Canada Pulls Out Of Economic Negotiations With The US. Is This The Beginning Of The End?

Key Takeaway

Before entering any negotiation, write down how the other person will explain the deal as a win to their employees, family, or constituents. Address identity, autonomy, and incentives—not just the economics. The episode’s Canada-US discussion illustrates a practical rule: even an objectively attractive offer can fail when the other side feels publicly coerced. Make your proposal easy for them to champion as their own choice.

Episode Overview

Tom Bilyeu and Drew examine bond-market stress, US debt, currency confidence, and the claim that durable economic stability requires real productivity growth rather than financial maneuvers. They also discuss Canada’s withdrawal from US trade negotiations, arguing that geopolitical alliances, public rhetoric, sovereignty, and human psychology can outweigh narrow economic incentives. The episode closes with discussions on Iran, Israel-Palestine discourse, product-market fit, and personal responsibility.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Canada Pulls Out Of Economic Negotiations With The US. Is This The Beginning Of The End? from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Billy Show live. Boy oh boy if you paid attention to the markets this weekend. It was a wild one and we have an absolutely stuffed docket for you guys today. The bond market is going crazy as Bessant calls a Monday meeting and rumors fly that he's going to use the $1 trillion Treasury General Fund to bring rates down. We'll see. Canada pulls out of economic negotiations while the US uh with US citing unfairness. But the reality that we're going to cover in detail is something very different.

Stay tuned for that one. Are we actually making progress in Iran? That was a question I was asking myself as traffic through the Straight of Hormuz jumped roughly 400% and reports start pouring in that the IRGC's grip on the straight is actually slipping. That could be good news. Today also marks the dawn of Bessant's promised economic D-Day against Iran. We're about to find out just how much strength the US has left. China is using data scraping to build a synthetic version of the US electorate and test messaging and its impact on voting.

Yikes. And Mark Ruffalo goes hyper viral for his denial of being anti-Semitic which sparked uh a whole debate that highlights a growing divide over Israel and what they mean on the world stage. So welcome everybody. Let's talk about Bessant because oh my god, his economic bazooka is out and he is ready to rock in an effort to try to tame the rising rates in the bond market which since his last announcement have been all over the place. The problem is he is going to be tested.

Why? Because people do not like seeing that we're $40 trillion in debt. Uh they don't like seeing that Japan, the largest buyer of US debt, is in trouble. And the US has been doing yes all kinds of financial shenanigans to try to help them out of trouble. We're now having to do financial shenanigans to get ourselves out of trouble. They also don't like that China is buying records record amounts of gold while selling record amounts of US treasuries. They really don't like that gold is now the number one global reserve asset held by central banks as people continue to move away from the dollar.

So long-term bond rates are colliming. The 30-year just touched 5.337%. That was a 19-year high. Now, when Besson said that he was going to double buybacks from 2 billion per round to 4 billion per round, yields did crater. They went down by nine basis points. But by Friday, they'd come right back, bringing the long bond back to about 5.273%. That was higher than before Bessant made that move, which is what I think prompted the two Treasury officials who were of course off the record to leak, though I think that they were told to do so by Bessant uh to CNBC this morning that the Treasury general account, which holds nearly a trillion dollar could be used to buy bonds on mass.

Now, the TGA is the government's massive checking account at the Federal Reserve, but I'm not sure that anyone was expecting Besson to dip into that to fund the buybacks. I think the market was assuming that more short-term debt was going to be issued to bring longdated bonds into being short-term bonds. So, you're not changing the amount of debt in the system. You're just changing the duration. The fact that he's using cash makes this a whole different ballgame because it means that the Treasury will be retiring longduration bonds without adding supply anywhere else on the curve.

And when they do that, when they buy it back in this manner, the debt just evaporates. It's gone. It doesn't exist anymore. Now, apparently, the markets are believing the rumor, at least for now, because yields fell again on the report. The 30-year is down four basis points to 5.22 to 2 3% and the 10-year is down four basis points to 4.7%. Now, there is a catch. When you look at using this method, the TGA is not an infinite war chest. That is some sort of magical solution to this problem.

Every dollar in that account was borrowed by doing a bond auction previously. So, if that money gets spent down, now you're just skating on thinner ice for future problems like uh if there's a government battle over the debt ceiling or whatever. These are the funds that would be used for that. And so you are likely to have to try to rebuild that if you end up spending it. And to rebuild it, you have to sell, you guessed it, more debt. And once again, you're going to put pressure on some portion of the curve.

So it buys us time, gives us a chance to see uh how this is playing out. Do people settle down? Do they realize that they're not going to be able to sweat Bessant uh enough to keep putting pressure on rates? or do buyers know that Besson's options are limited and that there is no silver bullet, only trade-offs. And so we are likely to see more volatility. Guess what fixes volatility, everybody? Having a good economy. You got to grow your way out, boys and girls. And you can't just say it.

You actually have to do it. And right now, oh buddy, as we delobalize, as we continue to place one gigantic bet on AI, that is growing for sure. But is it growing at the rates that it would need to grow to get us out of this? Not yet. Our GDP at last check was growing at a poultry like 1.2% or something. So, this is not an ideal setup. We definitely have got to find a way to really get the real, not the financial economy, the real economy growing.

You've got to see middle class real wages going up. Not nominal, real wages. So, not just that number go up, but number go up compared to inflation. That's where we've got to be. And until we see the real economy growing at a rate that we can get excited about, let's pay it at 3 4%. Uh, we're going to need to be somewhere in that ballpark. So, we're going to have to roughly double. I mean, the this is not going to be an easy task. So, Bessant and the whole crew in Trump land have their work cut out for them.

And I don't yet see signs that this is going to work. So, we'll see. The fullness of time, Drew. The fullness of time. I think like it's cool cuz like Bessant is like economic wizard. So, I'm just flabbergasted at how many little piles of money he's like, "Well, I got a trillion over here and I got two billion over here and I just did a currency swap with these people." So it's I could feel like he's at like the the board and he's trying to pull all the levers and do all the magician trick, but the bond market is like nah, you go up.

The the markets are very savvy. They are full of people that know exactly how this game is played. They know what uh tools he has in his disposal. So it for the general public, a lot of these things are going to be surprises, but for the people that are actually putting the pressure on the markets, not so much. There's a book called 1929. And it was written by one of the I think Andrew. Thank you. Jesus Drew. Come on, man. Uh written by Andrew Sorcin. Yes.

Bang. And he goes through some of the ways that people were manipulating the markets at that time. You really see because we've had so much time to look back at that and figure out who the players were, what were they doing, who are they grouping up with, how are they moving the markets. you really get a sense of how easy maybe the wrong word but easy as a standin it is to manipulate markets and to get them to move in a direction and what Besson is doing is basically creating a market meaning there's going to be a buyer now that buyer happens to be the US government and I know before we started going you you pulled up is it this bar chart where the US basically is just buying up all of the debt within a certain range was it the 10ear range I think 10 or 15 year range.

The US now owns more than 50% of its own bonds. In that range, it's not across the full spectrum, but in that range, that is not a sign of a healthy economy, man. That is not where you want to be. Where do you want to be? You want Japan just hoovering up your debt because it is a surefire way for them to get a risk-free rate of return. You want China hoovering up your debt. You want the whole world hoovering up your debt. But instead, right now, the world is splintering apart.

Delgoblobalization is my standin phrase for nobody trusts anybody anymore. Everybody is super suspicious. Um, you get like these agreements that are being made between different countries, but it's like all these very uneasy alliances that are being made. You're seeing stuff happening in the Middle East where they're trying to like team up a little bit, but they don't have a ton of trust for each other. Obviously, plenty of people don't have trust in the US government. Uh the US obviously doesn't trust China. China doesn't trust the US.

I it it is this is a weird time. And I here's my mental map. And I don't think I've said this out loud. Certainly not very often, but my mental map is one day we're all going to look back at this very time as like, what does deglobalization feel like? Is it fun? Is it good? Does it lead to instability? Does it cause people to shoot each other? And the answer is yes. this is what it is. And because we don't have the historical perspective to see it, we keep looking at like these narrow little beats and we're not putting it all together.

Every now and then I'll do a run and I'll sort of web everything out of like here's how all of this stuff is interconnected, including the kinetic warfare, but it's just too overwhelming to run through it every time. But when you zoom in, you lose the real picture, which is the world is fracturing. We're going from high trust to low trust and it's in the middle of populism and it's not a good time. Yeah. And when this all started with hollowing out manufacturing and people were getting rust beltized we just you know you sort of well yeah but everything's getting cheaper and that kind of feels good and you don't realize you've started a process that is brutal.

Yeah. We spoke with Arthur Laugher who's like the OG tax consultant to Reagan and all these administrations. And when we brought up the debt problem to him, hey trillion in debt, we're 130, I think we were at 130 GDP debt ratio. He's like, that's not real. We owe ourselves like federal debt isn't that big of a deal. And then we look at charts like this that shows that the Federal Reserve now owns half of the treasuries that are maturing. So it does seem like we're kind of circular financing ourselves.

Is what is the the thing on the other side? Like what is the cuz I feel like we are just owing money to us and like line item one is a withdrawal, line item four is a deposit. So what is the downfall or what is the problem this? What are the thing that we are trying to prevent? Cuz right now we're the biggest older owners of our own debt and like we owe us. So I'm trying to figure out like we just going to default on us.

You get what I'm saying? Like what what's the thing on the other side that I'm not seeing? Okay. Um, let's we're going to speedrun it a bit, but we're going to have to bring in immigration to this because it's going to make a point about the economy that we've been talking about since like the 60s or 70s. Um, I pulled a clip, if you want to pull that up while I start this, of Milton Freriedman talking about, he doesn't say the part that I'm going to fill in.

Um, but he's talking about why up until 1914, everybody was like, "Yeah, like open immigration," which we had an open immigration policy. If you made it to Ellis Island, welcome. There were no um stipulations. Then we started shutting that off. And certainly on the right, people have an intuition, if nothing else, that you can't do that. But the question that Milton Friedman asks is why can't you do that? And this is going to I know it feels like we're moving away. This is going to um begin to explain what we're protecting against in terms of um the fact that this is all a gigantic Ponzi scheme.

And so we're going to answer the question that Milton Friedman dances around which is what happened in 1913. Why is there a break in 1914? Let's hear from Milton. Always been amused by a kind of a paradox. Suppose you go around and ask people. The United States, as you know, before 1914 had completely free immigration. Anybody could get on a boat and come to these shores and if he landed on Ellis Island, he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? You will find hardly a soul who will say it was a bad thing.

Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. But then I suppose I say to the same people, "But now what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?" Oh no. They'll say we couldn't possibly have free immigration today. Why that would uh that would flood us with immigrants from India and god knows where and we'd be driven down to a a bare subsistence level. What's the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today?

Well, there's a sense in which that answer is right. There's a sense in which free immigration in the same sense as we had it before in 1914 is not possible today. Why not? Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every every resident is is promised certain minimum level of income or a minimum level of subsistence regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not, well then it really is an impossible thing.

If you have free immigration in the way in which we had it before 1914, everybody benefited. The people who were here benefited. The people who came benefited because nobody would come unless he or his family thought he would do better here than he would elsewhere. And the new immigrants provided additional resources, provided additional possibilities for the people already here. So everybody could mutually benefit. But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a prorated share of the pot to take the extreme example or even to a low level of the pot, then the effect of that situation is that free immigration would mean a uh reduction of everybody to the same uniform level.

Of course, I'm exaggerating. It wouldn't go quite that far, but it would go in that direction. And it is that perception that leads people to adopt what had at first seemed like inconsistent values. Okay. So now the question becomes what changed? Why is the year 1914? Now longtime listeners of the show know exactly where I'm going. Uh which is in 1913 we created the central bank. In 1913, you went from a real economy with soundish money that was backed by gold, and you moved into the steady breakdown over a very long period of time, but you moved into a situation where you had the steady breakdown of the relationship between the dollar and gold that has its final breaking point in 1971.

