like when Biden was like, welcome back.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  That's what he said.

• 36:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so he said the thing, but, but hold on one second. So, so one is the Hunter Biden, right? Dropping the news on a Sunday after, a Sunday night, uh, kind of a just like screw it, I'm pardoning him. He didn't wait till the last day, right? He did in December or whatever. The second one is, there's been a little bit of ratcheting up of that Ukraine, Russia conflict, where now all of a sudden Ukraine is shooting some missiles offensively, from what I understand. And so again, it comes into this thing of like, is the current president of the United States in a mood where he's just like, screw it. I got 45 days. Let's go out in a blaze of glory.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  What do you think Biden's legacy is going to be in 20 years?

• 37:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Is really, really, really hard to predict that stuff.

• 37:45Anthony Pompliano?

  But one way to think about it is

• 37:50Anthony Pompliano?

  if you look back through history and you ask someone, who are the presidents of the United States? There are some people who could name, you know, all 46 of them.

• 38:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Most people will say something to the effect of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, then they'll jump to like an FDR. Maybe they'll hit you with a Richard Nixon and a, you know, JFK.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  A Reagan.

• 38:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And then, yeah, maybe a Reagan and then like the last two or three. And the reason why I say that is most presidents are not remembered. Yes, you can go and look who the president was or whatever, but like you could rattle off a bunch of names and you could say to somebody like, what are they known for? What do they do? And majority of people would say, I don't know.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And so

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Well, in 20 years, I think we'll still remember Biden, but

• 38:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, people remember Clinton, Bush, obviously, like also because in recent memory. But the further you go away, I do think that presidents end up having defining moments or defining pieces of legislation. And it's not for me to judge. But if you look at Trump, I actually think a lot of the defining thing is just like the domination of the media cycle.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, like he was famous. And he was controversial and like seared in people's brain. Not necessarily because of any individual, you know, piece of legislation, etc. But like, that is a reason why he'll be remembered

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:24Anthony Pompliano?

  From his first term. With Biden.

• 39:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Stock market is at all time highs right now. Fifty-three different all-time highs just in this year alone. I mean, it's incredible. Bitcoin, all-time highs, right? There's a whole bunch of things that he would rattle off that say that he accomplished whatever, right? Whether you agree with him or not.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  But he-

• 39:43Anthony Pompliano?

  But was, but was there a defining piece of legislation or defining moment that 50 years from now, people will point back to?

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Depending on whether this pardon sets a precedent, he may be remembered for that.

• 39:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that there's a lot of people who will definitely remember it because it's a unique thing. But that's where I go back to again and say to myself, as an investor, I'm watching politics like a hawk right now because we have this window of time-

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Of uncertain-

• 40:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Where I've now seen two data points that suggest that President of the United States may be ready to do some things that are non-traditional, that would introduce uncertainty, volatility and chaos into financial markets unintentionally.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wait, do you want to hear a fun fact?

• 40:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Sure.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  You may not know. Did you know that every president at the end of their tenure writes a handwritten letter?

• 40:41Anthony Pompliano?

  To the next president?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and leaves it on the desk for-

• 40:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you know that so does the Chief of Staff?

• 40:44Speaker 02

  I did not know that. But anyway-

• 40:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So yes, I did know.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  I wonder, sometimes, Anthony, sometimes, stop it. Wait, what was I gonna say?

• 40:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, broke her brain.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  You knew the Chief of Staff thing, you didn't know the President thing.

• 41:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I did know. The Chief of Staff does-

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Okay, well, sometimes they make it public, and I think it's interesting to see, especially when parties are switching, what they write. So I wonder what Biden will write to Trump this time.

• 41:13Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what if he just writes a letter just scathing?

• 41:16Speaker 02

  P.S. P.S. I voted for you.

