Chaos Remains In Iran, Clintons Refuse To Testify And Google Will Power Apple's Siri

Key Takeaway

Civil unrest in Minnesota reveals a dangerous feedback loop: aggressive ICE enforcement meets organized resistance, creating perfect conditions for escalation. Both sides believe they're morally right and willing to fight. The key insight: populist moments arise not from individual leaders, but from economic extraction systems that shrink the pie everyone's fighting over. Without returning to prosperity, this tension only intensifies.

Episode Overview

This episode analyzes the escalating immigration enforcement crisis in Minneapolis, where 2,000-3,000 ICE agents have descended on Somali neighborhoods, triggering violent protests and aggressive federal response. The hosts debate whether Trump is orchestrating chaos for political gain or if he's merely a symptom of deeper populist currents. They explore how economic extraction through central banking creates conditions where both left and right feel justified using force. The conversation examines qualified immunity, media narratives, and historical parallels while predicting this situation will worsen without fundamental economic change.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Chaos Remains In Iran, Clintons Refuse To Testify And Google Will Power Apple's Siri from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Billy Show live. We are here and the world is popping off. It is wild out there. Another layer of Somali fraud is being detailed as tensions continue to skyrocket in Minnesota as roughly somewhere around 2 to 3,000 ICE agents descend on the city as part of the largest immigration enforcement effort ever. Steven Miller is doing his part to dial the tension way up by sending a public message that ICE agents have immunity when acting in service of their duties.

It's a little questionable. We'll go into that more later. Trump has terminated Somalian's temporary protected status. Iran's turmoil certainly continues with the Iranian government themselves reporting 2,000 dead and unofficial estimates going as high as 12,000. A bipartisan bill has been put forward that would stop Trump from making a move on Greenland. Something I'll be covering in more detail in my upcoming deep dive. So, keep your eyes peeled for that. The US just declared three chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organizations, and I believe it was Saudi Arabia that said, "We support this.

It's wild. Bill and Hillary Clinton are to be held in contempt of Congress for failing to show up for a deposition regarding Drew Epstein." Epstein no shows. And I'm gonna put this one in conspiracy corner. Former Trump campaign advisor says, I cannot believe this is real. Uh that a RICO style charge or charges are likely to be brought against the Democratic party that will treat them like an organized crime syndicate. That seems a little too crazy to believe, but nonetheless, there we are. Welcome everybody. Happy Wednesday, Drew.

It's just getting crazier and crazier in Minnesota. It is literally getting crazier and crazier in a lot of places, not just in Minnesota, but Minnesota is wild. I think this is rapidly becoming a legitimate flash point. Yeah. Before we get into some of the videos and some of the reactions, uh, set us up. What's going on out there? All right. On January 13th, up to 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents descended on Minnesota to conduct door-to-door raids in Minneapolis neighborhoods with large Somali populations. As part of the largest US immigration enforcement effort ever, they arrested over a dozen and deported via plane dozens more.

The public backlash has been massive and appears to be escalating as the Trump administration continues dialing up the pressure as protesters and agitators continue to disrupt the immigration enforcement efforts. Protesters have attacked agents, blocked streets, and rammed vehicles, prompting ICE to deploy pepper balls, tear gas, and smoke. Yank people out of their cars, cutting off seat belts, all manner of craziness. And obviously, tensions are just absolutely skyhigh since the January 7th shooting of US citizen Renee Good. Representative Ilhan Omar, whose name is constantly associated with the ongoing fraud investigations, though we will see uh in the state is now starting or excuse me, is now stating that the progressive caucus in Congress has adopted the official stance that ICE funding should be denied until appropriate reforms can be carried out in immigration enforcement.

So, she wants less, much less immigration enforcement. That one is probably not deeply surprising. Federal officials have intensified warnings and pursued charges related to obstruction of justice amid ongoing protests against ICE operations in Minnesota. The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice have repeatedly framed certain protester actions such as filming agents, though that is absolutely legal. Following vehicles, blocking roadways, or interfering with arrests as potential federal crimes. The most aggressive statement though from the administration comes from your boy Stephen Miller, the eternal voice of understatement and restraint.

He would like to remind ICE officers and we will show this video and clearly in my opinion the public as well that ICE agents have qualified immunity while on the job. He didn't say qualified, he just said immunity. But the reality is it is qualified immunity. It seems clear to me that we right now are locked in a selfreinforcing feedback loop that is guaranteed to deliver more tragedy. The agents the administrations um are sent the administration is sending to the area. The more they do that the more protesters and trained agitators to be honest are going to resist.

the more they resist, the more force the administration is going to apply and it's just going to continue to create problems and escalate to the point where I'm going to guess something snaps, something even more horrible happens and you get the protesters who feel completely justified and really going riot. And then you get the US government deciding that they're going to send in the National Guard or whatever increased um presence they're going to decide to have. But this one does not end calmly would be my assumption at this point.

So you think it's just going to be more and more stoked up? What do you think is the ultimate boiling point is going to be? Cuz I thought honestly Renee Good was going to be that. I thought once they seen that people were going to riot, protest, and they were going to kind of do National Guard shut it down like that, but it seems that it's still even escalating higher than that. Yeah. I don't I think partly because it's the winter, you get a blunting effect.

So, in the summer that might have been the thing that spilled everything over, but if you watch enough of these videos, you see that this really is escalating. So, it isn't that um oh, that one was just taken in stride and nobody's bothered. Uh it is definitely ramping things up. I think some of what is possibly muting the effect is we've been through this once before and in the fullness of time, people start to realize that there's a lot of complexities that they didn't necessarily take into consideration when this was all popping off.

And so hopefully people are stopping their emotions from running away with them. Um, Um, Um, what do you mean we've been through this once before? once before? once before? So with George Floyd, so as everything escalated in the summer of love and the initial sweep of all that was I remember going through it and being like, I don't even know what to think about this. And so when that was all happening, people had not processed through any of this stuff. And so it looked like uh cop did bad thing and then it just all kicked off from there.

Uh now that people have seen both the government acquisition of power and that there are there are there are paid agitators as I will call them that there is some sort of push that's being funded that's being organized that wants a destabilization within America. I think people are I I certainly am less trusting of either side of the story. So, I'm more of a hm I want to see how this plays out. I want to see exactly what's going on uh before like rushing in and saying this is exactly what happened.

Everybody needs to get behind this. So, I have a feeling there's some of that. Uh but there's no question that the administration is ratcheting up, getting more violent. Uh if just watching people being yanked out of their cars, my thing is like even if like Okay, so there was a video of one woman who I don't know if we have this one, but one, but one, but we have it queued up. Um, so, okay, there's a video of a woman who the report is she turns down the street because she has a doctor's appointment.

And so, uh, she's saying that she's, uh, disabled, I think. And it's like, even if this is a paid agitator, I'm just like, boys and girls, when you are acting like this, dragging people out, a young woman, young woman, young woman, you look at your screens, yanking her, throwing her to the ground, she's caught on her seatelt, they come in, they cut her seat belt out. It's like, uh, this is just absolutely catnip for agyprop. So, if you want to get people riled up, then you just show an endless stream of videos like this where no one is going to look at that and be like, "Okay, this woman is a complete tyrant." Well, I shouldn't say nobody.

There's going to be people on the right that are going to make out like this is just absolute lawlessness. And what I see is pushing us towards the boiling point. And we have another video of an ICE agent who what I'll call takes the bait where people are um harassing him and saying, you know, I hope you're ashamed of yourself. Yeah, this one. And so and this guy just comes across in my opinion like uh a bit of a douche. And so it's like I guarantee that you've got some percentage of ICE agents that are going to snap.

