Another Tragic Shooting In MN, Is China On The Brink After A Failed Coup, The Fed Bails Out The Yen

Key Takeaway

America faces escalating civil unrest, particularly in Minneapolis over ICE enforcement. The key lesson: never choose a tribal side - always think from first principles and call balls and strikes objectively. When you align with a tribe, you stop thinking clearly about second and third-order consequences. Stay on the fence, evaluate cause and effect, and make decisions based on facts, not narrative affiliation.

Episode Overview

This episode analyzes the rapidly deteriorating situation in Minneapolis following the ICE shooting of Alex Prey, exploring whether this represents the beginning of a modern civil war. Tom discusses the fragility of global systems, the coordinated resistance against federal immigration enforcement, and how both left and right political factions are maneuvering for permanent power. The conversation examines systemic fraud in Minnesota, the role of community organizing, and why Minneapolis has become the flashpoint for violent resistance compared to other states. Tom warns that both sides are on an escalatory path that could lead to actual civil conflict if cooler heads don't prevail.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Another Tragic Shooting In MN, Is China On The Brink After A Failed Coup, The Fed Bails Out The Yen from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Morning everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Billu Show Live. This was an insane weekend that had me very uh hesitant to actually begin planning for today's episode. I had been hearing rumors of everything that was shaking down. Uh, and yeah, diving into it all at once, it really did feel like a um, everyone everywhere all at once kind of moment where there are so many different parts of the world order, world stability, uh, just beginning to fray at the edges. It's getting pretty wild.

Uh, Minneapolis is on the brink of total collapse in the wake of the ice shooting and killing of Alex Prey. Barricades have been set up, agents have been bloodied, and hotels suspected of housing ICE agents have been put under siege by violent mobs. Governor Walls has deployed the National Guard at the request of Minneapolis Mayor Fry to help keep the peace, but they're simultaneously calling for continued resistance. And did a guest on Joe Rogan predict today's immigration riots back in 2023? I'm gonna put this one in conspiracy corner, but it is a fascinating argument that you are definitely going to want to hear because now that we've seen the signal chats get hacked and what's going on, uh, there is far more credence to it than I would have otherwise given it.

Besson signals that he's willing to devalue the dollar as a weapon in the global trade war. We'll see how far that's going to go, but there's so much happening right now in Japan. Rumors are flying that Xiinping's most recent purge of the Chinese military has resulted in a failed coup attempt. You heard that one right. Details are coming out. They are very sporadic and they are very confused. So, this is going to be one that uh not only are we going to cover today, but I imagine we're going to be covering a lot in the future.

So, keep your eyes on China. Speaking of keeping your eyes on China, Mom Donnie is making it clear that illegal immigrants do in fact get taxpayer dollars in New York City and they will not cooperate with ICE because the model playing out in Minneapolis is so wonderful. Why wouldn't you want to mimic it? Drew, this was a wild one. This is this was a wild one. This is one where I am realizing just how fragile the entire global ecosystem really is and seeing everything fraying here in the US at the same time that it's fraying everywhere.

We've talked a lot about this this you all of these forces are intertwined. They are all economic in nature. Uh, but somehow, man, when you hit that black ice and the back end of your car kicks out, you really realize how fast you're traveling and how dangerous things really are. Um, so yeah, keeping your eyes on the dollar, which is going down. Japanese yen, which is wildly unstable. Uh, obviously everything going on in Minnesota, it's wild. Yeah. Oh, and I didn't even mention the fact that a carrier strike group has arrived in Iran.

Like the the list of things to cover is way too it's getting crazy. Um insane. We need that uh DJ Khaled button. Another one cuz Ice just got another one. Just another one. Another one. And just keep pressing. Nah. Too soon. Um All right. Let's ground this. I hate how both funny and appropriate that is. Drew. All right. What was your read on Minnesota? Because that's definitely the thing we need to talk about. Yeah. Uh it wasn't good. It remains not good. But to lay down the facts, on January 24th, Alex Prey, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at a Minneapolis VA hospital, was shot and killed by ICE agents in the back, by the way, during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis.

Bystander videos make it pretty clear, and there's so many of them coming out. And they show that Prey himself was filming the federal agents as they made their way down the street on foot. The situation escalated when an agent shoved a woman to the ground. Prey stepped in to assist her, putting his arm around her, at which point agents pepper spray and grab him and force him to the ground. While Prey was pinned to the ground by several agents. Video pretty clearly shows the following. We're going to show some of this, but not all of it for reasons that'll be obvious.

But Prey was holding a cell phone in his right hand. An agent finds and removes, that's an important part of the story. An agent finds and removes a handgun from Freddy's waistband. Basically had it tucked in his back. Uh that agent then quickly turns around and walks off with the gun. Very shortly after that, as Prey continues to struggle, which we will certainly talk about that part of it, it, it, agents fire at least 10 shots over roughly 5 seconds, killing Prey right where he lay.

And if my read of the videos is accurate, the first shots go into his back. Man, it is horrific. And with the ability to watch the video over and over in slow motion, it seems like Prey is not only shot after being disarmed, but as I said, shot in the back multiple times. Needless to say, the narrative battle of what actually happened is raging. If you've seen the footage, it is very easy to understand why people are absolutely a gasast at this shooting. From where I'm sitting, the shooting is completely unjustified.

The man was disarmed. And yes, he was resisting, which for my money is absolutely lunatic behavior. However, shooting him full stop is horrific, but shooting him in the back is ghoullish. It is completely unforgivable. unforgivable. unforgivable. But as with so many things, as more and more detailed analysis kept coming out over the weekend, after the ridiculous claims that he was wielding a weapon, that he was aggressively threatening ICE agents with a gun, as all of that evaporated, a new narrative began to gain traction, namely that the gun that was removed from Prey allegedly misfired as the ICE agent whisked it away.

And it was the sound of the first shot that made the ICE officer shoot Prey, thinking he had a gun and was firing. Now, if you've seen the video, given how clumsy, jittery, and untrained the whole debacle looked, I would not be surprised if that's what happened. That doesn't mean that this is okay. It just means that the horrific, tragic sequence of events may have included the misfiring of the gun. Now, if you watch the video in slow motion, it really does look like the gun may have accidentally discharged.

Additionally, there are unverified reports that the gun was a Sig Sauer, a gun with multiple lawsuits alleging that it misfired. Now, at this point, I know the FBI has the gun in custody, so that might have been verified at this point. We'll have to look that up. But apparently, despite the Sig Sauer themselves, the company denying that the gun has any issues, it is an open secret apparently in the gun community that that particular gun will discharge without the trigger being pulled. Obviously, very rare, but seems to happen.

Now, regardless of whether the shooting ends up being incompetence or malice, it's shaping up to be the spark that lights all of the dynamite bundled up in Minnesota. And I am expecting things to continue to escalate from here, especially all the things that we've seen with the coordination, the instruction manuals on how to track and disrupt ICE, all of the signal groups that were infiltrated. So, we see just how much coordination there is. If I can bring a little Mike Benz to all of this, Mike Benz's read that NOS's have been specifically using tactics like this.

First, it was the CIA doing this kind of stuff abroad. Now, NOS's bringing this in uh to domestic use. So, all of that is going to be coming out as well. But this is uh an unmititigated disaster. And ultimately, it's going to be up to all of us to slow this down, to try to find ways to deescalate, to hopefully convince Trump that you cannot just keep pushing this forward. You can't keep escalating. You can't just keep hammering people until morale improves. Like, that isn't going to work.

Especially not if this is an organized resistance. And I understand there are going to be people on the right whose inclination is one of emotion that you just you can't let people get away with this that you have to hammer them down. You absolutely have to get law and order back in place. There is no doubt about that. But you've got to get law and order on the back of cooperation with local uh state government. I think the reason that we're seeing all of this pop off in Minnesota and not elsewhere is multivariat.

We're going to be talking about the depth of the fraud and all of that. But I think a big part of the reason that you're seeing this escalation in Minnesota is because we don't have that cooperation. And if the federal government makes the mistake of having an only up escalatory response, uh then the people are going to be justified more and more for pushing back. Remember, we have a second amendment in this country for a reason. We had a founding father who believed and stated very clearly that liberty is secured or must be watered, I think was the exact quote, must be watered by the blood of patriots and um the tyrannical alike.

alike. alike. So this is one of those things where you've got a nation with a history of using weapons to stand up against tyrannical governments. You have it baked into our DNA. And so if you just use the hammer, then you're going to see further and further escalation and people are going to needlessly die. So, while I think it is insane to resist arrest, uh at the same time, I think it is insane to send a roving band of angry young men uh into these situations without the necessary level of restraint or even feeling of safety uh so that they can in a coordinated fashion calm these things down.

But that's not what's happening. And so, uh, I certainly don't agree with Minnesota's response, but I don't agree with the current federal response, which is only making things worse. worse. worse. It seems like on the surface level, this is, you know, ICE is a gangster killing civilians and they're unmasked men terrorizing communities. Um, but do you think that this is deeper? Like, is this the our modern-day civil war? Is there something, you know, is it an insurrection? What's kind of your general read on the the totality of what's going on not just in Minnesota but in America period.

We are a strange species. And once people understand that we are evolutionarily shaped to be a social creature and that I believe the way that you achieve balance in a social animal is you have to have different roles and different people keep things in check. So everything from chronoype why some people want to stay up late why other people get up early. Well, if you put us all together as a village, the late night people stay up for ages and then the morning people wake up really early and you've more or less got 24-hour coverage.

Uh, when you think about the left and the right divide, something that I've talked a lot about, you've got people that really believe in compassion, incredibly beneficial to social cohesion, and then you have people that believe in social responsibility. It's the way that you deal with the game theoretic of you'll get the um bottom feeders that are going to do nothing and just reap the rewards of of of the compassion and so they won't contribute to the group. And so all of that stuff becomes incredibly important to getting human civilization to the point that it's at.

But it has all of these weird ways that it manifests. I say all of that because I believe that for a very long I believe that humans are such that there are always elements that believe that the country whatever country is balanced in the wrong direction and they are trying to undermine that country at all times. This is what you see going on in China. So here you have the reds win and I liken Mamani to China because he has the same impulses that this needs to be top down.

we're going to take care of everybody. Don't worry if we have to like break some things. No big deal. Uh it's how you get stability. I think that's inherent to humans. I don't think that's inherent to China or America. It's just humans have this bifurcation. And this is why you see these debates over what type of um society we should have. So within America, for a very long time, there have been people that want to see capitalism destroyed. and modern technology has allowed for a level of cooperation that we've never seen before.

And so I think that the slow march through the institutions as they call it um which is a very Marxist idea has been going on for decades and we're now seeing it manifest in the extreme in Minnesota. And I think that there are a lot of things tied from uh people that believe that borders should be open because this is stolen land and nobody's illegal. And so therefore, um, it anybody should be welcomed into this country. They're wildly economically illiterate. They have no idea. But I'll even grant them that they really mean it.

That they're really coming from a place of compassion. You've got that. Then you've got people that understand, oh, I can use that chaos to gain power. Uh, and I think that you're certainly seeing that in terms of who's more likely to vote for me. Let me get a bunch of people in here that are going to vote. Uh, we're now seeing in the same way that Doge was like, hey, there's a lot of financial fraud. people like, "No, there's not." And now we're seeing that there really is like an obscene amount of fraud.