• 41:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, that'd be hilarious, right? Now, look, it's a, there's a lot of nonsense in politics. There's a lot of stuff that isn't worth paying attention to. But right now, specifically, I really do think that politics in particular is going to have a big impact on financial markets. You've got, obviously, the crypto regulation stuff, which we talked about earlier. You've got a lot of stuff going on in terms of what the president is doing right now that is introducing this uncertainty. And then I do think that third is, you know, one of the things I keep coming back to, I'm at 36 years old, I still got a long time to play this game. And so I look at the two parties and I say to myself, okay, it's very clear that the Republican Party's got a lot of young talent. And so you can kind of see, okay, what is the future, you know, of the party? If they're in power, what are kind of some of the things they care about?

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Players.

• 42:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, like, just, there's a lot of, you don't get clarity, but at least you get like directional. Like, these are the things they care about. These are the people who are likely to be around for a long time. Here's the people who, you know, J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy. You just go down the list. Like, there's a bunch of these folks, right? And you can kind of say, like, okay, I kind of see where this party's going. On the left, there are a couple of young stars, right? I think that you've got like a Ro Khanna, you've got a Richie Torres, you've got even an AOC, you know, whatever.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 42:29Anthony Pompliano?

  But, but the, the young stars are actually two different groups. I would put the Ro Khanna's and the Richie Torres's in kind of like a left of center. They seem to be pretty practical, rational, and they're like, look, I'm a Democrat, but, you know, I want to figure things out, et cetera. And then you've got a group of kind of quote-unquote younger stars that are farther left, and it feels like the country kind of rejected that view.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, like, are those people relevant 20 years from now? I don't know, we're gonna find out. And so I do think that paying attention to this stuff is important because I want to have the context as we keep moving forward to understand how these people think. What are they doing? How does this work?

• 43:18Speaker 02

  And you have friends on both sides of the aisle. I mean, politician friends. Like, you know people on the left and the right. And I think that, honestly, like, as long as they're rational people.

• 43:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I've had on the podcast Republicans and Democrats. I've talked in private to Republicans and Democrats. I have been impressed by Republicans and Democrats. I've also thought that both Republicans and Democrat people I've met are dumb asses. Right. And everything in between. And so it's like, to me, the right and the left is less interesting. I really think about, are you focused on the future or are you focused on the past? Like, that is how I cut the people that I meet. And thankfully, most of the young people that I've met, they are focused on the future and they're kind of rational. They're pro-technology. They're, you know, understand this stuff. But we need a lot more of them.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  One time, a few years ago, Anthony and I met with a Republican politician. I will not name him. And we went to his office, we talked, and we came out and I was like, wow, he's like so charismatic. That's not what I was expecting. And Anthony goes, yep, he's a politician.

• 44:23Anthony Pompliano?

  That's his job. Right? So, but I mean, look, and again, you know, I've said this now a number of times, but like, I used to be able to say that none of my smartest friends wanted to go into the government. I can no longer say that, right? A number of them. And I actually believe that a very easy prediction is that I should get no credit if this becomes true because it's so obvious. Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, is going to be the new Harvard.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  You think?

• 44:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. If you go and you work in DOGE, you're working with Vivek and Elon. It's going to become this whole thing. And it's going to be like being early employee at Facebook or having graduated from Harvard. Or, you know, name your thing, Goldman in the 90s or whatever.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Something like a DOGE continues to exist in, across future administrations?

• 45:11Anthony Pompliano?

  No, they've already said that they're going to end it after like a year or two. But I think that the idea of it hopefully will persist. And yeah, I just think that there's a lot of people that I know who want to go work inside that organization. They're people I would have never guessed, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs. I know one founder in particular that is like, I will shut down my company and go work for them tomorrow.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 45:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you hear that and you're just like, well, hold on a second. Let's not shut down the company. But also, man, that's a pretty strong statement to, you know, want to go and work there.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Fascinating. Okay, um, Trump threatens 100% tariff on BRICS, BRIC nations if they try to replace the dollar. So just for those who don't know, um, major world powers, China and Russia are part of the BRICS alliance, along with Brazil, India, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE. Um, so Donald Trump is saying that he would impose 100% tariffs on this block of nine nations if they were to create a rival currency to the US dollar. But I was reading that and like, can't you argue that Bitcoin is a rival currency to the US dollar? Why not?