They're angry. They've got an axe to grind with who knows what and they're going to grind it. And so they're going to go over the top, do something that they shouldn't, give us an endless stream of videos where they're yanking people out uh of their cars. I think there was a guy that served in Iraq. He was a US citizen deployed to Iraq and he ended up getting detained for like 3 days. I I don't know that it was in Minnesota. It might have actually been in California, but anyway, you're going to get enough of those stories that that this is really going to start to get ugly.

Uh so that's the the colliding forces that I see coming. Let's jump into this video of the guy talking to the protesters. I I told you if you guys get in my way, I will arrest you, sir. We're just observing. Please come. You're going to observe all you want. I am observing. Do you see me in the way? I am back. You had anger issues as a kid, didn't you? Were your parents present? And listen, I get it. um he's being trolled and they will troll him relentlessly.

This is like um the paparazzi were notorious for this. They would see a celebrity and they would just pester them and pester them and then and pester them and then when they finally snap, they just start filming the two seconds before they go crazy and it's like whoa, this guy's completely out of line. So, if you've got those people standing there for 20, 30 minutes just constantly like picking at you, picking at you. at you, picking at you. If you are a certain type of person, you're ultimately going to take the bait.

And I think that we're going to see plenty of that. Uh, but this guy, in my opinion, comes across horribly. Uh, you have to let the video play out to hear the stupid conversation they start getting into about pay. Be ashamed of yourself, man. He is. He is. He is. I love my job. Thank you. You love your job. I can't believe I get paid for this. Really? Really? Really? I do this for free. Really? I get 200k. I'm a physician assistant. assistant. assistant. I'm How long did you go to school for that?

that? that? For 7 years. I went to high school. I made 200k. People regard me as someone valuable in society. What about you? Does yours? No. That trillion dollar influx from the BBB. Thanks, Trump. paying ICE officers 200,000 uh forgiven student loan forgiveness and I think they did the 50k signing bonus. I don't know if that comes out of the 200,000 but um um um I mean listen can we take what he says at face value? Probably not. But here's what I hate about this. So one, we're going to see more and more of this.

It's going to be juxtaposed with acts of violence. Uh everybody, each side is going to have what they need to show the other side as the villain. We've got video of people ramming the cars of ICE agents, which is clearly using your car as deadly force. So, it's like you're you're going to have both sides armed to the teeth with a bunch of propaganda and that is going to continue to stoke the fire of the already insanely growing resentments on the left and the right. You've got there was a post from I assume he's a Chinese national uh telling Americans, don't worry, the revolution is coming and you should take the um take note of anybody that has an American flag in front of their house because while it's too early for the revolution now, uh when the revolution does happen, you want to know who had an American flag because they're your enemy and you want to eat them first.

Literally, and I quote, "Eat them first." first." first." So, it's like watching um this moment in history, social media, the ubiquitous presence of cameras, and the real problem. We're in a populist moment, seeing all of this stuff come together. It's like you're watching it happen. You know exactly what's going to happen. You know, this is going to continue to escalate. And I don't see a way to stop it. Um remember it was a Jordan Peterson quote. used to quote all the time about like the goolog and like the takeover of the Nazis and you were like it's good men had to be quiet or something like that.

that. that. Yeah. I don't think it's a Jordan Peterson quote but it's all it takes for evil to reign is for good men to do nothing. nothing. nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this Okay. Now you're getting your finger on exactly how civil wars end up breaking out, which is both sides believe that they're right. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. To the point that they're willing to kill and die for their side. So that's another thing that I see in this where the woman is like, you know, people see me as an upstanding member of society.

What about you? And it's like she doesn't even realize that there's a very substantive portion of America that are like, this is precisely what I want. I want more of this. I want angrier, more brutal ICE agents. Get these, they might not even think through what these people are, but get these people out of my country. So, you're going to um blind yourself if you think that your way is the quote unquote right way and that other people, well-meaning, loving people could never see the flip side of the coin.

But the reality is they do. And so, you've got people on the other side of this this. So when I was watching Renee Good, the thing I kept thinking was, okay, we're we are seeing that some people are like Kyle Writtenhouse before them, they are prepared to step over the line of the Second Amendment and say that I believe that my government has become tyrannical and I'm going to resist up to and including violently. including violently. including violently. And the Constitution gives you that right, but at the same time, you are now putting yourself in a deadly situation.

So, I feel like people are not being realistic about the level of danger that they're putting themselves in. I don't think that Renee Good thought, "Oh, I'm making a stand with my life." This is why seeing her dance in her car was very much like, "Oh, wow. She is in a totally different place different place different place emotionally. She's having fun and she's not realizing." When you resist federal law enforcement, you are making a certainly a second amendment adjacent stance that my government is tyrannical and somebody needs to push back.

Now again, I want to be very clear on my thoughts. She should not have been shot. Just nice and simple. But nonetheless, you're putting yourself in this hyperdangerous situation that is about saying you, dear government, have become tyrannical, and now it's a question of how far are people willing to go. If you're protesting under normal circumstances, you know that there's a way to protest where I can't be arrested because I've not broken any laws. There's a way to protest where you break laws, but you don't resist arrest and therefore shouldn't be escalating anything if they come and arrest you.

And you have crossed a line. That's the whole point is to make that bold statement. You're going to get arrested. You're going to get your day in court. and you can make your case there where it makes all the rational sense in the world to say exactly what you think is going wrong, why it's going wrong, and why you shouldn't be um why you never should have been arrested in the first place or I've been arrested, but I certainly shouldn't be um convicted of anything or anything more than a misdemeanor.

Great. misdemeanor. Great. misdemeanor. Great. But that's not what people are doing. People are making the on the street level the I want my day in court right here, right now. And so I'm going to resist. I'm going to say that your authority is uh unjust, invalid, you know, whatever. And that becomes violent. It becomes so dangerous so fast. And so that's where I'm like, okay, listen, if we're here and that's what you guys think and that's the statement you're willing to make, so be it. I again, constitutionally, we have the right to have weapons specifically because our constitution was designed to say our government is likely to tend towards tyranny.

Mhm. Uh and if people are drawing the line now, so be it. But that it is going to cost human life. So people need to be very clear-headed about whether they think we've reached that point or not. Um and then a new report just released that a whistleblower has leaked the largest ever uh names and addresses of over 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees on Tuesday. Um this is potentially one of the largest like data breaches I think in the department's history. So this can only be escalate tensions even more because what if those protesters use that information for nefarious reasons.

Um just your information publicly being out there in the world is dangerous um in and of itself. So um curious to see how this adds to the fire that is currently being stoked in Minnesota. Yeah. Well, it's certainly not going to be good as you you have a growing belief in a percentage of the population that ICE is our version of the SS, that Trump is Hitler, and that they would do the right thing and uh they would stand up to the Nazis in their day.

And listen, in fairness to them, if that's what they really believe, you really do have a lot of people that are standing up and saying, "Hey, I'm not afraid to be counted. I'm not afraid to get in your face. I'm not afraid to u you know, put myself at risk." and because I think this is the right thing to do, I'm going to leak this information. And so it's like, is this person a whistleblower who's like, I can't bear the thought of these guys covering their face, being these um supposedly immunity carrying thugs that are going in and um harassing Americans in many cases.

And so there's no way I'm going to stand for it. And just like I told you, I'm not some paper tiger. I'm prepared to actually take action and rat out these SS [ __ ] Okay. That we're seeing that play out. Again, my beef is I don't think we're anywhere near that. And so you've got people reacting. You don't think we're anywhere near the SS? SS? SS? Definitely not. Okay. Definitely not. So going back like if you look at even Obama was sending in ICE enforcement agents to go and arrest people.

