#1465 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Bitcoin Has Entered A New Era

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 why bitcoin is coming to every single corner of the financial market, Mark Zuckerberg and META committing to free speech, why he is moving some of his teams out of California, why you have to pay attention to the congestion pricing in New York City, Justin Trudeau, and how the media is evolving over time. ======================= Ledger has been trusted for 10 years to secure 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management. Go to ledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future ======================= 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. All right, guys. What's going on? Today I've got an amazing episode with Polina Pompliano. She is the founder of The Profile and the author of a great book called Hidden Genius. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin. It's back over $100,000 and I explain to you why Bitcoin is coming to every corner of the financial system and what it means for you and your portfolio.

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Then we get into Mark Zuckerberg and Meta. He just came out with a brand new video where he recommits to free speech. He's moving some of his teams out of California and he talks about what he thinks content is going to look like in the new era of Donald Trump as president. On top of that, we then get into congestion pricing and its new tax that was put in in New York City. Why you need to pay attention is because this tax is coming to a city near you and it's ultimately another insane move by the government to take money out of your pocket. And then last but not least, we finish up with Justin Trudeau and what's going on in Canada? Why weak leadership ends up leading to bad situations? And then we even talk about the media and how the media is evolving over time and where we think that's going as well. This conversation is packed with tons of insights and a few hot takes that you may or may not agree with. So we'd love to hear what you agree with and what you don't.

• 1:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Leave a comment or let us know on Twitter. Here's my latest conversation with Paulina Pompliano.

• 1:37Speaker 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.

• 2:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Ledger. They're celebrating 10 years as the most trusted name in crypto security. With over 7 million users and 20% of the world's digital assets secured, Ledger continues to lead the way in protecting your crypto and digital ownership. Their latest devices, Ledger Stacks and Ledger Flex, feature the world's first secure touchscreens, making managing your assets easier and safer than ever. Plus, the new Ledger Security Key app offers a secure alternative to traditional passwords, enhancing your digital security. Go to ledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future. That's ledgerpomp.com. L-E-D-G-E-R-pomp.com. Today's episode is brought to you by Bitkey. They are the hardware wallet built for Bitcoin. They're made by the team behind Square and Cash App.

• 2:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitkey makes securely managing your Bitcoin absurdly simple. Bitkey is integrated with partners like Cash App, Coinbase, Robinhood, and Blockchain.com, so you can easily compare prices across exchanges before you buy or sell. And their app works like the money apps you already use, because simplicity is the best form of security. Send, receive, and track your wallet value over time, all in one place. Time Magazine named Bitkey one of the best inventions of 2024. Their simple three-key approach to self-custody replaces complex features like seed phrases that make traditional wallets hard to use and easy to lose. Give the gift of simplified self-custody to the Bitcoin person in your life. And if that's you, get Bitkey and sit back and relax while the sats stack. For a limited time, you can get Bitkey for $99. That's $51 off the normal price.

• 3:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Get yours today, online at Amazon, Best Buy, or bitkey.world. That's B-I-T-K-E-Y dot world. Go check out Bitkey today and start securely managing your Bitcoin in an absurdly simple way.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Bitcoin is over $100,000. MicroStrategy is buying more. And you said that Bitcoin, the Bitcoin. You said Bitcoin is the new S and P 500.

• 3:55Anthony Pompliano?

  We're back. Everyone who thought Bitcoin was over, it had peaked, the bull market was over, they're wrong, and we're back. Already back over $100,000. $100,000 is a very important threshold because it's a psychological thing. Below $100,000, the number is just smaller than it was over $100,000. And so I think that whenever we are over $100,000, people get excited, they realize Bitcoin is winning. Now, the most interesting part to me is, yes, I do believe that Bitcoin is the new S and P 500. The S and P 500 is benefiting from a lot of nonsense, but it's not even outperforming gold. And so anytime that you have a benchmark that can be outperformed by a commodity with no cash flows, it's probably not a good benchmark. The reason why all of the hedge funds like to pick the S and P 500

• 4:37Anthony Pompliano?

  is because they think that they can beat it. But most of them don't. There's only a handful of hedge funds that actually beat the S and P 500 every year. Nobody beats Bitcoin. There's not one hedge fund that beat Bitcoin. So if you can't beat it, you gotta buy it. That's my general philosophy. Now, here's what I think is the most interesting part about Bitcoin right now, is we saw the adoption of Bitcoin. It started with individuals, then we got the financial institutions started to come in, and the public corporations. Everyone knows that whole story. Obviously, the ETF is the greatest product launch in Wall Street history. Michael Saylor, Michael Strategy, many of the copycats, they're all buying Bitcoin as well. But most people are not yet talking about this idea of taking Bitcoin and it infiltrating into the corners of traditional finance. What I mean by that is, the Newmark CEO came out, he said, "Look, we're going to offer

• 5:22Anthony Pompliano?

  a brand-new type of mortgage on real estate that allows you to, rather than cash out in dollars, what we are going to do is we are going to give you the money, you pay off your old loan, you now have our new loan. Any additional money can be either used to improve the property or to buy Bitcoin, and that Bitcoin becomes part of the collateral package." Now, all of a sudden, you have real estate and Bitcoin coming together. A second example, you have Grant Cardone. He recently launched a Bitcoin real estate fund. He said, "I want to buy a piece of real estate, you guys are going to give me money, I think it's like $87 million. I'm going to buy the real estate, which is like $70, $75 million, the rest I'm going to put in Bitcoin, and then the cash flow that comes off of this property, I'm going to buy more Bitcoin inside of the fund, rather than pay out it..."

• 6:06Anthony Pompliano?

  As a dividend, I'm going to get you more and more Bitcoin exposure. Interesting. Then we can go and we can look at something like Michael Saylor's brand new perpetual preferred equity. What that means is basically it's a new type or it's it's an old type, but it's new for micro strategy. Way to get different type of investors to invest in these companies. So insurance companies, for example, really like these ideas because it's a perpetual offering that has yield, etc. Next, we can then go to BlackRock. BlackRock took their fixed income fund, they call it the Strategic Income Opportunities Fund or something, which is just traditional fixed income. And they got approval and then bought Bitcoin inside of that fund. So you take fixed income, you take Bitcoin, you put those two together.

