Cartel on Fire: Mexico’s Civil War Threat, Iranian Nukes, & Huckabee’s Middle East Blunder

Key Takeaway

The recent killing of CJNG cartel leader El Mencho has plunged Mexico into crisis, with coordinated attacks across multiple states. This situation demonstrates a critical lesson: when dealing with groups willing to commit extreme violence, decisive action is necessary. The key takeaway: Organizations and governments must have clear boundaries and be willing to enforce them decisively when faced with existential threats, even if the enforcement itself is difficult or uncomfortable.

Episode Overview

This episode covers two major geopolitical crises unfolding simultaneously. First, the death of Mexican cartel leader El Mencho has triggered widespread violence across Mexico, with the CJNG cartel launching coordinated revenge attacks including roadblocks, arson, and threats against civilians. The operation involved US intelligence support and Navy SEAL training of Mexican forces. Second, tensions with Iran are escalating as the country approaches nuclear capability, with Trump's envoy meeting both Iranian officials and exiled opposition leaders, while massive US military forces position near Iran. The episode explores the tension between compassionate governance and the need for decisive action against violent threats.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Cartel on Fire: Mexico’s Civil War Threat, Iranian Nukes, & Huckabee’s Middle East Blunder from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Welcome to the Tom Bilyeu Show live. We had a wild weekend if you were at all paying attention to international affairs. affairs. affairs. Things got very crazy as Mexico is now under siege after the leader of one of the largest cartels in Mexico was killed in a raid by the Mexican government. They were operating on US intelligence, so there's all kinds of drama that's still playing out there. Iran, also the center of massive drama, is apparently 1 week away from having enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

We've heard this story before. Uh but Trump is giving them 2 weeks. I don't know. Trump is certainly known for striking uh long before deadlines conclude, so we'll see exactly uh how this plays out and if that powder keg blows up. New York City Mayor Momani says you need two forms of ID to shovel snow, but zero to vote. That's fun. America's ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, says it's cool. If Israel wants to take over the Middle East, no worries. That did not go over well with well, the Middle East.

And so they are clapping back. Bill Gates is indicted in the Netherlands for lying about the COVID vaccine. This one is going to be insane to watch because either either either uh one of the richest men in the world is going to get off, nothing to see here, and people will freak out, or one of the wealthiest people in the world is going to be indicted on an international stage uh stage uh stage uh for sucking the world into something very questionable. This this one really is going to be insane to watch that unfold.

Uh despite some of Trump's tariffs being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Trump is already imposing new tariffs under a new law, exactly as I said he would on Friday. So, uh the refunds on that are going to get interesting to watch, but plenty of things happening in the world today, true. Turning on the TV and seeing Mexico smoldering was pretty wild. Sicario 3 is crazy. Like the practical effects they're using is wild. That is I'm going to see Benicio del Toro come out. That it was it was bad.

I just seen the gas station footage and I was like, oh, this is not real. This is this is AI. I was waiting for the like the community note. I was like, where's the community note, guys? Guys, seriously, where's the community note? Please let there be a community note right now. That's how I felt when it was old footage, but nonetheless, they were showing footage of they had um a traitor or something to the organization tied to a tree. a tree. a tree. And then they lit him on fire with a flamethrower.

flamethrower. flamethrower. And And And there was something so jarring about watching the guy he's like trying to light the flamethrower and it won't light, and so he has to like reach forward and fiddle with something and then it like sprays a bunch of flame on the ground. Then he's like, oh, I got it. And he like dude, it it's like humans are capable of such such such horrors. It's really insane. So, again, that footage was old for anybody. Uh I'm not confused. I understand that, but just seeing all of the um supercuts put together of people things burning, gas stations being lit on fire, Costco's burning down.

I mean, it's really really crazy. Uh if you guys haven't been watching, this one is worth paying attention to. They really are under siege from one of the largest and most dangerous drug cartels ever. cartels ever. cartels ever. After their leader, El Mencho, was killed by the Mexican government, and he had a little bit of help from the US, or they had a little bit of help from the US. Many analysts are saying that Mexico is now on the verge of civil war as the CJNG cartel is going on a rampage around the country.

Within hours of his death yesterday, CJNG unleashed massive coordinated revenge attacks across more than a dozen Mexican states, including Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit, uh Tamaulipas, Guerrero, Baja California, and Tijuana. And there was a bunch more. Here are just some of the insane things that they've done so far. They've set up hundreds hundreds of roadblocks by burning hijacked civilian cars, buses, trucks, semis. Gunmen have forced people out of their cars at gunpoint before then just torching everything to paralyze highways and major routes. They're digging up roads with backhoes.

It's crazy. Like this is not uh your average run-of-the-mill like we're putting up a blockade. They're actually destroying the roads and making it impossible for people to drive. There's been mass arson as they've uh set fire to cars, buses, gas stations, convenience stores, bank branches, supermarkets, supermarkets, supermarkets, random-ass businesses, even full-on structures in cities like Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta. Uh smoke plumes are visible over beaches and skylines alike and tons of places just flat-out look like war zones. Armed men have stormed into uh airport terminals at Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, causing panic everywhere.

There's massive evacuations, flight cancellations. Many tourists are just stranded sheltering in place. In fact, just off camera, we have a young man whose uh father-in-law is stuck and trapped. Uh just absolutely wild. There've been attacks on security forces, sporadic shootouts, clashes clashes with the National Guard and the army, and one reported explosive attack on a National Guard base in San Juan de los Lagos in Jalisco. Some security personnel have been killed or injured in the follow-up confrontations. Exact numbers on injured and dead are still emerging, so we'll hold tight, but so far there hasn't been any um confirmations of mass civilian deaths, thank god.

Uh unverified leak messages alleging uh allegedly coming from CJNG warned of all-out war, including storming hotels and homes, targeting civilians unless the killers uh are handed over. They've made similar warnings here to the US saying, "If you're a border state, uh you can get ready for some acts of terror in your cities as well, so um we'll see. Public transport has been suspended, schools have been closed, and stay-at-home orders are in place in Jalisco. El Mencho was one of the most wanted drug lords on the planet.

He had a $15 million bounty on his head, and from my understanding, that actually got collected. Uh his cartel was responsible for a massive share of the fentanyl, meth, and cocaine that have been flooding into the United States. And this is the biggest cartel takedown since El Chapo was captured in 2016. Now, one of the weird things about how this is all shaking down, uh in the firefight, four cartel members were killed. El Mencho was seriously wounded and died while being airlifted to a hospital in Mexico City.

Now, I don't know if the footage is real, but there was supposed footage of El Mencho being airlifted. airlifted. airlifted. He didn't look injured. Now, that doesn't mean he wasn't, but I certainly didn't see blood anywhere. So, pretty wild. We'll see if this was he was actually wounded in the firefight or if he was killed in custody. Now, that's tinfoil hat city. Uh we don't know. The official reports are all just that he was mortally wounded in the raid and did not make it to the hospital.

So, we'll see. see. see. White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the US provided intelligence support to the Mexican government for the operation, and Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, called El Mencho one of the bloodiest and most ruthless drug kingpins and said his death was a quote "great development for Mexico, the US, Latin America, and the world." According to Reuters, a brand new US military-led task force called the Joint Interagency Task Force Counter Cartel, very catchy name, played a direct role in the raid. This task task force was launched just weeks ago.

Run by US Northern Command out of Tucson, Arizona, its entire purpose is to map out cartel networks on both sides of the border. It involves multiple US government agencies, and according to a US defense official, it contributed to the operation that killed El Mencho. Just 1 week before the raid, on February 15th, 19 members of US Navy uh Navy SEAL Team 2 arrived in Mexico. They came with the direct invitation of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum despite all kinds of accusations that she's actually in bed with the Mexican cartels.

We'll show a clip here in a minute for saying that she doesn't want to violate the uh Oh god, what did she call it? I don't I can't remember she actually says the word like their humanitarian rights, but it's pretty wild. Uh saying that she doesn't want to be violent towards the cartels. Hard to square with what just happened, but uh more on that later. The Mexican Senate voted to authorize the US's entry to help. Uh their stated mission was to train Mexican special forces. Multiple reports now indicate that the Mexican army uh team that actually carried out the raid received specialized training from those SEAL instructors.

And according to sources uh cited by Breitbart's Cartel Chronicles team, the SEALs confiscated the phones and communication devices of the Mexican soldiers that they were training because so many of them are suspected to have connections uh to the cartels, which is how uh El Mencho was able to avoid capture for 30 years. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's just play connect the dots for a second. second. second. February 2025, the Trump administration designates CJNG a foreign terrorist organization. Late 2025, the Pentagon launches a brand new counter-cartel intelligent intelligence task force.

February 15th of this year, so just very recently, nail SEALs Navy SEALs arrive in Mexico to train special forces. On February 22nd, so what, yesterday? what, yesterday? what, yesterday? Uh El Mencho is dead. The war on cartels just got really real. For me, this is Narcos whatever season 4. Uh so, hit that subscribe button, boys and girls, to stay abreast as things unfold. This is crazy. We'll see how fast it settles down, but um I'm not super optimistic given Claudia Sheinbaum's words of like, "Oh, we don't want to be violent.

We don't want to hurt their feelings." Like it's crazy, man. If your country is they are a paramilitary group operating inside of Mexico. I've seen a ton of footage of them showing off their weapons, showing how organized they are, their uniforms. their uniforms. their uniforms. I mean, this is crazy. Yeah, let's jump into our comments now. The narco is not an option. It is not an option. First First First outside the framework of the Hold on. Hold on. Why not arrest them? Like the the war doesn't have to be Yeah, you have to get on your knees.

Put your hands up. If you're if you're wielding a flamethrower or whatever and doing the act and I tell you to drop it and you don't drop it, you get shot not because you're a narco-terrorist and because we don't want to have rule of law, but because you're actively dangerous right now and that's how we deal with dangerous threats. But this this is how I feel like when Mom Donny's like, "Oh, we don't have any other choice other than to uh raise taxes." And you're like, "Wait a second.

How about lowering your spending?" What are we talking about there's no other choice? She's making it sound like to interrupt them, the only option is to shoot them in the face. What? Like look at look at what uh what's his name did, Bukele, did in El Salvador. Now, those jails are pretty full. So, they obviously just didn't go shooting people in the face. Like you're incarcerating people. And I get it there is uh all kinds of interconnected uh people that are linked to the cartels that are actually running the government.

And so, there is uh very problematic things to deal with there. But yeah, when people let politicians get away with like the absolute just [ __ ] of they're trying to narrow your options and make it make it seem like they're being completely reasonable. And look, they all do it. They all do it. But I I I I'm split because on one side, yes, Bukele arrested a bunch of criminals, but I think the cartel in Mexico is in the most notorious cartel in like the Americas. Americas. Americas.

And as we can see, they're emboldened to do whatever they want. So, her I understand and if through the American lens, we could just do a raid on the house like Training Day and surround the house and hey, everybody get your hands on your knees. But from the cartel's perspective, there's no jail, there's no other there's I'm like kill like shoot kill or be killed. The like period there is no negotiations. This is a war with them. So, I feel like You mean that she might be right?

Because on her side, yes, there is no arrest. I'll just go in there and kill everybody. And then if I could go and designate one organization a terrorist organization, I could just go in there and kill any everybody, then who's to stop the next president to say civil rights organization that might have a bunch of guns, we just go in there and kill them. And it just makes a bad precedent. So, I understand the hesitation and not the I watched this movie, we should just go over there and bomb that house.

There has to be a line. But to your point, yes, if somebody's walking down the street with a AK-47, yes, those people should get taken off. I don't know if he should go into the den and hunt them. That is interesting. So, uh I don't live in Mexico. So, full disclosure, I am an outsider looking in. But if I put myself in the shoes of this is happening in the US and we have gangs full-blown cartels, whatever state this gets to and they are doing some of the most horrific things including at one point they had decapitated people.

I think some politicians put their heads on spikes. They were killing kids. Um that's where I'm like, "Yep, we're going to have an ultra-violent task force and they are going to come to your uh hideout and they are going to say, 'Put your guns down. Put your hands up.' And if you don't, they're going to shoot you dead in the face." Like at the end of the uh Tarantino movie where they get Hitler and they just like unload a clip in his face. Yes, a thousand percent.

If you're putting people's heads on spikes, bro, you cannot let that play out in your country. That is some wild [ __ ] And so, listen, starting to commentate on politics, I do realize like we all have a moral framework, a mental map of how the world is, how the world ought to be and it is utterly fascinating to have to articulate mine. articulate mine. articulate mine. Uh but you absolutely cannot let this kind of violence go where they know, "We can do whatever the [ __ ] we want because people are going to back down." That that's pure insanity.