And so once you understand that, when you put the central bank in place, what you're doing is creating that. And if we had it fast on top, I would have you play that Biden senior economic adviser who could not explain the economy. Because what he's tripping over is that, okay, wait, how is all of this money being created? Like, who do we owe it to? Like, wait, is it a problem? Like, why do we have to print money if we just owe it to ourselves? What what's the issue here?

And it's where you realize that money, even gold, it's all a fiction. It is all a psychological game. Man, do I want people to understand you're having a biological experience. None of this stuff is real. we whether the fact that we live in a simulation is real or simply the best um approximation of what's really going on doesn't matter. The reality is the way that human psychology works is that you will very quickly realize it's far too hard to stay alive by myself. So I need to um find a high utility way to capture the value of my time and effort and so I'm going to specialize in something.

And that forces you to abstract money. It's no longer the real thing. It's no longer I build you shelter, you live in the shelter. I built you a fishing rod and you were able to go get something to eat. And it becomes um I did a thing. I don't know what people are going to do with the thing that I'm making. But as long as that thing has value, people will give me this abstraction that we call money. Now that money has to be made from something.

And we picked gold because it can't be eaten by like silver fish, which will actually eat cash. uh it doesn't rot over time as so many other things do uh because for a while you know things like hay or rice could be used as money uh because it was just so universally used by everybody. Salt is another one. And so we found okay gold is this thing. It's very hard to inflate because it's just hard to get out of the ground. And so there's this um natural scarcity to it, a natural difficulty to get it out of the ground.

And so even though it does slowly inflate over time, that becomes a thing that like basically every society settled on, it just happens to be this thing that comes from an exploding star. So it has like a relatively even distribution so that everybody sort of come across this thing. Okay, so it's already fake. It's just a thing that we go, okay, we're all going to agree that if you have this thing, I can trust that it's real. But then as you get into the central banking, you can't trust it anymore.

Now you just have to believe that the people running the central bank will try to be sensible about the amount that they inflate the currency. And as every empire before us has done, they stop being sensible. And 1971 was the end of the sort of sensible train where there was any tie between gold and the dollar that kept it constrained in some way. And so you look at the M2 money supply and it just starts climbing ridiculously high post 1971. So all of the debt that we're bringing on it is it's all basically um a fake system, a Ponzi scheme, however you want to look at it, that is completely done by fiat, just by decree.

This money now exists. It is valuable because literally I as the government say so. And the problem is that as we do this, you find that you can't infinitely create appetite for debt. You can do a lot of things to create um people's desire to give you the fake money that they earned uh in order to get that. But over time, it just keeps increasing the supply, increasing the supply. You can buy it back from people. Um but the problem is the mechanisms that you have to buy it back ultimately cause the creation of more money.

So, as the Fed uh sorry, as the Treasury is using the money that they raised at auction, um they basically sequestered that money. Mhm. But now that they're buying it, they're injecting liquidity back into the system. And then they will ultimately, assuming they want to get back to a trillion dollars in that fund, they're going to have to print more money to do that. And they have to at all times be ready to quote unquote make a market by being willing to either print money or buy as the Treasury is doing now to make sure that somebody can buy that excess um available debt to keep the psychology of people in line.

But it's a psychological game that you're playing. It isn't that you're adding real value to money. In fact, you're doing the exact opposite. As you inject more liquidity into the system, if you don't inject it in exact proportion to the amount of new things that you can buy, then you're making every dollar less valuable. And so that's the game. It It's literally all quote unquote fake. But what people have to understand is if you just go, "Oh, it's fake and this is all [ __ ] and what are we doing?" You miss the whole point that all of money always and forever, whether it's sound money or not, it's all fake.

It's all psychological and that's why you get this repeating thing where even if you're the Roman government, you start clipping your coins, uh you start using impure metal so that you can um inflate the currency. Mhm. And even the fact that gold acts as currency, it only works when people believe that it's real. And so this is why gold beads have worked because well that's what we believed in at that time. This is why salt has worked because that what we believe in at that time.

But then of course people will make the fake gold or um glass beads not gold beads. If I said gold beads the glass beads um that's why they will find a way to go make those elsewhere. Roll up with ships and now we've got glass beads. You just inflated the currency it will eventually collapse. And so all of this what you're calling circular financing it does eventually collapse the currency. And so the US dollar over the last h 100 years has lost like 98% of its value.

The British pound, same thing. It's just this is what we do. So the fakery of it all, you can use it to manage people's psychology for a while. But the reality of the dynamics of a fiat currency over time will be abused through all of these gimmicks. No matter how many gimmicks you run, it will be abused over time uh to the point where it stops being real. And this is why what you're seeing now is central banks going okay we want to go back to that thing that's less uh manipulatable which is gold.

And so central banks now gold is the number one reserve asset of central banks the world over for the first time in god knows how many years. Um but yeah you it's most people will tell you well gold at least is real. Nope. It's just a less abusable fake thing that requires everyone to believe in it. So at first look I just checked the markets are kind of mixed. Dow is up S&P is sliding but there's some chip stock chip stock problem. So people are saying it could be because of that not necessarily because of the bond while Besson is playing you know fixer on the bond market.

The stock market hasn't necessarily reacted as much. Bitcoin had a little bit of a pop. What do you think is the second order consequence if Bessing keeps trying to inject liquidity or inject um money to buy those bonds back and the appetite for the bonds do not return as fast as he would like? You you are looking at one simple thing I can boil all of this down. If your real economy isn't growing, meaning you are making things more productively, more efficiently that people want very badly so that the people making that thing make more money, pay their people more.

Those people have good jobs, they're making more money over time, the real economy is growing, which they then spend in the economy, and now all of that money that's slloshing around just becomes a smaller and smaller portion of your GDP. And you grow your way out of this. If you do not grow your way out of this, you're back to my it was a 10-year clock. It's now at 9 years. And that just keeps going down until it ends in bloody revolution or uh some sort of war that just does a natural reset to the global economy.

Because if you're uh looking at all of this from the outside and you just don't have any allegiances to anybody anywhere, you're looking at the US and you're like, "Okay, this is interesting. These guys have been abusing um their position as the world's reserve currency for a long time. They become completely fiscally irresponsible, which is precisely why immigration is a problem. Now, uh you have all these insane um debts and deficits. Uh that's going to force without growth is going to force a reset of your economy because you simply won't be able to pay.

Remember, the amount that we're paying to service the debt is still climbing. So people don't talk about it much anymore because it's almost like it gets boring. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, Tom, I get it. We're 123 uh% debt GDP. Yeah, whatever. No, not whatever. You you are going towards a cliff. That cliff is there now. People can slow you down. But when you get to the point that you can't pay the interest on the debt, then you start defaulting and you just don't pay the interest on the debt or you write off some of the debt or you, which is what they're really going to do, you inflate the currency really hard to just make the debt smaller because what happens is if you have a let's just say you double inflation just to make math easy.

Mhm. Now your uh 40 trillion becomes effectively 20 trillion. Now everybody suffers for it because that's 100% inflation. But that's how with postinflation dollars you can pay off pre-inflation debts. And so this is the game that they do and they just go you're all going to suffer. Meaning anybody who gets paid in dollars, saves in dollars, uh has US debt, all of that is going to become worth less over time. And that's the game every empire ever runs. Uh they don't do austerity. They have a hard time growing.

China's now facing the same problem. Their growth rate is declining. They're still growing faster than us, but their growth rate is declining. So you get caught in this trap. So the second order consequence is you will eventually have to do something dramatic either massive inflation, defaulting on your debts, something and that something will be bad. It will be very bad. Uh and that's precisely how you end up with revolution because you can imagine look at how much energy the DSA is gaining now. Now imagine you do another 30% inflation like co forget it.

It's game over, right? We can agree if we're already in trouble, if we do another CO style bump without real growth in the economy, the pitchforks actually come out. Um, I want to tie the ends on this immigration thing. Um, in this context, if immigration were not tied to any type of benefits, you don't get no benefits, 0%. If you get health insurance through your job, great. But other than that, no government assistance at all. Would you would immigrants immigration still be as big of a problem?

Almost certainly not. So you still have a question mark around um cultural match. But if there's nothing to gain from anything other than um a hard work ethic, entrepreneurial endeavors. Um, and I talked about this really early when we started doing the lives and I said, "Listen, you've got to create a situation where you're only attracting the most hardcore people, people with an entrepreneurial spirit who have the equivalent of, I may die in the first winter, but I'm going to come anyway." When you have a setup like that, now it's like, yo, you're getting like the best and the brightest or the people that come that weren't the best and the brightest, they learn real quick, I got to go back to wherever I came from because this is not working out for me.

And it is legitimately cold in the winter in New York City. And without that forcing function of it is hard to eat. It is hard to stay alive. And I get how like brutal that sounds. But without that forcing function, you just get everybody coming. And now they're forcing you to run bigger and bigger deficits because the real economy isn't growing. You won't be able to tax the billionaire class. As much as I know everybody wants to believe that's true, you won't be able to tax them to be able to cover all of this stuff.

And so you end up in a socialist death spiral. As a PSA, I will remind everybody the Nordic countries are not socialist. They themselves will tell you that they're not socialist. And the only way that they're able to get the um large safety nets that they are is by um now starting to push back on immigrants. So they've dramatically started reducing the number of immigrants that they're bringing into the country. And they have extraordinarily broad-based high levels of tax. uh lower corporate uh tax rates. So they're like, "We've got to protect the corporations because that's we need the average middle class person to be making good money.

That's the only way get those guys making good money and then tax the [ __ ] life out of them. And you tax them at every opportunity. You tax their income. You tax the things that they buy, VAT taxes, things like that. And so you get a massively broad tax base. And then you can do a social safety net. You need a high trust, what people will call a homogeneous society. I do not think they need to look alike, but they need to think alike. And if they think alike, then you're able to get in a situation where people are like, it's considered gross in our culture to not contribute.

So if you're unemployed that you just feel terribly about yourself until you get a job. So everybody that can is like out there desperately trying to get a job because they don't want to be the guy that's like riding on the system harder than everybody else. And so there's this um cultural enforcement of don't be that [ __ ] As soon as you lose that, and I don't know if you've seen some of the riots, I forget what country it was in. Um Norway, Sweden, some one of them.

Uh where there's just like these big riots now and you've got immigrants like attacking the police and [ __ ] and it's getting crazy. So it's like that's not going to work. If you've got people are like, "No, no, no. You're going to give me my fair share. France, I'm looking at you." And people aren't like trying to make sure that like, yo, I've got to contribute to this system, not because there's a gun to my head, but because everybody's looking at me sideways and internally, I have the value system of insert country here.

And when you don't have that, when there isn't a shared value set and you can get um on the the government dole, you create an incentive structure that will implode it. But if you have something where it's like, all right, it's, you know, 1600s and you're riding on a boat where you've already got a 30% chance of dying, then you've got the ones that make it have like an 80% chance of dying in the winter. It wasn't that uniform, but it was like there were some places where it was really brutal for those first several years.

Uh, the kind of people that come in that scenario are very different. In in America, it was the Puritan work ethic. It was people who rolled off the boat and were like, "All right, we got to chop down trees. We got to build forts. We got to get shelter. We've got to figure out our crops. And it was just like that. Like if you didn't contribute, you were going to get the [ __ ] out. And being ostracized back then was quite literally a death sentence.

Yeah. Speaking of contribution, we got to talk about this US and Canada trade war. Um I'm a bit conflicted on it. Tom, break it down for us so we can really go find out what's going Well, the good news is I'm not conflicted at all. Canada is attempting economic suicide as it walked away from a trade deal with the US. Now, that trade deal with the US would have dramatically lowered the tariffs that are currently in place on several of Canada's key industries. Now, Carney said the three deal breakers for him were autos, Canadian cultural and French language protections, which I do want to know more about, and this is the important one, a last hour US demand restricting Canada's ability to sign trade deals with other countries.