• 6:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, I think the Bitcoin allocation is small, it's like a single digit percentage. But if you're competing with all of the other fixed income funds and you got a little bit of Bitcoin, you're likely to outperform. So now you have the best performing fixed income fund. Next, you have Meanwhile, a company that is a private startup. They're doing Bitcoin life insurance. So the policy and the payout is denominated in Bitcoin. Now, why do I go through all those examples? It's because what we are seeing is that only a certain percentage of people are going to buy more than 1 to 5% of their portfolio in Bitcoin. Most people are just going to buy between 1 to 5% or say, hey, I got some Bitcoin, it sits over there. I don't do anything with it, I just hold it, 1 to 5%. But if Bitcoin wants to continue to get more and more capital inflows, sure, there's large pools of capital that just buy direct.

• 7:35Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think the next big, big leg of capital to come into Bitcoin is actually through these other types of products. So a lot of people have more than 5% in real estate. A lot of people have more than 5% in fixed income. A lot of people have more than 5% in their life insurance policy. And so what's going to happen is Bitcoin is going to infiltrate into these corners. People are going to be buying life insurance, fixed income, real estate, etc. But they're going to be getting kind of indirect exposure to Bitcoin. When that happens, I think that that will be a massive inflow of capital for Bitcoin. There's only 21 million, it's a finite supply. That will continue to be this persistent bid for Bitcoin and the price will continue to go up over the coming years.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Very interesting. What do you think the next psychological threshold is?

• 8:16Anthony Pompliano?

  A million dollars.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Not even like 500K?

• 8:19Anthony Pompliano?

  No, million dollars. You gotta put a zero on it. And so we're going to a million dollars. I don't know when it's gonna happen, but I do think that Bitcoin will hit a million dollars one day. And when you think about that, look, it's 10x from here. A lot of people get excited about 10x. A lot of people don't get excited about 10x. It depends on what the timeframe is. And one of the things that I think Bitcoin investors are really good at is seeing into the future. What they're probably really bad at is doing relative comparisons. And so if Bitcoin takes 20 years to get to a million dollars, that's obviously not as great of a return as if it does it in three years.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I do think that there's this element of trying to figure out, okay, what is the compound annual growth rate going to be moving forward? Now, there are people who will argue that the 50, 60% that it's averaged over the last couple of years, if we just extrapolate that out, Bitcoin goes to a really high price. I personally believe that the compound annual growth rate of Bitcoin is going to continue to go down as the asset gets larger. That's usually what happens. If that occurs, it doesn't mean that it's gonna go to 5%, right? It's probably gonna still continue to outperform the stock market. And so maybe it's at 20, 25, 30%, maybe it's 35%, still very attractive rate of return. You're still outperforming most hedge funds, but all of a sudden, it's gonna extend that amount of time it takes to get to a million dollars, etc.

• 9:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I think that's really the thing to think about is like, what is going to be the compound annual growth rate of Bitcoin moving forward? If you could know that number, then you would know whether you should be buying Bitcoin or doing something else, right? But if it's 5%, you probably can generate 5% somewhere else. If it's 40%, well, there's not very many people in the world who can generate more than 40% a year, every single year. And so Bitcoin obviously would be the, if you can't beat it, then you gotta buy it.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Let me ask you like a personal, somewhat personal question.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  I watched you kind of go through this journey of like finding out about Bitcoin, understanding what it is, sitting there, learning about it in 2017, but like, nobody was talking about it to now where everybody's talking about it, everybody's buying it. How do you feel now?

• 10:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's see what happens.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  But like, do you feel a little like?

• 10:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Vindicated?

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Vindicated or like, you know, like it paid off, you know?

• 10:38Anthony Pompliano?

  No, look, I think that there's an element of, um, when I first discovered Bitcoin, I thought that I'd missed it. Right? Uh, in 2016, uh, I started mining ETH and, and, you know, started getting into this whole space, et cetera. Uh, I was like, oh my God, I'd heard about this years ago. Why didn't I buy any? I mean, very common, I think, experience for people.

• 11:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think that I really fully understood how much the legacy financial system did not like Bitcoin, or how dumb they thought it was until 2018. So really 2016, 2017 was all like, my experience was on the internet. Uh, and people there loved it, right? They, they, they were understanding it. They were adopting it. It was very kind of a bottoms up thing. Uh, in 2018, there are three experiences that I had, um, that I think really hammered home to me, oh my God, these people don't get it. The first was, uh, I went on CNBC and Kevin O'Leary was screaming at me saying that he forbid me from putting 50% of my net worth or more in Bitcoin. Uh, he was telling me how dumb it was, et cetera. Now, I love Kevin. We've become friends. Uh, he's incredibly smart. And the reason why you know he's smart is because he changed his mind.

• 11:46Anthony Pompliano?

  He's got new information. He changed his mind, right? But I remember being like, oh my God, like this guy's like on TV. I'd never met him before. Uh, he was had a very visceral reaction, uh, to this and, um, man, they, they are bringing me on TV because they think I'm like the idiot in the room and they're, and they're like, you know, uh, using me as like the whipping boy. Like, okay, that, that's kind of crazy. The second experience was, um, I went and, uh, Mark Usko, uh, took me to go meet Julian Robertson. Julian Robertson is obviously a, a very famous guy who unfortunately recently passed away and-

• 12:19Speaker 02

  And Mark Usko is Morgan Creek.