Uh so, I now I don't know enough about the gun laws in Mexico, but what little I know, it does seem like they have ultra-restrictive gun laws. And so, that has led to the people who just completely flout the law, who can afford to pay politicians off or police off uh to be the only ones with guns. And so, now you create a scenario where uh you've got a populace that can't be armed going up against paramilitary groups that are not governmental. They are drug and sex trafficking kingpins uh who are extraordinarily well-funded and they're more than happy to go to war using modern military tactics from drones to high-caliber weapons.

Uh these guys there was footage and assuming that this isn't AI of them using backhoes. Like imagine how fast they did this. Using backhoes to tear up roads so that it's like they're just isolating parts of the country. And so, yeah, I'm like, "Cool, where is your Bukele?" Like you've got to get somebody in who's just like uh we're this is absolutely something we are not going to tolerate and we're going to go ham. And yeah, if you uh if you go in with that level of force, there is no doubt that it's going to create some peripheral problems.

But nothing near my mental map of the world, nothing near what allowing narco-terrorists to run your country does. That is way worse for my money. Yeah. Um this is also the country that last political election, 37 politicians were murdered by the cartel. Um to your point of the when the Mexican crime lord that call, he knows people's families and things like that. So, again, I think what she's saying is coded through civil rights. But is it worth my entire family gets decimated, but I stopped the narco-terrorist or hopefully they could just blow off some steam and this will like blow over.

And I feel like she's going to the blow over part. To be to be to be 100% honest, I feel like that's the human reaction. That Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That's Okay, so you read Claudia Sheinbaum as very well-intentioned. well-intentioned. well-intentioned. I'm only thinking of my people and um she just knows the knock-on effect of what that kind of ultra-violent kickback will be. That look, they're going to kill a few people. They're going to burn some things down, but then it's going to re-stabilize. re-stabilize.

re-stabilize. Yeah. Wow, that's clear. That's clear. Again, 37 Like imagine if you said we brought it to America. So, imagine if half the house was killed. And then it's just like nothing happened. They got away with it. Like You you have been very clear. I respect that. Neither of us are inside of Claudia Sheinbaum's mind. I will say, if that is her read on the world, she is a [ __ ] of such unprecedented levels. I don't know how to make sense of that. And when you've got somebody who's like, "Bitch, I will cut people's heads off and put them on spikes." Who who the [ __ ] do you think you're dealing with?

Like the these are they're not animals. They're humans. Humans are far far more deadly than animals. So, humans, when they break bad, they break so bad that you you have to have a strategy for stopping this immediately. immediately. immediately. I am utterly shocked that anybody gets to her position in power and does not understand that a bully will continue to ratchet up their paramilitary arm if they see that there is a gap they can exploit. And this is why I say you need the left and the right.

The left and the right are evolutionary functions. They're not political functions. The political manifestation is born of architecture of the human mind. To have a society that can go to extraordinarily large numbers, you have to have this balancing mechanism. And what the left absolutely is apparently blind to is they will um compassion spiral into death and suicidal empathy. And the right obviously has their own pathology over here and they become draconian and it's all [ __ ] boot steps, goose stepping, heil Hitlering, all of that. So, uh I'm not saying that you can get away with one or the other.

You need them both. So, just as we need people that are compassionate as you [ __ ] Bukele your way to victory uh so that you do re-stabilize, it is insane to me that somebody looks at this and goes, "We just we we have to be careful. We don't want to um like violate any of their rights." Like Jesus Christ, yes, you should do your best not to violate their rights, for sure. But nobody has a right to torch everything uh to indiscriminately take over freeways. This is so crazy.

Like I do not understand people that don't look at that and go, "Oh, okay. Well, cool. We tried that and we've had however many decades of uh narco-terrorism in our country. It's not working. We need to do something new. something new. something new. Just to pull up in the chat, should Mexico go to war with the cartel? Um some people are in there um somebody said, "Drew, you stand for nothing." Um Um Um I feel like it's not a stand for nothing. There's two ways to approach this situation.

When we're looking at something like the cartel, historically, they have political figures, they have cops. You don't even have an army because half of the army that you would rile up to go get the cartels are parts of the cartel. So, it's one of those things that I can understand her pause. Now, if Drew was president of Mexico, ooh, that is a tough pill to swallow. I think you would have to do it just cuz as a leader, you can't say, "I can't do anything." because to your point, then you empower them.

But at the same time, I can understand why she's not going full Trump of like, "Yep, get the drones and blow everybody up. Let's get it back. Let's push back right now." You have to be strategic. You have to be surgical with this because one leak, one wrong move can lead to a blowback and political prisoners. It can lead to occupations of territories. To your point, the the populace, the actual citizens of Mexico can't own guns or anything like that. So, while we can be tough guy in boots in our ivory tower saying, "Yeah, let's send the army to go get them." their pushback can be, "Okay, now I'm confiscating this entire state now.

And now we're going to negotiating with ransom and you have a thousand hostages." There's all these other things we can have to think about as opposed to like, "Yes, bad guy, let's go bomb them." I think that it's not as a straight yes or no. Yeah, I mean, this is definitely worldview. worldview. worldview. And my worldview is that if you have somebody that is doing something as grotesque as what the cartels are doing. So, hey, if I can't get if I can't win you over by saying that drugs are bad, let me try to win you guys over with sex trafficking is bad.

Uh and the whole Jeffrey Epstein thing is is a uh failure of imagination on my part. I just could not have fathomed uh that this is all playing out right now in real time. But if you start doing a deep dive on some of the way that women are trafficked, like how they get sucked into it and then what happens to them afterwards absolutely horrifying. Uh and so, yeah, if I have an escalatory battle with a um group that is willing to do that and they hunker down and they start arming themselves and going crazy, I'm going to be totally in support of a massive military push on my own soil to obliterate them.

obliterate them. obliterate them. Uh it would be horrifying, but you that that is a tumor just like if somebody actually had a cancerous tumor that was going to take their life, I would say you got to do chemo even though chemo is devastating for the body. body. body. Uh but better than just giving up, tapping out, letting cancer run its course. And that feels directly analogous to what's happening here. They have to absolutely smash these guys into oblivion. And yeah, we've become very uncomfortable with state-sponsored violence.

violence. violence. Um we're right to be paranoid that it can spill over into being a problem for sure. But you can't be so paranoid about that that you let the people who are actively doing the thing you're afraid that the government will do, they're actively doing it. [ __ ] wild, man. Like this is where trust that if this comes to the US, I will bang the drum for you got to root that out. And if it gets violent, it gets violent. Oh, I was going to say US wouldn't wouldn't play that.

Like US is a different animal. Um should she call the US? Should she be like, "Hey, Trump, my hands are tied. I can't trust any of these people. Come uh drone bomb these people Afghanistan style a little bit." Dear dear President Trump, as the president of Mexico, I would like your help. I want a deeper economic relationship than we've ever had. And I want the kinds of military protections that you have provided the world over since World War II. It clearly works. It's absolutely incredible. And I would like you to come into Mexico and help me clean all of this up.

We will work closely with you in a way that our Congress is totally supportive of. That may be information only, great. But please lend us your technology at a minimum. Uh if if possible, like we just sent Navy SEALs apparently down to train them, some training would be wonderful. All of that. But help us do right by the millions and millions and millions and millions, the vast majority of people in Mexico that want to raise their family and want to fall in love and they want to do rad [ __ ] And they don't want to be looking over their shoulder because they might get killed.

Uh so, yes, law and order is necessary if we're going to economically continue to climb the ladder. Now, I've spent a reasonable amount of time in Mexico. It's awesome. So, the I don't know, people have like a mental map of this is like some like crazy backwater. This is not. But they have a problem and if we want to help them keep climbing out, if Mexico wants to keep climbing out of that, yes, asking for the US alliance would be wonderful. We share a border with them.

That would be amazing. Chat said um Trump would be like, "Yeah, I'll help you. You'll just become the 51st state." Listen, Listen, Trump is unhinged. And so, I certainly understand that take. Um at the same time, you've got somebody who is pliable. So, whenever you're doing a negotiation, always look at your point of leverage. And if you have a point of leverage with Trump that you know he wants a legacy, he wants to be the peacemaker, but he wants specifically a legacy of peace through strength.

This is a guy Look at what he's doing in Iran. This is This is This is what's happening in Iran is some of the craziest global politics I've ever seen in my life. This is wild. But this is exactly what he does. He sends all of these carrier groups off your shore. He builds up the military presence in the most mahusive way possible. And then he sits across from you at a negotiating table and is like, I mean, he doesn't literally do this, but it's pretty close.

He just like while he sits down, he puts his pens and pencils there and he reaches over and he pulls out of his bag this big red button. It's really [ __ ] heavy and it's metallic so he sets it on the table makes this really loud like thumping sound. Clicks it open like super dramatically. super dramatically. super dramatically. And then the button just sits there. And like another guy comes and leans over Trump's shoulder and like polishes the red button. Trump's like, "Ooh, be careful. Don't put too much pressure on it." And that's how he negotiates.

Okay? So, you've got this guy who you know gets down like that. And he is very eager to help you just to show that America's the big swinging dick. And so, yeah, do you leverage that to get what you need politically? Uh thousand percent. So, that would be the wise strategy. Leverage his desire for that legacy, however bizarre it may be, uh be, uh be, uh to get the help that you need and want for sure. And then you just say, "Haha, it's so cute that he says we'll be the 51st state.

Obviously, we'd never do that. But we do love being an ally. We do love" By the way, Mexicans are North Americans. They're not Central, they're not South, they are North Americans. And so, for them to be like, "Let's be a strong united North America." [ __ ] yeah. That would be dope. Um or you could just name a resort after him, you know. Trump Tulum. Trump Tulum. Trump Tulum. He'll he'll he'll send you a couple drones for that. Like that's all it takes. takes. takes. Um speaking of Iran though, let's jump over there cuz we sent everybody over there.

there. there. We sent everybody over there. Um Man, Man, Man, the US is clearly poised for a massive attack attack attack on Iran if negotiations don't go the way that our beloved Trump wants. Trump's special envoy Steve Whitkoff claimed Iran is roughly a week away from having enough enriched uranium to build a bomb. Now, I'm a little skeptical, I won't lie, since we've been down this road before. This is exactly what caused the bombings that we did what last summer. summer. summer. Um but Whitkoff confirmed on camera that he met also with Reza Pahlavi, who's the exiled son of the former Shah of Iran, at Trump's personal direction.

Now, for context, Pahlavi has been publicly calling for regime change and positioning himself as a transitional leader if the current government uh falls. falls. falls. Why might that be? So, the same envoy that's negotiating a nuclear deal is also meeting with the man who wants to replace the government that Whitkoff is negotiating with. negotiating with. negotiating with. Now, Whitkoff also said on Fox News that the president the president, Trump, is curious as to why Iran hasn't This is a quote, "capitulated." quote, "capitulated." quote, "capitulated." Now, that's not exactly the kind of talk you expect when two sides are supposedly negotiating.

But welcome to the world when it is governed nakedly by pure power politics. And that's the era that we're living in. Right now, everybody is realizing that, "Oh, that's right. There is no parent. There there's no adult in the room. It it's literally just all of us. It's Russia. It's China. It's the US. It's Mexican drug cartels. It it's just a bunch of people with a whole lot of weapons holding each other at bay with a threat of ultra violence." Now, both sides are talking tough.

And each went on national television within hours of each other and basically told the world that they're ready for war if the other side does not blink. Okay? That's the negotiation that's going on. These massive carrier strike groups. Iran talking big. Supposedly days away from having nuclear weapons. Now, Iran's foreign minister went on CBS's Face the Nation and said Iran's nuclear enrichment program is a matter of national dignity and pride. He said Iran developed this technology on their own, which by the way is true, paid for it with 20 years of sanctions, also true.

They lost scientists to assassinations and survived a war over it. And he made it very clear that they're not giving it up. This is a red line. Now, he also went on to say a diplomatic solution is still within reach. We'll see about that. He said Iran is finalizing a draft counter proposal that could be ready in days. He said there are elements of a potential deal that could be better than the original Obama era JCPOA. And he announced that he expects to meet Witkoff again this Thursday in Geneva for a third round of talks, which Oman's foreign minister confirmed just hours later is true.