Now, who might that country be, boys and girls? That country would be China. China because there is a growing relationship between the two countries that is starting to get very hot and heavy. Now listen, Canadians are rightly pissed off about Trump's asinine 51st date comments. I mean those were so dumb. They were dumb when it was happening. They are still dumb in retrospect. But ejecting out of this deal is going to be bad for Canada, especially given how far their economy has already fallen. Dude, when you look at where they were like 20 years ago compared to where they are now, yikes.

These guys are falling off a cliff. And while Carney may look tough through all of this, the numbers are not in his favor. Around 78% of all Canadian exports rely on US consumer markets, 78%. Boys and girls, come on now. The goods and resources that are at stake here, they are around 13% of all US imports. So big deal for them, much smaller deal for us. And around 15% of US exports go to Canada. So not a huge thing for us. not not trivial, but 15% is still only 15%.

In the US, exports themselves only make up 11% of total GDP. So they're 15% of 11%. Okay? So this is not the biggest deal for the US. But in Canada, exports make up 33% of GDP. So 33% of GDP and we're 78% of that 33%. Youch. This is very unwise. Also, China is far enough from Canada that it is a much worse trading partner for Canada, especially given that the US MCA article 32.10 already gives Washington notice rights and an exit trigger from other trade agreements if Canada signs a free trade deal with a non-market economy like China.

Now, as a reme China is a non-market economy, so they manipulate things to high heaven. Now, that agreement was written specifically for Beijing back in 2018. But given how cozy Carney has been getting with China, the US for reasons that I think are very understandable, they wanted more guarantees. And according to Carney, they wanted a broader lock on Canada's independent trade expansion. Given that Ottawa's target is a 50% increase in exports to China by 2030, I get why the US is like, "Nah, we're not here for that." And that's exactly why Washington has reason to push for more concessions in this agreement in my opinion.

Now, did we do it? Well, probably not. Trump is a total douchebag when it comes to this kind of stuff. He is always trying to bully people. He is making something that is good for Canada seem absolutely terrible psychologically. It's the art of the deal, Tom. Yeah. Here's the thing. Does it work in private business dealings? Maybe. But does it work on a global stage where you're going in front of cameras and saying, "These guys are like the little bro. Uh, you guys are the 51st state of the US." That's where it's like, "Dude, okay, listen.

You want to talk about things that I teach entrepreneurs all the time. Here we go. You've got to show the other person how this is a win for them. Just be thinking about that. How is this a win for them? What are they going to go back and tell their employees? What are they going to go tell their wife? Whenever I'm thinking of a deal like this, I'm thinking, how's this person going to represent to this this to their wife? How are they going to show their wife that they're cool?

If they're not going to be able to do that, this deal is going to cause me problems. and Trump just again, maybe this works in backroom deals, but it certainly does not work in the public when you're talking about somebody's identity being tied to their country. It's really dumb. Now, Canada is obviously making a play to go deeper with China, so I understand why we are pushing back, but you can't do it in a dumb way, which I'm sure is precisely what we did. Now, in January, Carney became the first prime minister to visit China since 2017.

Heime Xi in Beijing cut Canada's 100% tariff on Chinese EVs down to 6.1%. China in return dropped canola seed tariffs from about 85% to 15% and subsidy um suspended duties on canola meal, lobster, crab, and peas. Beijing also went, this one blew my mind, they went visafree for Canadian travelers. That tells you just how close these two countries are getting. uh the foreign minister reclassified and this is obviously Canada reclassified China from disruptive global power to strategic partner. So they are obviously making their play. They are saying we're going to distance oursel from the US.

We are going to get deeper in bed with China. As you can imagine, America's not feeling so good about that with Canada sharing a border with us. After the deal, Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Canadian exports if Ottawa went further with Beijing. So, this is back when the deal was originally made. On January 26, Carney said Canada had no intention of pursuing a free trade agreement with China and would honor its US MCA obligations. But when during the negotiations, when the US basically just asked Carney to put that promise into a binding agreement, he walked out in a huff instead.

So you can imagine the US, forget the Trump of it all. The US administration is looking at that going, "Yeah, this is not a Canada that's looking to build fences or build bridges with the US. This is a Canada that's trying to distance itself from the US and very clearly build stronger relationships with China." And that's going to create massive friction. So the question is, how extreme does that get? Carney can say all he wants that this is about sovereignty. And again, this is a powerful reminder to Trump that saying dumb [ __ ] like Canada's 51st state has consequences.

The British Prime Minister or British Columbia uh premier David Ebie pointed out that Trump's request for exclusive access to Canadian critical minerals on top of everything else would have essentially made Canada the get ready for it the economic equivalent of the 51st state. So they're they're telegraphing exactly what their beef is. And so, boys, you're having a biological experience. If you don't understand people's need to protect their self-image, if you don't understand that people really feel strongly about their countries, then you're going to keep making these stupid mistakes.

So, we've got to completely reverse our rhetoric. We've got to understand, yes, we may be in a stronger position than them, but they will cut their nose off despite their face. I I'll never know if it's despite or to spite, but you guys know the reference. These guys will shoot themselves in their own face to make a point, which is crazy, but is nonetheless it's not a Canadian thing. That's a human thing. Humans do this. And so the fact that we are not taking that into consideration as we negotiate is crazy.

But having said all of that, Canada is in a way worse position. Them getting in bed with China is a terrible idea and it will be met with more friction that will hurt them a lot more than it will hurt us. So, damn, Canada. Like, I don't get it together. It sounds good. Like, I don't want you to be friends with that person cuz that's a bad person. But right now, it sounds like we're the the friend that got exed out the friend group and we're just like, she's going to backstab you and you need to stop it.

She's a bad person. You don't need to be her friend, Samantha. And it's like, no, you're just mad cuz Samantha is not as cozy as you are. This is true, but we're also the friend that's worth uh a trillion dollars. we're the one flying you to the Maldes on a moment's notice with the private chefs and all that. Uh and so if you're ready to give all of that up, great. But I'm not sure that your citizens are going to like it when they suddenly realize like, oh [ __ ] we don't get all that economic activity anymore.

This kind of sucks. We've been sliding for 20 years. We are now worse off per capita than like Mississippi. It's nuts, man. These guys have been falling, falling, falling economically like a [ __ ] rock. And they're so in their feels about the whole situation that they're now doing things that are even worse. And here's the part, dude. Are people not paying attention? China is going to put itself in a position where it can choke anybody out that it wants to. You're not going from a superpower that bullies uh you know that plays its hand in a ferocious way to somebody who is like on the come up with you and they just want to see you do well.

That that's not China's play. China gets people in a debt trap so that it's in control. Now there's a lot of pro-China vibes out there. So let people run the experiment cuz it listen, the US is no longer a place where uh it's like we were during the Marshall Plan post World War II. We've got the moral authority. We're really trying to help build people up. We are the drone strike the [ __ ] out of you in Yemen, in Iran, in wherever the [ __ ] because we found oil in your country and y'all need some freedom.

That's the America that we are now. So I get it. People are going to see what they can find elsewhere. But China is an authoritarian regime. They believe if people are rising up in your country, you roll tanks into Tianaan Square and you shoot them in the face. So everything that's literal. So this is a um as long as you agree on everything, you're fine. But what happens when you don't agree? Would you rather be in a pissing contest uh with a country that shoots its own citizens or would you rather be in a pissing contest with the US?

I'm not saying it's fun to be in a pissing contest with the US, but people are not running the calculus of China being authoritarian regime. Not at all. They're like putting, in fact, I think some people are giving them bonus points for being an authoritarian regime. Um, all right. I want to break down the some of the demands that came out of why Canada walked away. Number one, it was veto over strategic infrastructure partnerships demands that Canada submit all major and foreign investments in de in domestic infrastructure.

China preemptive trade restrictions on non US nations. China judicial preeemption on critical minerals. Uh China [snorts] requirement that's us trying to get away from China just for the record. Requirements for the US to receive guaranteed rights of first refusal and price caps on all unrefined critical minerals. So instead of them sending them to China, they would have to at least fly and buy us before they send them out. I get why we want it that one. I understand why they would be like, "Yeah, no, we need to be able to have free trade." So but my thing is if we started at number three, I feel like it wouldn't be a problem.

But like veto part, like to have veto power over what another country has a trade partnership with, that is ambitious. I feel like that is an ambitious act. It's very ambitious, dude. What what you're watching is all of this stuff used to be um self-evident. We didn't need to put these kinds of things into agreements with Canada because we knew that Canada was never going to trade with China. China had a terrible reputation and the US had a better reputation and so yeah, we knew you were going to trade with us and they knew they were going to trade with us because we are right across the border.

The logistics are always going to be in the favor of doing trade with the biggest economy in the world that happens to be literally right there. So now what you're running into is you're making a far worse deal because uh you're mad and the US is trying to tighten the screws because they're mad and this is delobalization. This is a rising power making it a multipolar world. And I I am empathetic to people that are like I'm I'm just so sick of the US trying to bully the world.

I'm not going to take it anymore. Yep. It's a fair position to take, but there will be consequences. And so this is where I get very nervous for all of us that this period is going to be brutal that there are going to be economic consequences that will be extreme basically the world over and so it we are in a race with a global depression because you've got both the US and China in weak economic positions and getting worse by the way by the day and AI and Will AI be the productivity miracle that we all need it to be to stop that global depression from manifesting?

But there are so many signs, dude. There are so many signs. You've got what's going on in Japan. You've got the housing crisis in China. You've got the everything problem in the US with growth being slow, uh overinvestment in AI, massive bubble, hyper financialized economy, not being uh not having enough manufacturing here. Like woe be to all of us that we are caught in this where now nobody trusts anybody. Everybody's fracturing into these weird ass alliances. Trump continues to alienate our traditional um allies. Now keep in mind one good deal and people will be back to the table because it isn't just the US that doesn't have friends or allies.

We have interests. The same is true of everybody. Everybody has an interest now because China's on the rise. People are like, "Oh, I if you're smart and you're a foreign leader, you don't want to alienate China or the US. You want to play them off of each other. So, you want to go for a better negotiation." This is not Canada saying, "I'm not going to do business with the US." This is Canada saying, "Well, now I've got a second option." And maybe it's not quite as attractive, but it means that I'm not beholden to everybody.

It's brilliant. So I don't a lot of people probably don't know this um but Impact Theory we have something called Impact Theory Network. So we are not the So we've got my show, we've got Lisa's show, uh we have my ambial show, we've got other people that we're flirting with, negotiating with trying to get more and more people into that network to diversify away from me relying on myself. So I want to be able to be in a coma and still make money. And right now that is not the case.

So when you [snorts] have other options, you're in a much better position. And so we can now as we aggregate more and more talent, we can go to advertisers and be like, "Hey, this isn't just about Tom. It's not just about Lisa. It's about a much broader portfolio." So that is the smart way to play this. So I understand why people are trying to play these two things against each other, but at the end of the day, you got to be careful. Like we don't walk in and slap a 9b penis on the table when we're negotiating.

We still are very friendly with the people that we are uh trying to get ad deals with because it's like you don't want to put yourself in a stupid position. Yeah, 100%. Um there's a couple Canada's putting themselves in a stupid position. Couple more than that. Um rescending the digital service and tax online news act. This is just saying there's compensation made by Canadian users. We US had to pay taxes on that. This is something similar to the new uh data deal that the EU did.

So that's that one's gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. I actually if I'm a foreign country uh and I'm of any size, I'm going to do what China did and just be like, "No, we don't use Facebook here. Build your own." Yeah, easy enough. The only thing that makes it hard is that they already have network effects. But if you say to your own country, "Yeah, you got to build your own Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, whatever." Uh they'll build it. And if your citizens can't access that thing, then the new one will explode and it will grow super fast.

So I imagine more countries like Europe will probably do their own thing because they all want to put our um like X especially under restrictions that X doesn't want to be put under. And so X for instance now I think it's with Brazil. Brazil is like making all these crazy requirements. And so they're like all right cool. Uh we'll comply but every request for censorship that you make of us we're going to publish. And so that I think is brilliant, but it's also going to piss them off.