• 12:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and Mark took me to go meet Julian, uh, to talk about Bitcoin. And Julian is famous because, uh, he had Tiger Management. He seeded a bunch of, uh, other hedge funds, uh, you know, uh, Tiger Global, et cetera. And in that conversation, I saw what it was like to be somebody later in their life, but still remaining intensely curious. He was asking questions. He was bringing in analysts. Like he just wanted to understand it, right? And I think he was like 80 something years old at the time. Uh, so it was a surreal experience. But when we left, I remember saying to myself, I don't know if he's gonna buy any. Right? Like, like, like, he's obviously super curious. He like, it's easy to see why this guy's been

• 13:00Anthony Pompliano?

  successful, because still at this age, he his mind wasn't really rigid, etc. Like, he wanted to be successful. Then we went, and I don't want to say who the investor is, but we went to go see another kind of legend of Wall Street, somebody that everyone would know, everyone is very fond of. He actually has a fantastic reputation. A very short meeting. It was only about 12 to 15 minutes. It was not supposed to be 12 to 15 minutes, supposed to be a regular meeting. But when we started talking about Bitcoin, he kind of had this attitude towards me of like, oh, that's like a cute thing. Like, leave your papers here. We'll look at it. Like, thanks for coming. And I remember walking outside and Mark was very disappointed, because this was a guy I had known for a long time. You know, he thought that the guy would be a little bit more receptive to it. And I remember

• 13:42Anthony Pompliano?

  saying to Mark that I was excited that the guy had that reaction. And Mark was like, what are you talking about? Like, you know, we could have raised money, we could have done whatever. And I said, no, Mark, that's the opportunity. The opportunity is that that guy could go buy a lot of Bitcoin right now, but he's not going to. Because he doesn't get it, he doesn't care, he's not intellectually curious, etc. Our opportunity is that we can go buy the Bitcoin before he buys the Bitcoin. Right?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Did he, do you know if he ever bought Bitcoin or changed his mind?

• 14:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Funny enough, a couple of years later, this guy's son reached out to me, and he said, hey, I've been trying to convince my dad of this. Would you mind doing a Zoom call with me and my dad? And so I did it. And, you know, I said to him, I said, look, you know, you probably don't remember, but I came to your office, this whole thing. He was incredibly polite, etc. And one of the things he said to me was, he goes, you know, I'm not in the business of identifying disruptive technologies. So I'm not surprised that when you told me about something new, I kind of, you know, pulled away. He goes, because actually, I'm in the business of finding things that don't change. Right? So it's kind of a Warren Buffett versus maybe like a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. And

• 14:49Anthony Pompliano?

  so what was interesting to me is this guy now is starting to, one, as a family, they've bought some, but now he's in a certain investment field where Bitcoin is starting to Kind of infiltrate. And so some of the products that they are going to be buying or creating probably will have Bitcoin in it, not because there's some crazy Bitcoin bull, but because they understand, hey, if we have our traditional kind of investment strategy and we put a little bit of Bitcoin, there's a lot of value that can get created there. And so I just think that, you know, if you kind of look back over the last almost decade or so, it's not so much about being vindicated or being right, wrong, etc. What I think is the most interesting part is that Bitcoin

• 15:31Anthony Pompliano?

  taught me about everything else. It was through the lens of Bitcoin that I learned so much about monetary policy, that I learned about geopolitics, that I learned about energy, that I learned about, you know, infrastructure, that I learned about all these different things, even history. And now, what is cool to see is that there are people who are coming into the market who bring a different level of validation and bring a different level of knowledge. And so Bitcoin is this thing that if you're interested in it, I think you can remain intellectually curious, you continue to learn more and more. And it's like, you know, the perpetual preferred equity offering, I had no clue what that was. I hear it, I gotta go research it, I gotta go do it, whatever, right? And all of a sudden, you're like, okay, cool, I get it. Like, I understand why it is. You can look in history and see all the people who've done this. You can go and you can check out,

• 16:14Anthony Pompliano?

  you know, who currently has these out there, whatever. And I think that's the beauty of Bitcoin. And so, you know, I think one of the things Bitcoin will do is teach you to be intellectually humble and say, hey, look, it's not about being right or wrong. It's about trying to constantly understand something that is ever changing. And if you can do that and kind of sit in the student's seat more than the teacher's seat, then it's this incredible experience that I'm glad that I had.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Very cool. Bitcoin is your second best investment.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  I'm the first, in case somebody didn't get that.

• 16:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I appreciate, if you have to explain the joke, it's probably not a good joke.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  All right, let's move on. So Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Meta, formerly known as Facebook, he posted a video on Instagram and the caption is, "It's time to get back to our roots around free expression. We're replacing fact checkers with community notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes. Looking forward to this next chapter." Is he just taking a page out of Elon Musk's playbook?

• 17:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, look, there is, um, there's been two factions in American culture over the last, I don't know, maybe 10 years or so. And part of, uh, the faction that I'm gonna put as the like, left, the woke faction, whatever descriptor you want to use, right? I think it's very clear, like, there are people who were not for free speech, there are people who were for free speech. The people who were not for free speech, I don't think they woke up one day and they're like, "I'm not for free speech." What happened is it was death by a thousand cuts. And Zuck, uh, mentions it in, uh, the video, but I actually think that, uh, these were well-intentioned people who were pursuing inclusiveness. Yeah.

• 18:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And so inclusiveness means that you can't offend anyone. Well. And so, by being inclusive, what that really morphed, that terminology morphed to was, "We are held hostage by the most extreme people." Because they will stand on the outside of our inclusive circle and yell and scream, "Say, you're not including me." And so if you just constantly keep doing that over and over again, then eventually you're like, "Oh, we include everyone." And you're like, "Oh, my God, there's like a wolf in the hen house." No, it's like, there's nothing we can say now. And so, simple things like, "We probably should not be encouraging people who are doing really nasty, illegal things with children."

• 18:47Anthony Pompliano?

  It's simple, right? We also should be looking at things like, uh, what is the power of the internet? The power of the internet is that it allows anyone to speak to anyone else. It allows anyone to transact with anyone else. It allows anyone to actually, uh, conduct commerce, to send data, et cetera, with anybody else. That's the beauty of the internet. What these platforms started to do was they got put in a position, mostly through political pressure, some of it through, like, societal pressure. To become the gatekeepers. To become the, the referee. And so when you become the referee, all, you can't be right. And so, I think that, uh, if you go and you look at a lot of, uh, CEO speeches, this is our interviews, this is a great example.