Uh you're seeing the same things with voter registration. So, hey, there's voter fraud. No, there's not. Don't be ridiculous. Oh, we found one voter. That's like comical. And now, I forget which state it was, but there was a report that came out that there's a state that has 33% duplication rate. Uh and so you're I think you're going to see more and more things like that coming out where we realize Yeah. Like if we know that game theory says any element of the design of a system that can be exploited will be exploited.

When you see people say it is now illegal to run an ICE operation around a polling booth, you have to ask what why would illegals be near a polling booth anyway? That should be like the dumbest place to go look for somebody illegal because they would never be there because they can't vote. Uh, and so if we're trying to set up laws that say you can't enforce immigration around a polling place, you should raise your hand and say, "No, no, no. That that is clearly meant to abuse the system." That to me is just like if you said, "Uh, you cannot enforce um child sex trafficking laws around schools." You'd be like, "Hold on.

Of all the places that we should want that to be, that would be one of them. Of all the places, everybody should just be like, be like, be like, "Yeah, you can't uh have illegal immigrants going into a polling place. We're all good with that because it shouldn't be happening. We don't think it is happening." And so, if they want to put, you know, they want to waste their dollars and put them there, cool, no problem. But that's not what you're seeing. You're seeing them specifically say, "You can't run ICE enforcement around these polls." And they're trying to get that passed through the legislature.

So, it's like I have a feeling you're going to see that what's really going on underneath is a coordinated effort of a populist left and a populist right both trying to fight for permanent power. They both want to be in power forever. And so, the very thing that we have to watch out for are the techniques that the left and the right, they will be different techniques, same goal, the techniques that they're each going to be using to try and remain in power forever. And so, um, I will ask the eternal question once again.

Do you prefer your fascism in a left flavor or a right flavor? Because right now, in a moment of populism, clearly that's what you're getting. That's what rises to the top. So, um, I look at this and see basically two elements of fascism clashing and they're it's horrific. and trying to reach into the soul of America to say, "Okay, how do we begin to back out of this? It's people that have to be aware that um the human mind is governed by something like the laws of physics and that's why over historical time periods we are so predictable and if those things are predictable then there are actions that we can take to unwind that.

So, uh, the shock of all shocks of aerodynamics is that if you want to take off with an airplane, you don't fly with the wind, you fly in to the wind. And that's the very thing that allows you through aerodynamics to jump up into the sky. And so, we have to find a way to recognize, okay, there are ways to calm this all down. They are going to be largely economic, but at this point, things are from a psychological perspective, the two sides are racing away from each other.

so rapidly that we have to get people to start running a thought experiment basically of where does this lead and if people want a civil war and they believe in that then we have to understand that okay from a first principles perspective if people believe this ends in civil war and that's what they want and it won't be a north south divide uh I don't understand people who are like oh how would that even play out it will play out literally what you're witnessing now is Um, if civil war is a spectrum, you're already on the path.

So, it will look like this. It will be um violence encouraged by the local state government um to fight for the left or the right. And so, right states will do right things and left states will do left things. Uh, and whoever's in power, they're going to fight against it. And when it's your side, it just feels just. when it's not your side, then it feels like people trying to decoher the country. But it's really the same phenomenon. And so people have to go, okay, are we at that point where now I'm prepared to use violence?

Because be very clear, if these things continue to ratchet up regardless of the state, the federal government has to act. And if a state tries to secede from the union, I don't think that will be met peacefully. That will be met with violence. violence. violence. That would be suicidal though. So what is that? Certainly hasn't stopped us historically and I don't see anything in the human character that would stop us. I think historically we at least had more economic bandwidth to do that. I think any state other than California would do that, but I wouldn't even put it on California because they rely on federal funds for the short budget shortfalls that they do have.

So, so I think seceding is is taught, but go ahead. ahead. ahead. Let me run a scenario for you. Um, Um, Um, forget seceding from the nation. Take Minnesota. Minnesota. Minnesota. Minnesota right now, I promise you, in private conversations, it goes something like this. like this. like this. Um, immigration has become a burden on Trump. Used to be a signature policy. Not anymore. It's now a liability. Keep this up. We have to make sure that he loses the midterms. Once he loses the midterms, we impeach him and then we arrest him.

We arrest JD arrest him. We arrest JD Vance. We arrest Cash Patel, Pam Bondi, and we're gonna put them in prison. Then we're going to regain power and we are going to do, they won't call it an inquisition, but we're going to do an inquisition and we are going to arrest and jail everybody that we feel um was creating this problem. And so it will be a call it soft power coup where it's just just just blue states coordinating with blue states to resist all what they view as a red uh federal government doing these things and then when it flips it will be the opposite and then it will be red states doing things to styy blue leadership.

the way that Trump is responding. Um I don't the Supreme Court will almost certainly strike this down, but uh he's going to do something like I think he already said as of February 1st, no dollars go to um I don't remember that if it's like they won't cooperate with ICE. It's something like that. That's close enough. It's directionally correct even if it just serves for the thought experiment. But if he starts doing that, cutting off funds to blue states, correct? correct? correct? You're you're already in economic warfare.

And so now if you're a blue state and you can't balance your budget because there's no federal dollars coming, what do you do? You escalate. You don't just go, "Okay, so now it becomes, what does that escalation look like? Is it all underground? Is it above ground? that I don't know and time will tell how this plays out. But the goal will be just like with um Israel Palestine the goal on the Palestinian side was make Israel look as bad as humanly possible in the eyes of the world and they've really flipped the way that people look at Israel.

Israel went from historical home of victims to no no they're just a bunch of evil victimizers. So, I mean, just an absolutely incredible absolutely incredible absolutely incredible uh global mindset shift that they were able to pull off. And so, you're going to see that kind of battle. And then at the federal level, we're now, as far as I can tell, I don't see anything that stops this. We're on this escalatory path of if Trump doesn't start arresting people, which he's getting heranged daily for by a lot of people to arrest people.

Yes. 100%. People want to see Obama perpwalked. People want to see Clinton perpwalked. People want to see God knows James Comr. I forget some of the names, but like you guys have all heard him. Like they want to see all those guys locked up. And if Trump doesn't do it, then the next administration will. But if I'm right that meaning the if the Democrats take power, they will. Um, if I'm right that this is two sides trying to create a we're permanent like Republicans are in power for the next 30 years.

Uh, years. Uh, years. Uh, that's how this is going to play out. You have to punish the other side. And so we went from, remember, we went from in the 70s economic woes, so of course everything is popping off and you have a president who gets caught being openly corrupt and he resigns, man. Like he's in office. He resigns. This is Nixon. And do they prosecute him? No. Why don't they prosecute him? Because they say it's not good for America. But we need to be looking forward, not behind.

And America dusts itself off, regroups. The '8s are a boom. [snorts] Uh you're not going to get that this time because we're in a totally different place. Both from uh the long march through the institutions to radicalize people and bend them towards left-leaning Marxist style causes has really worked and you now have a um socialist mayor of the economic capital of the world. I mean just like let that one sink in for a minute. Uh so all of that is playing out. The attitude is being exacerbated because on the right you have these draconian immigration enforcement policies that will just give any sort of independent person watching this is like this is horrible.

Mhm. And so now it's like, yeah, you become very easy to paint as the villain. And then that gives a side that wants to see you locked away the ammunition to say we're really coming for you, which then makes this existential on your side. So now, what are you willing to do to make sure that you maintain power? So I don't think this is a, oh well, uh, we're just going to go in and say, uh, peace out. we're no longer part of America in the way that Alberta seems to be doing with Canada.

Canada. Canada. But I do think it's we're going to do our part to make sure that we get to an all blue House, Senate, Supreme Court, executive branch, and then we're going to run our game. And so if people think that Trump is as bad as it gets, they need to understand Trump is a step on the spectrum to total war between the left and the right. Um, you put out a lot of things there, so I kind of want to like lay it down and uh map it out.

So right now, ICE is happening in Minnesota, but it's happening across the country. There's ICE raids in every mostly every state. Um earlier this year we talked about when Trump brought ice to California they did that whole military exhibition through L Mer Park um with the tanks and all that other stuff kind of driving through that happened and then there was push back there were protests they then re withdrew. What do you think is making them double down in Minnesota? So if you look at Minnesota uh there is there is a question that needs to be asked.

I want to be very clear. I don't have any more information than anybody else. I'm watching the same news segments that other people are watching. But there there are two things to note in Minneapolis. One is the just systemic refusal of the governor and the mayor to cooperate with ICE. So they are making it as hard as possible, including asking people to put their bodies on the line to literally go out and protest. Now, they say peacefully. Yeah, I want to be very clear. They're not telling people to rock up with their guns, but they are telling people to um keep making the noise, keep going out there, keep doing what you're doing.

Okay? So, that gives people a permission structure. They're calling off the police. Obviously, the police are not assisting ICE at all. And so, now you have this antagonistic relationship between the government, local government, state government, and the federal government. So, that's huge. And so they are persistently escalatory. Now I think that Karen Bass was also on that spectrum. So that isn't the whole of this. The other is the am this didn't turn deadly until the fraud was uncovered. Once the fraud was uncovered, then it started really to escalate.

And so I don't think you can remove from the table the fact that you've got all of this uh fraud that is looming in the background. You have a governor who when the fraud came out stepped back and said, "I'm not going to run for reelection." And so uh it it is unknown exactly what that number ends up being, but you obviously have a permission structure for some absolutely insane things uh going on in Minnesota full stop without this. Now, when I look at California, is it possible that California is just so much bigger, so much more diverse, so many different interest groups that it's just harder to get momentum going here?

Maybe. I don't know. Uh, we'll see. I think there's also something to in Los Angeles or in California, this is hypothesis, hypothesis, but in California, some of the strongest push back against illegal immigration comes from Mexican immigrants. And so you've got Mexican immigrants that are like, "Bro, I did this the hard way. I did this the right way. I got here legally. I've done the thing. I've worked my ass off. I've been a part of the fabric of this city and this country uh for, you know, in some cases decades.

It's like I've raised my kids here. I wanted a better life for them. I wanted them to be American." So there's less like momentum that you're able to get by whipping them up into a frenzy in the way that you can the Somali population who's newer here who if is true is coordinated and acting like a block. There's far fewer of them. There was an estimate that I saw that there's only 130,000 illegal immigrants in Minnesota compared to millions in California. So it again hypothesis easier to organize easier to get them to move as one unit.

Um more clear leadership hypothesis allegedly no idea if this is true but Ilhan Omar as the sort of like top person that's able to coordinate the coordinate the coordinate the I'm trying to because I feel like there's a lot of things there. So, are you saying that it's happening in Minnesota because the Somali are organizing the protest or I don't I don't believe that they are organizing the protests. I think that's down to the community organizers. You're just saying they they as a voting block. block.

block. They move as a block. So, you've got a group of people who are like, "Okay, we need to act in a coordinated fashion." Then you get community organizers, members of the government, whatever, coming to them and saying, "Okay, cool. Here's the playbook." like in the signal chats there is um we just there's at least one member of the Waltz administration that is a part of these um community organization groups that are pushing back against ICE. So does that mean that Tim Walls is involved? No, it does not.