And so they're going to be like, "Yeah, we're just not going to use this anymore." And if they're of sufficient size, they'll build their own and that'll be that. Yeah. Um elimination of cultural language protections. This is what if you see some speculation that Trump was attacking them speaking French, it was the Canon Act, which basically means for online goods and digital services, they have to have provincial language law. So you have to have it in the language of that uh province. and French is a major language there.

Yeah. So, really fast on that one because I have personal experience with it. So, uh at Quest because you're doing global packaging, what you find is you just put uh French on everything because if you want to sell into Canada, you're going to need it anyway. Also helps you in France. So, it's like you just end up doing it, but it's a pain in the ass. And so, people would much rather Canada's an English-sp speakaking country. We don't want to have to have one label because no one's going to do a Canada specific label.

You don't make enough money. Uh, and so it's just a pain in the ass enough. I get why they were pushing for that one. It is obnoxious. I'm going be honest. Um, elimination of by Canada public procurement rules. Right now, Canada's required to go Canada first when they are looking for public infrastructure contracts. Trump wanted access to their public uh procurement. Dismantling agricultural safeguards. Unilateral alteration of auto rules. Exclusion of heavy assembly plants and key auto sectors from tariff relief. Um, I think this is big because of our focus on auto manufacturing and how you crab you uh quoted it.

That's a signal of how much war manufacturing you do based on what your auto manufacturing can do. I'd also be curious. I'd have to read that a lot closer, but if um if Canada is smart, they would not want China to come in and hollow out their automotive manufacturing. Now, I don't trust the Trump administration to be altruistic and be looking out for their best interests. Um, but I am curious if there's some sort of thing there where we have enough American-owned auto plants. I don't know that this is true, but if we have auto plants there by companies that are owned by US companies where we would now be losing manufacturing capabilities into the future, should we find ourselves in a kinetic war with China where we would need to turn those over to manufacturing munitions.

I don't know that probably a stretch but um but I mean with with B proliferating into China it will naturally make the demand of domestic cars drop because BYD is cheaper more accurate. Yeah. So they'll just there there will be no Canadian market they'll lose. So this would be this is another way that BYD will be able to compete directly with US manufactured vehicles um that are being sold into Canada. And so for the same reason that we want to keep it out of the US, we want to keep it out of Canada.

Yeah. um pharmaceutical patent extensions, priority allocation of Canadian energy. This was a big deal because I know I think it was Ottawa who was already giving a majority of the electricity to Michigan. Um I believe so we're already having energy deals. So this is interesting that this can now um impact second order consequences in the states directly. Uh binding military and Arctic mandates and lowering customs and dimminimous rules. So some of these seem like okay that makes sense. other of these seem like they wanted um ownership of I don't want to say Canada sovereignty, but they basically wanted a seat at the table.

Yeah, they they want to turn Canada into the 51st state. Like that is real. Trump shouldn't have said it, but he did say it. Uh they're pointing out, yes, this is exactly what this does. This folds us under the US umbrella. And when it was, and this is an important human psychological insight, when it was them choosing to be that, they felt good about it. Now that they're being forced to write it down, they don't feel good about it. So that is u when people when you can get somebody to do it and it feels like it was their own free will, they will um do it gladly.

When they feel like they're being forced to do it, even when it's in their best interest, now they feel some type of way and don't want to do it. So yeah, that that's that's a good rule in your marriage. That's a good rule with your kids. That's a good rule with governments and companies. Find a way to make it the most selfish thing that they could do where they're excited to do it. And then on Carney, he had a statement about his response to it. He said in the coming days, the government will introduce additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses, building on the nearly 25 billion in support provided over the last 18 months.

These actions complement Canada's economic strategy. From day one, we have been focused on building our strength at home and diversifying our partnerships abroad. Anybody that's listening to that and doesn't go that is absolute [ __ ] is crazy. Even Carney has somebody did an audit on this. I don't remember the exact percentage, but the vast majority of Carney's wealth is invested in American companies. So it it's Canada is a backwater economically. For 20 years, they've been sliding. So, I get wants people to invest in Canadian companies, but right now that's not that's not the growth place.

That's the decline place. Canada has what the world wants, and we will not allow any nation to determine our future. Will we set our own course to keep building a Canada strong for all? They do have oil and minerals. Here's here's what I would tell uh Canada. All right, Canada. You want to get away from the US word. What you want to do is audit what China did. China was brilliant. China was willing to pay play the supplicant. China was like literally they had doctrine written down where they're like while we're weak we're just going to hey yes how may I help you of course we'll do that we'll put nets up around the facility so we they can't even commit suicide like we got you and they did everything the world wanted them to do so that they could get strong so that they could sucker people in to get all the manufacturing all the expertise and they got it and now they're in a much stronger much stronger [clears throat] position and given that improved position.

Now they're pushing the advantage. It's brilliant. So if you want to learn from China, I think that's very wise. But Canada is not in the place where they're in a strong enough position that they can start making these demands. But psychologically, they just cannot bring themselves to play a long game to uh pretend to be a um supplicant. I'll just reuse the word. Uh to do that while they're weak. And this is where it is um it's very unwise. China showed that playbook. This is also a playbook that um when you look at immigration from Islamists, they run the same thing.

So you're in the early days of Dearbornne, Michigan, you're not ruffling feathers, you're not um you know uh causing any problems whatsoever. Flash forward whatever 50 years later and now you guys are a massive political block and you're doing call to prayer. uh blasting it in the town, you're getting your officials elected and you run that place. So, it is a very wise strategy. It is super effective and if Canada were smart, uh they would do something more like that. I mean, at the same time though, Canada doesn't have to play the long-term game.

They just have to wait until Trump loses power. That's the that's the like the eye opening thing that America needs to realize like we're only as tough as what the four years dictate sort of. So if they can get a um left-leaning government in then yes, but there will be also lasting damage from what Trump is doing. So there's just going to be there'll just be so many things in motion as people move away from the US that it won't vans. I I don't think he would approach this trade deal the same way.

Yeah, agreed. Agreed. It it will all start moving in a better direction. Um but this isn't like, oh, I just need to buy myself another three years. That's the Iranian playbook. That's not the That's not what Canada is about. Canada's been cozing up to China for a very long time because I think I'm I'm I am formulating a hypothesis right now. So, everybody should take it in that spirit. But, um I think that Canada is more ideologically aligned with China than they are with the US.

the US DSA contingent, yes, same boat, but they're not aligned certainly with the US right at all. And so I think for a very long time, given that you didn't have a DSA option in the Democrat wing, they just kept moving more and more towards China and doing their own suicidal policies, which is why they've been declining for so long. All right, we have some super chats. Yes, we do. First up on the super chats from Marushia Dark says, "How can rich kids learn the lessons only poverty and hardship bring?

Also, thoughts on Hormazi's having a baby. Following Leela's content, I can now understand why some people would give all for beloved queen matriarch. I don't know what the last part means." Uh, okay. So, there was a lot. How do rich kids learn the lesson? You one, you have to indoctrinate your children from a very early age. Um, first of all, mom and dad are rich. The kids are not. So, dear child, how did m mom and dad get wealthy? Walk them through that. And if it was an entrepreneurial journey, wo, that's going to be amazing.

If it was an inheritance, that's a totally different ball game, which we'll get to in a second. Um, you've got to get them out doing hard work. So, they've got to be uh responsible for an outcome. You've got to put them in over their head so that they have to learn something and get better. You want them humbled by a learnable skill that's a little bit outside of their grasp. You want to teach them work ethic that nothing comes easily, nothing comes for free. And you want to let them know that while you're never going to let them starve to death, that at insert age, uh, that after that they're going to have to fend for themselves.

So, for instance, I know Warren Buffett did this. Warren Buffett was like, I'll pay for you to get college. And I don't know how far out that went, cousins or whatever, but I know some radius around him. He paid for everybody's education. And then after that, he said, you don't get anything. And to be fair, like, yeah, yeah, honestly, I don't want to drop into a Minecraft world and have somebody give me all their diamonds. That's not [ __ ] interesting. I want to have to build up my own victory.

And that's the exact position that you have to put kids into. They've got to struggle. They've got to understand from a values perspective, uh, what the right value set to have is, which is only be proud of the things that you earned. Don't be proud of what your parents have earned. Enjoy it while you're a kid, but certainly don't be proud of that. You didn't earn that. And so, um, getting them to recognize what I call the only belief that matters, which is if you put time and energy into getting better, you will get better.

So, go get better. Get so good at something that you can't be denied. Um, I think all of that is very, very wise. If you want to invest in your kids starting a business, by all means, do that. I think that's a great use of capital while you're alive. Uh, but you want to make sure that your kids are hardworking, goal oriented, disciplined, focused. Okay, I could go on forever. Uh, but that that's what you need to do there. Um, the next part, what do I think about Ila having a baby?

I think it's awesome. I think that those two people are going to raise an extraordinary child. I won't divulge private conversations, but I will just say this. Uh, those two are thinking about it in the right way, man. They understand all the traps. Uh, they understand how to avoid the traps. They understand Yeah, they understand a lot of things. I'll let them speak for themselves, but I was very impressed. I am so excited for those two. I think that having kids, despite me not having kids, I think having kids is a very smart strategy.

If you think it could even remotely possibly be something you want to do, I would really consider it. Uh so yeah, I'm thrilled for those guys. Now, obviously, they're very successful. They're very driven. They are likely to be casting a big shadow, and so they'll have to work to make sure that their kids don't succumb to being in that shadow. But if anybody can do it, I think they can do it. Uh I love those guys. I think this is going to be awesome. Yay. Now, the very last thing that they said I didn't understand.

So, uh oh, which I can now understand why some people would give all for a beloved queen matriarch. I will just say it's the word matriarch I don't understand. But, uh I will say the single most valuable thing that you could do in life is to find a spouse who you love and they love you. Oh my god, there is nothing. There's literally nothing better than that. I have been poor and married, like proper broke and married, and I've been rich and married. And I will just tell you the married part is the best part by far.

So yeah. Yeah. And I know right now, and I have long wanted to do more content around relationships. Um, but I will just tell you, I get it. You guys are, if you're young, especially, you are up against it. The psychology of men and women right now is a total disaster. Uh but yes, you should be willing to pay an extraordinary price to find a true partner in your life for sure. Journey with John, thank you for the 50 says, I think the rise in popularity of flock cameras and the hate of data centers is correlated.

People don't have a problem with the physical reality of data centers. They have a problem with the elites who own them and the government. Data will be abused. Yeah, I don't think that's a real problem. They believe that AI is going to replace them. They are having an existential crisis in the middle of a populist moment where things are not getting better. They need someone to blame and AI is a very visible thing to blame because AI is scary. I understand I understand why people are afraid of what's happening.

Uh and Ryan, you've said this very well. You also do want to hold these comp companies accountable. You don't just want to let them run riot. It is just an overcorrection that it we're going to pay a price for if it continues and that price will be ugly. So yeah, I highly encourage people to uh find a more sensible path forward. Whenever you find yourself emotionally triggered, you really do need to stop and analyze, okay, what am I being triggered by? What is like the fundamental cause and effect of why this thing drives me crazy?

As you can imagine, I have done this with the DSA to make sure that I'm not just in my fields that there's actually something real there that I can track back to cause and effect. Uh so that I'm like, okay, the thing that I'm actually upset by is this mapable cause and effect thing. This is the exact change we need to make. You don't need to make more than that change, but we need to get to that point. And I would encourage people to do that with AI and data centers.

Also, thank you for the $50 super. Yeah, no joke. [cheering] Thank you for that. Uh, Iceblink says, "I'm Cyber Leak." Just kidding. You are Cyberlink. Maybe we are all Cyber League. Uh, those TK2 thugs can't come knocking on all our doors. Oh, take interactive. Uh, take the queen, but God save the gaming culture from corporate greed. I want to talk about the gaming culture so much. Uh, we'll find out how much you guys tolerate me talking about it, but as a game developer, you can imagine I think about this a lot.