• 19:32Anthony Pompliano?

  CEOs have a point of view. If you go talk to a CEO in private, whether it's Zuck or anybody else, they have a personal opinion on things. And usually, they tend to be pro-business. They tend to be, you know, pro-economy, they're capitalist, they believe in democracy, all these things. It is very rare to find a communist CEO, right? It is very rare to find somebody who is just off their rocker in terms of the social issues that is a CEO. And so, why is it that that's their belief behind closed doors, but they don't actually go and talk about it publicly? Well, a huge reason of it is, it's all about risk mitigation. And so what they do is they say, "Okay, this is my belief." And somebody on their team says, "Well, we can't say this, and I don't offend this group. Oh, can't say that because that'll offend this group. Oh, you can't say that because somebody on the internet will twist the words into the..." And by the time you go

• 20:17Anthony Pompliano?

  through this whole process, it's like you took your personal beliefs, and now it's just like glob, right? It's just this, "We would like to be inclusive of everyone in the world," right? Like, well, guess what? We shouldn't include everyone in the world, and we gotta be okay saying that. If you're a bad person, you shouldn't be included. If you're an extremist, you shouldn't be included. Like, that is okay. If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. And that's basically what happened with that faction of people, is they said, "We are accepting of all views." Inherently, that means that you are accepting of people that are doing illegal things, that have radical views, that are extremists, etc. So obviously, if you are

• 21:01Anthony Pompliano?

  saying, "We are accepting of all views," at the same time, you are then going and deplatforming, critiquing, de-emphasizing, etc. content that is critiquing some of those views. Well, you can't be for all views. And so, again, it just becomes that faction became held hostage by the extremist. And so, what happened here, I think, is a couple of things. The first is, the country rejected that view. The country said, "We've had enough of this." And I think that what's really interesting is this idea of the A/B test in politics, where you had Trump, then you had Biden, and it's very clear that the country said, "Hey, we want this perspective rather than this other perspective," right? And you saw it like, you know, I, I, I've never met Kamala Harris.

• 21:45Anthony Pompliano?

  But when I heard that she didn't go on Joe Rogan on the podcast, the largest media outlet in the world. Because people on her team said, if you go on his, if you go talk to him, you're going to offend some people.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  I thought it was that she wanted him to come to her and he was like.

• 22:01Anthony Pompliano?

  No, it came out later that the team advised her that if she went on, he, uh, she was going to offend some group, whatever. Who knows if that's even true, but that's the story that came out. And so you look at that, you say, wait a second, how in the world is it that one side doesn't even want to talk? They're scared because they may offend somebody in their own party. It's, it's crazy, right? So then you say to yourself, okay, the country has a certain perspective. They put a guy back in office, right? Trump is coming into office who has a very specific view of embracing free speech. On top of that, you have the world's richest man who said, I'm going to buy one of these platforms. I want to instill free speech. And so now you have an example, it can be done.

• 22:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And one of the things that, you know, uh, I, I'm very sympathetic to Zuck for, which I think that people frankly, don't give them enough credit for. Is I worked at Facebook, right? I interacted with Zuck on numerous occasions. I've seen how that team operates, et cetera. These people are not malicious. They are not negligent. They are not trying to, you know, put some weird view out in the world, et cetera. What happens is they are constantly under barrage from law enforcement and politics. These people are constantly coming at them. And so what do you do, right? It takes immense risk to stand up against that stuff.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  And because if you look at it, Zuckerberg, this is, he's newly kind of in the spotlight. He was never really out there. He would, you know, make statements via Facebook post or letter. He was never like actively sharing his view.

• 23:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I think that a huge piece of it, and this is my personal opinion. I never heard him or anybody else at that company say it, but I do think that he became very media shy. Once the situation with Kara Swisher happened onstage.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  The same thing. If you guys haven't seen this, I mean, it's very hard to find the video. I don't know why. Um, but he was onstage at Recode and with Kara Swisher, um, getting interviewed, uh, about all sorts of. Uh, she, yeah, she was like, oh, are you sweating? Take off your hoodie. Let me see you sw- like, let me see if you sweated through it. And he was like, I'm not gonna take off my hoodie. She made him in front of everybody, take off his hoodie and then paraded that. It was it. I.

• 24:17Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a bully.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that was unnecessary and not professional or journalistic, but some would argue.

• 24:23Anthony Pompliano?

  So if you think, if you think about that, like, the media also is a huge part of this because the media felt like they had weapons. If you're not inclusive, we're gonna come for you. But there is safety in numbers. It took one courageous person to come out and say, I don't care if you come for me. Another one, a third one of it. Now I can list 50 CEOs who say, I do not care. You are not the media anymore. We are the media. Zuck did not do this. He didn't go on a show, do an interview. He didn't go to the papers. He literally sat down. It's a cell phone video and he posted it directly on his platform. And guess what? It's the talk of the world today. He went direct to the audience. And so that is ultimately what has happened now is that the media overplayed their hand.

• 25:08Anthony Pompliano?

  They kept going and canceling people and going after them, et cetera. So the finally people said, yeah, we've all been canceled. Every single one of us has been canceled.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 25:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? I, me personally, have had people come after me. I mean, you remember, there was a time on Twitter where there is an individual who literally, I tweeted something to the effect of, hard work never goes out of style. I don't remember the exact words, but I said something about hard work.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  And this was like 2018, maybe 17?

• 25:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And somebody came after me and said that I was racist for it.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  And, and, uh, and sexist.