So, you've got one side publicly using the word capitulate, basically surrender, give up, and meeting with exiled opposition leaders. And the other side saying this is about national dignity and they're not going to bow down. Those are the words Iran's president used on Saturday. But also saying, well, a deal is achievable and putting we're going to be putting a counter proposal on the table. Now, to really make this an unstable situation, the pressure inside of Iran is building from every direction. You've got university students in Tehran that are now holding fresh protests over the weekend.

These are the first significant demonstrations since the government's brutal crackdown in January that killed thousands of students or thousands of protesters. It's unknown exactly how many, nobody seems to be claiming that it's under under under thousands at this point. Students at Sharif University were reportedly chanting for the supreme leader's removal once again, which is so ballsy. Can we take a second to be very impressed? They just saw the slaughter of thousands of civilians that happened during the last protest, and now they're back out there protesting again.

I'll just say God bless the young. It's wild. I'm at this weird stage of my life where I am not really young anymore, but I still I can still feel it. I still remember what it was like. And it really is a young man. The young are just not for play. So, you need them, you want them, you celebrate when you see it. And so shout out to all of the Iranian students that are protesting for a better life. Uh Axios reported on February 18th that there are no signs of a breakthrough in negotiations.

Not what we want to hear. And so that's making military action look like the most likely outcome. Boo. Senator Lindsey Graham, fresh off meetings in Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, uh is publicly urging Trump get ready to press ahead with strikes, warning that voices counseling restraint are getting louder and that this is a narrow window for historic change. I actually don't agree I don't disagree with that. I think this is a narrow window for historic change, but I do think when you're talking this kind of military build-up that restraint is always wise and that you want to be very prudent before you launch the attack.

Now, if they really are uh a week away from having a nuclear weapon, you can't back off. That I will say. I'm totally on board with the idea that Iran having nuclear weapons is just a hard line and whatever you've got to do to stop that from happening, you've got to do. to do. to do. Thursday's talks in Geneva will be the most consequential diplomatic meeting of 2026 so far. That is for sure, maybe an even longer. So, we're going to be watching this closely to see how it plays out, boys and girls.

So, definitely tune in. Uh yeah, this is important how this one plays out. I think it's going to echo for quite a while. There's the China connection. If we can actually get China get China get China uh sorry, if we can get Iran to flip their regime by offering the kind of support and pressure that we're clearly doing so that the country can change from within, I think that that would be a huge deal for the Iranians in terms of being able to pull their country into the 21st century, and then also stability in the Middle East it would just be radically different.

I wasn't able to verify enough of this ahead of time, so it's rumor at this point, but it's rumored that there are countries within the Middle East that fully support regime change, that they actively want to see it happen, that they can feel an economically motivated Middle East on the other side of the current religiously destabilized uh Middle East that we have right now. And I don't expect everybody to agree with me on this, but I have said forever since I first started talking about what was going on in Gaza, the only solution is economic.

And we don't think of economics as something placed on people from the top down. This is the most fundamental thing to the way that humans operate for hundreds of thousands of years. Uh if you want to understand it, God, this is going to be a weird example. I hope you can look past the sort of salaciousness of this and get to what I'm trying to point out is it's architecture buried in the human mind. If you teach monkeys that grapes are a currency that can be exchanged, one of the first things that they exchange it for is sex.

Like they just immediately it is so deeply ingrained in us to go, oh, this thing is valuable, cool. I'm going to trade it for something else. got these red grapes, girl. Come through. I'm telling you that's literally how it plays out. It's wild. wild. wild. It is wild. But I I'm trying to uh I say that because it ties to how deeply embedded that structure is in the human mind to say, oh, I can turn my time into a thing of value that I will exchange for another thing of value.

That that is how our minds are built. And so once you understand that, you realize we've got these two competing architectural elements. You've got religion, which is how we organize in larger and larger groups, how we can bump into somebody that we've never met before, they show the same symbols, they believe in the same things. We can just immediately convey value systems super rapidly. So, incredibly potent uh thing that has allowed humans to become humans. And then you have the other, which is we are economic uh units and we are constantly figuring out how to turn our time into an abstract thing of value that can then be used as a currency to facilitate deep specialization in life.

This other incredibly deep, incredibly foundational thing. thing. thing. And Iran is like this perfect collision. And what we have seen over and over and over is religion tends to lead to tribalism, whereas economics creates a system that Now, it facilitates inequality. That is absolutely um the point. Let's be very clear about that. Uh Uh Uh it only becomes a problem when that becomes what we'll call toxic inequality, which is a real thing that has you have to do something to bastardize your system in order to get to toxic inequality.

Uh but nonetheless, if you can keep that in check, uh you create a system where people are maximally incentivized to innovate, to push, to work hard, to build things the world wants so that they can capture more economic uh returns for their time. It's the only thing that's pulled people out of poverty, boys and girls. So, again, look at China, the most communistic country on planet Earth. How did they pull hundreds of millions of people out of poverty? They did it by realizing, ah, we're economic units and yes, we must lean on an economy.

And so um my hope is that we can help Iran get to that, but I really do think that that needs to come from within. Uh we're there to run support. Uh and I really hope that we don't have to drop a whole bunch of bombs on them. Uh because they are headed towards nuclear weapons. We'll see. The China of it all is interesting because we have reports that China is actually providing Tehran with like live satellite images and stuff like that. So, it seems like China's not at war with us, but they're giving intel to the person at war with us.

So, you're kind of at war with us. Yeah, like Yeah, like Yeah, like There's there's not even a kind of We're in a cold war with China. This is Russia 2.0. 2.0. 2.0. Uh this is what a cold war looks like. They have chosen sides. They are very I mean, this is it's very interesting to see how people map this kind of stuff. So, you've got China, Russia, China, Russia, China, Russia, uh Iran all teamed up. Not sure North Korea feels a little bit like a hanging chad, but also they're a little too friendly friendly with them.

China said many times that they don't want humanitarian things on the table with like the UN and stuff like that and they'll constantly veto things that they believe um believe um believe um basically passes judgment on anybody's culture. So, it's like, who are you to say that we can't put people in concentration camps? How dare you? Mhm. Uh so they then don't say that they have any beef with, you know, if Tehran wants to rule by an iron fist, then you know, it is what it is.

Um so seeing them group up group up group up is uh not too surprising, but it's certainly revelatory in terms of their um moral standards and what they believe is right. So, yeah. But we we are in a cold war with China. Let there be no mistake about that. They they are your adversary. They are no longer just your rival. Um I'mma get to the markets next, but what do you think? Do you think we actually bombs on the ground attack? I'm not talking Venezuela in the heat of the night moment.

Like do you think we actually have boots on the ground, some type of like No. bombing or anything? You think this is just there's So, you're saying not If you're taking Venezuela off the table, I'm saying we don't do it. If you're leaving Venezuela on the table, which is exactly what I think they're going to do. Oh, so Venezuela I think they're going to go blow some stuff up. Um if they know where uh Khamenei is, I think they would go in and try to snatch him up.

I think part of why Trump has been so slow is I think he is absolutely rightly terrified about putting boots on the ground, doing something that then [ __ ] up, and then he really does just look unhinged. Mhm. It's hard to attack him. When he goes in like think about how little scandal there really has been that he went in and kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation. Mhm. That's wild. But it works so well and there were no American casualties. Everyone's like, well, it's hard to get people mad.

So it's like, wait, are you saying my gas prices are going to go down and no Americans died and they used some cool technology that like sort of liquefied people's brains? Yeah, I'm cool. Yeah, let's go kill let's go grab some other guys. guys. guys. 100% True. That is so cynical and accurate. I love everything about it. Uh Yes, that is exactly I think what he's thinking. So he's obviously I'm not a mind reader, but I love reading minds nonetheless. I think that Trump's math goes something like this.

like this. like this. Uh we want the people to rise up. We would rather they do this. I am going to get what I want out of Iran. I'm going to send we've got more hardware there in the Middle East since we first launched an attack on Iraq like in 2002 or whatever. Uh so this is massive. He is ready to go and he has shown, yeah, I don't do this stuff for a bluff, man. Like bluffs only work if people also know that you're willing to play that card.

And so, yeah, I think he's ready to play the card, but he's not going to put boots on the ground. That would be insanity. Uh as you can get sucked in and the drumbeat going into the midterms would just be this is Iraq 2.0. So if you've got boots on the ground, that is all they're going to say over and over and over that this is expensive or money printing. printing. printing. Uh he this is their version of socialism and they wouldn't be wrong. And so it's like, yeah, this would be I that would be a catastrophic mistake.

It'd be way too risky. Yeah. Polymarket is heating up right now. The highest um volume is 37 million says we're going to have a strike by February 28th. Um 19% chance. And then the one with the greatest percent chance, 73% of people saying it's going to happen at least before December 31st. 67% saying before June 30th. Um so but look at that June 30th one. The volume of that is crazy. Volume on that March 31st is at 14 as well. So that's kind of heating up, too.

So they're they're People are speculating. Um speculating. People are speculating. Um Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I It it makes sense on paper, but again, Iran been a nuclear bomb away for a nuclear bomb a a week away from a nuclear bomb since 1993. And we just did a victory lap like, yeah, B-52, we killed their whole nuclear program. They're going to have to start over. They're going back to the the stone ages. Trump was high-fiving Hicks saying that they were doing push-ups and then now it's like, oh yeah, they're back a week away.

We need to go bomb them again. So it's I just feel like I don't know. Here's the so the so the so Iran Iran Iran is making it clear that they are pursuing nuclear enrichment. So there's no reason to believe that part is a lie. Now, the week away from, I think Iran is in a weird position because if their own people believe that they're a week away, they're going to like button it up, tuck it in. They're going to be way less like cocky that we can overthrow these guys.

Um Um Um So that So that So that if you say you are, then you invite the attack, but if you say you're not, then you are weak and you're now poised to have a whole bunch of people coming after you. So that's tough. Now, I think that the that politicians will say whatever they think will catch fire in your mind and truth be damned. Like I lived through the weapons of mass destruction thing and that clearly was just it's a lie. We're just going to repeat it enough that people know what to say at the cocktail party when someone's coming at them.

And so it's like that feels like the week away from nuclear weapons is just that. Just repeat it enough. What are they really? Are they months? Are they a week? Whatever, but like if we did all that we did in the summer and it didn't I mean it took them from being a week away to being whatever eight months away and now we're just right back in the same position. And so if we're constantly in the position of we've got to do all this stuff and it only ever sets them back like six to eight months, that's pretty crazy.

That means you have a a far more systemic problem. Uh and therefore doing the things that we're doing may not is not a long-term solution. So how we work that out in the end, I don't know, but it seems like seems like seems like you have to break their will to do it. And I think the only way to do that is regime change. But that really really needs to come from within because if we're applying that pressure from the outside, it won't take. We've seen this go awry way too many times.

times. times. Um I have to shout out David in the chat. David, I I don't think that's his screen name. Um He's saying it's all [ __ ] They just don't have a central bank. That's why they want us to go after them. Is this the bankers? Let me go get my tin foil hat. don't want to think so. Um Um Um So listen. So listen. So listen. Do I think that central banks are the primary evil that allows for a lot of bad things? Yes, for sure.

But if I think about, okay, I'm going to put all of this at risk, risk getting sucked into a war all so that we can install a central bank? central bank? central bank? It's far more compelling if they are trying to get the oil. Like that seems like a way more believable thing. If you're doing this as a play to turn the Middle East into an economic hub because imagine a world where you take another chip away from China in terms of cheap oil, you stabilize the Middle East where I mean even if you just need to believe that Trump is selfish, he's got a ton of business interests in the Middle East.

And even just his son-in-law. Like if you look at that, like, okay, I've got my son-in-law placed in the Middle East. If we can make the whole Middle East stable, if we can turn Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East, if the UAE basically in cooperation with Saudi Arabia can run the table and it's just all now about economics, economics, economics. I don't like going to the UAE, going to Saudi Arabia. I have been. I have boots on the ground in both Saudi Arabia, um UAE and oh god, who has invaded?

Oh, I cannot believe I'm blanking on it. I a third country. And you you feel the wealth in a way a way a way it honestly was it was a gut punch being an American to be like, oh, this is what wealth looks like. It was wild. And so like Beverly Hills is the backwater like shame things didn't work out for you compared to like the UAE. When dude, when you go through the airport in Dubai, it's like holy Jesus. This is This is This is it's unreal.