Uh so yeah there is a very strange thing happening in gaming culture. People have been abused by AAA gaming to the point now where they are triggered and they have taken a very real thing and now their response I think is disproportionate. So what I would um encourage people to do is vote with your dollars. Um don't start doing things that are illegal and hacking things as that will disincentivize people to do those things. So, for instance, if you feel that um Grand Theft Auto has been an abusive game and you don't like those guys and you want to see them hurt, all right, fair enough.

Like want for their downfall and all of that. If on the other hand, you think that GTA is we we have offered people to take the day off to go play GTA because I don't want to be I don't want people suddenly getting a 24-hour influenza. So, uh just being [screaming] honest about one how exciting it is. We're a game company, so hey, I want to see people have fun and like do your thing. Uh, but then also just people are gonna play this game. This doesn't feel like the one to go after.

So, there are ones I understand why people have felt abused by certain companies and and they're cheering for their downfall, but is Take 2 really that company? So, anyway, I would just parse those things out, see what the value proposition of GTA has been over time. Have they put the money that they've earned to good use, or have they abused gamers? That's a decision for everybody to make. Just don't get this blanket hatred where it's like you just want to see any company that's successful be hurt, even if it's a company that's making a product that you absolutely [ __ ] love.

Uh so be a little bit thoughtful about that one. And then obviously I have a dog in this fight. So I totally understand if people want to ignore me, but boy would I love to see that money go to indie developers who I think over the last 10 years have really been that answer to the corporatization of these big companies. And part of like if you look at Bungie, this story just illustrates this point so perfectly. Bungie in the early days was just these young game lovers who were also good at coding and they started making things.

It got people excited and uh I get watching that devolve over time and get deeified has been heartbreaking for a lot of people. But indie games has become the new like it's just a small group of people that love what they're doing and they're pouring their heart and soul into making something awesome and go find those games. Go reward those games. That would be amazing. But that one is definitely I am pumping my own bags there. So, I'll leave it at that. Surfer dad SoCal $50 super chat.

Thank you for that. Hey, thank you for the $50 super chat. [cheering] Says, "Hi, Tom. I'm a sushi caterer in San Diego and would be willing to do a high-end event uh for 12 people if you give me 30 minutes to discuss my app idea. I've built a ground uh level app with uh Replet KGW chef guiles and then they put their app. Listen man, that that's a really uh smart move. That's so wise of you. I would say your app just needs to speak for itself.

uh even if you convince somebody to take you up on that deal, it's just going to come down to the app. And if you have something that actually does a great thing, um all you have to do is give the app away for free. If you can't give the app away for free to a small handful of people, if you can't give the app away for free, it means they don't recognize that they have that problem and then you don't have product market fit. Okay? Do not be in business of trying to convince people that they have a problem that your product solves.

You've got to make sure they know they have that problem and you just need to make them aware that the solution exists. Then you finally get a couple people to try it and then you use those testimonials to scale your business. It is that when you have product market fit, scaling your business is dead easy. Where everybody struggles is they don't have product market fit. So my concern is because you don't have product market fit potentially, you're trying to give away something where you do have product market fit, which is that you make this insane sushi.

And so you're trading where you're strong to get people into where you're weak. You don't want to be in that position. So make sure that your software solves a massive problem that people are like waking up at 2 a.m. in in sweaty terror because they need that problem solved and then you solve it. Okay? That is a way easier road to hoe than doing a bunch of these uh free sushi for 12 people, though. Hey, that sounds delicious. But honestly, you you don't need just you don't need to do that.

Just tell me. You can drop it in Discord. What problem do you solve? How do you solve it? And if I'm like, [ __ ] I need that. Then I'm going to snatch it up. Cool. That was it for super chats. Um now I want sushi. Thanks. Thanks. I'm thinking of sushi, too. Sounds so good. Uh, all right. We got to talk about the straight of her moose and how traffic reportedly explodes near 400%. It did get community noted. There's some asterisks there, but I'll let you break it down for us, Tom.

Well, let's read the uh the community note here. Straight of horm traffic growth sharply week over week uh from near halt levels, but remains 80 to 90% below pre-conlict daily averages of 100 plus ships, reaching only approximately 20% of normal per the cider reports themselves. Okay, so that's a dope community note. So, um, it is true that from what I can tell, cuz I did do a fact check on this one, that traffic is up the roughly 400%, which is absolutely phenomenal news. It becomes even better news if traffic is up through the straight of Hormuz by 400%, because Iran, the IRGC's grip is slipping.

If that's true, now we're in a much better position because that means that all of the disruption, all of the economic warfare is actually beginning to have a destabilizing effect on what I view as a very brutal authoritarian regime. You don't need to agree with what the US has done at all, and I would be with you. I think this has been a bumbled exercise. But at least if we can destabilize that regime enough that people can rise up without getting shot in the face, that would be incredible.

And from the meager uh snippets of information that I've got directly from people that are connected to people in Iran, uh it is very much been these guys are cracking down hard on the citizens. So not the kind of thing uh that any of us should want to see. I don't think anybody's surprised to hear that I'm not a fan of authoritarian regimes. Now, to get to the like specifics, so roughly 200 ships have transited the straight of Hormuz last week. The week before that, uh, 150.

Two weeks before that, about 40. So, that gets you to the total 400% jump in 14 days per UK Maritime Trade Operations Center data. Uh, so that is very exciting. Now, specifically, what's changed? More than 80% of vessel transits over the past two weeks took the Omani route. So, they're hugging that southern route. It's a UN authorized shipping channel that Iran vehemently opposes. They do not want to see people doing this. Uh people are also turning off their transponder switches, just making it harder for Iran to track them.

And so, the Ammani Channel hugs the southern edge of that straight as far from the uh Iranian territory as the waterway is going to allow. and it's backed by US naval escorts. So, the US military is operating that corridor to move roughly 10 million barrels of oil per day. You've got Axios reporting uh that citing two US officials that we've got 15 to 20 uh tankers entering and leaving each night. So, okay, this is all good news. Now, uh according to CNN, it increased it increasingly looks like Iran has at least partially lost control of the straight.

Okay, so that could be amazing. I think the jury's out. We don't know how long this is going to last, but for right now, this is good news. And it actually I was originally going to come in and be like, you know, best since D-Day. We're going to see like is this really going to have anything? China's already saying they're going to be dismissive of what the US is um doing from a um further economic restrictions perspective, all the sanctions. So like, yeah, is this really going to do anything?

So when I heard that we're actually seeing evidence that Iran is not able to create the disruption that they once were, I was like, whoa, maybe they're really is now starting to be a sufficient amount of disruption primarily from the economic disruption at this point because the US hasn't been doing any significant um striking in weeks. So, the fact that this is now popping says that what they're doing from the blockade, so them not being able to sell their oil, uh what they're doing in terms of trying to uh stop them from getting resupplied, all of this stuff might be working if Iran is not able to pay their own soldiers, for instance, because of inflation going up so much.

And the last number I heard, I believe, was like 98% inflation. So if we're feeling the effects of 30% inflation, you can imagine what 100% feels like. And if now the economic sanctions that Bessant is putting in place are, you know, ratcheted up. They're saying this is the most economic sanctions any country has ever been put under ever in the history of sanctions. So that would be something. Again, I think there's a lot of question marks about how many people are going to abide by the sanctions.

But I would presume that Besson has talked to a lot of our still stable allies that are willing to get behind this. So, we'll see. But if things are already bad and this escalates them uh even a little bit, then we really might be seeing progress in the right direction. So, fingers crossed that the Iranian people are able to take back their country. We're going to find out if there are enough people um that actually want a more call it free and prosperous Iran um or if it's actually overwhelmingly people that support the regime.

It is so hard to get a read on that. Yeah. And going back to it, um, this is per the Hermude's letter, Bessa implies that the US would directly target China and Gulf states, saying any nation that serves as a financial artery or a wi to a withering regime should expect a share in its isolation and that any country that keeps doing business with Iran will become a global pariah. Yeah, I don't buy the global pariah. I think he's overstating that in terms of what the US has an ability to do.

Like there was a time maybe 30 years ago that we could have turned somebody into a global pariah, but man over the last four or five years, we have not looked like we've had the ability to do that. You can go back further because Biden certainly was not loved by uh anybody in Saudi Arabia. So we'll see. I don't think that we have that kind of strength anymore, but I'm sure that we can st still tighten a lot of screws that no other country would be able to tighten.

So we'll see. And then Iran warned all Gulf countries not to join the US in the economic war and any country that should take part in imposing economic restrictions on Iran will be regarded as an enemy. Fair. Now I will say that the Gulf regions have been starting to um protect themselves from drone attacks. If you look at the critical infrastructure for energy, they're putting these metal cages around. It's actually very interesting. Um now I don't know how scalable that is. I don't know what percentage of their critical infrastructure they've managed to actually secure under those cages, but the fact that they're putting those in uh is certainly a step in the right direction and shows that there is at least a temporary solution.

Now, anything like that is going to be a cat-and- mouse game. uh new items will be built to try to um get around that of course, but if that can stop the cheap drone attacks, that's really something because the big thing is yes, they have missiles, but those missiles are a lot easier to shoot down. The missile could destroy the cage, but we have a much easier time shooting those missiles down and they are far more expensive. The drones have had this wildly disproportionate ability to do damage for the cost.

And so if the cages help with that could be very very interesting. Um another report out of uh the straight moose in Iran is that the secretary of Iran supreme national secretary council we have not only attacked any of we have not attacked any of America's economic interests so far. So far we have only targeted military bases but they are going to advance the economic war. We are ready to target all American oil and economic companies in the region. Um and there is like Amazon out there.

There's a bunch of oil refineries out there. Yeah, it could be a interesting new chapter to the Iran war. We're going to see whether the fact that we've gotten more control of the strait says that they're really having a harder and harder time or if it's like no no the what we said earlier is how this is going to play out. They're going to wait till roughly October and then they're going to go ballistic and make a huge problem for Trump right before the midterms known as the October surprise.

So, we'll see. Unfortunately, this one's going to have to play out in real time. We'll find out just how much uh we've turned the tide, but we've got some encouraging signals right now, which is um very exciting. Yeah. Um staying in the region, it's very interesting there this Israel Syria strike. So, Israel strike Syria and some saying that it may be a bid to provoke Turkey into the conflict. Yeah. Uh yeah, this this is going to be one of those rabbit holes. All right. Israel's strike on Syria wasn't necessarily about Syria.

Eight Israeli strikes hit the Abu al Duhar air base in Idlib, uh the Idlib province overnight on August 17th and 18th. Uh the runway was like blown to bits and pieces. Hangers were smashed. Uh but there were zero casualties, which is very smart. Now, the base has been defunct since the civil war, the Syrian civil war. It sits about 70 kilometers from the Turkish border. Turkey uh had supposedly been rehabilitating it. Now, put supposedly out there because this is coming from Israeli intelligence. Now, if you believe like I do that is Israel has some of the best intelligence, then hey, maybe it's true.

But if you believe as I do that Israel is likely to use their reputation for having the best intelligence as ways to get away with something that might not be true, you sort of go, well, maybe maybe they were rehabilitating it, maybe not. We don't know. But, um, that is showing that Israel isn't going after Hezbollah. They're going after Turkey. So that becomes very interesting. So whether this is what's really going on though is a bigger question mark that we have to find out. I want to be very clear.

I'm putting out a hypothesis that isn't like super backed up by a lot of claims. I'm not the only one saying this, but you need to take all this with a grain of salt. Now, Israel didn't claim the strike at first. A military sensor uh gagged reporting that confirmed the IDF did it. Then US Envoy Tom Bareric posted on X and named Israel himself and I I'm almost certain he was breaking a um gag order when he did that. So it's like uhoh, we'll see like are there any repercussions?

Does Trump want this information getting out there? It's possible. Netanyahu's office followed with a statement saying Syria was on the verge of breaching an agreed security status quo by letting Turkish troops deploy. Okay. Here's where Israel's reputation is going to come into play because Israel and the idea that people were on the verge is one of the ways that they're losing credibility in the eyes of the public. Now, if you guys know, I've talked about this before, but in the Old Testament, there is this idea if somebody is coming to kill you, what do you do?