• 25:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Racist sexist. What? This is the whole cancel culture playbook. They came after me and it became this huge thing, whatever. And I just sat there and I was just like, I just don't care. Maybe it's my personality or whatever. Like, I know who I am. My friends know who I am, et cetera. And it bothered the hell out of me because after that, this person then DM'd me and asked me for money for their company.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  It was like a shakedown. She said, I'll stop if you invest in my company. I was like, I cannot believe, and I was a reporter at the time and I knew who this was. And I was like, it blows my mind that people do this.

• 26:17Anthony Pompliano?

  So that's the whole game. And the world has had enough. And so now, all of a sudden, we have these CEOs who are saying, I'm not going to participate in this anymore. And he references it. He says, look, it's incredibly hard to operate when the government is operating against you. And so with Trump coming in, obviously, that's not going to happen. Now, two other things that I want to mention real quick on this. One is Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook or Meta just put Dana White on their board of directors. You want to say that there's a big vibe shift? Dana White isn't exactly your buttoned up corporate CEO. And so putting him on there, one, Dana White's an incredible operator. He's a great CEO, and he's built an amazing business in terms of entertainment, etc. And I bet there's a lot of technology and AI, etc., that's coming to that business. And so he'll

• 26:59Anthony Pompliano?

  be a great resource. But he also is very close to Donald Trump, and he really understands and has his finger on the pulse of what society is doing. And so Zuck is not just talking, he's taking actions here. And then the second thing that he's doing is he's moving some of the teams out of California to Texas. Now, he said, I think, I can't remember if he said perception of bias or to remove bias. But it is very clear that politicians overplayed their hand as well. And so it goes back to, America was built on taking risk. It was built on giving people freedom. And it was built on government being small and out of the way.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, but.

• 27:34Anthony Pompliano?

  But that's not what happened over the last couple of years. And now the internet and these digital natives are going to take that back.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  And but do you know what I kind of think about all this like culture shift and vibe shift, as you call it, is that it's almost like the cool girl effect. It used to be very cool, like you gained social capital by canceling people and by being someone to point fingers and say, oh, they did this. And did you see their Twitter history? And like all this stuff like that used to be

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Only with nerds and losers.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Well, right. But that used to be considered the cool thing to do. Now that's out of style and now the cool thing is like common sense. So I think that where you place the cool factor, that's what's gonna grow.

• 28:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and also the media and others, they pioneered the cancel culture playbook. And they taught it to the people on the internet. And now the people on the internet can weaponize it back. And so they now what they do, you can see this, right? If you say dumb things, we have a voice too. And really, the the entire power dynamic was based on previously, we as the media have a voice. We as the platform have power. You as an individual are susceptible to our rules. Again, this is something that I very, very intimately understand. We've had our, we've had videos taken down. We've been censored. We have had tons of issues banking wise, etc. Right? And generally, we're not that controversial.

• 29:04Anthony Pompliano?

  We're not that, you know, doing anything too crazy. There are people who are way more controversial that deal with this on a day to day basis. I'm talking about over a decade, you know, maybe four or five, maybe six incidents. But there are people who've dealt with this every single week. There are people who still are kicked off the platform. And I go back and I constantly remind people that

• 29:24Anthony Pompliano?

  if you want to see ultimately how the future will play out. The number one thing that I will keep reminding people of in the digital age is that eventually the people's voice will be heard. You can trick them. You can slow them down. You can provide friction, you can do all stuff. But eventually the people's voice will be heard. And the people's voice has been hurt. They put the president they wanted into the White House. They pushed back and they've got people to cave on the platforms. Right? Free speech is making a comeback. The people's voice is now being implemented. It took a long time. There's a lot of people's careers that got derailed. There's a lot of people who had to kind of fight the fight. But ultimately, the people's voice is prevailing.

• 30:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that that is going to be a huge theme of the next 10 to 15 years.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  All right, let's talk about the people's voices not prevailing. Congestion pricing was introduced in New York City on Sunday after a late attempt by officials in New Jersey to stop it in court failed. The measure which charges many drivers $9 to enter Manhattan during peak hours is intended to bring relief to the country's most populated city. According to traffic data analysis, New York had the worst traffic in the world in 2023. Drivers lost 101 hours to traffic during peak commuting times. Is this really about traffic or is this about collecting some money?

• 30:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, there's a couple of things that are worth paying attention to. The reason why every single person in the United States should pay attention to this is because the New York City is the first city in the country to implement a congestion tax. This is coming to the rest of the country.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  You think so?

• 31:01Anthony Pompliano?

  It's in Europe.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  I mean, Atlanta's got, they got some congestion.

• 31:04Anthony Pompliano?

  It is coming to other cities in America. Once it is implemented.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  It is in Europe?

• 31:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, this is, the, the, the, New York City did not invent this. They borrowed this from, from other places. They've now implemented it. Other cities are going to start asking themselves, should we do it? The second thing I'm going to say is that whoever created the terminology congestion tax is a moron. Just call it a toll.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? People are used to paying tolls. The second you put tax in the name, of course, people are going to freak out. Stop taxing me, stop taxing me, right? No tax without representation. It's literally built into the DNA of this country. But tolls is really what this is because it's not just during peak hours. You get, have to pay whether it's at midnight, you have to pay on weekends, you have to pay during the week. They just implemented a toll. Okay.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  And it's also not just to enter the city. It's if you want to go uptown.

• 31:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Basically, they just implemented this thing where anywhere below 60th Street, right? You gotta pay. Now here's what people are not talking about is yes, that is the actual thing that the government implemented. How are companies like taxis, Uber, Lyft, et cetera, doing this? Taxi drivers.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was talking to.

• 32:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I talked to one and he said, every single time you get in a taxi, it used to be $4. That's the flat fee. Now it is going to be $4.75. He showed me it's $4. Seventy five cents. That seventy five cents difference is what the taxi companies are putting on every single ride to make up for the nine dollar a day uh uh tax. On top of that, Uber and Lyft, they now are adding some to every single ride as well. And so you don't end up just paying the nine dollars. What happens is every single time you take a ride, you are going to pay some of this on these ride sharing services or in taxis. So if you go back and you look at this, my number one problem with the entire situation is that uh they estimate they're gonna raise five hundred million dollars to do this, right? If they, everything plays out how they say they're

• 32:58Anthony Pompliano?

  gonna get five hundred million dollars. Every year, the MTA loses out on seven hundred million dollars by allowing people to jump over the turnstile.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  I don't know if they allow it.