Uh they were doing it super early in the dead of night trying to get people. And so the question becomes, okay, why is why was the reaction when Obama did it chill? And the reaction now is horrible. You've got two options before you. Option number one is, well, Trump is an authoritarian [ __ ] who's sending these guys in, hopped up, and they're being so over the top that people are responding accordingly. The other option is that people are so Trump derangement syndrome, so convinced that he's the next Hitler that even though he's doing the same actions, he's being met with a level of resistance that people weren't being met with when Obama did it.

So when you look at the CNN coverage of what Obama was doing, it's very positive. When you look at if Trump says anything, traditional media is going to go against him. The left is going to go against him. And so we were just in a very different place when Obama was doing it as a country. We weren't as divided. And so now it is almost impossible to tease out is this a reaction to Trump is doing it or is Trump doing it in a bad way from the jump.

I think Trump's instincts are all wrong. I think they are all populist. They are all designed to be aggressive towards the other side. They are going to rile people up. And I think that even if Trump were doing it the right way, the other side's instincts are all wrong and they are all designed to risk uh resist in a way that is totally disproportionate to what's going on. The whole idea of a sanctuary city to me is patently absurd. The fact that in the middle of some of the biggest revelations of fraud that America has ever gone through, we've got people not talking about like, oh, we got to find that fraud.

Clearly, we have an issue here. Oh, by the way, we let some unknown number of millions of people come across the border. That is a non-starter for a country that cannot pay its own bills to let people come into the country and then offer them benefits. Like this is wild. So all of that you put together and it's like from where I'm sitting in the middle just trying to go, okay, I know what my goal is. I'm trying to get to a thriving middle class. Okay.

Uh everything looks like madness. It's all madness. None of it works. None of it makes sense. All of it seems intentionally designed to be problematic. Uh what Trump is doing seems designed to be problematic. What the protesters are doing seems designed to be problematic. Um it it that's why I have said over and over and over, I do not enjoy a populist moment. Everyone is in an emotional state. The pie really is shrinking and so everybody is fighting. Just I I'm going to get my peace and I don't give a [ __ ] about everybody else.

it. America first once you take it from an international policy perspective is that America's going to get what they want. It does not matter what you want. Greenland, I don't give a [ __ ] Like, we're coming in. We're going to get control of Greenland. Venezuela don't care. You guys have something we need. We're coming in. And so that whole populist vibe and if people think that it's only on the right, they're crazy. They're just not understanding that violence play or Yeah, sure. we'll stick with violence that violence plays out differently on the left and on the right.

And so when you realize both of them are trying to co-opt the government, they just do it in different ways, then it's like, oh man, we the only thing that will back us off of this is prosperity. I've said it a thousand times. Barring that, this just keeps going. Like really think about when I first started saying like, guys, this feels civil war to me. Everyone's like, "Oh my god, [ __ ] was just saying all this stuff for the clicks. Are we really going to say that now?

I'm not saying we're in civil war, but I'm saying godamn like we are now so much farther down that path. The tensions between the left and the right have ratched it up so much. There are there's like more drama in the government than you can even track. So there are major stories we just don't even cover because it's like I don't have time to even go look at it. There's so many other fires that I'm dealing with. So with. So with. So Trump is like mission accomplished.

Yes. Well, I don't think it's just So this is where Okay. So give give me your take because I think you're a wonderful counterpoint. What is your like when you look at this? What do you see? Uh Trump being Trump. I think politics fundamentally changed in 2016 2015 in the leadup. I think um when Obama was president, uh Fox News did uh two segments um in a prime time news channel about Obama wearing a tan suit uh and that was the entire it's unpresidential for a president to wear tan suits supposed to be dark blue and black.

I think now in the year 2024 uh or 2026 [ __ ] um after Trump won the second term I think fundamentally how we approach politics is different um whether it's a hangover of COVID whether it's whatever is happening but now to compare pre20 life to post 2020 life I feel like that's night and day. You don't even think look at vaccines the same. We don't look at government intervention the same. We don't look at lockdowns the same. Like there's a lot of things that we no longer look at the same after that time.

So with that new inflection point and this whole new uh line of questioning, let's go like let's go into it. What Minnesota is right now is exactly what I think Trump wants it to be because as crazy the crazier and crazier it gets, the more he can point to the leadership of Minnesota and they're all Democrats. Like I said in the last live, there's still illegal aliens in I in Arizona. There's still illegal aliens in Texas. Minnesota is not the only place that there's illegals, but a YouTuber said there's a bunch of fraud here.

It got viral. Trump likes viral. He went to go do it and then he did it. We have a reality TV show president and you're saying that we never had this much drama in the government. I don't think those things are mutually exclusive. I think Trump knows how to monetize attention. I think Trump knows how to wield attention and I think Trump knows how to feed his base. So, he does those three things expertly. Trump is very good at what he does. I'm not going to be bashful and act like he's a stupid person.

He's an idiot. No, absolutely not. He knows what he's doing and he's concentrated at what he's doing. But I think that we're spending more time with the rhetoric of is this woman who got shot in the face wrong for trying to drive away or was driving toward the ICE agent versus the lady who was driving to a doctor's appointment and got snatched out and had agents surrounding her car. And I'm still just confused like where are the illegals? Where are the Somali that are stealing all the money?

Because I just seen a white woman and a racially ambiguous woman get pulled out. But I haven't seen a daycare center yet. I haven't seen a healthcare refund. I haven't seen a lawsuit happen. So, this is the part where it's like we're saying we care about this one thing, but yet we're doing a lot of theater on the other side. And that's the part that I feel like is just Trump saying, "Okay, I can make people get more excited. I get more make people get more excited." And then after that, when the midterms come around, I can either do martial law, I can shut Minnesota down to show that you guys don't have restraint.

And it's another political move I can use so that way it can help me bolster my base. help me bolster my my team, quote unquote. Okay, so let me see if I've understood your position. Tell me if I miss anything. anything. anything. Uh Trump is a politician who leverages chaos to get control. His goal is to uh whip people up into a frenzy partly because he goes where he knows he can get attention, but that's going to be the most heightened emotional state. So wherever the most heightened emotions are, where the the most attention already exists, I'm going to go in there.

And then I am going to intentionally uh incite chaos so that I can get martial law which will give me a better chance of winning at the midterms. midterms. midterms. Martial law better chance of winning at the midterms. Martial law so I can get more control so I can point to my law and order uh track record to bolster me up in the midterms. Okay. So I want the chaos to show this is so chaotic. You need me so that I can clamp down on this this this because if you let the lefts do it, they're going to run rampant and it's going to be just this much.

It's going to happen over and over again. Okay. And so that all has internal logic. I'll say that. So now when you think about what's happening now, now, now, Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. the post when you said the world changed, political world, I can't really say world, the political world, but we'll narrow it. Political world changed in the leadup to the 2026 election. Um, was that because Trump is just this agent of chaos or is he a symptom of populism populism populism in 2016? I don't think populism was the word to use at that time.

I think at 2020 in 2016, Trump's whole uh the one thing he hung his hat on is I'mma drain the swamp. Um all these Republicans are losers. He was talking about people. He was calling names. That's where he first dropped the nicknames. We never had nicknames in politics till Trump did it. Um so that's why I think he fundamentally changed how we talk about politicians. The Marjorie Taylor Greens and even how Elon uh Omar is talking spicy now. all these politicians who are now I'm gonna go on this podcast and talk about other people and I'm gonna call people names and I'm gonna say they're stupid and the other left is terrorists.