But does it mean that there are members of the government that are involved? Yes, it does. So um now again I don't have any information that other people don't have. So I want to be very clear about the level of speculation here. people need to be very careful. Um, but that is one potential reason why this is happening in Minnesota in a way that it's not happening elsewhere. And so the question becomes if there is a similar level of systemic fraud happening in California, will it suddenly create the same kind of push back as that begins to become uncovered?

Or does California just have too many different constituencies pulling in too many different directions and it's harder to get something coordinated? I don't know. So, we'll see how that plays out. But that level of coordination seems to it makes sense. It has internal logic. Whether it ends up being correct or not, we will find out in the fullness of time, but it means something that you have 50 states that have uh immigration enforcement happening in them. You have states that have way more like orders of magnitude.

In fact, can you pull up the um there's a heat map of the US that shows that Minnesota's like in the middle in terms of how much immigration enforcement has been being done there. Uh and it is nonetheless got a level of push back and violence that is orders of magnitude larger than other places. So, option number one, um, ICE is being unusually, unusually, unusually, um, draconian in Minnesota because Trump hates walls and wants to punish him. It's possible. Okay, I won't deny that that could be what's going on.

Uh the other interpretation is that there's deeper coordination to push back against federal law enforcement coming from Minnesota potentially related to the fraud, potentially related to the um Somali group being more united and more willing to act as one cohesive block. I'm looking for we've got two things in chat if you want to hit those really quick. Let's go. Um, so the first one's from Pooky and this is actually something that happened to me during COVID. So this is uh very interesting. Um, loved ones telling you to choose a side and is it rampart yet or am I the only one dealing with it?

I personally am on the fence um post sitting for this stuff like so the thing here is like people are splitting and um everyone's asking you choose a side especially family and then I even remember some of my own family like if you have differing opinions like it got a little testy dude if you talk about this [ __ ] with your family like good luck my family is exactly the same it's like I avoid this [ __ ] like the plague you would not know over my Christmas holiday when my whole family was here that I do a YouTube channel where We talk about this stuff endlessly cuz I was like mum is the [ __ ] word.

Uh yeah. So here's the thing in life. If I can do a PSA especially because 2% of our audience, shout out to the 2% of our audience that is under like uh 18 or something. So we have like six young people out there to you guys. I say uh always sit on the fence at all times. Figure out what cause and effect says. Never choose a side because choosing you're going to choose actions. You're going to be very clear in your actions, but don't choose a side.

And the reason that you want to avoid choosing a side unless you are absolutely forced because look, if it pops off and you're talking actual armed civil conflict, then just for survival, you'll have to. But up until that point, you want to be calling balls and strikes at all times. You want to deal with cause and effect. You want to make sure you're thinking from first principles. You do not want to get caught up in a narrative. You want to be able to look objectively at the facts and say, not just first order consequences, where does this go?

Second and third order consequences. Um, that's where I think that that gets really important. And when people are shoving you onto a tribe and you want to say all of their uh magical phrases so that you can be one of them, it feels so good. I understand the temptation. And there's so much safety in being on a side because now you don't have to think for yourself. You don't have to worry about getting isolated and being isolated for uh a human is very dangerous from an evolutionary perspective.

So you have all kinds of alarm bells that are going to go off in your head when you feel isolated. Man, do I get it. But you stop thinking clearly. I think the least clearly in my life when it comes to my wife because I am eternally on my wife's side. And so that is a high risk position to be in because now you may find yourself in a position where you have to go to bat for somebody even when they're wrong. and you don't want to find yourself in that situation beyond your immediate family.

Uh so yeah, be careful. Think from first principles, cause and effect. Always want to hear the other side's argument. Always want to understand the other side. If you can make the other side's argument better than they can, you're in a very good position because that's going to let you know that you believe the things you believe, not because you don't understand the alternatives, but because you understand the alternatives so well. and your side maps to cause and effect based on an outcome that you want to get to.

And I pray every day that the outcome that you want is honorable. And assuming that you want an honorable outcome, then the very thing that you should be doing is trying to figure out the cause and effect that's going to lead you to that outcome. And you won't get there by thinking like a team. Thinking like a team, good for cohesion, absolutely terrible for marching towards uh a good outcome. And then a super chat from the Mandre mechanism would love a policy level discussion on the term lawful but awful and what changes if any should be made at the policy level.

Seems to accept tragedy for the betterment of society and that is inherently icky. It is inherently icky. Lawful but awful. That's fantastic. I've never heard that before but that is very true. Um so I don't know that h so there is a shooting that to me is far more distressing. Uh, and it was the shooting of Daniel something. Oh god. What? No. No. No. Penny is a dude on the train. Uh, it was Do I still have this pulled up? I'm not sure that I do.

When did it happen? Uh, this was like back in 2008 or something. So, anyway, I can describe it for you. His first name is Daniel. I forget his last name. I think it begins with sh, but I could be wrong about that. that. that. uh he was in a hotel and he matched the description of a suspect and the of an armed suspect. He comes around the corner, the SWAT team or whatever is waiting for him and they say, you know, get on the ground, all that stuff.

And they're telling him, "Hey, you're not following instructions." Now, this guy's laying face down. Okay, he's on the ground, face [ __ ] down. And they're like, "You're not following instructions. If you make a mistake, you are going to get shot." And then they're telling him to do [ __ ] that sounds like the hokeyp pokei. It is wild. And he moves his hand too fast and they shoot and kill him. That officer, That officer, That officer, no penalty, no penalty, no penalty, legally all good. And every time I watch that, I'm like, god damn.

The way that when you're under duress, you go into fight or flight. The blood actually leaves your prefrontal cortex, meaning it is harder for you to do things that require high high level cognition. And so now you've got a guy who has no blood in his prefrontal cortex because he is fully panicking because he's got a bunch of people pointing guns at him saying if you [ __ ] up you're going to get shot. Imagine how well you would do on a test. Uh and then imagine that the instructions for the test are absolutely uh wild.

So that one. Yeah, I uh I don't love that one. So if you look at that, if you look at Alex Prey, if you look at Renee Good, you're asking the right question. At what point are we going to say? Because when you're talking policy, there has to be a line in the sand that you can describe in words where it's like um the your knee is in front of the car by 42 cm or more. Like it really does have to get that kind of specific.

And if your knee is more than 42 cm uh in front of the car, then you can shoot. If it's 41 cm or less, you can't shoot. It really has to come down to that. And so we'll debate that until the end of time. And there's always going to be stuff that we're all going to hate. Uh but you still you have to go, what's your northstar? My northstar would be the enforcement of law and order without tyranny. And so, okay, if we're aiming for the enforcement of law and order without tyranny, now we have to be able to define tyranny.

And giving it a pornography uh description where it's like, I know it when I see it, is not going to fly because of the things that we're seeing. Like when I watch the video, I'm sure I see something that other people don't. I see a buffoon who has no right to be uh on the job. Just watch. We can't show the clip because it violates YouTube terms of service, but uh we can probably show it right up to the point where he pulls the trigger. Drew, can you pull that up?

If if you're What's that? What's that? What's that? The slow-mo one. Yeah, if you're able to watch watch the guy that actually shoots him. Um he is like very unconfident, very like jittery. This I'm not sure if you can see it in this angle. There's another angle right from the front. I mean, whoever's there is like four feet away from what's happening. Yeah. So, the guy that ends up shooting him um is just like just like just like jittery and what are we doing? I mean, this is so all of this is so awkward.

What? Like, look at that. Look. Okay. Stop. Stop. Stop. Because he's about to shoot him. [screaming] [screaming] [screaming] Okay. A little slow on the pause button there. Um, so I look at that and I think this job is brutally difficult. brutally difficult. brutally difficult. It's ultra high risk. You've got to have the best of the best. Just no way about it. So, if we're going to put these guys in this kind of situation, they've got to be elite. They've got to be well compensated. They've got to be vetted to the ends of the earth.

They've got to be put through training that um is not only about like the physicality of it. It's about the mindset and how to deal with these difficult situations. Um and I understand America may not want to pay for that in terms of dollars and cents, but it works. Trump already did. Well, he's trying to get the budget. We'll see if it actually goes through. But even that, I doubt he's going to spend the budget on the training. The budget's going to be on uh you get a a brown shirt on every corner.

So very different roll out than what I'm talking about which is when you start training these guys like the thing that they do requires them to engage with the public deescalate and be ready to pepper spray shoot someone whatever whatever. Uh so this guy in my opinion clearly was not up to that task. Clearly should not have fired. Uh and if we that but the answer to that is not no ICE because you have laws for a reason. You can't have illegal immigrants running around in your country which is already by the way that that is a thing I have decided right so I don't expect that to be universal but from my perspective to get where I want to go thriving middle class that's just an absolute must law and order just like tippy top of the thing.

So you do you do you do you look at the way that things play out and you have to take them piece by piece. You can't have a guy like this. You it leads to catastrophic outcomes. Also resisting arrest is the dumbest [ __ ] thing on planet earth that you can do. So both things can be true. They shouldn't have shoved the woman. They shouldn't have pepper- sprrayed the dude. Uh Petty and Petty shouldn't have been struggling. So, it's like if officers and and I know because I've been in this position, I was accosted by the police and they were throwing me around and I did not resist.

We actually have a clip about this. There's a um what did I title it? Guy has a good point about how to avoid not being shot. Um so, Um so, Um so, this is this is an all things are true statement. Please take it in that vein. This is not a, hey, shooting this guy was fine. Shooting this guy was an abomination. It was ghoulish. It should never have happened. It should never happen again. That guy is going to have to be punished. Like, it was just absolute an outrage.

Now, having said that, here is to all of you out there thinking of rolling up with your guns, which you have an absolute right to do as Americans. Love it. Yay. Uh, but hear my man out. Hey yo, America. Understand this. Understand this. Understand this. I'm a black man in America, right? I walk around with a 19 on my hip, hip, hip, a Sig in my glove compartment, and an AR15 in my 2020 Honda Accord daily, daily, daily, right? right? right? And you know what I don't do with those things?

I don't go and impede law enforcement carrying out their duties. duties. duties. You know what I do? I mind my business. That's all I do. I go out there. I drink water. I get money. and I mind my business. You know my favorite saying, right? I think we got it. So So So my my take is that if you are being thrown to the ground by the police and you do anything other than ragdoll compliance, you're resisting. resisting. resisting. and watching the video. He is he does not reach for his gun.

Anybody saying that, I don't know what they're watching. There's no way they saw that video. I don't see that guy make a move for his holster. I don't see him make a move for the gun at all. Uh so if if anybody wants to single that part of the video out, I'm happy to watch it. I'm happy to be wrong, but damn, I've seen his video like 10 times. I don't see him make a move for it. They're grabbing him, pulling at him, yanking at him.

But like every time they try to like I think they try to get his phone away and he's like clinging and pulling onto it. They're trying to pull his legs out from under him. He won't let them. Like he is resisting. He's acting like he's in a wrestling match and that he's trying to maintain a certain position. And that is exactly the kind of thing that causes people to escalate. So, uh, again, from where I'm sitting, both things are true. The shooting was completely unjustified. Absolutely horrible.