• 33:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, what else would you call it? Where this has been happening for years? Why is it that when I go to certain uh news organizations, they have the equivalent of a turnstile, but guess what they have? It's not just a rotator where I can easily jump over. Instead, it's these doors, they pop, they're fully closed.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Costs money.

• 33:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Nearly impossible to jump over, right? Then they open, you walk through. You see this at airports, etc. Again, maybe it costs money, but again, it goes back to if you actually want to stop the bad behavior, there are solutions. The solution is not, oh, screw it, let the people keep jumping over the turnstiles and let's take the money from the good actors. You're punishing good people because the bad people are getting away with doing bad things. So why don't we, again, common sense, go after the bad people and stop punishing the good people? And then how stupid do you have to be if you have an area where there is commerce happening to try to deter people from going to the area of commerce?

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, very dumb. I mean, what are all the businesses above Sixtieth Street saying?

• 34:16Anthony Pompliano?

  You mean below 60th Street?

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Oh, sorry.

• 34:18Anthony Pompliano?

  They fought it.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Below 60th Street.

• 34:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, they fought it for a while. So there is something called the Partnership for New York City. Kathy Wilde runs that organization. She's a fantastic woman, very well connected. I think probably one of the most important people in New York City. And she pushed back a lot on the congestion tax on behalf of her members. Because at first it was going to be $15. So here's a very interesting idea, which is if somebody could actually fix the MTA's budget, they spend over $19 billion. They have more than 74,000 employees. If you can't find $500 million of savings in a $19 billion budget, we need new people running the MTA. Right? And so ultimately, this congestion tax is not a thing about New York City.

• 35:03Anthony Pompliano?

  New Yorkers will figure it out, right? People in the tri-state area will figure it out. But this is something that now is going to come to the rest of the country. And it's because ultimately, these cities, this infrastructure, they're broke. They are bankrupt. They cannot operate. And so either we put people in positions that can actually operate these things and make them sustainable, or we are going to have the state and federal governments have to keep funding this stuff. And so what does that do? It puts immense pressure on the national debt. It devalues the currency and ultimately, again, hurts the people because the ones who are holding cash end up being the ones who have their currency devalued away. And so it goes from if you want to solve this problem in the United States, you got to have the politicians in Washington stop spending like idiots.

• 35:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you got to have people at the individual local state level who can actually run these organizations and say, we're not going to run at a loss. We're not going to keep dipping into the state or federal piggy bank because we can't figure out how to take $19 billion a year and run this organization.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And then my favorite part is that the firefighters, they came out and they said, our members used to drive their personal vehicles into New York City to take on extra shifts, to provide more coverage, to do all this stuff.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  It has ripple effects, right?

• 36:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Our members are no longer going to drive their personal vehicles. They've told us they're not going to do it. So we're going to have to buy vans with taxpayer money to go pick up our members because this tax is on our on them. So again, this is a blanket tax. There's no, oh, policemen, firemen, paramedics, they don't have to pay the tax. I saw a story that said, if you have a funeral hearse, taking a dead body, you gotta pay the tax, right? So everyone gets treated the same, which on one hand, okay, got it. Everyone gets treated the same. But on the second hand is, if all of a sudden the firefighters aren't driving in, we might not like that. Right? What are the repercussions to that? And so there's all of this complexity around this thing. But ultimately, this is an example of you have politicians who are implementing

• 36:58Anthony Pompliano?

  a really, really dumb idea, because they are simply trying to play math, where rather than, say, how do we get more money? They should be saying, how do we spend less with abuse, fraud, and inefficiency? And if they were better at the spending part, they wouldn't need to drive more revenue. But ultimately, they don't know how to do that. And so the only thing they know how to do is add more tax.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. I'm looking at these tools to enter the congestion zone, and it's a lot of money.

• 37:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it's like $500 a month approximately, depending on how many days you come in, etc. So the average worker now has to pay, if you drive your car, you have to pay $500 extra a month, which is six grand a year. I don't do public math, but I think that's right. And so from there, then you get, uh, what if somebody gets paid 120 grand pre-tax?

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And let's just say that they pay 30K in taxes. They're paying the tolls with post-tax dollars. All of a sudden, you start saying, wait a second here. These people are paying high, single-digit percentage of their take-home pay for a tax.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  And if you think about it, the people coming into the city, many of them, you know, work normal jobs. It's not like you're taxing the billionaires.

• 38:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  It's crazy. And, um,

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Why do you think other cities will start to implement this just to make more money for the

• 38:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Because idiots love to copy idiots.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Clip that.

• 38:28Anthony Pompliano?

  It's true.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  I'm gonna start up. Okay.

• 38:31Anthony Pompliano?

  No, idiots love to copy idiots. And so if you're an idiot and you belong to the idiot club and you see somebody else in the club doing something stupid, you can't help yourself. Like, oh, my God, great idea. And then you go and you try to implement.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  So what, did people not vote on this? I don't.

• 38:46Anthony Pompliano?

  There is an entire faction of people who, I mean, just cracks me up. They believe that there will be less pollution because of this tax.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 38:59Anthony Pompliano?

  And here's the crazy part is the only country in the world that matters for the environment is China. It doesn't matter what the US does. China is the biggest polluter in the world. So unless you are able to do something in China, no matter what the United States does, it will not matter.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 39:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And so the people who are celebrating this, again, it's all virtue signaling. It's all part of the cancel culture crowd, etc.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  I'm so tired of virtue signaling.

• 39:28Anthony Pompliano?

  They're in the streets, literally claiming victory. But what is hilarious to me is they don't realize that they're actually plotting their own demise in doing this.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Oh, I did not realize that. Sorry, this is back to our former topic, but I didn't realize that Meta is moving the trust and safety from California to Texas.