• 46:23Anthony Pompliano?

  No, because Bitcoin is a store of value, whereas the dollar is actually a true currency that's used. Like, nobody wants to spend their Bitcoin, but they all want to spend their-

• 46:30Speaker 02

  But in the future, they could?

• 46:31Anthony Pompliano?

  They could, uh, but right now it's not a threat. Right now it is, you know, digital gold.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  So why is he saying that then?

• 46:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Because he doesn't want somebody to create a thing that is, you know, competitive with the US dollar. And, you know, look, it's this weird thing where, um, on one hand, you want a free market, right? Let people do whatever they want. Let the competition, you know, flow. Uh, on the other hand, um, if you have a pro nationalist view of the United States should continue to be the leader on the global stage, you know, protect our economy, do all this stuff, then he's doing, you know, what you would want to do. Like, you're, you're the big dog. You're, you're the bully, right? In, uh, in financial markets. And so you've got the ability. Everyone wants to transact with America.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 47:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what do you do? You use your weight to stop the competition. Um, this happens in business. Obviously it happens, you know, in competition of economies. Um, I just wonder how many times do you get to go to the tariff, you know, bag of tricks until people say, wait a second, he's never actually gonna do it.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  But why is he even saying that, given that none of these nations have ever created anything that could rival the US dollar?

• 47:38Anthony Pompliano?

  That could because they keep talking about it. And so it's like-

• 47:41Speaker 02

  But could they realistically?

• 47:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think I think that they could it because ultimately what you would do is it's like the classic innovator's dilemma, right? What you basically do is you say, hey, we're going to get together some of the biggest countries. We're all now going to trade together using this new thing. So you're able to pull somewhat of a network effect immediately. And then what you do is you don't go compete head on with the dollar. Instead, you go to places like in different African nations in Latin America, etc. And you basically seeded into areas where the dollar is not as strong, where people don't have access to the dollar. You basically beat them to the punch. And so then all of a sudden, you kind of disrupt them, right? It's like you're going downstream to try to to beat them. Again, I don't think that the United States has to worry about this right now, but I do think that

• 48:25Speaker 02

  It sends a message.

• 48:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, look, Donald Trump promised and ran on from a campaign standpoint, he's going to use tariffs as kind of a stick.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Loves a tariff.

• 48:33Anthony Pompliano?

  It's pretty powerful, right? It's very, very powerful. And so, you know, if you think of Canada, it just came out recently that he threatened the 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada. They freaked out. Mexican president called them that day, like an hour later. And then, you know, our old boy Trudeau, he flew down to Mar-a-Lago after he was done, you know, censoring all the truckers and taking away all their freedom. And he got to Mar-a-Lago. And supposedly, he said to Trump, it's now coming from two sources that were at the table with them. It's been reported on the news. So, you know, hopefully it's true.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  What is it?

• 49:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Trudeau said to Trump, if you impose this tariff, it will cripple the Canadian economy. And Trump said to him, well, if you can't survive without ripping off Americans, then maybe you should just become the 51st state of America, and you can be the governor.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 49:24Anthony Pompliano?

  That's the type that's the type of American energy we need as president.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 49:29Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think Trudeau did then? He put his little tail between his legs, got back on his plane, even though he's, you know, obviously trying not to create any climate change and flew his private jet back to Canada and said, shit, must we want everyone saying A in the 51st state of America? Well, we better get in line. And he put a statement out the next day, and he said, we're going to do our best to close the border.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 49:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, again, it's not just a threat of the tariff, right? I mean, there's something in your head that is just innate. You can't teach someone sitting there with a Canadian prime minister. And tell him you could be the 51st state of America.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  Big dogging him.