And that guy's gonna if is he going to get punished? Probably not. Should he? Yes. Uh Uh Uh I mean the I I just feel like we're having the accountability on the wrong side of the conversation. I think yes, resisting is bad, but I before let me finish my point. Let me just put finish my point. Land of plane, then you can jump in. I think um I have a buddy in Atlanta who just became a beat cop. He got his letter of approval from HR last week.

He's not going to be on the street writing tickets until August. Writing tickets, traffic tickets till August. ICE agents get 12 days of training and a pat on the back of the Capri Sun. And then now we're saying that the victim should have had his composure should have been kept up when the reason that the victim was even involved in the first place is because they pushed the woman and pepper sprayed her. So he jumped in the middle to kind of help the woman. Then they have him back.

He's on all fours. They're on his back. And you're saying that he's resisting. If I don't know, like we got a UFC fighter in the room. I don't know how res how much more tame you can be in that position. So again, the guy who we're saying he should have done, he should have done, it doesn't matter. His accountability is he's dead. So he that's what happened. But I just want to say in the in the law of court, in the land of the free, in the home of the brave, in the justice system that we all hang our hat on, that we're not like the um all these other third world countries where we're civilized, we're a progressive organization because we have justice, we have courts, we have law, and we have order.

He didn't get his day in court. He didn't get his day in front of the judge. He didn't get his side of the story. We have a bunch of people looking at videos from different angles saying he had a gun. He didn't have a gun. It was his phone. He shot a gun. There was a misfire. All these other things that are happening. It doesn't matter what you want to say about him cuz he's dead. So whatever whether he did it right or wrong, he's dead.

It doesn't matter. Now the ICE agents just killed somebody a couple weeks ago. Where was the accountability? Where was happening? Nothing. You can act with impunity. Don't worry about it. Just do your own thing. So now they killed somebody else. And what's going to happen after this one? It's not It's cool. You're right. They're wrong. go get the illegals. Cool. So then this is going to happen again. So we can spend 20 minutes talking about he should have did this, he should have been in all fours, he should have been in a fetal position.

It doesn't matter. He's dead. Let's talk about the ICE agent that killed him. And let's talk about the other ICE agent that killed that other person. And let's talk about how these things are now starting to be tied up together. You're a businessman. You're an entrepreneur. Everybody knows about the 8020 rule. You're spending 20% of your time. You're spending 80% of your time trying to go after 20% of the illegals. There's a million illegals in California. There's a million legals in Texas. If Minnesota is not even cooperating, withdraw from Minnesota just like you withdrew from LA.

Sue him. Law order them. Say you're impeding progress. Put Governor Walls in in in jail. Do these things that the legal process is for. The country was founded on a bunch of lawyers. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence was a bunch of people arguing in the courtroom. That's how these documents got formed. So Trump wants to call like lawfare and all these other things to throw the people that don't vote for him in jail. But when it comes to what he actually should be like suing for, he should be suing Tim Walts.

Tim Walsh should be in front of Senate and they already did that. So, okay, get Tim Walsh in front of Senate. Have him accountable. Are you going to help him? No, you're not. Okay, now you're held in contempt of court. Now, we could throw you out. I did the same thing that we want because it's all about end goals. The end goals get illegals, right? So, you can get the illegals two weeks from now after you done subpoenaed all these people. You get the illegals two weeks from now when you go and actually cooperate with the jails.

They're not even in the jails yet. They're started in the streets. I thought we were going after the bad and the criminals. Why are we in the streets and not in the jails? You get what I'm saying? So again, I I feel like we spent a lot of time with the guy and what he could have done and should have done and caught uh gun or not gun and all that. He's dead. It doesn't matter what he should have would have done cuz he can't undo that.

Now, let's talk about the ICE agents and what they can do better going forward. Let's talk about this administration and how they can execute their goals going forward without another loss of an American citizen. Okay. So, that feels like an argument for somebody other than me me me because I because I because I The reason I jumped in on that because you were saying he he shouldn't have been resisting. He shouldn't have been all these things. Here's how I mentally map you. And if you think I'm incorrect, let me know.

Um, it doesn't matter how much I say about the wrongness of what Trump is doing, which I covered extensively today, the wrongness of the guy shooting, which I've covered extensively today. The second I say these guys really need to stop resisting. No matter how unjust the police coming after them is, they need to stop resisting. The second I mention that, you're going to have a problem with that. Which is fine. It's not that that's what I'm going to have a problem with. It's just in the totality of things where it's false equivalencies, equivalencies, equivalencies, but I'm not making them equivalent.

So, I'm saying, hey, if you you right now you have a government that's acting tyrannically. They should stop immediately. In no uncertain terms, this is a problem. Trump is rationing this up. He's marching us towards civil war. My whole opening thing was you cannot keep using the hammer. He's got to stop. Now, I'm saying as a PSA, for the love of God, I if you find yourself in the situation where you were trying to peacefully protest, you you c you have to stop resisting. And if you don't, now you're going to find yourself increasing the likelihood you get shot.

You don't drop it to zero because these guys are acting tyrannically. So I'm just saying I that's where I do not understand how people are mapping the situation as if we don't have people who are showing up to like they are so antagonistic towards ICE and that is coming out in these moments of confrontation where they try to run they try to resist arrest and it is it's just increasing increasing increasing there is a reason that the ultra successful movements what Gandhi did in India uh what the black community did in the civil rights movement was always like you've got to be beyond reproach peaceful and that's not the message now.

The message now is one of resistance. The message now is um protest peacefully but have your gun on you, organize, try to impede. like there's there is another layer of that and I'm saying that layer I I'll just speak at the individual level. Dear person who is trying to make your voice heard in America, you have every right to say the government's become tyrannical and I'm going to pull my gun out. But just know that when you stand for that that it could mean prison forever.

It could mean you get shot dead. And so it better be that place for you where you really believe this is the right play. if you don't. And he didn't take out his gun. He did not reach for it in any way, shape, or form. I think he's beyond reproach in that way. From where I'm at, you had a guy who was in in that moment was 100% peaceful until they took him to the ground and then he's resisting and ratcheting things up up up up.

So, it doesn't even necessarily mean that it would play out any differently, but he's in a much better position if he's not fighting back, pulling, resisting, making him yank harder, trying to shove him down. Like, that's where all of this stuff goes crazy. And if I were saying, "Dude, the government's playing this perfectly. This guy's the problem." I would get why you're saying what you're saying. saying. saying. And I'm not saying that. Cool. Um a lot of people are saying that these protests are like organized.

Do you believe in to the larger fault that this is all a coordinated effort? I think it's it is being coordinated. The question is is the coordination 20% is the coordination 80% 100% that I don't know that will come out in the fullness of time. But if we miss the angle that this stuff is coordinated then I think that we're not going to understand what's actually happening here. Let's jump into core data for a second because I want to like really nail that definition. Um I know people in LA they're part of alternative political groups.

So they're fringe left groups or democratic socialists or things like that. Yep. Yep. Yep. For those organizations while they're coordinated meaning that there's a group of people who get together and want to make it happen. To me I think that's different than this was Biden George Soros given by an NGO. They have $4 million uh behind that. Uh, do you think it's coordinated on the governmental level where there's a puppet behind it or is this just people, local people getting together and coordinating? I think it is.

Um, I was completely transformed as an individual by Mike Benz. When I did the research for that episode and I realized the way that NOS's coordinate and put dollars on the street to destabilize governments, to gain power, I was like, whoa. Like, this is a real thing and it doesn't just happen elsewhere. It's not just the CIA running this stuff. In fact, NOS's sprung up according to Mike Benz, and it feels very believable to me. NOS's sprung up with the modern incarnation of the way that they act because the CIA was getting curtailed.

And so, they were like, "Oh, we're not going to be able to do it through the CIA. No worries. We need to do it. So, we're going to go do it in these following ways." Anybody that thinks that we don't have money on the streets in China to try to destabilize China is a fool. Anybody that doesn't think we have money on the streets in Iran trying to destabilize Iran is a fool. Anybody that thinks Iran doesn't have money on the streets in Tel Aviv is a fool.

Anybody that doesn't think China has money on the streets trying to destabilize America. Russia has money on the streets trying to destabilize America. The part that gets unnerving is when you go, "Oh [ __ ] Americans have money on the streets in America trying to destabilize America." And I think in all capital letters, there are factions within America that want to overthrow the US government in no uncertain terms. And in order to lead to revolution or in order to get somebody else in power in order I think you have both.

So I Tim Walls does not strike me as a revolution guy, but he does strike me as a get the Democrats in power guy. Okay. So you've got those guys working within the system but doing things that I think all of us would feel the way like the way that I feel about the instruction manual of how to impede federal law enforcement is the way that I feel about money and politics. It's like okay it's legal but it is also extremely destructive. And so now you've got a problem where I don't want to see people organizing against the federal government in that way where it's funded by an NGO.

So there's millions of dollars. These guys are being outfitted and coordinated like paramilitary groups and they're going in and creating autonomous zones within a city. uh when the federal government is enforcing federal law that they were elected specifically to enforce. So it's like yo uh that is not how I want to see things play out. I don't want to see what are essentially essentially essentially um SCOPs being run on America, color revolutions is probably a better way to say it being run on American soil by American NOS or foreign NOS for that matter.

I don't want it to be anybody, but yes, I think that we have um coordination with the government as evidenced by the fact that somebody in Walls's administration is in the signal chats. It'll be interesting to see if there are more. There very well might be. Uh the fraud I think there's so many whistleblowers going Tim Walls knew all about the fraud. We have been complaining to him about it for years and he has done absolutely nothing. So I think all of these things are going to come out.

We are going to find a very distressing level of coordination. But I don't know. We don't have all the facts. This is conjecture and hearsay at this point. This is all allegedly. I do not know. I will be more than happy to accept that I was wrong about all this. Uh Tim Walls is completely clean. I want to see this play out in the actual court system. I don't want to see people going berserk. Like this is where everybody has to admit they don't know what's happening.

They may have suspicions. They may think uh but they certainly don't know and I certainly don't know. But those are um that's the internal logic that I'm working under right now. But I want to see it play out. We've got three super chats. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Uh first up from Lublan. It's coordinated. The signal groups relig. Y'all are way behind on the news. They're using government for car plates and government officials are working with the harassers and there is foreign money being funneled in.

Every word of that I just said except for maybe the thing about license plates. plates. plates. So Leblon of all people to come at me so hot. hot. hot. Uh secondly from Pac-Man. Uh it does appear that a negligent discharge was the first shot. It happened as the officer took the gun off Alex. It was way it was away from the action and the other officers only shot after hearing the first shot. Yeah, we should play that. Can you pull that slow-mo clip up, please? So, yeah, watch your screen.

This was in watching the video multiple times without this being isolated. I never noticed it, but boom. you're going to need this one with volume because what you realize is assuming this video hasn't been doctorred, which is at times a real concern, but I certainly don't see any community notes or anything. Uh the the gun jerks in his hand and it jerks exactly at the sound of the first shot. All right, with that, look at your screens. Check this out. So, this is the guy walking away with the gun.

Uh, is this the one that I pulled? That was a very shot. Oh, there we go. All right, one more time. So, you can uh pause for a sec. So, the guy that you see in the gray jacket is the one that disarmed Prey. He gets up and I presume he's trying to clear the field of the gun. Uh, and the gun right about that frame on your screen is where it goes off and you hear that first uh, report. Back it up just like a tiny bit.