And the answer is you rise early and kill first. Technically, that was a rabbi uh notes. That one wasn't in the So that's not what are they bas I I've got to do a deep dive on this because I keep reverting to the mean on this because I don't believe it because I read this whole book about it that says that it's based on a principle in the Bible is the rabbi. Oh. Oh. Oh. So this is like the hadith. You're going to have to keep doing this with me because I keep going back to the mean.

All right. So anyway, uh if you guys know uh you've got the Quran and the Hadith. So the Quran and then like official interpretations. In uh Judaism, you have a similar thing. So you've got the um the Torah and you've got the Talmud. So similar idea, you've got people interpreting it, but they are very sort of um high level, very important. So it's a it's it's probably important to make the distinction, but I it is a longstanding religious doctrine. Will we grant me that? Okay. So there is a long-standing religious doctrine where if somebody is coming to kill you, you rise early and kill them first.

Now I think that is a very wise strategy. So the fact that they are doing a strike if there is real reason to believe that these people are coming and because you're doing it before the troops end up getting there now they don't have to respond because there were no casualties. So you destroy a base, you stop them from doing the thing. You let Turkey know, hey, we're watching. We have good intelligence. since we know what you were about to do and we're stopping you and you're doing it in a way where nobody has to escalate.

So from where I'm sitting, if that's all real, that's a very wise strike. It's a very wise policy that I would understand any country having that policy, including against the US. Because if you think that the US is coming to kill you, I get why you'd be like, "Hey, hold the phone." Now, the catch is if you're not smart about the way that you handle that and you force a response, things can get out of hand very quickly and they can escalate into madness, which is exactly the risk that Israel takes every time they do this [ __ ] And they just keep building a reputation because it becomes unfalsifiable.

They're going to say, "We had the evidence." The other side's going to say, "That's bullshit." And then you run into this thing where whether it's true or not, Israel begins losing that credibility on the global stage. So they have to be very careful. Now Israel is well aware that on the global stage that they are losing a lot of friends, losing credibility. People are turning against them in a very aggressive way. But that triggers all kinds of uh human responses. Again, it's not an Israeli response.

It is a human response to go, "Yeah, yeah, you hate us, we'll [ __ ] you." And so they're going to back into that corner and it will be couched by most people in diplomatic language of we have a right to protect ourselves and all that which of course is true but you just have to factor like the changing landscape which makes it harder and harder for your allies to go to bat for you. Uh which will make it more and more an isolated nation which they're not in a great region of the world to be an isolated nation.

So this stuff gets complicated very fast. Welcome to a multipolar world. It just is what it is. I feel like Israel's never beaten these allegations. I understand October 7th, but we're going on two years and I feel like they're milking it. The what? People are coming after us. Yeah. Like this is like their fourth attack on another sovereign country in search of proxies, terror. I don't know. Here's the thing. I don't even know what the cover story is anymore. Now it's just Israel's is allowed to bomb people and it's cool cuz it's Israel.

Don't say nothing. That we're long past that. We're long past that. No one is saying that. The the tide has shifted. The tide has shifted. This is the four. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're gonna do it. They're gonna say it. All of that. But there's no universe in which people are now saying it's Israel, so we just can't say nothing. Everybody's [clears throat] saying something. Everybody's talking [ __ ] Like these guys are isolating themselves because people are not here for it. It it doesn't even matter anymore if it's true.

The tide has changed. The world is going against them. and that that's where they're at. And so now they've got to figure out, am I going to uh double down, get stronger, uh attack more people, more preemptive strikes, blow people up, uh entice people to um come into the fight, which is one of the things that has to be said. A possible strategy is that this is Netanyahu. I'm out over my skis here, but this is Netanyahu possibly saying that, okay, I've got an election coming up.

I can either find myself uh turned into a war criminal or I can stay in power by being like, "Oh my god, like we just got attacked by Turkey. We got to do something." And so you want to make sure that you keep the guy that's going to be tough on all this stuff in office. I'm out over my skis, but that is a potential take on this. I'm not the only one floating that as a potential here. So, um that's a real thing. But it it from where I'm sitting, it is not hard to figure out what the narrative is here.

The the Israel is absolutely despised by a large sect of the Muslim world. Okay? It's not everybody. There are no monoliths. Uh but they are despised by a large sect of the Muslim world that would like to see them removed completely. I don't need you to believe that the sect of uh Muslims that want Israel to cease to exist as a state, I don't need you to believe that they want all the Jews to die. But I do need you to believe that they're serious when they say Israel shouldn't exist.

Uh and so that comes in a couple flavors. Flavor number one is right of return and um Arabs, Palestinians, whatever, however we're going to break that down, should be able to go back and vote. And obviously they will be outvoted instantaneously and they become a minority in their own country. That's one way that could happen. Uh and Israel ceases to exist. The other way and you can find plenty of clips uh of where people don't say Israelis, they just say Jews. And so now that takes flavor of at a minimum ethnic cleansing.

Now if it's bad when the Jews do it or Israel does it, it's bad when somebody else does it. So that's where I'm just like, hey, you would expect them to defend themselves. So don't be shocked that they're going to no matter who tells them uh that they don't have the right to exist. They're not going to be like, "Okay, they're going to keep fighting." So that's just where we are now. You can say, "Okay, cool. I just want to see enough people get together and blow them up so hard that they lose the battle and can't defend themselves anymore." And that is your right to take that position.

But anybody that's like, "I just can't imagine like why these guys are fighting back." Well, people have come after these kids historically. They've got a history of people coming after them. So, yeah. Yeah. There you have it. And we can and probably will go deeper and deeper onto the um fight, the ideological fight between the sect of Islam and uh going against Israel and the tangential ways that anti-semitism finds its way into this more. In fact, we have it on the list of things. So, if you want to pull up um yeah, the Mark Ruffalo, I haven't seen a tweet go this viral in a long time since they changed the X algorithm where you used to see um Elon Musk getting numbers like this all the time.

Now, Elon struggles to get 5 million views. So, this has 27 point something million views. 7.6. Yeah. So, th this is the reason that we're going to go into this tweet is precisely because this has become such a big issue. this is becoming like a a defining issue where we were on trans four or five years ago. This is where we are and like what's your take on Israel? What's your take on Palestine where it's like so many of a person's views will just slot into place like if you just ask them that one question it's like okay cool I know where you're at uh on the spectrum.

So, I don't know what happened that led up to this tweet, but here's what Mark Ruffalo I I agree. The accusation that I am anti-Semitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest. Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who support it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people. This critical and necessary dialogue is then dishonestly framing framed as being anti-Israel. To be clear, my views come from my own political convictions and should never be interpreted as hostility toward Jewish people for whom I have a deep love and respect.

Everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has be been foundly profoundly shaped by the Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have been integral and family throughout every point of my life. This merger has real consequences for real people and for the entire country. Scrutinizing the Ellison, including Oracle's business built on data, surveillance technology, and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of livelihood for thousands of family is far is fair and necessary. The $111 billion deal would hand one family control over CNN, HBO, and Warner Brothers, backed in part by foreign money whose influence on editorial decisions have never been fully explained to the public.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for serious national security review and regulars still and regulators still haven't given the public a real answer. Until they do, the merger shouldn't move forward. Now is the time to dive boldly into all these issues, not step back or concede. Yeah. Well, he's certainly diving boldly into these issues because people feel some type of way about it. So, here is my beef with this whole thing. So it is inevitable that when you talk about um Islam that you're going to get you're going to have to very carefully distinguish between okay what is the beef with Islam versus what is your beef with Muslims.

So that is a whole thing that you have to disentangle. The same is true when you start talking about this. Uh when you're talking about Israel, you're talking about the Ellisons, you're drawing uh you're making a point of the fact that and I don't know if he said, "Hey, this is a um a Jewish family." Or he just said the Ellison, we really need to look at this and there was a heavy implication of something like that. Uh but clearly for him, he's tying what's going on in Israel and all the questions that he's got there with the merger.

And so people are like, "Hold on a second. If this really had nothing to do with them being Jewish, then where's your animosity for uh the number of kids in Africa that are being sold into uh slavery right now, which I I plan to do a deeper dive on that because I've started collecting links on this. It's really terrifying. There's images of this is the reporting. Maybe there's some other reason these kids were in Sachs, but I certainly can't fathom what that would be." Uh but the reporting was, hey, these kids that are in Sachs, they're being sold into slavery.

They're all Christian kids. There was another one where you see these kids that are uh bound up, being marched, and it says, "These are Christians being sold into slavery." So, you've got uh Christians being uh attacked and killed. Uh mum's a word about that, right? Nobody's talking about it. You've got um Christians being uh in multiple locations supposedly being sold into slavery. Mum's a word about that. So, it's like people like, "Hold on a second. We've got real problems when we see a quote unquote genocide in Palestine because it involves the Jews.

But when you have uh Muslims killing Muslims, nobody says a word. And when you have um Christians being killed, nobody says a word. But when you've got uh the Jews pressing um bombing uh Palestine into oblivion, now all of a sudden we're upset about that. So, it's like if Mark Ruffalo were covering all of this and he was like, "Listen, these are the crimes against humanity that I'm tracking." Great. I don't think people would have a credible way to say that this is somebody who is more interested in this one because it happens to have uh Jews in the mix.

But if he is basically just going on about that, now we've got bigger issues. And you see that all the time, all the time. is this one issue becomes the thing that people talk about instead of this actually being about a broader respect for life or um a a group of people being targeted and killed. That's where people start saying, "Hold on a second. There's some tie to the fact that this has to do with Jews and that needs to be investigated and talked about." I was just going to say I think a big difference in this is we're funding the genocide in Gaza and so I think that's why like something like South Africa while it's still bad doesn't get talked about as much.

That's what a commenter said and I I do agree with that. I think we have more of a direct hand in Israel's actions than what's going on in South Africa right now or wherever you said. Uh okay. So if that's true and we dropped aid to Israel to zero, you think people would be like, "All right, cool. Done." No, no, there'd still be a ton of issues. I also think and I don't so hold on because that so that takes your point and says yeah that's not really it which is what I would say that's not really it but we have a direct hand in it they're still our ally like right even if we're not giving them the money but if that were true then we would only see people in America complain but we don't see only people in America complain so this is a far broader complaint set than just people here right I'm talking Mark Ruffalo though cuz you were saying why didn't Mark Ruffalo talk what I'm saying is this is not a Mark Ruffalo problem.

The reason this went hyper viral is this is becoming one of the defining issues of our age where no matter what country you're in, people want to know what you think about Israel. And the Israel Palestine conflict stands for something. And I'm saying we've got to figure out what the Israel Palestine thing stands for because I don't believe that the evidence is there to support that this is about we don't like to see people killed because we're very conveniently ignoring a lot of other people dying in a lot of other places at like pretty gnarly levels and we just turn a blind eye to that and we're talking about numbers that are way higher than what we're seeing in Palestine.

U I think let me jump in real quick. I think there's there's two things. So if this was a debate, that would be a what about ism. And I think when you always define to default to what about ism, that's not a position of strength because I think you have to what about because what about will reveal your it will reveal your values. No, cuz the the thing is I can pull up a Mark Ruffalo tweet about him criticizing Sudan. I could put a pull up a Mark Ruffalo tweet about him being mad about drones, but nobody else cared about it.

And I think the reason why Israel is being pushed to the forefront is it supports other narratives across the world that are being pushed by the West. for example, we need to have a firm fist against Muslim. So every Israel conquest is Israel taking fighting back against radical Islam. That's what every Tommy Robinson retweets it because that helps his personal cause in Ukraine and the in the UK and the things that he's trying to do. So it's if we're talking about people dying in lives, I don't think this Mark Ruffalo talks about Israel, he should also talk about all these other places.

He has talked about those other places. If you're talking about on the global scale, why Israel was always in the middle of the conversation is because the US put Israel in the middle of the conversation when they established Israel in the middle of the Middle East. And since that point there, it's now our proxy cuz we're we're all over the map. So the US didn't establish Israel in the Middle East. If you did the West, I'm using the US as a proxy for the West. [clears throat] Okay, that already to me starts weakening the point.