I was taking photos of the airport just like, whoa. It it was pretty crazy. And so if you're Trump and you're thinking, cool, I've got my installed base in Jared Kushner in there. They are like I forget the number. It's something like seven out of the 10 largest private equity firms are in the UAE. So coming out of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Unreal. So in terms of the accumulation of the world's wealth, people just have their eye there. And so if you're like, man, [ __ ] Iran, will you stop [ __ ] everything up?

And so you're just like, all right, let's let's get their oil. Let's [ __ ] get somebody in there that will turn these guys into an investment hub. Let's get this whole place going. Forget all this theocracy [ __ ] Like let's just this is going to be the place. In fact, yes. Yes. Okay. So Drew, let me let me paint a picture for you. This this is meant to be horrifying, but just honest. This is going to get clipped out of context. I'm going to say it. Okay. So what was Hitler's pitch?

Hitler's pitch was Ukraine becomes our wild west. America's doing as well as it is because it's just expanding west and there's so many resources and all that and plus just land. Like people can go effectively for free, get a homestead, incredible. It's given the Americans like this spirit about them that's incredible. There's so much hope and it's just they're they're a revived nation. nation. nation. We're going to do the same for Germany. We're just going to take over Russia, Ukraine and the Germans are going to be able to spill over and get their homesteads and all of that in Ukraine.

It's going to be amazing. Uh Uh Uh Middle East. Middle East. Middle East. If you can take it from just dry [ __ ] desert and you just pour wealth, irrigation, grab all the um the oil and you go, okay, here's what we're going to do with the oil. We're going to transform this whole place into this gigantic economic tourism hub. If you don't believe me, look at some of the bets that Saudi Arabia is making. So many of them are based on tourism and getting people there.

And Mr. Beast amusement park. amusement park. amusement park. Uh I'm definitely um out of my depth in terms of I don't know how real desalination is and so maybe this part of what I'm saying is is a bit far-fetched, but Elon just keeps banging the drum. Desalinization is cheap as [ __ ] and it's like once you get the right amount of energy going, you're good. Solar. So you create safety in the region so they don't have to worry about terrorism. You are the capital's already being pumped into there.

You just have this one destabilizing agent. You get that under control and you now build out the region and you turn it into this hub of um tourism, all eyes on us and they become the like capital expansionary zone that we've been looking for. And they're a little like okay with slave labor light. And so it's like you just import a bunch of people from other countries who by the way like when you talk to there are a ton of Filipinos there. And you just ask them like hey what are you doing here?

Why'd you come here? It's a long way away from home. And they're just like the opportunities here are incredible. And so I can make so much money here and send it back. So they're like they're like they're like yeah, this is great. Like I'll do this all day long. And so you're able to get you want to talk K shaped like you've got the people at the tippy top ultra ultra ultra ultra ultra wealthy and then you've got people who are like for them it's way better than where they were and so they go there but they're at the bottom of the K shape but they're perfectly happy to be there uh sending money back home.

cuz now they're in a upper K of their respective economies. Correct. So it is um um um again, this is not me going to bat for this. I'm sure people are going to say that that's what it is and it is uh you get why oh this isn't about a central bank. This is about maybe something more crazy. crazy. crazy. The bankers are still getting their cut though. We can't act like the bankers aren't. Bankers run the world full stop so they're getting their cut. But to end of the story.

your point Trump is like all right, I'll get the oil and Kushner's going to have all his name on the paperwork. I'm going to get that money anyway. It's coming back to the house. So Trump's going to get paid on both sides. America's going to love him and his coffers going to get stuffed. And then the central bank now is like oh you guys you guys need a loan? I can help you. Like Yes. Let me give one more piece of this puzzle to see if I can bring this all home.

home. home. I think I think I think if you map Trump as doing that which enriches him enriches him enriches him you are directionally correct but you're missing a piece. There's a world that he wants to live in and he's trying to make that world come true. true. true. And that world is um stable, safe, America first and real economic prosperity. And so And so And so like it's not just kleptocratic. I won't say that there isn't some kleptocracy in the mix but isn't just kleptocratic.

Um so I mean we'll see but he's clearly planting trees under whose shade he will never know, right? I mean this is a guy in his 80s. Yeah. So or almost. Uh so yeah. Cool. Uh all right, let's jump into those super chats. Let's do it. Uh LeBlanc started us Yeah. right again with good morning everyone. Make sure to have a beautiful and wonderful day. Uh Right back at you. Right back at you, man. And uh what a joyous uh thing this has become that you do that so frequently.

So thank you, man. And Shaq Power 678 said good morning Tom and Drew. Not sure if you're interested in studying the cartel deeper. If so, I would recommend interviewing Victor Galarza from the vigilance project. If so, happy to introduce. If not, that's fine, too. It's very kind. I don't know him so we'll have to look him up. Uh but always always appreciate guest suggestions. So thank you, guys. And from Marco Cano, hey Tom, the US is in Afghanistan for 20 years and they still lost the war to an invisible enemy.

Bukele when went and grabbed every idiot the mark that marked themselves with tattoos. Do you want Mexico to be like Afghanistan? Well, I don't I'm having a hard time putting those two things together. So I'm not sure the Bukele Afghanistan thing. thing. thing. Uh so do I want Iran to be like Afghanistan? Afghanistan? Afghanistan? Was that the direct question? is going back to Oh, do I want Mexico to be like Afghanistan? Yes. Yes. Yes. Again, no. That's the nice easy answer. Uh so Uh so Uh so think the point was we went into Afghanistan thinking it'll be easy and then it was 20 years of nothingness.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Ourselves better a better a more formidable adversary than Uh Al-Qaeda was. was. was. Okay, let me let me speed run what I hear here. Um we may have very different understandings of who the invisible enemy was in Afghanistan. I would say the invisible enemy is a culture that is perfectly happy with their religious beliefs. They are a hurting culture which man I know this is like a landmine. Uh but they are hurting honor culture who culture who culture who they are culture wide not exactly thrilled to see women get educated as a for example.

for example. for example. Uh and so you put all of that together and they don't want Western democracy on mass. So I don't even think you were getting the kind of pressure from women to get educated and get out from under that culture that you might expect. And so yes, when you try to push your culture down from the top, it's not going to work. And so that was a fool's errand. I don't think we adequately understand the culture of Afghanistan. I would say that the culture of Mexico is far more like American culture than it is like Afghanistan culture Afghani culture.

So uh I don't have those same fears in terms of how Bukele fits in the mix that part not tracking that maybe just too much much much indiscriminate locking people up somehow make you Afghanistan. I don't know. That part I don't understand. But uh yeah, culturally I think we are far more likely to understand Mexico than we are to understand Afghanistan though clearly Mexico has their own unique culture. It is not American. Uh but I would say if it isn't full blown west, it is certainly west adjacent.

Uh and so um yeah, I that one doesn't strike me as um super problematic. I think they're all going to want to live uh under rule of law and I think if you could ferret out the corruption um they would be thrilled and the reason that's hard is because they um have a very good business model of selling um vice and by selling vice they're able to make gargantuan amounts of money outside of the governmental system which they use to co-opt the government. And so untangling that is going to be difficult but it is not uh in any way analogous to Afghanistan.

Last one from Living Fit Every Day. Good morning from Alaska. Uh Iran might be negotiating but let's not forget Islam's mission death to America. Negotiating with the supreme leader is like chemo treatment using your analogy it's pushing out the inevitable. inevitable. inevitable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it definitely is like chemo treatment. There is no two ways about that one. Pull that comment back up, Mace. Mace. Mace. Yes, it's right here. Um Yeah. Yeah. Trying to make it bigger. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Um Yeah, it really could be that there's uh no two ways about this moment is going to happen no matter what. Um Um Um It's just a question of now or later. We'll see. The the death to America do I is that my main concern? That is not my main concern. main concern. main concern. They will escalate but my main concern for Iran is in the Middle East. I think that that is going to be where this all plays out and so the question becomes uh does taking out Iran's does cuz I don't want us to take out their leadership.

But would a flip of Iran's leadership uh weaken China? Yes. Uh would it put us in a better position in terms of the global war on terror? Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh would we likely get a government well, let's say in the event that we get a government that is pro-America, it will also help us out with energy costs, sanctions, things like that uh which then further helps us with China. So um we have a lot of reasons to want to see this play out before we have to worry about them actually striking on American soil.

I think that's that's a way way way off into the future problem. Quick question. Quick question. Quick question. Just because of their ability to hit us. They could hit military bases but they're not going to hit us up close. So anyway, while I agree that that's a problem and that they say that stuff that's not the thing that drives my thinking around Iran nor do I think it drives Trump's thinking even though it may be the thing that they talk about to get um get um get um the populace behind the idea.

But I don't think that's the driving force. To your point of um he's trying to create this like economic utopia in the middle of the Middle East to make it like this new population. Do you think that's why we're so focused on Iran we can completely transform it, get economic benefits and that weakens China simultaneously? When you realize how small the world really is and you understand we're going up against a very small number of adversaries. Their relationships are not only knowable, they're known and you start looking at all the pieces on the chessboard and you've got one of your strongest allies Israel saying hey these guys are all that matter and if they get a nuclear weapon they're going to blow us up so help us out and you're like ah damn.

Like we do get a lot from Israel both things that we talk about, things that we don't. Israel's a huge lobbying group in the US. I am hyper aware of how much people uh people uh people uh hate Israel. A a lot of people uh hate Israel but nonetheless they are an ally of ours. I think that there there is a reason that uh Israel has allies all over the world and my instinct is it's money and it is uh intelligence and that I have a feeling from a tech technological standpoint that they provide the best intelligence.

Now I don't know that. I don't have any inside information but when you tell me that these [ __ ] guys uh ran a pager company for like a decade. So that one day one day they might blow the nuts off some uh Hamas people. completely changed it. Bro. Bro. Bro. That changed the game. Well, so hold on. So if you really want to So if you really want to have your eyes open to Israel, read the book rise early and kill first. I think that's the exact title but somebody check me.

It's something almost like that. So there's a a Bible verse that says what do you do when a man is coming to kill you? You rise early and kill him first. That is Israel. Yeah, rise early and kill him first. So, Israel does not [ __ ] around. So, you've got the whole world that's like they know more than we know about what Israel's doing in the clandestine, classified, we can't talk about it world. And so, when they're all like "Hey, we got to help Israel." It's like you've got three things at play.

You've got the Mike Huckabees of the world who just from a like biblical standpoint are are dick riders for Israel because they think that God wants it to be so. Biblical dick rider is crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. Nonetheless true. Oh my god. Thank you for that. for that. for that. Thank you for that. So, uh you've got that. Then you've got money. So, I it it appears to be It's a winning strategy whether they do this intentionally or not, but you've got the diaspora is uh the Jewish diaspora is far bigger than uh Jewish people in Israel.

And ooh, this is where people really start to get weird, but you've got a Jewish diaspora way bigger than the number of Jews that you have in Israel. And if it's true uh you've got the um Ashkenazi Jews have a standard deviation higher IQ. So, they go, okay, well, we just sort of get how the world works. We have a higher IQ. And so, they in their diaspora do two things. They are very cloistered, so they help Jews before they help anybody else. Not all of them.

Obviously, this is just like the culture the culture the culture uh bell curve and [ __ ] There's going to be people that are Jewish that could not give a [ __ ] and feel completely on the outside of Jewish culture. For sure, for sure. But if you want to know why these patterns in history repeat, uh so, you've got Jews, some of them standard deviation higher IQ allegedly, allegedly. Uh and then if you really understand how the world works, where do you go, Drew? To the guy with the higher standard deviation.

You go to the money. Oh, you go to the money. If you understand how the world works, the thing you understand is we are all economic units. Money makes the world go round because it's great facilitator. And so, now you're a diaspora, you spread all over the world, and you're like, "Hey, like, "Hey, like, "Hey, uh let's go into finance." You [ __ ] dominate in finance. So, now you [ __ ] making money hand over [ __ ] fist. And everything works on money, most especially politics. And so, you go into uh making sure that you're greasing the wheels politically, legally, let's assume.

And so, now it's like you've got the money to your will be done. And so, you do this stuff. And now we have this world where you got a whole lot of people that are like, "I'll keep making donations to your thing, but you got to vote for a candidate that's pro-Israel." You put that on the back of the uh religious stuff and and the fact that they are an ally to so many countries. Mhm. And clearly it's important again, I think for finance and for uh technology and anti-terrorism and all that.

And they're a democratic-ish country. And so, you've now got this thing where it's you've got your Western outpost in the Middle East, and you've got this gigantic diaspora diaspora doing its thing, and you've got them being very strategically relevant to a whole lot of countries. And now all of a sudden it's like here we are. And you get the world that you see. Um so, yeah, I mean, that's my take on that. It's wild. You did bring up Mike Huckabee, so let's um jump into that story.