• 39:49Anthony Pompliano?

  That's what I said, yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  Oh, I did not hear that.

• 39:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  Interesting. Don't clip that. Okay. All right. Let's talk about Justin Trudeau. He has announced his resignation as leader of Canada's governing party after nearly a decade. God, he's been there forever as prime minister. Trudeau said that he will stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen. He said this country deserves a real choice in the next election.

• 40:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Congratulations to my Canadian brothers and sisters. Congratulations. The people's voice will eventually be heard. They hate this guy. His approval rating is below 30%. He can't help it. And I actually feel bad for Justin Trudeau.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Why?

• 40:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Because he's probably got an incredibly low amount of testosterone. And when he's got a low amount of testosterone, he's susceptible to being convinced to do all kinds of dumb things, like the trucker protest. That guy should have been out of there on that alone. Is you basically have people expressing their free, um, speech, and then you threaten to take their children away. People forget how nasty they got towards that trucker protest. Right? The government threatened to take people's children away because they were saying, what you are implementing is not correct. The people ended up being right. The truckers ended up being right. But the government tried to use all of their power and might to crush those individuals.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, guess what? The people's voice was eventually heard. I cannot tell you how many videos I saw of people walking up to Justin Trudeau at various events saying, uh, uh, uh, you know, sir, sir, sir, go up. And he thinks that they're there to take a picture or to shake his hand or whatever. And they're like, let's take a picture. And they'd be on a video. And then they would be like, F you, Justin Trudeau, you slum bag, blah, blah, blah, blah. And just like go at them on video over and over. It just became cool to do because they literally did not like the guy. And so, again, I said, I feel bad for him because I don't think that he's ever had a ounce of strength in his bones. But to be a leader of a country, you have to

• 42:00Anthony Pompliano?

  approach it from a position of power and strength. You have to lead. If you, again, get co-opted by this, we're going to include everyone, you get held hostage by the extremist. And Canada is a perfect example. A lot of the dumb ideas in Canada were from the extremist saying, oh, my God, they're saying this, they're saying that, they won't let me do this, they won't let me do that. Good. That's the point. You're an extremist. The rest of society doesn't agree with you. And so it comes back to this idea that if we want to live in this digital world, if we all want to have peace, prosperity, high GDP production,

• 42:45Anthony Pompliano?

  if we want people to actually live a better life than their parents lived, etc., you have to stand for something. And when you put weak leaders into these positions, they don't stand for anything. And the worst kind are the ones who say all the right things, but then when the time comes, they don't stand for it. And that's the category I put him in. Because if you listen to him over the years, he actually says a lot of the right things. But when it came time, what did he do? Right? And so if you go back and you look at times in history where people were better off, it's always with strong leadership. And strong leaders know, I don't need to dictate things. I can simply empower people to do what they want to do.

• 43:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I will give them free speech, let them talk about what they want. I will give them the ability to have freedom of commerce and transactions. Let them commerce how they would like. That is ultimately what the leadership ends up being. And so Justin Trudeau is the antithetical leader to that. And that's why he's no longer there.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Isn't it kind of cool to circle back to our Bitcoin conversation about how things being distributed is a good thing? Even in things like leadership and government, things like Meta, I mean, they're instituting community notes. No longer is Zuck gonna be the, you know, this is good speech, this is bad speech. Now there's gonna be community notes. Let the people, you know, flag it.

• 44:15Anthony Pompliano?

  The fact checkers are one of the stains on American society over the last 10 years.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  What fact checkers?

• 44:21Anthony Pompliano?

  The people who sit in these fact checker seats, because they're all full of shit, right? They would literally sit there and you saw it, right? Here's a great example. Do you remember in the presidential debate, on numerous occasions, they tried to fact check Trump? And then it came out, like there was one, I think about violent crime, right? And they said, oh, that's not true, blah, blah, blah, whatever, like fact checked them. And then literally three days later, the FBI went and they updated their numbers and he was right. Right? And I'm sure it happens on the other side. It's not just a right thing or a left thing. It happens on all precise political spectrum. Go back to the lab leak theory. Remember when we weren't allowed to talk about that? Remember when they were deplatforming people from that? The US government now says that's the most likely cause of it.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  But again, like, I mean, things evolve and like we get more information to a story. So it's not fair to say-

• 45:09Anthony Pompliano?

  How did they know then? There was, there was research done. There was, it was obvious.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's better, it's probably more accurate to say this is a developing story than call it a fake fact, a fake news.

• 45:20Anthony Pompliano?

  You can say whatever you want, but at the end of the day, I can go through example after example after example. The Hunter Biden laptop story. The fact checker said, that's not real. They lied. The government knew that it was real. And so when you look at this over and over and over again, nobody has a monopoly on facts. Inherently, the fact checker believes that they are the arbiter of right and wrong, of truth and false. And so get rid of them. Because that's not the world we live in. Instead, let people figure it out for themselves. If you're so concerned about truth, then go into the grocery store and get the tabloids and don't let them post the things that they post. Cause there's

• 46:03Anthony Pompliano?

  all kinds of crazy stuff going on there. But if you're not willing to go and actually oversee that, then you shouldn't be overseeing the conversation online. And so the fact checkers are just absolute stain on American society.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Wait, just, oh, go ahead.

• 46:19Anthony Pompliano?

  You know who else falls in that category? The misinformation reporters.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Like that they report on misinformation?

• 46:26Anthony Pompliano?

  They're the ones who they're like, they're basically fact checkers, right? Is they come out, they say, uh, that's misinformation. How many times have they been wrong? The misinformation people, the, the irony is the misinformation reporters are full of misinformation.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Do you remember that New York Times story that came out when, what was that app that everybody was using to talk? During the pandemic, like to chat, audio clubhouse clubhouse. And the New York Times had that story about like, they are allowing unfettered conversations. Like, people are just talking.

• 46:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  That was crazy. That was crazy.