So we have to I can start at the beginning and lay them out and take them one by one. Give give me your thesis first so that I know what we're actually My thesis is Israel is a collective uh [snorts] representation of other issues. So that's why you define what those other issues are. Um fighting back against Muslims, why the West is the dominant uh culture that should be in the Middle East and it's a proxy for the US and the UK back in the day before we Trump split with Trump in that region.

Okay, so let me try to boil that down to one idea. Um, the West has created a problem in the Middle East that never should have been created. And so people are very angry about the West continued involvement in the Middle East. The West has created a proxy in the Middle East that should have never been created. And that is why they're having the issues that they are having today. Okay. I wouldn't say problem, I would say proxy. Okay. So the you don't think this has anything to do with Israel?

This has to do with the West creating a proxy. And if the West had created the UAE as a proxy, let's just say that people would react exactly the same. It's the connection of Israel to the US. To Ryan's point, the reason that people care about Israel is because of its connection to the US. It's getting the red carpet treatment by Trump. It doesn't matter if it's a war crime. and they aren't held accountable because really specifically uh if the UAE which is a Muslim country were a proxy of the US that people would have just and then did those types of things did ethnic cleansing against another uh body they would have the same amount of heat that Israel has currently today.

Okay. So if there was beef before any of that then what uh the West creating a proxy. Okay. So if Jews were being killed before the Balffor declaration, you'd be like, they were right. So I'm saying it isn't that from where I'm sitting because there was already tensions there. There was already people being killed. You're saying there were already because there were already Jews being killed killed. That's not why Mark Ruffalo and this is getting attention because Christians were being killed for years. Muslims were getting killed for like we can keep going back in history and see every generation in every society is getting killed.

But I learned that from you that human animals have massacred each other. So yeah, if we can slide the clock, there's always a group of people being massacred and a group of being people a group of people being treated unfairly. Yes. So I So what I'm trying to get to is is this beef that's happening right now, is this indicative of the I'll call it the red green alliance, which is where I'm trying to go. Okay. or is this a um a proxy war that you're saying this is just political Tom?

This is people are looking at the West being a bully and that's their only beef. What we'll call I'll call the Dave Smith argument. And so this isn't what's the red green alliance? The red green alliance is the alliance between uh left-leaning people that want to see the downfall of Western civilization uh pairing up with um call it radical Islam. uh who also wants to see the fall of Western civilization. They are teaming up for now as they did in the rise of the IRGC in Iran.

And one of the um test cases for where you fall on that is your take on Israel, which is an obscenely complicated issue that there's it's never going to be one thing. But the reason I'm saying this is going viral, which remember my hypothesis was very simple. This is going viral specifically because the um collision of Israel and Palestine represents something larger. Now I never said what the larger was until just now but that is the reason I believe this is going hyper viral is there is a uh desire to tear down the west that is um getting a bunch of people in America and Europe super animated because so many people want to do it and then this becomes the way for everybody to have that battle where and again the conflict between Israel and Palestine And isn't that I want to be very clear that's not what's going on.

I'm saying that's what's making it go viral in the west. What's going on here is extremely complicated. I don't even know it well enough to give you all the details. I have a very highlevel headline sort of understanding of the rough timeline from when it was the Ottoman Empire to now. I certainly don't know a bunch of the history before that. But to me, you have two groups that historically have extraordinary amounts of beef with each other, which is uh I'll say orthodox Islamic take, not your average Muslim, but orthodox Islamic take versus uh certainly orthodox um Jews.

And so that becomes the point of collision. Then it becomes politicized because they create a state. Uh Israel creates a state. And so we can sort of speedrun that. But I want to be very I want to make sure you and I are colliding the same thing. My hypothesis is the reason I'm saying this in terms of Mark Ruffalo's uh tweet. The thing I'm trying to answer is how does this get 27.6 million views? To me, this gets 27.6 million views because it is the uh proxy battle for the ideology of are we tearing down the West?

Yes or no? Does the West need to be torn down? Um, and 27 point or now 28 million people are saying yes or they want to comment. No, it's it's people fighting about it. So, you're going to get both sides. You're going to get some people saying basically this is um just an absolute unbelievable tragedy. I cannot believe that uh the Palestinians are being genocided and how are people not understanding that? And that's where I go, hold on a second, there are way more people dying elsewhere.

Um so why are we overfocusing on this one? And that to me is what needs an answer. Now you've put forth an answer which is hey this is about um this is a a proxy battle and we never the west never should have let Israel become a proxy and I never said never should. I'm just saying that's what it is. I have a great example for that. Um, Trump just announced that he's flooding 300 pounds of 300 tons of ground beef into the beef market from Argentina.

So, forging beef into the US cattle market. He's discounting it at 30%. The same 30% that Mom Donnie was talking about with his grocery stores. When Mom Donnie announces it, we jumped on here and we covered it and it was a number one read. When Trump does it, it's not even in our top five. The reason is when Mam Donnie does it, it's a signal for the greater uh tragedies of socialism using your language. But when Trump does it, oh, it's not that bad because and then you can kind of explain it away.

And I think the same is true with a Sudan genocide versus a Israel versus Palestinian genocide or other other genocides. There's so many conflicts happening in the world right now that we all don't care about. So now to say Mark Ruffalo can't talk about this because he doesn't care about this thing that we also doesn't care. I just want to remind you, I didn't say Mark Ruffalo can't talk about this. What I said is that there is something supercharging this. To your own point, you're not going to get this response in the Sudan.

you're not going to get this response about a similar partition between Pakistan and India. And so given that we've seen other things like this, it's that backstory. So the same thing with the Mam Donnie grocery store, that backstory makes that the top news. Whereas when Trump does the same thing, it's like, well, hold on because we're not agreeing what the backstory is. I don't think that the world is I think you're representing, if you agree, definitely say so. And if you disagree, tell me. I think you're representing a Dave Smithesque uh take on this, which is the West should stay the hell out of this.

They never should have created that partition in the first place. They shouldn't have created a Jewish state in the first place. It's their meddling in the region that's causing this problem. Is that roughly accurate? That's the argument. Yeah, that's an argument. I just want to make sure you hear me. I am not making that argument. I am saying this is something totally different. Everybody who's getting [ __ ] confused about that, that thinks this is about the West is [ __ ] confused. Yeah. I I But because I don't see it that way doesn't mean I'm not confused.

Well, I want to make sure you can actually say back my position because you keep misrepresenting my [ __ ] position. So, that's what makes me go, hey, I've stated my position very clearly. My position is one more time that the reason this is going hyperviral is because this has become a proxy for do you want to see the West torn down? Period. So, if you're team Israel, you don't want to see the West torn down. If you're team Palestine, you do want to see the West torn down.

Correct. Got it. Well, the I don't want to see the West torn down and there's a genocide in Gaza. Like I don't know. I feel like that's an open. So, this is where we have to go. Now, I'll say people like you get caught up in the headlines and haven't done enough uh researching into this to actually start pinning down um why is this one uniquely bad versus other ones. Now, I think as you start going down that path, and and by all means, give it to us here.

But as you go down that path, you're going to end up somewhere near where Drew is at now, which this genocide, which is very debated. I want to be super [ __ ] clear about that, but I'm not going to invite that debate for now. But this quote unquote genocide is uniquely bad for what reason? The Dave Smith argument. I Dave Smith argument. Excellent. But you were saying that that wasn't your take. I didn't ask you to take my take. I just said that is my take.

So my thing is I think this is a proxy battle. The reason this is going hyperviral in the west is because of that collision. It is the red green alliance where people are getting together and they're like we got to tear this whole [ __ ] thing down. Okay. Now you're saying, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Tom, I'm not in that camp. I'm in Drew's camp." Okay, great. So now it's I think as people begin parsing this out that they're going to see that this does not get the kind of ferocious cultural energy specifically because of the fact that everybody's cool with genocides in other places.

They're just not cool with this genocide that you then have to go all the way to well it's because the US is involved in this. Now as we start peeling it out it's like why does that matter? And then you're gonna say it's because I'm funding it. And I'm gonna say, well, there's plenty of people that are mad about it that aren't funding it. So what are they mad about? And so I think there's a ton of cultural energy here where people who lean left are swept up in the but this is wrong, this is bad, and they just hear so much language about it's wrong, it's bad, and they don't start drilling under to figure out what's really driving this.

Because I'll bring this one up for the 700th time. The island of Cypress was um invaded by Turkey. They cut the island in half, did a far more violent version of what the Jewish people did in the founding of uh Israel. And nobody's up in arms about that cuz they didn't have TikTok back then and they didn't. But that's what I'm saying. So we we get to there's always some reason why people aren't animated about things that like match all the other stuff. But okay, so I I'll give you an example of why there no one is paying attention to what's going on in Cyprus right now.

Right now ever. It's never been a big enough issue to push anybody over the edge. Okay. And the reason is that the Greeks aren't shooting anybody. The Greeks aren't blowing anybody up. Uh the Turks aren't running an October 7th. And so everybody just went we lost or we won depending on what side of that equation you're on. And they took a diplomatic approach moving forward. Mhm. So then for me the question becomes why isn't that happening in Palestine? Do you how long do you think the Palestine Israel conversation has been going and on your radar?

Like when did it like bubble up? Well, like was 10 years ago that people talk about Israel Palestinian Israel Palestine specific specifically? They don't start calling themselves Palestine until like the 60s or something. I don't know the timeline well enough. But the word Palestine, it was like Philistine. It used to refer to the Jews at some point. Uh they even at least from the Bible, they were never the same. No, Philistine was a word used to reference like an area that's now Judea or something. Anyway, this this is where I am out over my skis.

I will not be able to give you the specific answer. I can only tell you on that. All of that stuff is hotly contested. The people who now call themselves Palestinians did not call themselves Palestinians until the 60sish. They certainly weren't calling themselves Palestinians when uh the original uh Balffor decoration came about. They at that time, if I'm not mistaken, we're trying to do something that would be akin to a larger Syria now. So, it's like there's all it all of that is for much deeper scholars than I to take in.

where I think we the three of us can get today is to and by all means if you guys are like Tom the reason I brought that up is because George Carlin was talking about the Israel Palestine uh conflict in the '90s like it it's it's it's not that I mean the '90s was like another one of these regional peaks where it was like it was on everybody's mind you had Yaser Arafat like bringing it to the four like so it's not some I don't want it to seem like there was no genocides we never cared about it and then when the DSA is now rising now we care about it now so I don't I just want to make sure you're not think that what I'm saying is that there are two things at play here.

Mhm. And this is why I'm saying what's happening between Israel and Palestine has nothing to do with what I'm saying now. I am talking about why this tweet is going hyperviral in the US. Got it. Now the Israel Palestine thing I think is about two religious groups that [ __ ] hate each other. And because the Bible tells them so, they're going to keep killing each other forever. And that the extremists on both sides, that's as far as I'll go, but the extremists on both sides each want the whole thing.

Mhm. So the extremists in the Israel camp want all of it, and the extremists on the um Palestinian side want all of it. Now, yep. to get to the full story about the global issue and what's going on. I don't think you can strip out the um there's something that I wouldn't even be able to put my finger on beyond what Thomas Soul has already said about it about the Jews that really [ __ ] trigger people. And so there's no way to have this full conversation without talking about religious hatred.

There's no way to have this full conversation without talking about um anti-semitism. Really quick, are we still talking about the tweet or now we're just talking about the Israel Palestine specifically? So there is the Red Green Alliance, which is what I wanted to talk about. Okay, I laid out that hypothesis. Yep, I got that one. Now to take in the fullness of everything. Mhm. Which goes well beyond that. And maybe a better way to say it is one of the engines of the virality is the Red Green Alliance, tear down the West.

One of the engines of virality is the Dave Smith argument. One of the engines of virality is anti-semitism. And so I don't have a read on whether Mark Ruffalo is or isn't anti-semitic. Um I'll even just default assume he's not. Yeah. But if he doesn't understand that there is rising anti-semitism the world over, then he's [ __ ] Every time I talk about Islam, Muslims, I'm like, I know people are going to say I'm Islamos Islamophobic because there's rising uh hatred towards Muslims in the West.