That never was a thing. It was always a quorum. Obama and Bush used to shake hands and they were at next to each other in the lines. They there was cord there was all this cordialness and then after um in 2016 it just kind of jumped. Um but I mean hey that's just I'm just one guy sitting in the chair. It's not an ideology. I'm not a leftist. I'm not protesting. I'm not outside of Minnesota getting shot in the face. So you know maybe I just don't see the clear the clear the clarity of it all.

Yeah. Okay. So, I don't know. I didn't understand the final caveat at the end. Is that because you're cuz I feel like people want me to speak for a certain existence or a certain uh stereotype or um people in the chat love to say that, oh, that was a leftist, Drew. Like, you're the the leftist is is brainwashed them. Like, nah. I'm parents of an immigrant. We're way more conservative than people who live in California. Uh so, I don't typically lean in those like arching directions.

I live in Arizona for 6 years and they don't get any redder than that. Um, yeah, but that none of that matters about what's in your mind. So, one, I feel your pain. I certainly understand being heckled by the community. They love it. Uh, however, if I can because it's certainly instructive for thinking through problems to have somebody who's smart and well-intentioned to in some way disagree with you. One of the things I it it is always hard for me to map where you draw the line in terms of um ultimately you must have in your head some belief that at some point you could say something where I'd be like get this [ __ ] guy out of my company.

So I know there's pro no I feel like I said a lot of oh my god I love that true no way I want you to say what you believe to be true. So that's fantastic. Okay. So, if you're not hedging based on that, then what I have is the ultimate thing any human can hope for, which is a smart, well-intentioned person who doesn't always see eye to eye, but you share enough values that you can actually communicate. That's how I see you and I. You and I.

Now, if people see me as right, they're going to be eternally confused. If they see you as left, they're going to be eternally confused. Um, at the same time, I do think our personalities, our frames of reference are I lean slightly right and you lean slightly left just by way of people being able to map our constitutions. So that fine, neither of us like tribal thinking or being on a team. Okay, with all of that, you and I have very different base assumptions in terms of how we look at the world.

that is certainly manifesting here, which is I believe Trump is Trump is like uh he's been summoned in a demon summoning circle. The demon summoning circles only exists in moments of populism. populism. populism. Trump as a archetype of a human being would never become an electable politician in any environment that wasn't already populist. And you think that's relevant for his first term as well? I Yes. And I think failing to understand that the world changed for a very specific reason, which is we created a central bank in 1913 that allowed very smart, very well-connected people to control money and extract eternally from the holders of the largest amount of wealth, which is not billionaires, it's the middle and working class.

So they hold much more depending on how far up the ladder you go. Like if you go all the way to um the top 90%, you now control so much more wealth than billionaires. It's ridiculous. But anyway, so they understand that they want to extract from people. And they also understand the way to protect themselves to own assets. So they're like, I have a method to extract from everybody else that hurts me just as much as it hurts everybody else, but I know how to protect myself from it.

So it's like, imagine somebody that can control the weather and they can make it rain. Uh, but they're the only ones that understand rubber. And so they're the only ones wearing boots, raincoats, and holding an umbrella. And so they're like, "Well, it's raining on me just like it's raining on you." But I know how to protect myself. The way to protect yourself is assets. So cool. You've got these just round it to bankers, political elite, Brussels, like however you want to think about it, but those people understand how to extract from everybody else.

Everybody else, they don't even know what's happening. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. History shows that as they're extracted from over and over, they start feeling like they're being taken advantage of. And when they feel that, they feel it because the pie really is shrinking. So when the pie is shrinking, they don't know what's happening, but they know something bad is happening. And they slip into what we call populism. The reason I say it's obviously populism back in 2015 is this is not the first time. This is like it's a thing that happens in history over and over and over, but it's not a like, oh, we don't know what causes it.

It's caused by exactly what I just walked you through. Always and forever all throughout time. It's always debt and money printing. Not sometimes, not mostly. It's always debt and money printing. So that creates these populous moments because they can no longer feed their family, keep a roof over their head, feel like their kids' lives might be better than theirs. And if you will grant me the um the metaphor that humans are like AI in that we are programmed. We process data in a certain way. And so that feeling of ooh something is bad makes people I'm being extracted.

I'm being stolen from just to keep it really simple. Yeah. The feeling of I'm being stolen from makes people feel very anxious. Anxiety is a hugely negative emotion that people will not allow themselves to sit in. So they turn it into anger. And in the moment of anger, they hold hands around the demon summoning circle and they pull forth a politician that will slap the other side around. That's specifically what they want them to do. And secure the money for them. And so it this is a historical pattern that plays out over and over and over.

So when people look at Trump and go, "Oh, this [ __ ] [ __ ] uh, he's doing all of this." I'm like, "You're never going to solve the problem because you're going to get mad at Trump. You're going to fight against Trump." When the reality is, if you don't solve the economic problem, we'll stay in a populist moment forever. And in fact, history is very clear. What ends up happening is you fall into civil war or revolution revolution revolution and you kill a whole bunch of people in your own country and then there's so much bloodshed that everybody goes I'm too tired to keep fighting and everybody just accepts like okay fine whatever there's a new world order and then you move forward and you limp along for 30 50 sometimes 100 years and then you finally get back on track to give people an idea it took China 200 years to get back it's taken Argentina a hundred years to get back.

So these are not like you don't pull out of populism easily. So I'm like, can we please just not go all the way to revolution because it isn't an ironclad law. You don't have to go all the way there. You can back out of this, but it's always through growth. And so if we can't solve the economic problem, we will go to revolution. We will kill a just absolute [ __ ] ton of people. and we will somewhere between 30 and 100 years, let's say, will be a backwaters nation.

Um, doubling down on the economic problem, how would you grade Trump and his ability to solve those economic problems? Um, is he putting his resources in the right place? Is he and it doesn't have to be like line by line of the big beautiful bill? But just cuz what I heard from you is if Gen Z could afford houses, I say he just wouldn't be terrorizing Minnesota. terrorizing Minnesota. terrorizing Minnesota. That is 100% accurate. So to me that sounds like I should invest in people affording houses like those those would be like where the investments flow through.

Um but overall it seems like Trump is a lot more worried about Venezuela, Greenland um immigration which immigration does have a second third order consequences of affordability but that's like saying if I don't eat I can lose weight. It's like yes that's one way but you can also work out you can stop eating fried chicken. like you know there's other ways that might be a little bit higher and more oh they would be way better they would be way better so to use your analogy um we have elected we're a morbidly obese country and we've elected an anorexic to get us back in shape and he's doing the most extreme most unhealthy [ __ ] so I'm going to speedun but by the way it actually has a chance of getting you to lose weight lose weight lose weight that's exactly how I look at Trump he's what he's doing is so high risk it puts us all it puts the entire world order at risk.

So I'm not a burn it all down and start over guy. I'm like we have a central bank. I wish we didn't. We shouldn't have ever created one but we have one. And so now we need to work within that system to write the ship before we just go and now we're going to terminate the um the central bank because people don't understand what the central bank protects them from. So, like many things, the central bank's a double-edged sword, and it really does awesome stuff, and then it also hurts you.