• 50:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, that's just, that's an innate thing that comes from somebody who has decades of experience in negotiating.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  I just think that now politicians like Trudeau are realizing that they don't have the majority on their side. I think they used to think everybody hated Trump. Everybody wanted to see Trump fail. And now I think that the, the energy has shifted, the environment has shifted and Trudeau no longer has that support. So he kinda has to play by Trump's rules.

• 50:37Anthony Pompliano?

  The will of the people will ultimately be expressed. It may take a long time.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  God, I love democracy.

• 50:42Anthony Pompliano?

  It may take a long time, but ultimately the will of the people will be expressed.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Okay. And I was told to ask you about Elon Musk getting his salary blocked.

• 50:51Anthony Pompliano?

  This is nonsense.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Tell me.

• 50:53Anthony Pompliano?

  These judges, they're activists. This is insane.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  What happened?

• 50:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Elon Musk had a pay package that was created where he basically said, I'm gonna bet on myself. I'm gonna get paid no money, but if I have the stock reach a certain price, then I get a lot of money.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 51:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Most simple terms. Shareholders voted on it. They approved it and Elon delivered. He, the company went and hit the milestones. He said, great, you owe me $55 billion. That was the deal. And a shareholder who has nine shares of the company sued and said that's excessive pay.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 51:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Even though the shareholders had voted on it and it was approved by the board. And the first judge said, you're right, that's excessive pay. So Elon appealed it and he recently went to a second judge. And that judge said, no, I agree, that is excessive pay. You can't get that. And oh, by the way, you also have to pay $350 million to the lawyers who brought this case.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 51:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And my point is if a judge can violate the will of the shareholder, you don't have a private company anymore. You now have a state-run enterprise.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 51:57Anthony Pompliano?

  That's what they do in communist countries. We're not talking about did they break the law, not break the law, any of this stuff.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And the best part is

• 52:05Speaker 02

  It was done by

• 52:05Anthony Pompliano?

  The second time they went back on the appeal, they had held another shareholder vote. So the shareholders knew that the judge had struck down the first one. And so they went back and said, let's do this again. Do you believe that Elon Musk deserves the money? And all the shareholders voted and said, yes. And this judge is still saying no. Well, who's in charge? Who runs the company? Do the shareholders own the business? Or is it a state run enterprise?

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 52:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And so if we want to live in a capitalistic country, then the will of the shareholder should ultimately triumph. And so he'll appeal, he'll go to the Delaware Supreme Court. I'm sure they'll hear the case, depending on what they do, he may go all the way to the Supreme Court. And if he goes to Supreme Court, I got a hard time believing that Elon Musk ain't getting paid. And you're talking about a guy who's averaging a multi-billion dollar company. He starts every five years for the last 30 years. Guy is just on a hell of a bender as an entrepreneur.

• 53:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Put another feather in his cap. He takes all his Supreme Courts and he makes, you know, 55 to 100 billion dollars, whatever the stock's worth now. I think there's a lot of people who say, you know what? Good for that guy. Good for that guy standing up for the right thing. And so we'll see what happens. There's still a long way to go. But yeah, I just don't think that you want judges coming in, playing Monday morning quarterback, determining what is too much pay when the shareholders approve something.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:27Anthony Pompliano?

  It's different if a CEO just says, I'm just going to take the money.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And shareholders throw a fit and they're like, hey, this isn't right.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:34Anthony Pompliano?

  But majority of shareholders are saying, no, we voted for this once. He did what he said he was going to do. He deserves the money. A judge struck it down. We vote again. We approve it a second time. And now they strike it down a second time? Now it's very clear that the shareholders will is not being exercised. And I just don't think that that's very American.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. That's all I have for you today.

• 53:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks, guys, for tuning in.