He was sitting down with Tucker Carlson. Carlson. Carlson. And um And um And um the America first agenda is slightly slipping. Um let's jump into it. And like how much does it matter what Americans think? Americans think? Americans think? Well, it matters every bit what Americans think. That's why Americans vote. It's why Americans have the opportunity to have free speech. We want them to have that. Okay, so what percentage of Americans support a war with Iran? I don't know. Do you know? I do. It's I think it's around I saw the numbers yesterday.

I think it was like 21%. Okay. Okay. Okay. Is that enough to have a war with Iran? We don't live in a world where you have a poll taken to find out whether our policy should be a particular direction because because because I thought I thought you just said that we we we direct democracy. No, we care were ignoring were ignoring were ignoring deeply about it, but on the other hand do we make the decisions of foreign policy and even domestic policy based on what the latest numbers care deeply about it in what sense?

How in if we're ignoring it, then in what sense do we quote care deeply about it? To your point, he like acts like he doesn't know anything and he's like slowly walking into it. It's like if you go on Tucker, Tucker has a trap for you. Like either you fit his narrative or he's got a trap for you. Yeah. And so, it if you're going to go on a show, bro, you better be ready. Uh Mike Huckabee was not ready, as you will see. Well, I think we care deeply when we see those are for was that the end of the clip?

No, but about Americans no way. There's way better Oh, god, you're sick. Um they vote. They voted in this last election on the basis in part of the promise no more wars. Okay? So, now we're about to have a war it looks like. 80% of people are against it in that range. Let's say it's 70%, but nowhere near majority support for this war. And it's not direct democracy, but it is a form of democracy. It's representative democracy. democracy. democracy. The ultimate form of democracy in our system in a republic cuz we're not a true democracy.

We're a republic. Right? It's a mediated democracy. it'll be it'll be it'll be an opportunity for Americans to vote if they think that we've made the wrong policy decisions. I personally think the president is making the right policy decisions. But I guess but you just said it matters deeply what Americans think. And if the overwhelming majority are against it, against it, against it, in what sense does it matter? Cuz what I hear is it matters what they think, but it really doesn't matter what they think because because because you take it in.

You certainly ingest that. And then what do you do once you ingest it? Then you make Uh this is not the clip that we want. So, there's another clip. I don't know if you can find it quickly, but where he presses Mike Huckabee on like uh hold on, like why why do you think that they have a right to Israel? And uh how much of Israel's land do you think or how much of the land in the Middle East do you think they have a right to?

Because in the Bible it says something like from the Euphrates to the Jordan or something like that. Uh oh, here we go. You got to hear this. This was the one that I was like, "Yo." to Genesis. Genesis 15 says it's Abram. It's pre-Abraham. It's Abram receives from God the news that his descendants will inherit the land. And you tell me as the as the theologian if I'm getting this wrong, but from Drew, I imagine you and I are going to feel very differently about this.

In terms of this is a classic example of two people looking at the same thing, and we're going to see something very different. Uh for me because I believe these are books not inspired by God at all. God does not exist. That this is just guys wrote some [ __ ] down. And the way that that echoes through history. So, I just interviewed um Raymond Ibrahim about Islam and had a very similar sense of like, "Yo, the number of things that people do in the name of a god that Tom Bilyeu does not believe exists is crazy town." And this is one of those exchanges.

Now, these two both believe in God, which is interesting to see them collide, but as people watch this, remember you're in a frame of reference. You either believe God exists and that the book is revelatory of what God wants or you don't. But just like step into the other shoe for a minute as you hear it or at least like go back and forth of, "Okay, what does this sound like if I don't believe?" And then what does this sound like if I do believe? Because this this is is is yeah, wildly different depending on which one of those two camps you're in.

Okay, with that the Euphrates to the Nile. I think I think that's right. And that would include like basically the entire Middle East. That would be the Levant, so that would be Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. It would also be big parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. It would be I'm not sure it would go that far. I mean, it would be a big piece of land, but here's the point. would be a lot of places that are now countries But this particular area that we're talking about now, Israel, Israel, Israel, is is is uh uh uh is a land that God gave through Abraham to a people that he chose.

It was a people, a place, and a purpose. We we can look at it that way. Christian Zionism, I want to go back cuz that's where we started. I'm not going to let you off on I feel about this Mhm. the way that I would expect people to feel about if a thousand years from now or two thousand years from now people were like, "Okay, remember what Voldemort did?" And uh Hogwarts was given to and you're like, "What is happening?" People already threw London train stations into the wall trying to find the secret chamber.

So, all right. Sorry, keep going cuz we he says something outrageous here coming up. up. up. Unless because you have said three times that God gave this land Yeah. to this people. And so, it is entirely fair for me with respect to ask, "What land are you talking about?" Because I just read Genesis 15 as I have many times. many times. many times. It's a good line of questioning. And that land, I think it says from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is once again basically the entire Middle East.

So, God gave that land to his people, the Jews, or he didn't. You're saying he did. What does that mean? Does Israel have the right to that land? Because you're appealing to Genesis. Yeah. You're saying that's the original deed. deed. deed. It would be fine if they took it all. Yo. Yo. Yo. Damn. Damn. Damn. I mean, hey, he said it. Yo, that delivery was wild. said the [ __ ] Like cuz he knew. He was like, "Uh-oh. like, "Uh-oh. like, "Uh-oh. We got walked into the trap.

And now to be consistent with my beliefs, like am I, Mike Huckabee, going to go against God? Like if God said it's theirs, it's theirs." theirs." theirs." What's he going to do? That is wild. I really Yeah, I watched that clip and was like Okay. Yeah. Damn. Uh it's it's hilarious to me though because everybody wants to quote Genesis but they don't want to quote anything else in the Old Testament and right after Genesis is Deuteronomy and through Deuteronomy I'm sorry Exodus and then Deuteronomy and Deuteronomy that's where God comes down and tells all the laws with the Jewish people and one of the laws is you can't wear mixed clothing so you can't wear like a polyester shirt.

You can't eat bottom feeders you're not supposed to eat pork that's why a lot that's where a lot of the Jewish customs come for kosher and stuff like that. So it's it's interesting to me that we say well in Genesis God said this so this must be true but let's skip the rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament and the other part of the Bible where he talks about all the other things that would invalidate that notion. Yep. And I think so as a person that believes in God I know the one thing that I have to deal with is there are a lot of people who read sections of the Bible use it to control a sector of people and they use that to operate and live off of and they profit off of them and they they make a fantastic living over using this Bible to manipulate these these groups of people.

That's my North Star I have to deal with that but just like we go to any other political institution there's people in the Senate White House whatever that uses the Constitution a small part of the Constitution to go to the a secular people and do the same thing. They're trying to enrich themselves they use their information to insider trade themselves into millions. I've never seen a a broke president. No president in the history of America has gone into the White House and left poor. It's actually not true but in the modern era it is absolutely true.

But yeah yeah they did somebody did a breakdown of like the number of presidents that like went broke after spending their own money and [ __ ] it is pretty crazy. Okay I'll give you that. in in the last say 50 years Yeah I'll concede but like yeah I'm going back to Bush one. I've seen like everybody comes out and they get a bag. No out and they get a bag. No doubt. doubt. doubt. And yes there are Catholic priests who are pedos and they get they got covered up because of sin and there's people who have talked to pulpits and they were touching little girls and there's a whole bunch of dirty ickiness in all of this.

So by no means am I saying because this is wrong or if it's because it's about Israel Bible people are wrong or atheists were right or nothing like that. There is a spectrum of thought that we should have around this topic. However to bring it back to Mike Huckabee again it's very interesting that you started at the beginning that's like if I were to say the Constitution says I get a second amendment so I should be able to shoot everybody and then I don't read anything else I don't care about voting rights I don't care about women I don't care about nothing else it's just you said I have a gun right so I can militia some stuff so I want to militia this office right now.

Time to need to raise give me a gun I'm going to take like it's just going to keep happening that way. We would say this is stupid you have to go through the whole document you have to but but somehow when it comes to the Bible it's like oh okay you read that one part at the very beginning you're right we don't need to read the rest we we trust you and that's the part that like bothers me. me. me. Also it just needs to make contact with reality.

So if you're saying that hey God gave us this land and now we're just going to knock knock and take it back it's like well hold on what do you mean by that? Are you saying that they have the right that God actively wants them to wage an offensive war to get it back and should America be helping them build that arsenal so that they can take it back because that is the will of God? Like really get people to say what they think. Uh and I think you will find them and that was already an absurd trap.

I think you will find them walking deeper and deeper into just outlandish levels of absurdity that I as a non-religious person want them to go and this is why there is a separation of church and state that even the founding fathers hundreds of years ago understood yeah we should probably keep these two things separate like you can believe what you believe love it more power to you that's amazing but here on earth in the here and now we need a structure that is uh congruent with the universal laws of man if you will because first of all there are many readings of a single religion plus there are a lot of other religions that just whole cloth like throw this idea out and so let's just keep these two things separate and so when I see somebody in the government leading with the religious stuff I'm just like man this is this is no bueno.

And I think that's why I like James Tallarico so much in Texas where he's a practicing Christian he goes to church and all these things but he was one of the members in the Texas Senate that voted against putting the 10 Commandments in every classroom cuz he was like if I'm pushing my religion off you that's not love that's the exact opposite of what I'm taught to do. So again when we're saying I'm religious so let me go bomb that country you're you're skip that doesn't make sense those are incompatible thoughts.

You're skipping over some things in order to get to that and I think to your point we're just using it to manipulate or like trying to we're trying to use it to control the state when it was never enacted to control the state. God never Jesus didn't come down and say all right Caesar watch out I'm going to take over this thing like he didn't interact with the government at all when he was actually standing trial he didn't even say anything. So that's kind of the thing that we need to kind of focus on versus this other manipulation that's happening.

Um in the greater scheme of things though Mike Huckabee definitely got his uh his foot in his mouth. I want to start with the other nations cuz this was hilarious cuz when he said I guess they can take it all. Um Jordan UAE Saudi Arabia Egypt Turkey Indonesia Qatar Lebanon Kuwait Pakistan Bahrain Oman Palestine and Syria these are all the countries that he said they could just take it plus the OIC Arab League and the Gulf states. states. states. They all wrote a joint statement against condemning what Mike Huckabee said and they kind of went like he's receiving well deserved backlash for it cuz you can't just say Israel could just take my country and shrug your shoulders like like that was wild.

Um Um Um So crazy and by the way Kuwait was the other country in the Middle East that I've been to. Oh got it. Um and then this was his statement um um um I feel like I want to Thomas Massie and be like congratulations or I'm sorry Yeah I'm not reading all that. The the punchline is actually pretty interesting so I'll summarize it. It goes something like Tucker because one of the things we haven't shown yet which is really what his tweet goes to is that Tucker came on the attack talking about the DNA connection that Jews in Israel have to the native land and that he was putting forth the hypothesis that there are basically Jews are European and that they have no right to that land whatsoever and Mike Huckabee is saying well one thing that I didn't think to say that I should have said is that the Ashkenazi Jews which I do believe are of European descent European descent European descent make up 30 to 40% of the population and the the the um Sephardic and Sephardic Sephardic Jews Jews Jews make up the and Mizrahi make up the majority and they do have ancestry that tracks back.

tracks back. tracks back. And And And uh what I will say to that is you cannot trace back Tom Bilyeu's ancestry to America and yet I shan't be giving up this land and this is where people need to understand that this is all [ __ ] this is all a distraction this is not how the world works. So however they came to be and people can debate this as much as they want to me it is just completely irrelevant. However they came to be in possession of that land they are now in possession of that land and if you want to take it you're going to have to fight for it it's just really that [ __ ] simple.

You live in a world where naked power rules the day. Now people will use power of all sorts they will use economic they will use military they will use political they'll use everything at their disposal and if you want to supplant them you're going to have to win in that fight and just that is what it is and so all of the messaging [ __ ] is like a totally different form of warfare that where is really being waged to control the minds of the people to either demoralize or to get them riled up and ready to fight.

One of the things I didn't say when we were talking in the last segment is that one of the ways that religion is actually really useful is if you're trying to get your people to go attack another country make it about religion. There is a reason that our current Secretary of War has some big ass Christian tattoos on him and whether it's just he just is really a believer and is like this is exactly what God wants me to do he wants me to be strong he wants me to be aggressive etc.

etc. It is a great way to get somebody to work up wake up be disciplined work hard become strong all of that become militant to go out to you know proselytize with or without the sword and so people been using religion to carry that water for a very very long time and so let us not lose sight of all of that and so so so when you look at whether there is a DNA tie to the region or not to me that's really of little consequence it's completely irrelevant they are there.