• 47:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, because you've heard that you've heard John Kerry say it, that free speech is an impediment to their plan. You've heard the the media talk about it. They don't want people to transact. They do not want people to talk unless it is approved speech or it is approved transactions. The internet is taking a sledgehammer to that idea.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  I really hope that all of this kind of manifests itself into what is considered journalism and media today. I don't think is true journalism and media because of, I think it's just advocacy, right? So I hope this like, freedom of speech and whatever has a resurgence into you are there to be a journalist, not to be an advocate for a cause.

• 47:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, you and I probably disagree on this. I don't think the idea of journalism that has previously been presented is a real thing. I think that there is no such thing as unbiased or objective reporting.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  No, but there's some, there's a fourth estate to check power, right? Like powerful institutions like the government. Somebody needs to be watching to report on what are they doing as accurately as possible. So we, the people, know what's going on.

• 48:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I think what ends up happening, and again, I'm not some media expert that knows the future, right? But I do think that what ends up happening is you're going to start to see less of an emphasis on this idea of we're objective, we're unbiased, I have no opinion, which is obviously not true. It's a human. If you go talk to these people, I know them, right? If I talk to them, they have opinions.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  You know, the journalists of today.

• 48:40Anthony Pompliano?

  So, no, no, but these are even people who have been around for a long time, etc., right? They've always had opinions.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 48:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Just say your opinion. You can still report the facts. You can still do all that, but tell people, show the transparency. That's what the internet did. The internet ushered in, I want to know what you believe. You're the journalist. You did all the work. You went and found all the facts. You did all the journalistic work, but then just tell me-

• 48:59Speaker 02

  So you want analysis?

• 49:01Anthony Pompliano?

  But that's the whole thing.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  You don't just want, here is what happened. You want-

• 49:05Anthony Pompliano?

  That's not, that doesn't exist in the world. Because when the people write the quote-unquote "objective," you know, "here are the facts," what we have learned is they constantly are twisting the facts. They constantly are injecting indirectly their opinions. And the most extreme version is the advocacy that you're talking about, etc. But I would argue that the world will be better, and there'll be better checks on power. Like, think of all the reporters who were sitting there and were being told that Biden was sharp as a tack. Right? It took three minutes for the American people to see the man onstage in a debate, and people felt bad for him.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Yes, but I, you see, again, I think that this is this like new wave of, because we're Democrats and we don't want this quote-unquote "dangerous" Trump to go into power, we're going to go against journalistic ethics and not report things and not show the reality of the situation. I just think that there's a new crop of quote-unquote journalists who were raised on blogs and who are raised on advocacy, and they don't know that there's journalistic ethics. And like, that you should try to be as unbiased as possible. You should go look at documents with facts and report that instead of-

• 50:20Anthony Pompliano?

  My argument is that you should be as biased as possible and just tell us the bias, and then we have competing bias.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, then you have-

• 50:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I want to know, what is the-

• 50:27Speaker 02

  But then you have a divided country in which people believe different things over the same set of facts.

• 50:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, it's different opinions, of course.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  And then you get Biden, half the country's like, "Oh, he's great," and the other half the country's like, "Oh, he's not mentally well."

• 50:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. But then, but then you show them the video, and you have them talk, and then people are like, "Oh, obviously this." And over time, what happens is people build up trust with certain individuals based on their analysis that-

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Analysis. It's a Substack theory. Because I read the Free Press, I know what the Free Press's bias is, and I choose to read it. I also read other things where I know like the author's personal bias.

• 51:05Anthony Pompliano?

  The Free Press is gonna be bigger than the New York Times one day.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Probably. But, but my, my thing is that I think we've just like swung so far on the advocacy-

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Swing that there's room in the middle like there is room to objectively report facts like what the Associated Press or Reuters used to be.

• 51:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  But anyway, okay.

• 51:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So some of those organizations.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Agree to disagree.

• 51:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I think some of those organizations are going to be uh um even crazier. If you can hide behind, oh, I don't have an opinion. It gives you license to indirectly pull the strings. That's the problem.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  I mean, I see what you're saying. It's just that.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  All right, you guys just saw the.

• 51:49Anthony Pompliano?

  You guys see that? See, you guys ever want to see a private conversation with Clinton and I? Can I ask you two questions before I let you go?

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Why you love my blazer? I'll tell you. I mean, I've just.

• 51:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you're in your equestrian era. Can you tell us you read the Free Press? What are the other media outlets that you consume?

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Well, I do read a lot of Bloomberg. I read the New York Times. But, you know, I know what I'm getting into. I read the Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Magazine. Yeah, I read. Oh, yeah. Well, Twitter.

• 52:24Anthony Pompliano?

  You consume a lot of X. You have two feeds on X. You have the one they give you and then you have me just constantly DMing you all of the red pills.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  But see, again, another thing with like X becoming a, oh, you know, freedom of speech, whatever, which I agree that speech should be free, but how, what percentage of your feed on X is fake? I mean, a lot of it is like manipulated video, things that didn't actually happen. People were doing it for retweets and likes. And you're like, I don't even know it's true anymore.

• 52:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, but if I read the mainstream media, same thing.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Nah.

• 52:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, there's a lot of manipulated videos. There's a lot of that type of stuff. I'm more informed. This is my test. Am I more informed or not reading X? I'm more informed. Am I more informed or not reading certain mainstream publications? I'm more informed. So like, give me all the information and let me decide what I believe and what I don't believe, rather than you act as the filter.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I get it.

• 53:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And you try to determine what's what's true and what's not.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  I mean, citizen journalism has always been a thing. It's not like it's new. It's just that all of us live on these platforms. So that's how you get.

• 53:33Anthony Pompliano?

  If Elon keeps saying you are the media now, people are going to start applying to places for media passes. Go to events and say, "I'm the media." Elon said it.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Uh, anyway.

• 53:43Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  That's all I got.

• 53:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I appreciate you doing this. Thanks so much, everyone, for listening. We'll see you guys next week.