So there you see the gun jerk in his hand, right, with the sound of the gunfire. So again, this is just to have all of the facts on the table. This does not excuse the guy shooting you. You can't hear a gunshot and then just start unloading on the person in front of you. That is so [ __ ] wild. Uh you have to know that that was actually the shooter. For all you know, it was somebody else on your side. It literally was somebody else on your side uh that was holding the gun at a minimum when it when it went off, not aiming at that person.

So, you cannot just shoot first and ask questions later. So, in no way, shape or form does this excuse uh what happened. In the same way that um prey struggling does not excuse the fact that they shot him. That that is not my pitch. We've got one more super chat from DK the DK the sage. Um Occupy Wall Street was too close to the public questioning our banking system. These social problems are the jingling the keys to keep the public distracted while the uni party keeps walking away with the bag of money.

money. money. I don't know that we have a uni party anymore. I think people have to start separating out uh the banking elite and the and the and the dueling parties that are going to go for blood and given that each side is going to be trying to arrest the other side now calling them a uni party would be a mistake and you're going to be very confused by what's about to unfold. Um but knowing that behind the scenes there is a bunch of money going in to make sure that both sides are good for business.

Yes, that I think is very true. But they are they are not a uni party. They just everyone dances to the tune of money. Now why does everyone dance to the tune of money? Everyone dances to the tune of money because we want to specialize. And that's very very very small nutshell and I'm happy to go into it again but I've talked about this so many times before. Once you understand the understand the understand the man as economic animal, you understand how um belittling somebody for making sure that they're able to monetize their time is not a logical play because the only other option is for everybody to um act like they're an episode of alone.

And uh if you've ever watched that show, you know that basically everybody starves to death. So, uh, there's a reason that society has organized itself the way that it has, and so you're always just going to end up back here. Um, appreciate you. Uh, what do you think we should do with the states that push back this? Um, Drew, I think the way that you laid it out is a big part of this, that no one is going to be happy with how slow it is to work its way through the uh negotiation track, work its way through the legal track, to work its way through the legislature, the legislature, the legislature, but you have to and if you're not able to go in and um win people over, like let me give you one example.

Uh, and this again goes to something that you've been talking about. So, you've got plenty if you are you've got beef with Minnesota, you've got plenty to go in with the fraud. You focus on the fraud. Just deal with the fraud. Uh that will be investigative. It will go through the legal system. All will be laid bare and then you take action based on that. Then you go to friendly jurisdictions to begin removing the illegal immigrants. And the way that I always think about this, every time somebody quits impact theory and they move on from one of my companies, I think to myself, whatever is true is true.

And if they're leaving because they have some beef with me, well then either I'm doing something wrong and in the fullness of time, impact theory will struggle and they will go find a better place to work or I'm right and that person was not able to get in line here and they're going to go struggle somewhere else. And the phrase, I certainly did not come up with this, but this is very true. It's true for me. It's true for everybody. No matter where you go, there you are.

So, a lot of times people think, I can go to a different company and I'm going to feel differently. But the problem is that all of your problems are created by your own mind. And so, um, the same is true here. If clearing out illegal immigration actually works, then you would go into the cooperative states. You would clear out illegal immigration. Those states would do better, and then all the blue states will look like morons. So, and if it doesn't work, then you're going to clear out immigration, and those farmers are going to struggle.

Everything's going to be bad, and the states that let it happen are going to look like idiots, and the people in the the states that fought back are going to look like geniuses. That's the glory of having a system where you're federated states that the states go, I think I know what weighs best. And then they each within constraints get to go do what they think is right. and they become 50 experiments for us to see what's working, what's not working. The problem is the federal government papers over all of their losses.

And so you never get to see if these systems are working or not working. The federal government needs to have very strict guidelines about what will and won't be tolerated. And so it's like, hey, this is the way that this current administration believes all the states should be acting. And if you act in accordance with that, you get federal dollars. If you don't act in accordance with that, no big deal, but you've got to balance your own budget. Nice. and easy. But of course, we are not doing that.

But if we did that, we would be in a much better position because we want to know what is true. No one should care if Trump is right. No one should care if Biden is right. They should only care if America is moving in the right direction. And so, it's perfectly acceptable for me if Trump comes in is a total disaster. We get him out, we get somebody else in, and they lead us towards a thriving middle class. Great. No problem. Uh so we should just want to know what is true.

Once you get away from I don't care what's true. I need to stay in power. I need my ideas to uh win over but over everybody else. You get into the madness that we're in right now. This is two people who believe that they know best and they're just going to ratchet ratchet up ratchet up ratchet up until more and more people get killed and everybody loses. Do you think America's going in the right direction now? Hell no. Hell no. We haven't been going in the right direction since 1913, quite frankly.

Uh, boy, do I wish that people didn't read that as a joke. We did something. We made a trade-off. Is the right way to look at it, though, I'm rarely going to say it this way because I think it is far more useful to paint it with wolves howling in the background. But right now, I will just give you the raw truth. Uh, the complex truth. When you create a central bank, you make a series of trade-offs. Trade-off number one is that you're able to stabilize economic disruption.

Something goes wrong. You tax the entire when you're the reserve currency, you tax the entire world essentially to stabilize everybody and you save banks and you save companies and you do all kinds of saving of things that should have been allowed to be destroyed so you can find out what actually works rather than papering over the problems. But it it feels nice, right? It's like, well, everybody is just going to share in the problem and I'm okay as the average person. I don't realize that the middle class and the poor suffer more than everybody else.

Um, it's better than collapse. And so everybody goes, I don't want any acute pain. I would rather die slowly. And so uh the second trade-off that you make is that the people that understand the financial asset game, they will financialize the world to hell and gone so that they can trade on margin and they will get freakishly wealthy. Freakishly wealthy. Okay. Gilded Age, same thing. Today, same. This is what happens when you're able to do everything on margin on loans debt. And so now you've got a situation where you've got you've got you've got that trade-off.

I can smooth things out for you, but these guys are going to extract money from you because they know how the game is played. And so they're just going to devalue the dollar constantly. So you're getting poorer. They're getting wealthier because they own assets. Now asset ownership is a dog eat dog game. So, they're trying to kill each other and and rob each other blind because when you make money, it means somebody else lost money, unless an entrepreneur created something new of value, but that's a whole another conversation.

Um, and that's a trade-off. And so, over a long enough time, you get what we're living through right now, which is a K-shaped economy where populism is on the rise, uh, and your nefarious wealthy figures are behind the scenes trying to orchestrate, um, a soft coup in their preferred direction. direction. direction. having fun yet? I'm not. This is not enjoyable for me. So, but nonetheless, this is where we're at. Well, in lighter news, while America's on fire, China got some problems, too. Yeah, let's go, China.

Welcome to the club, club, club, buddy. buddy. buddy. Um, so there's a bunch of different like takes coming in on this. Um, level set us with the China stuff. I think this is number three, Eric. Um, cuz I'm not going to lie, I I shouldn't have been as excited as I was to hear this news, but I'm like, "Oh, is this drama?" Cuz there was whispers a couple months ago. We talked about it briefly on the show. it was unconfirmed, all these other things. And now we're starting to get more um analysis and that actual like shots were fired and stuff like that happened over this weekend.

So, all right everybody, rumors are flying that Xiinping's most recent purge of the military has resulted in a failed coup attempt. Guns being shot, the whole nine. Now, those are rumors. Reputable outlets like Ruters, Bloomberg, CNN, the Wall Street Journal are all reporting on a major military purge initiated by Xihinping, including investigations into top generals Jiang Yaoa, who's the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Leu uh Zeni for serious violations such as corruption, undermining party authority over the military, and in Jiang's case, allegations of leaking nuclear secrets to the US.

Now, I want to be very clear. These are all rumors. Nobody knows what's happening right now. This is a big question mark. Some reports are like, "Ah, it's no big deal. This is just Xi doing more purging." Other people are like, "Whoa, they've arrested thousands of people, including these generals, including their families." So, it's unclear at this time what is actually real. But these reports frame it as part of Xi's ongoing efforts to consolidate control and root out disloyalty in the People's Liberation Army. Now, for anybody keeping score in China, you will know that you had Mao, a horrible, horrible, horrible, destructive, evil figure that killed tens of millions of his own people would make light of it.

I think he killed his son and his wife or sent them to die is probably a more accurate version of this. Like, this is just a very bad dude. And then you had Deng Xiaoing who is the like when you really think about China's miracle about using the free markets to pull so many people out of poverty. It was Deng Xiaoping. Now you've got Xi Jinping who is more mauist in his tendencies. So he's trying to consolidate power. He's violating a lot of the norms that um Deng Xiaoping had put in place and he's going back to more of an ironfisted rule in the way that Mao did.

So um who knows where this is going to go, but as new details emerge from official Chinese statements or even just stuff corroborated by multiple high credibility sources, uh we'll keep you guys updated. things could shift, but right now the violent coup narrative uh is being amplified all over social media. But I would read that as speculation rather than actual journalism. But there um what' you say the keys jingling? Somebody says something about keys jingling. It's like yeah, these are the was it LeBron? LeBron the you've got the noises coming out that tend to be a little bit early.

Um and then call it two months from now, six months from now, something like that. then we'll start to see like the official impacts of whatever's happening. Um, however, if he's Mao in nature, he's going to be tough, man. He's going to be tough. And anybody that thinks Xiinping is not smart to do what he did to go from China was moving in the opposite direction. They were becoming not democratic, but they were becoming more of a party that didn't have uh um emperor. and he managed to reconsolidate power, make himself emperor for life.

Doesn't call himself emperor, but he's an emperor. So, uh, very impressive guy, very politically astute, very good at consolidating power and very willing to kill, disappear, imprison his enemies. And so, when you have somebody that's prepared to do that, don't expect that to turn over quickly. So, um, I would say you have a far bigger chance of something happening in Iran that's in America's interest than you have something happening in China that's in America's interest. So, I would not hold your breath for that one. one.

one. Um, so on paper, you know, I'm making jokes about celebrating and stuff like that, but this does this increase their paranoia and now he turns into like a crazy dictator? Do you think it he's already in crazy dictator territory? He has been purging for years. And when you read purge as imprison, kill, um, concentration camp, like it's this is not like Bob, you're fired. This is, uh, not a lot of Bobs in China, but, uh, somehow that felt safer. Um, Um, Um, you it is a violent, fearinducing consolidation of power that will put him in a position where he'll be isolated inside of his own party, where he won't know where the attacks are going to come from.

And so like Putin, he has to be incredibly paranoid. He runs the risk of not getting real information because people are terrified to tell him the truth because you see, oh, the people that speak truth, often those messengers are killed, not literally, but you know, they're disappeared, not listened to, booted, uh, out of the CCP, that kind of thing. So for your livelihood, it's just better to go along and get along. Uh, and so you'll occasionally get people like um, oh god, who was the guy in Russia that had like a splinter military force and they like marched almost all the way to Moscow.

Oh, we don't even remember his name. They blew him up in an airplane. It was like, oh my god, please somebody look this up. I cannot chat. You must remember his name. What was his name? For the love of God. Um and he was like he marched on Moscow with his uh fraction of the the military progosion. Was it progenion? I think it was. was. was. So um thank you chat. So So So you end up getting guys in the military that will go against you.