It allows elites to extract from you. That's a easier way to say it or a more accurate way. Okay, I'm going to speedrun the answer to your Trump question. So, it goes like this. uh in a populous moment where people realize the pie is shrinking and they just want to make sure that they can stop feeling anxious, they turn it into anger, they summon a demon to work on their behalf to slap around the other side to get the pie for them. Uh you're going to get somebody like Trump whose natural proclivities are to um take and so he realizes, oh, I'm in a position where I can bully people.

bullying people's very effective. So, I'm going to go bully people and actually make America strong again on an international stage. The bad news is he must do that. China will bully you. You do not want to live under China. People are delusional. They think that um China won't do to us what we've done to the rest of the world. And the only thing worse than being the bully, because being the bully is not great, the only thing worse than being the bully is being bullied. being bullied.

being bullied. And so, you don't want to be in a position where China gets to control your future. are trying to get some control of the things that you do and don't do. That's I'm speaking for myself. I a thousand% am not prepared to do that. So, from where I'm sitting, Trump must do something now because this is a populist moment and we summoned a demon. We're now he's going to bully his way. That's just what he's going to do. Ambition grows in the Eden. So, with every success, he becomes more aggressive, not less.

And so, he'll just keep going. Like, if if he were able to take Greenland, holy be Jesus. I don't even want to know what he would target next. But if it all just works, then he'll just keep going. As always, politicians will go until the internal morality of their country stops them or they hit sufficient violent force. So far, we've proven to only hit people that we can win on. So now we're stacking the winds. We went in and snatched Maduro, got control of their oil, sort of.

That's more complicated, but we're speedrunning. uh we went in and stopped Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Um we are now threatening a NATO ally in Denmark by saying we are going to take their territory whether they want us to or not. So uh we're also threatening Mexico. So it's like yeah if these things work like he's just going to keep going and keep going if it's making him more popular at home if it's making America more prosperous. The bad news is it actually might make America more prosperous and we have to grow our way out of this.

So he's also deregulating and so the deregulations might make us more prosperous. The tariffs are theoretically and I definitely need to hedge here are theoretically forcing other countries and companies to make massive investments in America which you need to do. You must bring manufacturing back to the US throughidities trap. you are right now you have a 75 just looking at history you have a 75% chance to end up in a kinetic war with China you cannot given that you cannot let China control your military supply chain which right now they do so you have to do something you have to secure these rights but now getting into well there's multiple ways to lose weight why are we doing it the least healthy way humanly possible you get into this is the kind of leader with the kind of personality that is going to come to power in a moment like It is also an extraordinarily divided world and so getting people moving in a direction you need a quote unquote strong man.

If he wasn't willing to force his will then people aren't going to line up behind him even in a company man like if I'm not forceful enough about what we want to do. Now I try to do it via enthusiasm but like if I let people who were quietly trying to undermine the things that I'm trying to do stay then that toxin is going to spread throughout the company. And so you've got to be very careful and I have many times throughout this company's history pruned the people that I think are creating toxicity and you have to do it.

So anyway, you've got to have a forceful will. You've got to have clear direction in terms of what you're trying to accomplish. And then you've got to be able to use all of your leverage to actually get that stuff to move forward. Now again, I forgive me. I know people hate it when I use this word, but I just am not wired to bow to pressure. Uh, but plug your children's ears. Trump uses grab them in the [ __ ] diplomacy. And I hate it. I think that it's super short-sighted.

I think it is the John Wayne Bobbit of get laid strategies. And if you don't know who that is, um, his wife said that he would routinely rape her. And so one night he raped her, fell asleep, but she cut his dick off. Sheesh. Sheesh. Sheesh. Uh, that is a real story. Threw it out the window of a moving car, by the way, Drew. Um, so second and third order consequences can be a [ __ ] I don't know what the thing is that would put us in the weakened position where we will need allies, but life has a way of putting you in a weakened position where you need allies.

And if we have bullied all of our allies, maybe we got what we wanted in the short term, but we are certainly not going to get what we want in the long term. So I for one not a fan of that style diplomacy. Um, I think seduction is a far more effective way to get what you want in life. Um, so we are where we are. Last thing, um, somebody in the chat called this out, so I feel like I have to bring it up. They called what?

They called this out that I'm about to say. They have to fight to bring it up. It went from like ISIS is out of control to like the uh origin of populism. Um, if you were president, and I know you never want to be, and you had a $7 trillion budget to allocate, uh, would you spend 2.5 trillion of that on ICE and federal military, I'm including the.5 increase he just announced, or would you maybe invest in small local businesses, trade schools, entrepreneurs, kids who have good ideas?

Like, how would you allocate? give you a flippant answer because I think what you want is um a sort of directional like what do you think about this value? I'm laying it out there. This if you say that's how it should be then that's how it should be. I get it. I that is not where I would spend my money. money. money. But in terms of what he should do in this moment with this, the answer to me being on the outside, not being close to it, not seeing how bad it is, all of that.

My answer is you have to go in and do conspicuous acts of kindness. like you've got to find a way to bring these together. You have to turn to the ICE agents and make them feel like um you guys are, guys are, guys are, you know me, so I use these words in maybe a different way, but you guys are doing God's work. And what we need right now is you guys have to have uh just you have to be squeaky clean. Mhm. I don't know if this is what actually happened, but um supposedly in the movie when Jackie Robinson, the first black uh Major League Baseball player, started playing, he said basically uh something along the lines to the guy that was getting him in the game, like um I I'm not sure what you're asking of me.

And the guy says, "What I'm asking for you is to be so strong that you don't have to fight back." And that's what we need out of the ICE agents. Not that they let themselves get run over by cars, but that they understand that um we have to go way above and beyond as representatives of the United States government who must show love to the people in their country. You have to have law and order. But you can get it this way or you can get it by showing people we're on your side.

This is what we're trying to get to. This is how we're going to get it. Now, I don't even need to read the comments to understand that people are going to say that that's polyianaish, which is one of the many reasons that I am not uh a politician because I get that. But if you want to understand what the goal is, I hope people will read Nelson Mandela's long walk to freedom. I do not expect Nelson Mandela to be a perfect person. I'm sure he was not, and I know that he had troubles with his wife and all kinds of stuff, and I'm sure he did bad things uh in his early revolutionary days.

Whatever. Nonetheless, when he came out, his whole thing was we have to find a path of unity. And I'm just saying that would be the drum that I would beat to death. No matter how hard it is, you have to find a path to unity. But that's not who comes to power in a populist moment. It's not even who grows big YouTube channels, Drew. I literally every day think if I just came on here, picked a side, and went hard on that side, we would quintuple in size rapidly because I know what people want.

So, I'm just like, but in the long term, I think those people fizzle out. Uh, and anyway, the only thing I care about in life is earning my own respect, and that would not lead me to earn my own respect. We've got some super chats. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Hey, sweet. Hey, sweet. Hey, sweet. Uh, superhat. Uh, superhat. Uh, superhat. You guys are hilarious. First up from Fruital Loops. Uh, I read a book called The Nazi Seizure of Power written in the 60s that examines a single small town in Germany from pre-Naziism through full Nazi power.

MAGA is SS. No, MAGA rhymes with early chapters in that book. Certainly. Yeah, that sounds about right. Listen, uh if you think of SS as Hitler and not the human tendency to want to control and the realization that nature has saw fit to give us archetypes of humans that are sociopathic and they will just kill kill kill. And the reason they will kill kill is because it is deadly efficient. It is so efficient. And so, uh, there's just some people that don't have the internal moral compass and they will do it.

There's a book called Ordinary Men. And full disclosure, I've not read it, but I get the gist, which is that you can by slowly boiling that frog, you can get ordinary men to shoot a naked pregnant woman in the back of the head in the middle of a field in the winter. And it's like, they shot a woman in the face in broad daylight and got away with it. So, yeah. And we're getting close. expect it to go on and on and on. But uh the thing I think, Drew, that I'm beseeching you to to to um Yes.