If you look by the way at the history of how Jews ended up taking over the land that is now Israel it is a master class on how to go in and go we've got a weakly organized group here here here we're going to come in first with immigration and we're just going to immigrate immigrate immigrate immigrate immigrate and go from not mattering at all politically to being the dominant political class and you this is exactly what you see with Islam right now all over the place and Islam is running the same playbook and it's like okay well a lot of people seem to be pretty unhappy that the Jews ran this strategy in Israel and so how do those same people feel about any group going into any other area and running a very similar playbook where first we don't matter at all politically and then we immigrate immigrate immigrate immigrate immigrate look at the UK if you think I'm crazy and we just start getting elected to political office we become politically impossible to ignore and then you can basically just run the table.

And so, it's like, man, I'm not passing judgment one way or the other. I'm saying this just is what happens. It is a very uh high-utility strategy. And then, whether people decide that they're going to push back or not, but once people get in control, now it's a game of power. And if they've got a military, you've got to be able to beat them. So, I don't give a [ __ ] Like, if somebody can trace back their lineage, it's not like they're going to go, "Oh, yeah, Bibi Netanyahu, fake name." That's a stage name.

Uh his real name is a super-European-sounding a super-European-sounding a super-European-sounding uh I think he's Polish, if I'm not mistaken. And so, it's like, he doesn't belong here. Man, now what? It's like, you really think they're going to be like, "Oh, dude, guys, sorry, our bad. We're just going to peace out." [ __ ] that. They're going to be like, "Come and take it if you can." So, well, actually, what they're going to do is they're going to talk about how there's a bunch of um Sephardic Jews that do belong in the region, which is just a dumb argument.

You just say, "We are Israel. We're here." Um and this is what we stand for, this is what we're going to do. But, it's so mixed in with religion, it gets tough. Well, in news of other people in hot water internationally, water internationally, water internationally, want to switch chat on this one, though, uh uh uh if you don't mind. Oh, on this one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can take it. Uh from Marsha Dark, Israel-Palestine is a religious war. If it was just about defense and a and a home, we could move all the Jews or the Palestinians to Idaho.

But, each side thinks God gave them that particular territory. They're medieval cults. Yep, that's a big part of it. That's not the only part of it, but that is a big part of it. That is uh part of what keeps this going on. Uh it's weird, though, when you say we could all move them to Idaho. Like, what if I picked you up, Marsha, and said, "Okay, I'm just going to move you to um the West Bumbles of France, cuz that's your new home now. You're not going to be like, 'Yes, let's go.

I'm excited to like I don't know." I think what he's saying is, if this weren't a cultural problem, you could just put them anywhere, and it's culture that ultimately uh creates a problem. Now, that's me projecting my frame of reference, because from that perspective, he's right in the sense that if they weren't incensed about losing, like, this is my home, whether your home is Detroit or a place that God gave you, it's like, this is where I grew up, this is where I raised my kids, the landmarks matter to me, and so I don't want anybody to forcibly remove me somewhere.

somewhere. somewhere. Um but, I if that's what he means in terms of culture, religion, like, becomes a very big part of the equation, he's right. he's right. he's right. Uh but, you're also right that there's a second part of this equation, which is nobody wants to be moved. Yeah, like, no, I don't think anyone wants to And and that's no shade to the Idaho people, but like, you can't just pluck one person, bring them over to a new continent, and drop them somewhere, and be like, "Yeah, yeah, you'll be fine." Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I don't know. Uh Yeah. Um let's talk about Bill Gates. Um So, So, So, this is interesting. Um I'll let RFK talk and then you can kind of ground us in what's going on. Well, there was something else, another article about Bill Gates. It came out today that said he's just been indicted. been indicted. been indicted. [cheering] People forget about long-term alliances, man. man. man. I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure been indicted in the Netherlands. It felt like a good idea to just be like, "Listen, misinformation.

It's true, but it's not good." And so, for like, just for a second, believe that Bill Gates is sincere, and he really believes it. Mhm. You still can't do that. Like, people just go to bad guy, Epstein files, rich guy, manipulation, it's all about money. He was with Epstein. Yeah, you you don't even have to do that. All you just have to go to is, you can't lie to people to get them to conform, period. And everything that he does after that is already a problem.

And like, if you want to heap mountains on top of it, then you go to all the other stuff. But, we really really really, as a society, as a globe, we have to say, if it's true, it's true, and the truth is always knowable, barring like the rarest of rare things that are being classified. But, like, other than that, man, if it is true, just as in the law, the truth is an absolute defense. You can always say the truth. You don't have to justify it, it just is true.

Same thing here. You can't lie. Mhm. for lying to the public about the COVID vaccine. vaccine. vaccine. [cheering] And he's going to have to go to trial. [cheering] [cheering] [cheering] Man, that'll be so interesting. So, if he really does end up going to trial for this, I I don't know what comes of it, man, because here you've got a hyper-well-connected hyper-well-connected hyper-well-connected person with person with person with all the money in the world, and he's not going to go quietly, he's going to have incredible defense.

Um Um Um It it that is going to be this big, long, drawn-out process, where there's going to be a thousand ways that we can invalidate it, lessen it, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever. And And And if he if the tide has turned such that people are like, nope, homie's going to jail, and it's one of those where um um um it might even be that what the real energy is isn't even necessarily the COVID vaccine, it's the Epstein thing, or it's both of them put together, whatever.

And it's like, no, no, no. Like, there has to be somebody that goes down for this. And like how when the crime boss gets killed for like tax evasion versus like the murder and the drug stuff. drug stuff. drug stuff. Exactly. It's like, yeah, do we really care about the tax evasion? Not really. But, we really care about the other stuff. stuff. stuff. Um Um Um I mean, that'll be wild. This is one of those those those uh uh uh keystone bricks that if you can pull out, like, and I'm not saying one way or the other, and I don't know enough about this to know, like, did he really lie?

Was he just wrong? And that all has to be litigated. But, it is very very very um important that as a globe, we say, you can't just make claims and like move people around because you think it's in their best interest. Like, this this stuff has to be out in the open, it's got to be debated, and even if your intentions are good, um the likelihood of people being wrong is so high that you've got to let this stuff be debated in public. Uh so, it's um it's certainly a good thing that this is now at least hitting the point where somebody like that is going to have to answer for it.

Yeah. I'm I'm a precedents person, so I'm naive in this comment, I know, but I'm just walk with me for a second. I know that he had good intentions. I'm assuming. Let's just assume he's everything was above the book, he really thought he was trying to help people, to your point earlier, right? Would this then weaponize if we ever are in another situation where we need to rally the country together, is this going to have any blowback? Is this going to set You know what I mean?

So, it's like one of those things where it's like, yes, I want to get Bill Gates cuz he lied and he's wrong and all these other things. But, if he did do it with the best of intentions, and at the at the time he thought that information was correct, is that going to weaponize I don't know if I'm going to say like intelligence or science or anything, but like, there there has to be a second order we're not seeing here, cuz There there certainly is, you have your finger right on it, which is you're going to disincentivize people to try to do these big-scale projects where they say we want to cure malaria or whatever, uh and they set about doing it, partly for legacy, um but, I think that whatever the price ends up being for not manipulating the public en masse, you're going to have to pay that price.

And the reason I say that is because in the age of information, the only way to stop people from talking about this is force. Now, sometimes the force is economic, and we just debank that person, and we say they they don't get to exist in modern society. I consider that to be violence. And um And um And um we we need another word for it, because I don't want to conflate words or violence or whatever. But, it is it is it is a thing that is akin to violence.

So, It's an attack in Yeah, if violence is that which does physical harm, we need like this digital violence or something, I don't know what to call it. But, you're doing something to somebody that has measurable harm. And that is in this day and age, that is so dangerous that we have to put guardrails that absolutely stop people from doing it, because you're going to get the I mean, you've already got the rise of companies like Palantir and things like that, where we want the tools, we don't want them to be weaponized against the public.

We want the tools so that we see if somebody's coming after us, we don't want to use it for mind control. And um I did a deep dive effectively on how AI is being turned into mind control as we speak. speak. speak. It is so nefarious and so subtle, and we have to have a massive allergic reaction to that as a global society. Uh and so, this falls into that camp. And yes, I think that people will be far more hesitant to do these large-scale projects.

However, it will ultimately mutate into something like um um um "Hey, I'm ultra-wealthy. I want to do this thing, and I'm going to do it in full view of public, so that I'm starting something moving, but I'm not trying to control the narrative. I'm not trying to control it all." Because narrative control happens because it works. Censorship happens because it works. But, murder happens because it works. And so, we have to be very careful. I'm I'm somebody who really believes in assessing something based on its utility, but you have to assess that utility across multiple domains.

And when it turns the public into sheep, uh it's a bad idea, because it's ultimately the public that's going to give birth to the better ideas. It's the public like a Semmelweis, if you guys know that story, doctor realizes that um patients are being killed uh mothers specifically that just gave birth are being killed because doctors aren't washing their hands uh after dealing with corpses and then giving uh doing deliveries and that's creating like this crazy like death rate among women. He comes up with now what we would recognize as germ theory, tells doctors they need to wash and sanitize after touching a corpse before delivering a baby and he ends up dying in an insane asylum broke because everybody just went on the attack on this guy uh and we're saying, you know, he's like this crackpot.

Again, he ended up being not only right, but his uh the uh the uh the the things that he put forward end up saving God knows how many lives in totality. So, totality. So, totality. So, you you really want the public to be able to say what they believe to be true uh and to let those ideas be battled out. You don't want to silence people. You certainly don't want to drive them to an insane asylum. So, um this falls in that category for me. Mhm.

Mhm. Mhm. Uh Yeah. I'm I'm thinking depending on how this goes, I feel like the Fauci got to be next, right? Like there has to be some type of That Fauci didn't get got already is crazy. feel like that's going to be coming down the pipe, but Yes. We'll we'll see. We'll get there. Again, if he was saying what he believed to be true, great. Yeah. But was he? was he? was he? Yeah. Uh at the headline level, it seems pretty pretty pretty unlikely. Let's say that.

Uh okay, you have a update on the tariffs. Um Um Um I feel like they were there. The Supreme Court struck them down. Same day Trump came and said, "Okay, we're going to do 10% blanket on all of them." Then some got increased to 15%. I was trying to look at the most recent, so I didn't pull up a a tweet or nothing cuz I don't even know where we're at currently right now. now. now. Yeah. We're we're good without a treat, boys and girls. You can strap right in.

Uh if you've been paying attention this whole thing, you know the Supreme Court just handed Trump the biggest legal loss of his second term. Six justices, including two he personally appointed, said his sweeping tariffs were illegal. And they almost certainly are. Like if you just realize constitutionally, they are functionally a tax even if they're not called a tax and Congress has that ability, not the executive branch. But what was Trump's response? He called the justices a disgrace. He announced new tariffs under a completely different law immediately immediately immediately uh and then not only did he, like Drew was saying, he put first a 10% I think out of spite and just to prove a point, he then just raised them immediately to 15%, which is the max under the new law that he's using.

So, the Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEEPA, does not give the president authority to impose tariffs. It's probably true even again, even if the tariffs are useful, even if this is great for the economy. The question that the Supreme Court has been asked to answer is is it constitutional? Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion. The court noted that no president in history had ever used IEEPA to levy tariffs and that the word tariff doesn't even appear in the law. If you want to impose taxes of this magnitude, you need clear authorization from Congress and Trump simply didn't have it.

IEEPA tariffs represented roughly half of all import taxes and government uh that the government was collecting every month. The Tax Foundation estimates that the government pulled in over 160 over 160 over 160 billion dollars from IEEPA tariffs since they were imposed. That money is now potentially owed back to the importers, some of whom have already sued him and said if the Supreme Court strikes this down, we want our money back. Now, the refund question has been kicked down to the Court of International Trade and could take months and months to resolve.

The Supreme Court didn't want to get involved in that. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates that refunds could go as high as 175 billion. billion. billion. Think about that, man. The government collected this money, spent it, so don't think that it's just sitting there. They spent it based uh on expecting that they were going to be able to keep it and now they may have to give it back. That that is going to be complicated if nothing else. Trump's response, of course, was immediate. It was defiant.