But I still can't believe that that did he really think that Putin wasn't going to get him? But he uh backs down. They negotiate, shake hands, all's all's well, all's forgiven. No worries. And like six weeks later, he's on an airplane that blows up midair. Who could have guessed? have guessed? Who could have guessed? How convenient. How convenient. How convenient. So, yeah, it's wild. There were there are some rumors that uh Zang, who led the coup, was a government asset from the CIA and he was leaking nuclear secrets to the US.

So to your point earlier about um foreign agents doing things on uh local soil, it could be that is what started the coup in the back. Um back. Um back. Um yeah, so remember we're in an information warfare landscape. The odds of that being true feel low, but that's just a feeling. Feelings don't matter at all. So we'll see what ends up playing out over time. But if the US really has assets that high up in the Chinese military, because it's my understanding that um that general in question, Jiang, was like really close.

I've heard reports that they were like childhood friends. I cannot verify. I don't know that that's true, but that people are saying that they were very very close. So for that guy to be the guy that's betraying him, again, speculation, early conjecture. So, um I would not expect any sort of immediate crumbling in China, but this does signal that there might be far more tension within China than we think. And if there really is this kind of disscent in the military, you can imagine them making a move on Taiwan in 2027 goes down in likelihood because you doing air, land, sea invasions when you don't know if you can trust your general.

That becomes a much bigger question mark. Now, many people have been speculating that China is going to use an administrative takeover of Taiwan. So, we'll see. They're trying to get their candidates into office. And hey, that sounds familiar. So, um you it doesn't necessarily have to be a military invasion for them to still come in and take over. So, we'll see what happens there. Uh but I would say from a poly market standpoint, I would be surprised if the odds of a 2027 invasion didn't just go down on this news.

So, we'll see. I haven't checked. I mean, you know, that's bright side eye glass half full. Um, staying in international politics. Uh, we're getting mighty close to Iran. Um, and it seems like we're in striking distance now. Yeah. I mean, no, seems like this one's crazy. Uh, so the question all of us should be asking is, is a major military operation about to go down in Iran? That is truly the right question that should be on everybody's lips as the USS Abraham Lincoln just arrived within striking distance of Iran.

And the US media is using that phrase over and over and over. And so when you remember that basically everything is an asset ultimately uh of the government's propaganda war, they want Iran to recognize that they're within striking distance, which matters only if you're prepared to make a move. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier uh strike group has moved like the whole shebang over into the region from the Asia- Pacific and it is uh in that fleet you've got three guided missile destroyers the USS Frank Eerson Jr.

USS Spruent and USS Michael Murphy. The fleet has squadrons of F-35C Lightning 2s and FA18EF Super Hornets. And just to keep things extra spicy, the US has also deployed F-15E Strike Eagles to Jordan and B-52 bombers to Qatar. So they are ready at all angles. Now if you guys are going, why exactly are we doing this? The primary driver for the move is obviously in response to the massive wave of nationwide protests in Iran that began in late December of 25. Now, accurate numbers are exactly impossible to pin down, but Iranian security forces have engaged in a violent response against these protesters.

You've got some people claiming that the death toll is over 40,000. 40,000. 40,000. That would be insane. And to give you a sense, in um uh in Gaza, it took, I think, almost two years to hit that number. So, the fact that people are so quiet about what's going on in Iran is pretty wild. uh international monitor and uh activist groups estimate the death toll has at a minimum exceeded 5,000 people and that tens of thousands of people have been detained. So, President Trump has made it abundantly clear that mass executions would be a red line that would trigger massive US intervention.

So when I look at this, I'm like, okay, it's a little bit sad that the time it takes to move the assets into the region are what they are because the resistance seems to mostly died down and not necessarily for good reasons. Uh probably because they were cracked down on ruthlessly, but nonetheless, um the atmosphere is arguably arguably arguably um declining in its urgency. And so having the group out in the region, I'm guessing is more just from a deterrence perspective. So even though things are more volatile than they've been since June of 2025, strikes uh when we did the strikes on the nuclear facilities, uh it seems like the odds of the US actually doing something unless Iran makes some sort of horrific move first are very very low.

Currently the US posture is officially being described just as deterrence. So the goal here is to prevent the further violence um not to do some sort of preemptive strike. Now there has been an arrival of a THAAD missile defense battery in Israel and the carrier group position is within striking distance as we talked about earlier. So that means that maybe the Trump administration is trying to do a transition from hey bro we're just watching to being ready to actively hammer them. Uh but that seems unlikely if one of Trump's red lines isn't crossed.

But we'll see. The instability there continues certainly at a geopolitical level, even if not on the streets of Tyrron itself. Wild times. Wild times. Wild times. You think they're going to do like a Maduro style like black bagging of like the regime? the regime? the regime? Definitely not. So, um do I think they want to see it fall? Yes. Do I think that the US wants to try to run the government there the way that they do in Venezuela? No. I would be very surprised. There's too much connective tissue between other powerful countries that I don't think would smile upon that.

that. that. If the supposedly the UAE and a couple other countries are going to supply air um space to the US if they make a move and that's a change in reported posture. Whether it's a change in behind the scenes posture, I don't know. But if a bunch of countries were like, "Yeah, would you just go like take them out?" Then the US would probably do it because they're so oil rich and we could strike such a blow to China. Um, but without that, I can't imagine it.

But if we could because China, I think I forget what total percentage of Iran's oil goes to China, but it's meaningful. And so if you were able to um take control of that, not only would Iran have to jump dance to your tune, but you would deal another economic blow to China at a time where they've already got enough problems. So it's like I get why the US would have an itchy trigger finger on this one, but I just don't think it's I think it's so high risk and so likely to be unpopular in the region.

[snorts] I doubt it's going to happen, but we'll see. I mean to your point, we cut off their oil supply with Venezuela. Russia Bear being China. Yeah. Yeah. They're being China. Yep. Um Iran is another one. If we did make topple that regime there, that would be two of their significance. I would say more than half. And then Russia will be kind of their sole provider and Russia last weekend just had to sell some gold reserves in order to keep funding the war. So they're kind of on their back foot, too.

This could be the I don't want to say the death punch, but it could be something that can at least [ __ ] China for the next couple years if we were this aggressive. I think there's at least one general in Trump's ear whispering that. Yeah, I think that they're probably stronger than we give them credit for because what you would be doing, you wouldn't deal like some sort of um like gut punch that is likely to take out China. You just make energy costs a little bit higher, but they're look, energy is at the foundation of everything, but nobody on planet Earth is doing a better job of spinning up new power than China.

So, China's way too smart, way too disciplined. Um the the thing that's going if something were to really damage them, it would be that the continued global pressure on China as the US moves away from them, begins to do things at home, um as the US pressures other people like Canada not to um build direct relationships with China that there you could see like a just slow erosion of she's power and then somebody comes into China that more um I mean look, you could get somebody who's 10 times worse.

Let's be very clear about that. That's why this is such a dangerous game to play regime change. But if you got somebody that was more Deng Xiaoing in um temperament where it's like yes, we'll shoot a bunch of people in Tanaman Square. I think that was um Deng. Uh don't hold me to that though. But at the same time, we also understand the free market is really the godsend. And so um it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. But I'm not expecting just as I think uh for all of the turmoil happening in America, there's I don't think anything acute is going to break America in the next 18 months.

My time horizon is more like 10 years. Over 10 years as you race towards bankruptcy, you the pockets of violence grow into something else unless we can grow out of it. So, uh we'll see. And I would put China in the same basket. They've got plenty of time to correct course, figure things out. Um at least that's my hope. I may be being overly optimistic both for America and China, but that my gut instinct is that. All right, I know we got some super chats. We're going to hit those.

But first, this story I know was going to take a while because you're gonna have to break it down for us, but I want to cover the Japanese yen trade. Uh because there's a lot of different things on the table. I see US is now buying uh apparently is going to buy the yen and tank the dollar. Bessent saying that's a good move. I don't know if this is the same thing we did with Argentina that we're just temporarily backing them. So kind of give us the lay of the land when it comes to this Japanese yen trade and how America's getting involved.

Okay. Uh this one has a lot. I'll kind of speedun it. Uh and then uh depending on community questions, we can drill down on something. Okay. So Besson is signaled. Signal is the important word here. This is always how the financial system works. They signal things so that the market can react sort of react uh in a measured way first, but they can see like how things are playing and then they can like back off or push forward. It's utterly fascinating. But nonetheless, Besson has signaled that he's willing, get ready for this, to devalue the dollar as a weapon in the global trade war.

We will almost certainly want to talk more about that. If this is true, this would allow the US to use the dollar's value to help allies and hurt enemies. So like we could batter China, we could help Japan. In that vein, reports have been flying that the Federal Reserve conducted what's known as a rate check on Japanese yen on Friday. Again, this is all about signaling. Um, historically, when this kind of rate check has been done, it's been a precursor to direct currency intervention on behalf of the US to help Japan halt the yen's rapid depreciation.

I don't think people understand because Japan is like relatively small, but their economy is amazing sort of in the way that it's plugged into uh the US economy for sure and by proxy the global economy. So it's very important even if they've been in stagflation for like 40 years which is crazy. Apparently Bessant has a 160 yen per dollar threshold that he says uh when we hit that it's time to take action. I think they were like 158 or something very very close. Following the rate check the yen surged roughly 3% over two trading sessions and by this morning today Monday the currency was back to about 153 uh81 yen and that's down from a Friday high.

Okay, this is the number 15920. So, woo, got close to that 160. Uh, the question is, what exactly is Bessant trying to accomplish with this? He's indicated that he's concerned that the sell-off in Japanese government bonds, which I'll sometimes read as JGBs, which is normally how people refer to it, but that just means Japanese government bonds, was going to spill over into US Treasury market, driving up American borrowing costs. When Japanese government bond yields spike, like they did just recently, uh, hitting a 27-year high, by the way, following Japanese Prime Minister Takichi's tax cut proposals, it creates a a mechanistic vacuum that sucks liquidity out of the US bond market.

Now, there are likely three things that Besson is worried about right now. First, Japan is the single largest foreign holder of US debt, owning roughly $1.1 trillion in treasuries. For years, JGB yields were near zero. So, Japanese pension funds and insurers. They had to buy US treasuries to get any return to make good on their promises to the people that hold their products. But if JGB yields rise towards the 3 and 4% that we see them moving towards now while the yen is strengthening, those Japanese investors no longer need the hassle of US assets.

So they would just repatriate their cash by selling US treasuries and buying the Japanese government bonds. The massive selling of US bonds uh would drive US interest rates up, making mortgages and car loans and things like that more expensive for Americans. Okay, the second thing that Besson is most likely worried about, something we've talked about here before, the yen carry trade. That unwinding would be a problem. So, this is the borrow cheap, invest high strategy that we've talked about. So, the trade goes like this. Borrow yen at say 0.5% interest, sell it for dollars and buy US tech stocks or treasuries yielding 4.5%.

yielding 4.5%. yielding 4.5%. It's magic money. It It is an infinite money glitch, of course, until it's not. Now the crisis if the yen suddenly gains value uh or the Japanese government bond yields rise the cost of that cheap borrowed yen skyrockets. Investors are then forced to fireale the things that they've bought with that borrowed money. So they'd have to dump their US assets effectively all at once to pay back their yen before they're wiped out by the rising interest costs. This, by the way, is the same reason that you know that America, the Fed is going to lower rates because you see that cliff of debt coming.