Right. It's good work. That's a biblical word. I beseech you. I I I not to not not to derail us, but yes, I grew up in the uh the Christian Mill. Uh so the thing that I'm beseeching you to see because I think it is so high utility is that these things are born of the architecture of the human mind that it isn't about Trump or whatever whatever and that's why these things are so terrifyingly difficult to stop. This is just humans are a mass of and I include myself in this but we're a mass of NPCs.

We have programming and so when a stimulus happens it has a largely knowable it's not predictable but it has a largely knowable like reaction set as you zoom out. You're not going to be able to predict the you know butterfly flaps of individual wings but you can come out and you can start like we can with the weather. You can start saying 10 days out this is roughly what's going to happen or we know that winter comes roughly at this period. We know the shortest day of the year is this.

Like there are just so many patterns to human behavior. Uh, and so that helps us find the actual cause and effect instead of just the, um, like overfocusing on ICE agents being brutal [ __ ] uh, protesters being unnecessarily confrontational. It's like, don't get lost in that sauce because that happened for largely knowable reasons. Yes. I just still think that we should talk about it. I still think that it shouldn't be okay. I don't think it should be normalized. I don't think that it's okay. I think anytime somebody dies, it's a tragedy.

But maybe I'm just a naive uh Christian boy and I like Jesus too much. My bad. But this is great. And so everybody, let's be like maybe I hardcore. Maybe I need to get like a Jaco Willick vest and you know, start doing more push-ups and maybe I won't care as much. But to me, like any death is a tragedy if it could be avoided. And that's whether you're sick with cancer and you're in chemo or whether you're driving down the street. I love it. I would just say um my advice to you as a friend, you you can't let can't let can't let people make you feel like you have to handwave away what you think, which is not hand people feel you have to hand.

I feel like watching you feels like somebody who is talking to the comment section section section uh at the end of all of your very valid points. You'll give a very valid point and then go but maybe I'm just a naive Christian boy. Uh and I'm saying yeah say the thing like if there's something you've got a platform like unintentionally Drew by producing this show you became somebody with a voice. What do you think needs to be said? What isn't okay? isn't okay? isn't okay? People shouldn't get shot in the face.

I think I said it. I'll also say that chat is always split on everything that you say. So, you're probably seeing a lot of negative, bro. There's a lot of I'm not talking to these trolls. There's a guy that trolls me every comment. I know who you are. I'm not going to mention you cuz you're not that famous. I'm not going to put you on this platform. It's like Michael. It's like Jay-Z said, like, I put you on the SummerJam stream. I'm not going to put you on the Summer Jam screen.

You're going to be anonymous in all your trollness and I know who you are and it you cuz you say all the things that you want me to react to, but I'm not cuz that's what you want. You eat off of that. But I drink your tears. Why do I care about your praise? I see what you celebrate. That was a Rick and Morty quote, but it's still relevant. I love it. But But But we've got one more. Go for it. Uh, why aren't you commenting?

This is from R.J. Johnson. Why aren't you commenting on the new GDP release yesterday, 4.3% for third quarter 25 and projected fourth quarter 25 at 5.1%. Just been bigger fish to fry. So, if uh we're we're going to find out in the midterms if enough of the things that Trump is doing actually come together to make life better for uh middle America. If it does, that would be tremendous. At least get a positive first order consequence. If we're going to do all this madness, uh then let's at least make sure that it actually helps the people that we're trying to help.

So, yeah, I hope that it works. I hope that it works. And sometimes I worry that the morass of politics is such that if somebody like Trump didn't come in, act like a toddler, smash things, tip things over, that we would never get unstuck. So he's at least doing that. And if if the conspiracy theory that grows in my mind is true and Brussels as a uh proxy for London bankers really are just building a an extractive world order. Um somebody's got to break it. I've also got just one fun chat uh to throw in here.

Uh, the sore fingertips said, "I see Tom as newly wealthy and very ambitious and Drew is fairly wealthy and with average level ambition." I just thought that was kind of funny. of funny. of funny. Interesting. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Interesting. Okay. I don't know how to read that. Anyways, what do we have next? Um, just to put a pin in Minnesota, Trump ended the uh TPS status for the Somali in uh the US. Um, thousands will need to be required to leave by March 17th or you get a knock on the door from ICE.

uh level set us on this. Here we go. In a major escalation of its immigration enforcement agenda, the Trump administration has officially terminated the temporary protected status for nationals of Somalia. The decision announced on January 13th by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Gnome requires Somali TPS beneficiaries to leave the United States by March 17th of this year or face deportation. face deportation. face deportation. Estimates vary across sources in terms of how many people this affects. Official USCIS data cited in reports indicate approximately 705 to,00 current people with this particular TPS status with up to 2471 beneficiaries and another 1,383 pending applications that will potentially be impacted.

Now the rationale from DHS as stated by sec secretary gnome states temporary means temporary country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law's requirement for temporary protected status. Further allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. We are putting Americans first. TPS4 Somalia first originated in 1991 under George HW Bush and the civil war that was happening at the time. It has been repeatedly extended by subsequent administrations, most recently by President Biden in September of 2024.

The termination aligns with broader Trump administration efforts to limit temporary protective status designations following similar moves for other countries. So obviously uh Trump is ultra gung-ho about making good on the promise to deport illegal immigrants. I think that as the fraud continues to be uncovered in not just Minnesota but also California, we are finally going to understand that we are underwater by roughly $2 trillion a year on our budget. That is the thing that is driving all of the unease across the country. And one of the problems that we have is that you're inviting people into the country and telling them that, hey, from day one, some of you are going to be able to get access to services.

And this is where people point to the Statue of Liberty and say, "Listen, our whole country is based on immigrants. How could we not want more immigrants in the country? Is it not um hypocritical of us? Are we not just pulling up the ladder?" But the reality is, remember the period of American history that prompted France to give us the Statue of Liberty and engrave upon it, send me your poor, tired, huddle masses yearning to breathe free was a period in which you got [ __ ] all when you rolled up to the shores of America.

If you didn't starve to death and you could make it, then you were smart enough, entrepreneurial enough that you could make something of yourself in America. There was a reason they used to say of New York, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere because it was hard. It was a survival crafting game and you died if you couldn't play it well. And when I say died, I don't mean that hyperbolically. I mean literally people died in droves coming to America because there was nobody here to save them.

In fact, it was wildly hostile. So the early Americans had a le the ones that survived had a level of gumption, entrepreneurial spirit, uh can do attitude that they were able to build the country that became the strongest economy in the world. When like so many other countries before us, you send up the bat signal and tell everybody, hey, come on into America, and then you don't make them um stand in their own two feet, then you run into economic problems. And that is one of the things that we're struggling with right now.

So even though I despise the blunt force trauma methods that Trump uses, you absolutely must have a secure border. You absolutely cannot be giving out welfare and allowing immigrants into your country. You can do you can allow immigrants in, but they're going to have to stand on their own two feet. Full stop. Full stop. Full stop. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Um and we will keep a close eye on developing immigration. Um, we got to talk about Iran because those death numbers keep piling up. I've seen everything from 2500 confirmed to 12,000 unconfirmed.

Apparently, when they shut down the internet, they secretly switched the rubber bullets into real bullets. Um, so it's just getting um a lot crazier. Um, what's your opinion on Iran? What's going on over there? Well, first of all, I want to send all of my uh love and just will to see anybody that wants to be free to be able to fight for their freedom. I am the enemy of theocracies worldwide. So, um I can only imagine if half of what is coming out of Iran is actually true.

Um that every bit of emotional support that you guys can get goes a long way. and certainly having some real backing uh from allies around the world would be useful. But with that, the facts go like this. Iran's nationwide protests enter their third week amid reports of brutal crackdowns that have left thousands dead. As of this morning, anti-government protests in Iran sparked by economic collapse. Remember, it all starts with the economy uh are evolving into calls for regime change. They have persisted despite a severe government response that reportedly includes mass killings, trickery, arrests, and multi-day near total communications blackout.