He said the justices were very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution. Man, you could maybe make the argument that they were disloyal to the spirit of the Constitution, but I certainly would disagree. I would say the whole point of the Constitution is to create a framework in which the three branches of government are held in check. Why is the um the Fed so problematic? Because a central bank basically acts as a fourth branch of government, but it doesn't have any checks and therein lies the problem.

So, um that one seems pretty crazy. But Trump went on to even accuse the justices of being swayed by foreign interests. He singled out the three dissenters, Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh. Uh sorry, he singled out the three dissenters. That's who he was criticizing, but Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh, he was praising um calling Kavanaugh's dissent genius. Mhm. Within hours, Trump signed an executive order imposing a new 10% global tariff uh this time under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. We'll see if this ends up working.

By Saturday, uh he'd already raised it all the way to the 15%, which is the maximum under the statute. Uh Trump's message is pretty clear. We have alternatives. They're great alternatives. Uh we're going to do things with them. The the first part of that is a direct quote. So, the way that I read this, Section 122 comes with serious constraints that IEEPA didn't have. So, uh while I knew that he was going to just shift on to something else and I bet if you shut this one down, he's got another thing and he's just going to keep this running uh so that he can get to the midterms and show that it's actually turning the economy around, at which point there probably isn't the political will to stop him uh or it could all blow up in his face and then it's really going to be bad.

This is an all-in strategy. So, we'll see. Uh IEEPA caps at 15%. Also, auto expires at 150 days, so uh we'll see how this ends up playing out. It requires a finding of large and serious, quote unquote, uh balance of payments deficits and any extension with other countries and any extension requires congressional approval, which with midterms on the horizon uh is certainly far from guaranteed. He's getting so much pushback obviously from Democrats uh and he's got such a slim uh majority. We'll see how it plays out.

Kavanaugh actually acknowledged all of this by the way in his dissent, essentially arguing that other statutes could justify most, if not all, of the tariffs. We'll see. Uh but with a few additional procedural steps. So, if you want to translate that in normal speak, the president checked the wrong legal box basically and he can probably get to something similar to where he was, uh but it's going to be a little bit harder, a little bit slower, and more constrained. The administration has also signaled it will launch multiple Section 301 investigations, the same authority that Trump used in his first term to tariff China.

So, the thing you should be thinking about there is again, like they've got other options. So, they didn't go in just saying we've got this one strategy and if it doesn't work, we're done. They're going to have backups on backups on backups. So, I have a feeling he's going to try and diversify his tariff approach so that if one badge gets knocked down, he has another, which is already true by the way of the initial tariffs, the IEEPA tariffs IEEPA tariffs IEEPA tariffs um were only one of the different tariff strategies that he was employing.

The 301 investigations are going to take time anyway, uh but they could eventually reimpose country-specific duties. We'll see. Uh Section 232 national security tariffs on things like steel and aluminum will almost certainly uh remain untouched. So, this is not the end of tariffs. It's not the end of tariffs as a weapon that Trump is going to wield and from an international standpoint, it's going to feel much the same. Uh he can't take them necessarily as high, uh but he's still going to wield tariffs. wield tariffs.

wield tariffs. Yeah, did you see the um governor of Chicago and now Gavin Newsom on the back of it. Not the governor of Chicago, the governor of Illinois, Pritzker, Pritzker, Pritzker, uh uh uh and Gavin Newsom both uh sued the White House for tariff refunds saying the American people paid refunds, so each American person paid an average of 1,200, so you owe us 8 billion dollars or something like that. didn't see it, but I'm not at all surprised. Like political battles are what I'm saying. Yeah, it's a lot of that.

that. that. People will take them any chance they can get. This is going to be a tough one to swallow um as he kind of runs that out, but it's it's it's I don't know. It's interesting cuz it's cuz it's cuz it's at some point in time we have to realize that like we we're all in the same country. So, when Trump fails on an international level, it's going to like impact you. impact you. impact you. We're not at the point where people will recognize that.

It's so true and Lord knows I wish that we could all get on the same team. It's interesting. I was having a private conversation over the weekend and somebody was like, um "Aren't you glad that Momand Daddy's policies are failing?" And I was like, "No. What I want is for Momand Daddy to make New York City better for New Yorkers." Now, am I glad that so quickly we're seeing that the policies that he's deploying are low utility? Yes. Because if they're bad policies, you want that to be discovered quickly.

But nothing would make me happier than Momand Daddy getting in office and going, "Hey, uh I've just seen those policies didn't work, so we're going to be moving over to these policies uh that we think are going to be better for the state as defined by, you know, me. I want to hear like what are the things you actually are aiming towards?" Like to me it would be absurd if Xi Jinping wakes up tomorrow and goes, "Okay, you know what? Looking at the results, Deng Xiaoping just had a way better strategy than Mao.

I've been going Mao, I'm going to start going Deng Xiaoping. I'd be like, "Yeah, word. That's dope, man. Like, help the Chinese people." Now, right now, the Chinese are our adversaries. I still want to see things go well for them. Like, I don't want them to be somebody sticking a spoke uh in their wheels and they crash and burn. It's like, I want America to be strong. I want China to be strong. I want the world to be strong. I want the world to think in economic terms.

I don't want the world um trying to like expand out into everybody's territory and I want all your [ __ ] Like, I'm not here to play that game. I want to play a known economic game and I want to say, "Cool. May the best ideas win. We're not going to try to [ __ ] people up. I don't want you to crash and burn. I want to see who has the best ideas." Like, I remind myself of this all the time as a video game developer. Uh a game will come out.

Like, there's there's a new game coming out um out um out um called Crimson Desert. And Crimson Desert Desert Desert looks amazing, first of all. They are obviously way farther ahead than us and I'll even assume that they've had some of these ideas long before we did. So, that might my claim is not they stole my ideas or anything like that. But, they've got ideas that I've been working on for years and then I'm like, "Ah, I wanted to be the first one to do some of those things." And so, but I'm going to end up learning from things that they do in their game.

And so, that's that's how this should be, right? You do cool stuff. I get to learn from your awesome ideas. I don't need to be like, "Well, this is how we do it here, son." It's like, "No, just like rad ideas everywhere. Take your ideas. Stop being ideological about it. Have a north star. State what it is and then figure out how to actually march there." Um so, yeah. That that's how I want to see the world work. Nice. Nice. Uh you brought Ma and Danny up, so we have to pull this up.

I'm not going to lie. I thought I when I seen this headline, I was like, "Oh, this is not real. This is no way." Again, like I was like, "Okay, AI. Like, where's the community now? Where's the And it just it didn't come." So, um Yeah. Yeah, this is this is it. is where they're needed faster. And for those who want to do more to help your neighbors and earn some extra cash, you too can become an emergency snow shoveler. Just show up at your local sanitation garage between 8:00 a.m.

and 1:00 p.m. tomorrow with your paperwork, which is accessible online at nyc.gov/snow, nyc.gov/snow, nyc.gov/snow, and you can get started right away. what here with that paperwork is required? required? required? you want to help out shovel, Okay. Okay. Okay. you do need to bring two forms of ID, fill out the paperwork, and your social security card. But, to vote in an election, you don't need any of that [ __ ] cuz that's racist. is where they're needed is so hilarious. I really faster. faster. faster. like, how did nobody in his crew go, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

We're going to get trolled for this so hard." Like, bro, let them shovel the snow. snow. snow. Uh like, Uh like, Uh like, hand them cash and jot down the name I something. Like, Jesus, man. Like, this is so crazy. And to them, it's like, "Well, but we've got to make sure that, you know, they're legitimate cuz we're going to be paying them money." It's like, like, like, exactly. When you let somebody do something important, you want to know that they are who they say they are.

They're legitimate. Like, yeah. I I just I'm never going to understand the voter ID thing. That's so weird. Um somebody in the chat said, "It's different because it's a job." Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I tried. I tried. I tried. It's uh yeah, man. That's It It to me is so jarring that somebody's like um like, think about it this way. Let's say that the the government says this is an emergency. emergency. emergency. We want every worker we can get, including illegal aliens. We're going to pay them cash.

We're not going to tax anybody. anybody. anybody. I would rather be in that position and them just own, listen, this is an important. important. important. Voting is important. And so, let just pay these guys cash. It could be a Chinese foreign spy. And we're going to pay him the 19 bucks an hour to shovel snow because it's got to get done. Cool. I get it. I get where you're at. Like, this is a historic blizzard. You want to help make sure that New Yorkers are safe and that things are functioning and you will do whatever.

You just gave me your priorities in rank order. So, like, listen, people paying their taxes absolutely must. It's not my highest priority. The safety of New Yorkers is my highest priority. Word. I'm with you, bro. Like, yes, more. And then over here, it's like, "Hey, election integrity matters. integrity matters. integrity matters. Um not putting undue friction on people also matters. But, in election integrity matters more. We've looked at the stats. It's like 3 to 4% of people that would ever be impacted anyway." And so, we're not going to put everybody at risk for the 3 to 4%.

Okay, cool. Like, rank order [clears throat] your values, but it's not the game that people want to play. to play. to play. Yeah. Um Yeah. Um Yeah. Um it's interesting that when I kind of started digging into the Save Act after your deep dive, go check that out on the channel, everybody. channel, everybody. channel, everybody. That you really do start to see the pieces breaking where there's people on the left who are breaking against it. I found out Mitch McConnell was against it. He voted it down like twice.

So, you start to be like, "Like, wait. Like, it's not even like a party line break. Like, there's different people So, it's clearly this is not about the thing that we think it is. There's definitely something else there. And when we go back to the show snow shoveler, it's very interesting it's very like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, somebody needs a job. They just need a form of ID and a and a social security. Cool." But, it's like, "So, how come you don't need that for voting?" Well, uh and then you start to realize like, "Oh, okay.

This is not just a one-for-one thing. There's something else here." So, it's bigger than what we think it is. Yeah. And watch the deep dive that I did on this. I go into the connected dots, uh how aliens uh illegal or otherwise impact the census, how census impacts political power in Washington, uh on and on and on. So, there is a uh the most absurd argument that I've ever heard is that, "Well, there'll be no illegal voting." And so, hopefully we can put that to rest.

I went through a litany of people that have done like ballot harvesting and things for the most absurd stuff, like winning homecoming queen. And so, it's like, not only do we see reports coming out of states where people are getting fake driver's licenses. Uh people are um going to facilities to write that they want to sign up for um an election and they're just they're outright telling the person, "Uh I'm not a citizen. Can I still fill this out?" And they're like, "Well, you're going to have to check a box that says that you are a citizen." But, that's it.

"You're not going to report me?" "No, I'm not going to report you." Okay. So, it's like, at what at what point do people think that no one has an incentive to vote? If no one has an incentive to vote, why do we vote in the first place? Obviously, there's an incentive to vote. And um if we know that like, at every chain that we detect this, there are people that are doing fraudulent things and the only thing that we haven't found is like the the systemic fraud actually happening.

It's like, "Okay, is that proof that it doesn't happen or is it proof that we haven't found something yet that does indeed happen?" And for that, I'll say, "Hey, we don't know. We'll we'll see it play out in in the fullness of time." But, I would say until recently, we didn't know that there was like billions of dollars in fraud happening in um Minnesota. So, it's like, just because we didn't see it before, doesn't mean that it wasn't happening. So, I'm shocked that people don't want to like lock it down.

But, Yeah. Uh I know we got some super chats. We do. Quite a few. Uh first up from Blake Bullion, back to the tariffs conversation. So, when do we strike down deficit spending as a tax since it causes inflation? It's an interesting to watch this happen. It just shows me that they only uphold the rules when they think it benefits them. Good morning, everyone. Dude, I'm full Rain Man swaying back and forth on that one. That is so bang on. Uh yes. Yes. Yes. This is It is a tax.

It is a tax by another name, but inflation is a tax. Whoever What was their name again? Blake Bullion. Blake? Bullion. Blake? Bullion. Blake? I love you, man. I love you. So well said. You come to the house for the holidays, Blake. You're family now. Uh next up from Caleb Thompson. This was a $50 super chat. Hey, let's go. Let's go, Caleb. Super chat. D-50 chat. Throws in the chat for Caleb. Appreciate you. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you all for what you do.

Does anyone remember when we started addressing people as the herd, like we're a bunch of cattle? Quiet part out loud? loud? loud? Yeah. Do we, though, refer I said sheep earlier. But, I wouldn't say that I hear that a lot, but lot, but lot, but it is Here's the really bad news. The masses are really easy to manipulate. Sheepish. manipulate. Sheepish. manipulate. Sheepish. Like, I hate that that's true. But, that's true. And uh we are so easily controlled through frame of reference that if you repeat something enough, people are going to believe it.