You're like, you have to do something. In this case, you sell off your US assets and pay down your loans. Uh, and in the US case, you devalue the dollar. So, all right, the third thing that he's probably worried about uh is the volatility spillover. So, markets do not exist in silos all around the world. Understanding how interconnected we are right now is very important. And when the world's third largest bond market, which is the Japanese government bonds, because of that low interest rates, when that market has a heart attack, it triggers automated selling in risk parody funds, multi-billion dollar funds that automatically sell assets when volatility spikes.

Analysts of City Croup recently warned that Japanese government bond volatility could force funds to dump up to $130 billion in US bonds purely to manage their risk profile. So that's regardless of how healthy the US economy looks. Things could be fine on our side. But they have covenants that they have to meet around risk and so it would force them to sell things off. Now by signaling Fed support for the yen, Bessant is essentially trying to lower the temperature of like all this instability. If the yen stabilizes, the fire sale stops.

So he's effectively protecting the US Treasury market from being the liquidity ATM, right? So the yen is declining in value. Everybody's panic selling and now you because you have to raise rates to stabilize everything and now you are selling off in the US to get the money that you need and that ends up hurting the US economy. So um the last time the US and Japan engaged in a major coordinated intervention to support the yen was June of 1998 during the Asian financial crisis. In that instance, the joint effort was designed to prevent a regional devaluation war and restore stability to global markets after the yen hit 147.

So we're higher than that now. now. now. Um, when I hear this, my initial thought is like, okay, well, if they're holding $1.1 trillion in debt and they have to sell it, that's good for us because we'll get that money and we can pay down our debt or like they're selling the notes. So, where does that money get sold to? Back to us, right? Do I have this wrong? this wrong? this wrong? You do. So, here's where Okay. Uh, can I do a quick PSA? This is so important.

Uh, if by the way, if you're thinking about starting a business, join Impact Theory University. I teach this idea over and over and over and over. The reason you can ask me any question about your business and I can give you an answer. I don't need a gazillion years of context is because if you understand the mechanisms, the mechanisms, the mechanisms, then you understand cause and effect. Once you understand cause and effect, industry doesn't matter anymore. So the big thing that's going on here is when you understand the mechanisms of how this kind of stuff works, then you it's like, oh [ __ ] okay, I get it.

So for instance when um people are selling things off then there is a so bonds are sold on the private market as well as initial auctions. So they'll do an initial auction to get the thing into the system. the system. the system. Hugely important. How that goes, what price willing people are willing to pay, uh how much of it goes before they have to raise rates, all that stuff. Very, very important. But when people talk about the bond market, what they're really talking about are people selling things that they already own constantly all the time.

And so as people gain faith, lose faith, they buy and sell at different prices. And the fixed return of a bond is determined at the time of issuance. However, when you sell it, if you sell it at a lower rate, you know what it pays out at. So, if I buy it at a lower like cost and I know it pays out at that much, then we would say the yields have gone up. If everybody thinks that it's going to be stronger, then it's like you can drive the cost up and now people are like, okay, I feel really good.

This is stable, but my yields are going to be smaller. So, when yields are going up, it's actually a sign of a problem. It's people saying, "Uhoh, I I don't have faith that this is going to work. So, I'm going to lower the price, give you a way bigger potential return, so you'll be the sucker that gets drawn in by greed. You hold that [ __ ] for 10 years. We'll see what happens." So, that those are it's happening all the time. the time. the time. Mhm. Mhm.

Mhm. And that has uh an impact on the appetite for bonds. And if the appetite goes too low, then the Treasury is going to step in and buy those things. Now, the Treasury doesn't want to do that, but they know that they'll have to. So, as the bond market starts getting crazy, um that's bad news for them because they may have to print money and buy a ton of that stuff just to keep the economy going. And for the reasons we've talked about a trillion times in the show, printing money, bad news.

Um so, you don't want to see major sell-offs. You want to see um everybody have belief that the longtail uh bond rates, oh, it's going to be great. You want that rate low. And so people are like, "Yeah, the 10-year rate is low." Great. That means that people believe it's nice and stable. You don't have to um entice people to come in and buy it. And so as those rates climb, which is exactly what's happening in Japan, everyone starts to panic because if you want to borrow money, you know, to build something, you don't want to borrow it for 90 days.

You want to borrow for 10 years. And so as those numbers go up, now you're running into trouble. Now you're getting into the position where um you're in a expensive debt position and when debt is expensive the economy cools down. cools down. cools down. Gotcha. Gotcha. Do you think this is something that now that because the number cooled down this was just him signaling kind of dipping his toe in the water to try to give people ease or do you think this is an intervention that America would need to do?

this that to answer that question it comes down to the fundamental what do you think about 1913 do you like there to be creative destruction or do you want there to be no creative destruction it's a set of trade-offs so Scott Bessant is a very clever man uh who has made billions of dollars off of understanding currency moves and remember he was the guy with George Soros that broke the British pound it's wild to think that people can do that uh but they did. And so he understands how this stuff works.

He understands that if we stop the bleeding, we stabilize the global markets, but we also keep the zombie train running because it's people from the top saying, um, I'm going to devalue the dollar by making more of it. I'm going to punish anybody who saves money. I'm going to punish anybody that doesn't understand assets. I'm going to deepen the K-shaped economy. I'm going to rev up populism, but there won't be a acute depression. depression. depression. And so, if you're like, "Bro, I'll let you shove me to the bottom of the cave-shaped economy all day.

Just don't put me in a depression." Okay, great. You would rather that. And like remember in the depression flower companies like I bake bread with flour flower companies uh their sacks were printed designs because people were so poor they would make clothes for themselves or for their kids out of the flower sacks. And instead of your kid running around in a burlap sack, they wanted him running around in a sack with flowers printed on it. it. it. So that's a depression. We've never seen anything like it.

And we've never seen anything like it specifically because we steal from everybody that holds dollars. And we just say, "Yeah, we're going to kill you slowly, uh, but you're never going to have to wear our flower sacks." And if you would rather be in that position and say, "I don't mind that the billionaires run away with all the money in the universe via assets. Let's be very clear. clear. clear. Um, I don't mind not being able to make ends meet. I just want to make sure that there's never an acute moment of despair like the 1929 crash that led into the Great Depression.

That's the trade-off. And so, yeah, depending on where you fall on that side determines whether you think this is a good move or a bad move. Do you which side do you fall on? You have the system. So, right now it's a good move, but you should be looking to get out of this system. So, and get away from uh Federal Reserve in general. general. general. Yeah. I mean, listen, here's probably where I'm going to end up on all of this. And it's, oh god, I hate that this is true.

Uh, you know that meme that's like, dumb guy says, Midwit says something different, and then smart guy says the same thing as the the dummy. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Bitcoin is your life raft, says the dummy. Midwit is like, bro, like, that's crazy. you shouldn't be forcing people into an alternative currency. And then smart guy goes, "Bitcoin is your life raft." It and by Bitcoin, I mean gold, Bitcoin, like things that are alternative assets. alternative assets. alternative assets. Yeah, they're they're not easy to inflate. I say not easy because gold does inflate every year, but it's not easy to inflate.

Um it's decentralized. Gold is a decentralized reserve currency. Bitcoin, same thing. Um, I want to save everybody, but time and time again, life teaches me it's not really possible between people not having the time or the inclination to think from first principles or they're too stupid. Either way, you end up in a system where system where system where no empire in history has ever avoided printing money into oblivion. So, we're not going to avoid it. Um, so yeah, the only reality is I can make moves to protect myself and then yell into a microphone for anybody who will listen to go protect themselves.

But that's it. I don't see any other strategy. I feel like if you were the secretary of treasury and like let's say you weren't politically affiliated, you were actually the secretary of treasury and your one job was to make America long-term better. long-term better. long-term better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like you would probably go away from the Fed, I'm assuming. No, I would do something totally different. you're making me think about something I haven't thought about, but what popped into my head is um I would be running the uh strategy that they're sort of flirting with, but they don't talk much about where you're making sure that every American is invested in an intelligent way and you create a system where the smartest financial minds in the world desperately want to work for the government because they get rich as Americans get rich and they they don't get a management fee.

[ __ ] those kids. You get money only if Americans are getting money. And if Americans get money, you get money. And go get [ __ ] rich. And so if you could create that's it, bro. We have financialized the world. We're about to financialize outer space. And so uh let those like America stopped manufacturing and started financializing. So put like if you're really trying to do this thing, it's like just make sure all Americans benefit from that financialization. So and they're not going to like be the big swing winners.

You you want an all-weather strategy. I only want people that are like this has got to be stuff where we're never going to go bust no matter what happens in the world. Like we're planning for all contingencies. So uh but something like that. Oh my god. like that. Now you get a 100% of Americans own stocks. Now, if you want to do something like some percentage of it is in your hands and you can do whatever you want and then you just let people yolo and like flame out, whatever.

Uh freedom has consequences maybe. Like I'd really have to stop and think about that. But something like that where it's like now you're not going to get that insane K-shaped economy because the very thing that's driving the wealthy is now driving the average American. And because they don't understand it, you you can't just be like, "Well, go figure it out." We we've already answered that question. 10% figure it out. Everybody else is [ __ ] Got it. I thought you were going to go in a different direction.

I thought you were going to say like, "We'll be in a great depression for 10 years. Figure it out. Then after that, we'll be prosperity." prosperity." prosperity." That sounds like an absolute disaster. So, I get the pull towards So, if you're trying to unwind a system, like unwinding it all in one brutal step is almost never the right play. you want to do something far more surgical. You want to give people time to adjust and reallocate and let things happen far more smoothly. Um, jumping without a parachute is about velocity.

It it is it isn't even about distance, which is why you can jump from the same distance and if you have a parachute, you can land safely. The reason that you die on impact without a parachute is you hit terminal velocity and now you're going so fast that the internal organs just splatter. All of your bones turn to dust, your internal organs splatter, and you just mechanistically you're dead. So slowing the descent matters a lot. It's just that we don't have an answer for slowing the descent right now.

So um we are headed towards bankruptcy and that will be a cliff and we'll suddenly fall off of it. Uh so my thing would be okay, you've got to engage people in the part of the economy that's working, assets. You've got to um balance your budget and then use the devaluation of the dollar as a mechanism to deploy um tools to stop anything super acute from happening. And then if you can drag that out over 20 or 30 years, now it's like people see their wealth going up because of the stocks.

you've got a mechanism where um they can pull that money out at certain intervals. You'll have to deal with um what happens to people that don't have to work because I think you do want them working. But anyway, there are ways around that problem. Gotcha. And then last thing on this um what would be the impacts to like the everyday people if we were to intervene in the Japanese market? Uh well, so historically the impact has been stabilization. It's worked. Okay. But you it works by devaluing the dollar.

dollar. dollar. What does devaluing the dollar like mean practically? practically? practically? Uh so in I think it was 1985 we did one of these things uh and it devalued the dollar by 50%. Now I'm so glad you're asking this question Drew. Thank you because I would have forgot to talk about this. Uh okay so the fascinating thing is Bessant smart guy is saying uh I'm ending the era. He he hasn't said this explicitly but his actions speak to this. I'm ending the era known as King Dollar and I think it was uh I [snorts] want to say a Clinton era um adviser or someone in the Fed, I don't know.