Per usual, it all kicked off when the economy began to crumble under the weight of sanctions and mismanagement. And under the massive accelerant of hyperinflation, what began as demonstrations against soaring prices and currency devaluation in late December has spread to over 100 cities across all 31 provinces, drawing in workers, students, and diverse social classes. Iranian authorities have unleashed brutal security forces to crush the protests, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC as they're known, with supposed orders to show no leniency, leading to threats of executions and rapid trials.

Recent reports indicate a slight subsidance and visible protests over the last 48 hours in some areas. But if the reports around the um violent response are to be believed, then that shouldn't surprise anybody as watching a bunch of people get shot to death in front of you has a way of causing you to stay home. But tensions remain extremely heavy with regimeled funerals for security personnel and barricades and cities signaling ongoing desperation. Now, it is hard to get an accurate picture of exactly what the death toll is given the information blackout, but the US-based human rights activist news agency, HRA, uh, a respected monitoring group, reported at least 2571 deaths so far, including 24,3 protesters, 147 government affiliated individuals, and nine children.

This marks the highest death toll for unrest in decades, surpassing previous uh episodes like the 2022 Masa Amini protests and evoking the 1979 Islamic Revolution's chaos. Over 18,000 arrests have been reported with fears of imminent executions, including that of 26-year-old protester Efron Sultani, potentially happening as early as today by hanging in the public square. Iranian officials deny systematic killings, blaming external interferences from the US and Israel. President Trump has vocally supported the protesters while escalating rhetoric against Thrron. In a January 13th speech, the uh and a true social post, he urged Iranians to keep protesting, take over your institutions, help is on its way.

without specifying though what that aid might be. Now, is that because he doesn't want to give away his moves or is it because he doesn't really know what he's going to do yet. He has said that he's canled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing stops and has warned that abusers will pay a very big price. Trump specifically cautioned against execution, stating that the US would take very strong action if Iran proceeds, referencing past military strikes. So far, there's been no confirmed large-scale US military deployments to the region, though.

Uh, and if that's true, that may limit immediate options for intervention. However, in an interesting move, precautionary measures include urging some US personnel to leave Qatar's air base by January 14th evening. Uh, and people are describing this as a posture change amid fears of Iranian retaliation, but they would be retaliating against the US move. So, is the US saying that because they really do maybe not plan to make a move, but are ready to make a move if Iran continues to escalate? We shall see. Iran has warned Gulf neighbors like Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar that US bases on their soil would be targeted if Washington strikes, signaling potential escalation.

US options discussed include cyber attacks to disrupt regime communications. But right now, their regime seems to be doing some damage in terms of jamming the Starlink um terminals that Elon Musk has been sending over. So, uh I know Starlink has said that they're working around the clock to try to defeat those measures, but pretty um sad that so far it looks like the government has thwarted most of those. And I guess they send out a signal and so when somebody broadcasts something up to a Starlink satellite, they're able to detect that and then make a move on their location.

So, um, that is obviously bad. Um, also talking about sanctions or targeted strikes like drones, missiles, but, um, nobody's talking about a ground invasion. So, National Security Council meetings are ongoing with Trump briefed on strong options, but countries like Russia and China are already condemning US interference. Experts warn intervention could backfire, unifying Iranians against external threats or sparking wider conflict. And that's the thing, man. You've got to remember just like the US is divided, it's not like everyone in the country is on one side. There's going to be a certain amount of is the number tiny?

I have no idea. But there's going to be a certain number of people that are apparently willing to walk around with guns and shoot other people to death. So, not everybody is on the same page. The situation remains volatile with potential for executions, renewed protests, or even possibly US action. International responses include EU diplomat bans on Iran and calls for restraint. Updates expected as communications hopefully begin to get restored, but we'll see. This one is wild. And if you really want to get into the underbelly of how it's being metabolized here in the US, of course, this brings up all the stuff around is this just uh Israel trying to run their normal playbook and they're fermenting disscent where there shouldn't be.

I know Candace had comments along those lines. There's plenty of people pointing out that there weren't people protesting at Harvard as Iranians are being slaughtered uh to match the energy for what was going on in Gaza. And so America is clearly not on the same page in terms of what the right response is to what's going on in Iran. Uh but I for one long to see people the world over breathe free. So hopefully they get their shot. their shot. their shot. Um Turkey actually just released a statement also condemning um US and Israel to stay out of Iran and calls for uh Iran to kind of fix their own problems.

problems. problems. We do not wish to see any chaos in our neighbor Iran. We do not deny that there are certain problems in Iranian society and the state. But these problems must be resolved through the inherent dynamics and national will of Iran itself. We foresee that external interventions will lead to worse outcomes and that interventions, particularly those instigated by Israel to achieve certain goals, will cause even greater difficulties. We emphasize the importance of stability in Iran to prevent further crisis and to avoid dragging the region into more trouble.

Looking at the statements of Israeli officials, especially those directed at Iran, we see that they are trying to adopt a reckless stance that will create greater problems throughout the region, which is absolutely unacceptable. Yeah. I mean, listen, it is um having another country interfere in your operations. Like, imagine China rolls up and is like, I don't like what I see happening in Minnesota. This is crazy. We got to do something about this. um we would be like what is happening? We would have an absolute stroke.

So yeah, I get why that is going to be the official stance of people who don't want American intervention in their country. And at the same time, uh man, when you see a regime like I mean, let's even go back to Rwanda. when you see whatever a million people being hacked to death in whatever terrifyingly short period of time with machetes, it's like at some point like not doing something feels far more grotesque than doing something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I do think countries should be very slow to intervene in the um internal workings of another country.

But at the same time, it is just a universal fact of the human condition that governments tend towards tyranny. They will kill their people to maintain power. Uh and there have been plenty of governments that have proven there is no number of people that they're not prepared to kill uh to maintain stability in China. I'm looking at you like you you don't have to go back more than the 1970s to find China just mass killing their populace uh to maintain control. It it is crazy. Same with Russia.

You don't have to go back very far to see Stalin doing the same thing. Just mass murder to keep everybody under control. And so the question becomes um that there's not a non-human actor in this. this. this. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, that's humans that do that. So it is um man it is a wild artifact of the way that our brains work that we end up doing that. But we do overall do you agree with Turkey in this scenario that Israel, US, everybody should stay out of it and let Iran kind of figure it out?

because I my brain is divided between what do I think is morally right and then when you're living in the world of practicality and you have to have something that you can write down and say uh this is when you move in and this is when you don't. I'm I'm I'm I think it is very important for me to give you two different answers. Both are true true true morally. [ __ ] that kid. [ __ ] Iran uh as government and power to the people and a thousand% a theocratic regime that kills its own people can eat an entire bag of dicks.

dicks. dicks. Now having said that, you can't run around the world acting like that. So that's Tom Billu's personal emotional response. But the reality is that as a country, you have to say, "Okay, well, I wouldn't want somebody interfering with me." Um, I would go to great lengths to stop them even trying to do things from a cyber perspective like manipulate the populace, right? But I know that we're trying to do that to other people constantly. Um, that we may not have all the information and so us, you know, rolling in and dropping bombs is like, "Bro, you can't just run around doing that." Mhm.

that." Mhm. that." Mhm. Uh so I would expect there to be consequences from other countries who are like, "Yeah, you I don't want you coming in here and bullying." Take China, man. China is China has this is my interpretation of what I've read. But from where I'm sitting, China has a philosophy, a national constitution, if you will, like internal human constitution, not written document, that stability is worth a tremendous price. that stability is incredibly important and instability is a far bigger problem than mass murder. So that seems to that's how they behave.