Like, these are studies that have been done. If you repeat something over and over and over, people are more likely to believe it. If something rhymes, people have a it's like 72% more likely to be perceived as true because it rhymes. What? That's so crazy. So, there's all these weird things in the human mind that people exploit. Uh so, yeah. We are far, far, far too easy to manipulate. Next up from Sequoia Hall, will you cover the evidence and letters from Georgia to Elon about illegally interfering with the last election?

Election interference in real time with actual actual government action. Pre-filling out voter info, then sent to voters. voters. voters. I haven't seen it. I would cover it for sure. I was mortified by Elon's involvement in the election when he was just offering like a million dollars or whatever as a bonus for registering to vote and they were like picking a random person. I was like, "Yo!" So, uh yeah. As much as I respect Elon as a an engineer and all the things that he's built, like, god damn.

In terms of money and politics, no thanks. So, but yeah, I don't know anything about about about I want to hear it. I I found it on next real quick. I want to see what they say. Next case on the agenda is SEB 2024-151 multi-county pre-filled AB applications in November 2024. Uh the Secretary of State's office initiated an investigation on October 7th, 2024 after receiving complaints from several counties alleging that the organization America Pack, a political campaign, sent partially pre-filled absentee ballot applications to register voters in Chattooga, Cherokee, Coweta, Floyd, Whitfield counties after the passage of a law that had made such activity unlawful.

Mr. Chair, I think that there is evidence to suggest that America Pack is in violation of 21-2-381 when they sent um to an elector pre-filled absentee ballot applications so here's the good news. I have no problem. If you have done something illegal, you should get the penalties for whatever illegal thing that is. You should not be pre-filling out people's ballots on either side. I do not want to see anybody on the left or the right doing this. I'm not on a team. I'm not on Elon's team.

I'm not on Democrats, Republicans. [ __ ] all that noise. I want the uh money out of politics. I want people to decide to vote based on ideas. And while uh there's no way to have manipulation at zero because every word that you choose is a slight frame adjustment. Uh but yeah, I want people to win on the merit of ideas. Ideas. So, yep, all this is ass from where I'm sitting. I want people to stop immediately. immediately. immediately. Uh if Elon is doing [ __ ] like this, he should stop immediately.

Uh if he's breaking the law, he should get the law uh getting involved. Now, depending on what the it like if Elon does something where criminal prosecution is the right answer, you criminally prosecute Elon. Like it's just it's that simple. So, So, So, I don't know if anybody was expecting me to go to bat for him, but Next up from RJ Johnson, get ready for DeepSeek 4 20X over current US company LLMs, even Opus 4.6 and Codex. Man, I'm always ready. There have been some uh some uh some uh insane breakthroughs.

Insane. Okay, um Drew, I know that this is maybe unexpected, but I want to do a quick rant on AI. Please, everybody, as a PSA, I'm begging you. AI is moving so fast and it's making things so incredible. Figure out how you can use it in your life. The number of people Oh, in fact, uh in the spreadsheet is a graph that shows like it's like oh, you thought AI was a bubble? Look at this graph. If you're able to look at the screen right now, this is insane.

So, AI basically isn't being used by anybody. It It is the smallest [clears throat] number of people that are paying for like the top-tier stuff. Uh I get $200 a month is a lot of money. But when I say if you can find a way in your life that it actually would have utility economically for you, get the the best one. I don't care if your boss pays for it or not. Um we have some contractors that are working with us on the video game. I'm paying happily paying for their AI so that they can move faster.

move faster. move faster. And I'm doing that because I interface with AI. I see how much it speeds me up. I see how it's making things possible for me that weren't possible. So, we used to do um two different uh parts of Impact Theory University. I was helping people scale businesses um that are already doing a million dollars in revenue. It's far more on a per-person basis, it's far more profitable than what we do on Zero to Founder. I have now shifted our entire focus to Zero to Founder partly because I'm already rich.

And then just this I really believe is a generational thing that is happening right now where so many of you that can hear my voice right now are going to be uh migrated out of your current job either because you're replaced by somebody using AI um or because that company just folds because like software, you just make your own software now. It is wild. We're doing it actively inside of Impact Theory right now, okay? This is not stuff I'm pontificating about cuz I read about it.

These are the things that we are doing. So, I'm telling you the world is going to fracture. So, it's there's going to be a whole lot of small companies, solopreneurs, things like that. Start using AI right now. There is a narrow window where you're going to be able to uh have a higher economic output than other people because you have mastered AI. That window will close. It will become de rigueur. There are going to be a whole bunch of people that are just going to like resign themselves because they're um they're scared and I get it.

It is going to be a big change. It's going to be very disruptive. Understood. Understood. But you mitigate so much of the downside and open up this huge avenue of all this upside by being at the forefront of what's happening in AI. Remember, you're going to use AI. It's going to disappoint you. It's going to disappoint you. You have to get in, figure out where its limitations are, how you work around it, how you put two different AIs together. If you're living at the edge of the hype and you go and expect it's going to do everything for you, you're going to be disappointed.

But if you look at the rate of change, okay? okay? okay? The rack. The rack. The rack. If you look at that, I know technically the rock is probably more accurate. But if you look at the the rate of change, then you're now you're now you're now going to realize that this is going to be transformative. Maybe it's not transformative over 3 years. Maybe it's 7 years. But guys, oh my god. Like please, get involved right now. Figure out how you can deploy it in your life right now today.

It's moving very very fast. And we have we're basically in the middle of overhauling Zero to Founder to show people how to use AI for their business. This is how to do business in the age of AI. We teach business principles and AI specifically. Uh if that's at all interesting to you, make sure you sign up now. This is one of those I am proselytizing. Remember, I'm giving up margin to focus on this. This is not because I think it's better for business. It's worse for my business.

It is absolutely better for humanity. So, guys, get on this. Like even if you don't sign up for Impact Theory University, I don't care. But please, for the love of God, use it. use it. use it. And we have another AI class coming up and that link is in the chat. There we go. I didn't even know that, but hey, awesome. Is it this week? Uh it's March 5th. 5th. 5th. So, So, So, two weeks. All right, cool. We'll see you guys there. All right, it is 9:00.

You guys, love you bunches. We've got one more you got to And this one's a fun one. Uh also, we've been saying Marusha Dark. It's Marushia. Uh so, for Marushia Dark, Drew, as a the way, Marushia, thank you for correcting us and apologies for such a long-standing mispronunciation. And thank you. He's also like a a faux Discord mod. So, shout out to Marushia. Um he's been helping us out on the Discord side. I'm going to get you the mod chip. I don't even have access to it, but once I get there, you got it.

Thank you, man. That's huge. good to see you. Yeah. Uh from Marushia, Drew, as a Christian, what convinced you that Christianity is not only metaphorically true, but literally and historically true? Tom, what convinced you it's just an allegory with good morals and could anything change your mind? Ooh. Um Personally very excited for this. this. this. Yes. Uh Yes. Uh Yes. Uh okay. okay. okay. Uh not the testimony real quick, right? But so, I grew up in like a traditional Christian uh Haitian household. Um we were very much like the traditional church people were better than everybody else.

I had good grades. I graduated high school with a 3.9. I went to college on an academic scholarship. I thought I was better than people. I got my first job out of college was tech. I was on cloud nine. Um then my first one of my first major relationships, we ended up breaking up and I became a baby dad. I was stressed out, grew my hair out, and I didn't I ended up being the exact thing that I used to judge growing up. up. up. And and that was like a unwed father.

And I had braids at the time, so I just felt like I became a stereotype. So, I became the thing that my parents told me not to become. And at that point, I realized that I had I was humbled in my whole like transformation. And I think that my whole relationship with like Christianity and God and everything is like it's not my job to know what is right. It's not my job to know how big the boat was that Noah was. All those stories in the Bible are directionally true and it just shows that when you say I don't know everything, God knows this thing and I'm going to listen to him when he tells me and gives me the download and and lean on that and then everything else will kind of happen.

That's the part That's the important part. That's the whole thing about faith. You can't have faith unless that. So, that's my relationship. So, Alex kinda will sweep me under the rug. He'd be like, "Well, technically in the 1950s, that's the wrong boat that they would have used." And you're probably right and that's cool, but that doesn't invalidate all the things that I personally experienced with my faith and that's why I'm not any all one of those people that like try to push it and get it all in everybody else's face.

I feel like Christianity is about the humility and I'm supposed to love God just like I love my neighbor. So, I love you guys and I just like I love Jesus. That's why the same energy I give to you is the same energy I do when I go pray. Say, "Hey God, I'm stressed and I'm stressed out today. Help me, please." And then the next day, something happens and I get helped. So, that's what I do. The end. Now, is there anything that would change your mind?

Um Sorry to interrupt the applause. the applause. the applause. I'm not going to lie, there was way too many things that happened that I haven't even asked for and anything that it would have to be impossible. But I'm like I'm at the point No, like 0%. I'm at the point I would die for my faith. It's worth it. There you have it. Okay. Uh Uh Uh So, the So, the So, the thing that changed my mind, as I think will surprise nobody that's watched this show for a while, was a sequence of building blocks of my world view.

So, I was deeply religious in my teenage years. Um I first was religious in a Christian way. Christian way. Christian way. Um and then found Taoism and went hard into Taoism. And then through all of that, realized that I don't understand how the universe works. There is something clearly bigger than me at work. I just don't know if it's a 13 year old that's coded this all for a science project and we are a simulation to show something to a teacher somewhere or if there is a God but the odds that God is God is God is exactly as written by human foibles very like we're we're all stuck inside of a frame of reference and we all choose words based on the outcome that we want and that people would be divinely inspired just strikes me as it's not I'll say it's it's not 0% it's certainly possible that the outcome of all of this is that religion is exactly as told it just strikes me as the lowest probability probability probability outcome the problem of evil like for so many people was the thing that began the unwinding for me because I just could not make it make sense and that you terminate always and forever into God works in mysterious ways just seemed very odd very odd very odd and I could go on and on and on and on with a bunch of things like that but instead I will answer the second part of the question the question the question which is could something change my mind obviously if God rolled up and was like hey PS I exist and did all the things that one would do to prove that thou art God and be like oh word [ __ ] that's crazy or like if I die and wake up in heaven I'll be like or hell I'll be like oh [ __ ] this is all real real real so yeah either of those I would not reject what reject what reject what cause and effect tell me and so if I see that it really is true I'll just be like oh cool cool I was totally wrong and would have no problem with that so Can I have one one follow up is this small one Sure If somebody came up and said I will be the best YouTube producer I'll get you 10 million views views views in day one I'll do everything that you wanted to wanted to wanted to but you got to pay me a million dollars up front would you hire that person If I I always go to what's my out so if I can claw back my million dollars sure if it's just like a business transaction I run the math and I'm like oh I pay a million now I get you know let's say 1.8 a year or something out of the increase actually be probably much more than that you would do it but I'd have to have a claw back if I didn't have a claw back then no I would not So I feel like it's the same thing with like I would believe in God if God just showed up and said hey I'm real then everybody would believe him if he did that Yeah and so I don't have any friction with that with that with that my my thing is when you go then okay why is God running that test it all just seems ridiculous seems ridiculous seems ridiculous and also like why pick one time like 2000 years ago to send your son like that's crazy so you gave them the proof you washed away all the sins the people before them I guess [ __ ] you and the people after them they get nothing in terms of proof they get the outcome Jesus has died for your sins but even the proof got off to even the proof got off to so he was like at this point I'll I'll I'll meet y'all at the end of times I tried it tried it tried it So anyway all that stuff just seems like super wacky to me but if anybody thinks that I think I know how the universe works I absolutely do not so I sit in awe before how incredible the universe is and how much wonder there is and by the way I sit in awe that the brain has the architecture for Drew is truly a lovely person and if part of what makes him a lovely person is that he believes in God that's awesome awesome awesome so I love it the most just sadly there are some people that are horrible because they believe in God and so whoopsies whoopsies whoopsies That's very true There's a a weird thing there that must be accounted for but if you guys are religious I wish you the best nothing but love and like Drew I'm not trying to cram my belief down anyone's throat I don't know what is ultimately true any better than anybody else Smash that like button on your way out love you guys Indeed guys make sure you subscribe please it helps and by the way today was an awesome day thank you guys for being here was rad you guys have helped this channel grow cannot thank you enough all right till Wednesday be legendary take care peace