Anyway, uh he coined this phrase and his whole thing was the thing that is in the national security interest of the United States is a strong dollar. Period. We do strong dollar, low inflation. Strong dollar, low inflation. That's it. All y'all [ __ ] get in line. And the problem is that you then export your manufacturing because you can't compete with places that can do it on the cheap. Uh, also exporting becomes very difficult because everything costs a ton when it's made in America and it's very cheap when it's made in China and then brought back to the US.

This is why we started doing tariffs because this is like, well, you you're just undercutting us. We can't justify manufacturing here because it'll be too expensive. Everything you do is cheap. So, what Besson is saying is, oh, no, no, no. We've got a tool. I'll print the [ __ ] out of this money. I'll devalue it. It's going to make the debt easier to pay back. It's evil from where I'm sitting uh for reasons I've explained. But it is effective in terms of geopolitical wielding of weapon where it's like, oh, China in a bit of a precarious situation.

Are you Oh, it' be a real shame if 20% of your current manufacturing came back to the US because we lowered our prices by driving the um util not the utility, the value of the dollar down. Hey, China, you know that game you've been playing for the last 30 years of devaluing the yuan and constantly being right on the edge of where we consider an act of economic warfare? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Instead of coming after you with sanctions and some other [ __ ] we're just going to lower the value of our dollar.

And so now our [ __ ] is cheap and we're going to flood the market. [ __ ] you. And so it's like, but now Americans are like, wait, I don't own assets. This is terrible for me. So you get into that, but it's somewhat balanced out by if we're devaluing the dollar, manufacturing comes back to the US, then theoretically you could start getting things cheaper here. That one is not a guarantee. So I certainly wouldn't count on it, but it's like that's one of the other plays. But given how cheap China could make it, also just not tariffing the [ __ ] out of China would have the same effect.

So that that one's a a bit of a wash, but that's the game that Bessant I think is playing on an international stage. He's like, "Yeah, this might be bad for certain parts of the US economy, but it's great for other parts. Brings back manufacturing, makes us more competitive on the global stage, allows us to hurt certain allies to help Japanese. Because if we're devaluing the dollar by buying yen, then you're in a position where you stabilize their economy. They love you. you stay very tight with them or you do things like what we did with Argentina.

That was a little bit different because technically we made money off that but same idea. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. I know we got some super chats. Yeah, we got one from doesn't balance. Hey guys, with everything going on in the world, global tensions, AI, and all its implications, potential economic collapse, environmental changes, any tips on how to stay positive and hopeful for the future? Keep it up. Man, that's a really, really good question. So, um, here's what I do. Remember, please that life has nothing better to offer you than requited love.

So, somebody who loves you back. So, this sounds cheesy, but make sure you're putting time and energy into that kind of thing. Um, also remember, you control your mind. So, there can be things that are going horribly, but the wonderful Shakespeare quote hopefully brings it all back into perspective. Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. That doesn't seem true when you first think about it, but the reality is that is true. Uh so make sure that you have control of your mind and that you're able to stabilize your own emotional reactions.

That's very important. Um think about the fact that look, we all go through hard things. And so if you're focused on first principles thinking, cause and effect, you're going to be able to get to the other side of this. You're also you have a love practice. You are focusing on things the people that you love and spending time with the people that you love. All of that stuff is just incredibly important. also have things that are fun and cheap. Uh so yeah, for the cost of a Netflix subscription, which isn't free by any means, but is very reasonable for the amount of entertainment that you can get.

Uh find shows that bring you joy. That's one simple thing. Uh collect things that are cheap. I collect manga. Manga costs like $9, $12. Uh, so again, not free, but those kind of things, they don't have to be expensive to be something that really bring you joy. So, don't only put your time and energy into the things that are stressful. Like this weekend, I was working on the video game I'm building, Project Kaizen. I knew [ __ ] was popping off. I knew Alex Prey had been murdered.

And I was like, that waits until Sunday night. Uh, on Saturday, I'm going to spend time with my wife. I'm going to be a husband. I'm going to work on the video game. something that is just pure joy and thinking about how can I add value to a generation of kids' lives by the choices that I make in this video game. And so being intentional, seeking joyful things out. All right, I'll stop. I could go on about that one. I like that question. that question. that question.

Um, also, can we shout out Hi, Hig Box05? Box05? Box05? Hig ox05. Hig ox05. Hig ox05. Ox5. Yeah, he broke up his into two. Um, just a reminder guys, we only reached super chats with the threshold over 1999, but two of you guys today dropped more than that in multiple chats. Um, so just consolidate sucks. Um, but I'm trying to be nice, so you know. know. know. Got you. Want to read those up? Cool. Uh, okay. Uh, someone who is carrying two extra mags to a protest was fantasizing about being in a gunfight.

Full stop. People who everyday carry know this. One extra mag is common. Two is not. Tom, do you believe the numbers being reported about Oh, that's two different ones, but yeah, first one there about the two extra mags. Uh, okay. So, um, dear America, please remember you have a constitutional right to carry a weapon. I don't know if there are laws against how many magazines that you can have. Um, if there are, and he violated the law, then that is what it is. But we have a constitutional right to stand up against a tyrannical government.

The right question to ask is when do we think that it's worth laying our life down. So, I have no beef. That guy did not reach for his gun. He had his gun on him legally. He had a legal right to carry. So, man, if you've got beef with that, I better see that same [ __ ] energy when it's a school shooter or somebody on the right because Americans have the right to bear arms. Okay? It is the second amendment of the Constitution. So I looking at that there are many layers going on.

I think these are organized this is organized resistance. Okay. But in and of itself that's not necessarily illegal. It may be a thing that we hate. Uh but you have to take this guy's actions for what they were. He was peaceful. He did not reach for his gun. He did not do anything that should have ended up with him being shot. Uh, and so whether he was there to start [ __ ] or not, like if you roll up with the intent of starting [ __ ] but you don't start [ __ ] I'm not the thought police.

Nobody's the [ __ ] thought police. And so going after somebody like a precog from Minority Report is completely out of the question for me. I do not want to live in that world. Like imagine there's a world where AI can 100% detect that you have ill intent. Should they be able to stop you? I don't think they should because they shouldn't be able to read your [ __ ] mind. So, your mind is yours. It should not be uh violated via AI, but if you do something, then yes, if they've got their eye on you because they can tell that you're uh in a bad way, sure.

But somebody making a move on you before you do something, hell no. Hell no. Second one from Higgby Ox5. Tom, do you believe the numbers being reported about Iran? Why should Americans trust these numbers? numbers? numbers? I don't think you should yet. Um I think it you'll never get actual real numbers. Um Um Um the reason that I am all for the downfall of any um dictatorial theocratic regime is that the only way to keep those countries going, bless you, you, you, is through um violence.

And so they have been violent towards their own people for a very long time now. I think they need to do it themselves, but if you've got a government that is shooting their own civilians, um I don't need the death toll to be 40,000 before you go, we have a problem here. Uh so I don't think that the Americas I don't think America is doing it to be altruistic though. So uh please don't be surprised when they leave a whole bunch of people in an area that doesn't have resources to die.

They will. Um so yeah, don't be confused on that one either. But yeah, I would love to see the Iranian regime toppled regardless of whether those exact numbers are accurate. And by toppled, I'm assuming you mean like internal like internal like internal from the inside out. From the inside out. out. out. And then we got a couple from Zagros. The first one is, "Hey all, loves to Tom and the GO co-host. Have you seen the slow-mo video of Freddy pulling out his gun?" Which we did bring that up during this.

Uh, I have never ever ever in all the videos that I've watched seen Prey pulling out his gun. Apologies, I misspoke. Okay, Okay, Okay, we saw the video in slow motion of it going off in the other person's hand. The ICE officer takes his gun and is whisking it away when it appears will want the fullness of time to reveal whether that's true. Uh, where it appears to be fired uh unintentionally presumably, possibly it went off. I can't tell if he's got his finger on the trigger.

Who knows? Um, but again, that doesn't excuse shooting the guy. That was pure incompetence. That may have been supercharged by malice. I don't know. Uh, so that's the kind of thing that will have to come out in the fullness of time. Also, have you seen Cam Higgby's reporting on the signal insurgency networks in Minnesota? Aggressively. So that's a big part of what leads me to believe that all of this stuff is far more coordinated than people want to believe. Um, so again, I I'll say it again.

It is enshrined in the Constitution that a well- reggulated militia can bear arms for the very reason of pushing back against a tyrannical government. So look at it through that lens. You want to look at it through the lens of they are they have the constitutional right to both be a well- reggulated militia, whatever that means. Maybe they don't qualify, but to be a well- reggulated militia and bear arms. So, uh, you've got people doing exactly that. And so, you can't be mad at that. Now, you may say we shouldn't be there.

You may say that these are, uh, fan flames that are being fanned by the government and the government should be held accountable for that. Cool. I'm here for that whole debate, but you've got to make sure that you're looking at these guys carrying weapons as people who uh sure they may be being funded, but these are people who believe that it's worth putting their life at risk uh because they believe that the government is being tyrannical. Now, do you have to go in and tease out who's doing it because they're true believers, who's doing it because they're in on the grift and the fraud and all that?

Of course you do. Um, but I think if people look at this and just go, "Nah, these are a bunch of left-wing psychopaths and all that, you're going to be very confused. Going to be very confused." Your frame of reference seems just as crazy to them as theirs seems to you. So, you've always got to uh remind yourself, my way is not necessarily the right way. It's just my way. Then from there everything needs to be benchmarked against what is the outcome that we desire and are we actually making progress towards that outcome.

I think once you make um the people behind these organized protests state what their actual aim is. That's where your skin is going to crawl. Um so I want to know the world that they're trying to usher in. So why is a government that's trying to enforce laws tyrannical? Exactly. Is it just the methods or is it what they want to do? Now if they said just the methods, I'd be on board. If they said it's what they want to do, enforce immigration, then I'm like, hm, now we have a problem.

So, uh, that's where driving people to state out loud what the outcome that they want is is very important. That's all we got from chat. Cool. Cool. Cool. All right. Time as well. Yeah. And that's that is time. There we go. All right, everybody. Thank you guys for joining us. These times are wild. I appreciate very much uh that you guys are here to be a part of the sensemaking apparatus. Uh it means a lot. We will be back on Wednesday again. If you have not already, please do subscribe to the channel.

It matters a lot. The YouTube algorithm is brutal to get around. Same on X. Uh same on Kick. Wherever you're watching from, guys, subscribe, please. It helps a lot for us to reach new people. And if this brings any value to you, would you please share it? Uh that would mean the world to us. And I mean it. If you're thinking of launching a business, join me in Impact Theory University. I teach about applying these principles of first principles thinking, cause and effect to business. Uh and with AI on the rise, it's going to be a bigger and bigger thing.

All right, everybody. Thank you again for being a part of this ecosystem. I love you all. I'll see you on Wednesday, same time. Peace.