There's rising Islamophobia. Uh Islamophobia gets into triggery words in in the same way that there's rising anti-semitic. Yeah, exactly. So, you you have that rising on both sides. And so, I'm like, woo, I've really got to be slow. I've got to be careful about what I'm actually trying to lay out. You've got to tease out that there are different constituents in this massive debate, but one of the pieces on the table is certainly anti-semitism. One of the pieces on the table that I think Dave Smith has done a phenomenal job of arguing is what you guys are saying.

And then one of the ones that um I don't think people it's very hard to get people to talk calmly about is the fact that religion is making these two people hate each other. That culture is driving the different responses. uh and that it's if you're not talking about the religious aspect of this, if you're not talking about the um honor culture of all of this, you will be eternally confused. Um we just got fact checked by a super chat. Um the Palestinian Palestinian civiliz citizenship order in 1925 um was a British mandatory law that promagated um the term uh Palestinian.

So people were calling themselves Palestinian as early as uh we're really going to have to get into all of this. So I'm almost certain that that fact checker is incorrect. I I just Yeah, I Googled it. Unless Google's lying, too. It has origins in in Roman. So it it popped up in the way Drew is talking about, but it it even popped up earlier. I think it's Palestina. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. All the way back in the Roman Empire like the the words around will not do brain damage to chat.

I will plant one additional idea. So these gentlemen have laid out their belief. I was just trying to Yeah. Yeah. Which is very fair. Totally totally. Now I've I've done just enough digging on this to I'm sure get myself in trouble. But uh as you start going deeper at the time of the Balffor declaration, they did not refer to themselves in their own documentation as Palestinians. That that's a signal. If you look at on Google search terms, when do you start seeing the use of the word Palestinian in all written forms of communication, uh, it comes super super late.

So, for a very long time, this just wasn't a thing that people talked about. Anyway, I'm not a scholar on this, so I'm perfectly happy to have to update my mental model. I'm in the middle of what will be, I'm sure, a very long slow process of learning all the ins and outs. But I will encourage people to understand you're being propagandized by everybody talking about this. They are oversimplifying what is a very complicated issue. Uh and this wasn't as simple as at the time of Israel becoming a state that it was like we're Israeli, you're a Palestinian.

It was more we are Israeli, you're Arab. And so that was certainly a much clearer divide. Uh so I would just there's a lot of weeds to get in here. I am certainly not giving you a full picture. So I would not expect anybody to be like I see what Tom sees because Tom is saying what I know at this point is that there's a lot on the table. This is a very complex issue. It's getting reduced down to sound bites. People are using, I believe, rhetorical tricks to try to make out like there's no uh anti-semitism going on here.

That does not mean that people talking about this makes them anti-semitic. It does not mean that that Mark Ruffalo is anti-semitic. But it does mean that we're seeing a rise in anti-Muslim hatred. We are seeing a rise in anti-Jew hatred. And so people need to when they're talking through this, they need to be very thoughtful to make sure that they're teasing out the different implications because as we can see from the reaction to Mark Ruffalo's tweets, this is something that is extremely um animating for people.

Can I throw something on the anti note? Um, this is kind of tying back to the Mark Ruffalo tweet. Just to give a picture from what I've seen in the world about this conversation, the anti-semitism is coming from a small group of people out there who are using Israel's crimes to blame Judaism and get people to be like, "We hate Jews." I'm sure there is some of that. But I think, let me ask some um calibrating questions. Do you think that uh there has been a very strange meaning high amplitude amount of anti-semitism throughout history?

Yes. Okay. Do you think that Jews for whatever reason, maybe it's their own fault, that doesn't matter for the sake of this question. Do you believe that they have been targeted more than any other group in history? I would have to look, but in the like my gut reaction, what I know in history, yes. Okay. So, is it understandable to think, hey, whoa, we've got something happening again right now. Here's the difference there. We are looking at, and we don't have to dive into the whole thing, but we're looking at an ethnostate or eth ethnoreigious state set up by the Jewish people.

They were, you know, mistreated historically throughout history. I'm not ever trying to deny that. But I think there needs to be a distinct separation, which is what Mark Ruffalo is getting at, between Israel and the religion of Judaism. Right? Just because you're Jewish does not mean you're a Zionist. And I think that's a big distinction because what happens is everyone now is going to lump all Jewish people as, you know, lovers of Israel. And then what happens is you start seeing anti-semitism rising in places like America because there's a lot of people who do just genuinely hate the Jews for some reason.

And so what happens is this is now their excuse to start treating Jewish people like [ __ ] because of Israel. I I think that there is a lot of that. Uh, I think what people are trying to the sane people that are trying to counsel Mark in a loving way, what they're trying to get across is, hey, be very careful when you're um, and I would need way more information on all the comments that led up to this. But what I can infer, which is risky, but what I can infer is that um he's saying things about the Ellison's that are triggering some people to say, "Yo, this feels very um at a minimum adjacent to you saying there's a problem with them owning the network because they are Jewish." And if they were any other nationality, that you wouldn't be able to get people animated to say pump the brakes on this deal if they weren't Jewish.

And because of that, now we're getting into the current massive spike, from where I'm sitting, it certainly seems true, massive spike in anti-semitism. So, at a time where like if I were to say, hey, listen, uh, El Say like when people started saying his full name, I was like that that's a dick move. They are trying to make this guy feel like an outsider. They're trying to make this guy like they're trying to get people who are anti-Muslim uh to not like him because he's anti-Muslim.

Now, there's plenty of reasons to not like this guy for his economic policies. So, it's like focus on that stuff. So, if you've got beef with um walk me through specifically what you're worried about with the Ellison's owning it and if there's like a legitimate antitrust thing or something like that, yeah, cool. Like, do it. But do it because it's the antitrust of it all, not because it's one family that's doing this. It's like what what is the structure of the deal that would create a problem?

Now, no matter who owned it, this would be beef. And cool. It it is an area where right now just as I have to be very careful about this topic knowing that it's going to trigger a lot of people who just are looking for a reason uh to like any foreigner that when I start talking about hey there are some real issues with the what I'll call the Islamic playbook as very different than being a Muslim but the orthodox Islamic playbook is worthy of derision is worthy of people being like hold the [ __ ] phone.

But if you then just go first of all any Arab that that is to confuse it with a race which it is not. Uh and then second that there's a huge difference between somebody who is a fundamentalist or orthodox and somebody who is I don't think they use this word but I'll say it like a sort of post Catholicism reformed version of Islam. Those are very different things. And so when you start looking sideways at Elsa because that's his name, you're running a you're running into a similar danger that Mark Ruffalo is running into.

That's like where I'm trying to say like, hey, we got to be real careful because tempers are high on this one. And uh unfortunately, I think this is going to get violent in Europe for sure. So you can expect actual naked uh violence between religious on one side and and not on the other, but um a cultural violence that nobody should want to see. And so because this moment feels so dangerous to me, I'm just like people need to be very careful. They need to understand sort of what the tangential issues are here.

And the overly simplified versions of any of this stuff is going to lead people astray. And so we have to find a way to talk about it that is both intelligible so that we can boil it down to something people can actually hold on to and remember and at the same time uh be very aware that there are a lot of people who hate Muslims that are going to jump on a bandwagon. There's a lot of people that hate Jews that are going to jump on a bandwagon.

And so we have to be very careful. Cool. Um, last one. Uh, new evidence is emerging in the Anthony Carmelo Anthony trial. Um, right now there are petitioning for a retrial due to some withdrawn evidence both on the prosecution side and on the defense side. From the defense perspective, Carmemell Anthony didn't testify um, for whatever reason. On the prosecution side, they withheld um I'm sorry, on the prosecution side, they didn't um have Carmelo go on the um stand. On the defense side, they didn't bring up uh Metaf's Austin Metaf's disciplinary record.

So, it's kind of like a handshake agreement. Yep. So, all right. This one is wild. You've got they're trying to get a retrial for Metaf uh Anthony. Sorry. Uh thank you. for Carmelo Anthony um in the murder of Metaf. And the interesting thing is what's coming out is in the hearing for the retrial, they put I think one of the prosecutors on the stand. One of the attorneys ended up going on the stand and and admitting that they had a gentleman's agreement that they were not going to talk about the fact that Carmemelllo Anthony um I believe text his girlfriend, but certainly text somebody and said um I'm low-key, not going to lie, I'm on the verge.

Uh I'm going to stab somebody and lick the blood off the knife. Uh asked his girlfriend how many bullets she wanted in her chest or something like that. uh and she had reported that he was his girlfriend reported that he had been stalking her and so they believed that there were so many racial tensions around the trial that they didn't want to get into that because also Metaf had um I don't know if he was suspended or what but he had a record for bullying people and so they were like listen this just isn't going to look good on either side and so I guess there was some lastm minute fear that if they put Carmemelllo Anthony on the stand that the uh prosecution wouldn't hold to their side of the agreement, something like that.

And so, um, now that's what Carmemelllo Anthony is putting forward that hey, um, this wasn't explained well to me. I might have been better in a better position to actually put myself on the stand. Uh, but the Hubbaloo is basically around the like, wait a second, what is this gentleman's agreement? Um, should they have done that? I'm asking, is it legal to have done that? I I haven't seen anybody talk about that. But I didn't realize that you could what? This is me talking. That sounds like bearing evidence to me.

So that seems pretty crazy. I can't believe that they can do that. Um I know that you can go to a judge and say, "Hey, we are considering moving forward with a case like this. We want to go on the record." Uh and the judge can either bless it or say no, but they didn't do that. Uh and so that's where this gets pretty wild. Got to love the justice system. It was one of the things that they wanted to get the manslaughter charge and that's more of a sure bet.

So, I'll go before the lesser charge. That's where the defense says, "Okay, at least getting a injection, he'll get 30 years." Prosecution's perspective, it's easier to argue manslaughter than it is to argue murder. And the self-defense thing is a better defense for murder because it wasn't premeditated. He didn't know him. They wasn't stalking him or something like that. So, it's one of those the attorneys were talking outside. This is the best bet for us to win. Handshake. All right, let's go. But they didn't go for manslaughter.

They put it on the table and they could have done a lesser charge, but murder was the charge. So, uh, there clearly wasn't an agreement that, okay, I won't bring this up, but I'm going to go for manslaughter. So, I think, and we'll have to dig more deeply, but I think the way that this played out from the attorney's perspective was they were saying, "Okay, listen. I think we have a better shot of getting the jury to bite on the manslaughter charge if we don't include the text messages where he's talking about stabbing somebody and then licking the blood off the knife, which I would say, yeah, that was a very wise bet because if that had come out, yikes.

And then obviously the prosecution must have thought like we don't want to muddy the waters with um uh uh Metaf having a bad reputation because if people think, oh, he came in, he was bullying him, then yeah, that's exactly why he did this. So, the case, if all of this evidence had come out, think about what the case would have been. You've got a guy, they would have painted him very clearly. Meetaf was a bully. He was bullying um Anthony. And so, obviously, Anthony felt threatened.

This guy has a history of bullying. And then the other side's going to be like, "Bullshit. Uh maybe he had a reputation for bullying, but this kid said, "I want to stab somebody. I'm gonna lick their blood off the knife." He brought the knife there. This was [ __ ] wild. The truth of this scenario was even far more explosive uh than what came out in trial, which was already explosive. So, uh would it have helped or hurt the race angle of it all? I don't know, man.

But this is just really like what a tragedy that uh this kid got himself into a position where he felt like he was about to snap. Like [ __ ] man. to see a young kid just throw their life away like that. Just too grueling. Uh yeah, terrible. Terrible. Wild work. Uh okay, that's all I got. All right, we got any super chats? Nope. No more. All right, everybody. Thank you guys so much for joining us. We have another AI master class. It is coming up soon and that date is on there we go.

Uh Thursday, September 10th at 1 p.m. Pacific. The link uh to sign up is in the description. All right, everybody. We will see you on Wednesday. Love you bunches. Until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Peace.

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