So when you've got a country like that, then it's like, okay, well clearly there is a large number of humanity that thinks I'm nuts to want uh freedom and freedom is going to be messy and freedom is going to cause problems and freedom is going to get a lot of people killed and I would much rather that and be free and control my life and not be subjected to the giant bureaucracy of death. Um, so it's like it's one of those from my position I'm obviously right, but not everybody's going to see it that way.

And so given that I know if the US were to intervene that it will cause some people to get very angry that I create some sort of longtail risk that I may not be able to fully anticipate. And so uh, you've got to be careful. And this is where people need to have morality that becomes policy where they say this is what we tolerate and this is what we don't. I mean, it's like even just think about the fact that and I think rightfully so, but Trump was like, "There's a certain number of people that you can kill and I won't do anything." That's wild.

Like to actually say 400's fine, 401 is a problem, but that's what policy is. At some point, you have to say, "Okay, we've got a line. If you're on that side of the line, we're not going to do [ __ ] You step over to this side of the line, now we start killing people." And it's weird, but nonetheless true. true. true. Uh well, and speaking of foreign interventions, a bipartisan bill has just been announced that would block Donald Trump from taking over Greenland. Um the you Oh, snap.

I'm not sharing it on the right screen. Uh my bad, G. Give me 14 seconds. The bill is uh made by a Republican and Democratic congresswoman. Um go figure. Now we're bipartisan. and it would bar defense or state funds from blockade, occupy, annex, or any otherwise assert control over the sovereign territory of a NATO member. Um, what's your initial response on this? this? this? Well, so first of all, anything where you're going to get bipartisan support of something, that tells you something. So, that I like to see.

I like to see both sides getting together and saying, "This is important enough that we want to make sure that our voices are heard. This is clearly what we want to enact." Yeah, great. Go for it. Also, because I hate his smash and grab diplomacy, um I think it is absurd that he's just like, "We're just going to take it." So, if he were to draw a red line and say, "Hey, listen. Uh this is critical to our national um sovereignty. Here are the things that we absolutely cannot have you do in terms of um alliances with Russia or China.

Uh we also want to set up, you know, monitoring stations in the um strait that appears to be opening up from ice melting." all this stuff. Plenty of things that he could do to um allow them their dignity, quite frankly, their national sovereignty, and just say, "But these things are important enough to protect our nation, and we're strong enough to enforce it, and so this is what we're going to do." I would be back channeling that to Denmark. I would be finding a way to get them on board.

And so, um, that to me is how you play this. That's why you have diplomacy. And so the more Trump becomes um arrogant and hyperaggressive, the more people are going to resist him even on things that might make sense. I'm not saying Greenland taking Greenland makes sense, but I'm saying there will be things that I see people resist him on all the time that are like, "Wait, why would you resist like finding fraud when people resisted Doge?" I was I rate that is absurd to me.

Uh because it's good for them. But people are emotional creatures. They are not logical creatures. And so they will do things just to spite you. And so he's just pissing people off and they're going to now push back against him, push back against the US out of emotion. So people will start doing things that are bad for their own country just to tell him to pound sand. So that all seems stupid to me. So anyway, we'll see. I haven't read the details of the bill. It could be absolutely moronic.

But um there is a reason that we have three branches of government. I am here for the checks against tyranny. Uh so yes, I want three strong, robust, independent branches of government that keep each other in rock paper scissors style in [ __ ] check. Nice. So putting everything on the table, we have this bipartisan bill from the Senate that was just uh uh put out there. Um we have reports that yesterday Greenland prime minister says that Greenland chooses Denmark over the US. They had a joint statement.

I couldn't find a good translation, so I just did a screenshot of that. And we also have last week when some of the um head of the EU officials um Germany uh France, UK were all strongly against the acquisition of Greenland from the US uh by the US. Yes. So it seems like Trump is getting hit on all sides. Greenland themselves said no. We have a Senate bill and the EU was saying if you do that we have to look at this as a military action and not just as US doing us.

At this point, it seems like Trump should be uh have his hands tied, but I mean, as the uh secret midnight Venezuela action means, he can always come up with another way. But it seems like he should probably let this go at least. I My advice to him would be immediately change course, get the things you actually need from Greenland, which is not ownership. You um his argumentation that you don't fight for a lease, you fight for ownership is dumb. you fight for national interests. So if your national interests require you to have a relationship with Greenland to uh make sure that you get the things that you need, whether you own it or not shouldn't matter.

And so we've been trying to get a hold of Greenland for whatever 150 years or something, but we've done just fine without it. If you have reason to believe that Russia and China are, as the Brits would say, taking the piss, then it's like, well, draw red lines and say, okay, we're not going to allow this. And then it like then at least you're responding to something specific and you can get people on your side as to why you cannot tolerate that. Uh but right now it just literally seems like somebody who thinks that they can get away with it and so they're going to do it because they can, not because they actually need to or because they have to.

So I'm not even saying that it wouldn't be wildly to our advantage to get Greenland. I'm sure it would be. Uh but again, you've got to use seduction. and we're just at a point now where we're completely abandoning that. Um, so yes, I hope that the check comes internally. I hope that America stops itself stops itself stops itself uh versus us needing to have our hands slapped by the world at large. We'll see. We'll keep uh we'll keep monitoring it, but it it seems like he should let that go.

Yeah. And listen, I've got a deep dive coming out on this on Tuesday, so make sure you guys take a look at that. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what what is going on globally that has led America to act the way that it's acting. Uh you've heard some of the ideas today at the beginning of the show. Um but yeah, that is my most concise crystallized view of what's happening right now. Um why what America first actually means and how Trump is running that strategy and what the potential consequences are.

So uh check that one out. Do you think Trump is uh running in America first? America first? America first? Definitively. Definitively. Definitively. Got it. Got it. Got it. Definitively. Yeah. This is America first. Once you take it as um America's going to get what they want and it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks, then it's Yeah. Clearly. Um okay, everybody strap in. It's story time because Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton uh skipped their Epstein congressional hearing. Um and this was the letter that they sent. Chairman Comr, we want to take a moment given everything to you, given everything to address you directly.

This past year has seen our government engage in unprecedented acts, including against our own citizens. People have been seized by mass federal agents from their homes, their workplaces, and the streets of their communities. Students and scientists with visas permitting them to study and work here have been deported without due process. The people who laid siege to the US capital have been pardoned and called heroes. Agencies vital to the country's national security has been dismantled. Universities, media companies, and law firms have been subjected to threats to threats to their funding, access, and licensing unless they made concessions and surrendered their right to constitutionally protect free speech.

American troops have been deployed on the streets of our towns and cities. The Justice Department has been issued as a weapon at the direction of the president to pursue political opponents and most recently in Syrian, an ICE agent killed an unarmed mother only days ago. Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles, and its people no matter the consequences. For us, now is that time. We are lucky by virtue of the positions we held and the protections afforded by them.

But we are not blind. Every day we see the country we have dictated dedicated our lives to improving. Take step after step after step backwards. As chairman of this powerful congressional committee and you have immense power to target anyone in the subject them to closed door interrogations and more. The decisions you have made and the priorities you have set as a chairman regarding the Epstein continued Epstein continued Epstein continued investigations has prevented progress in discovering the facts about the government's role. The facts speak for themselves.

You subpoenaed eight people in addition to us. You demissed seven of those eight without any of them saying a single word to you. You made no attempt to force them to appear. In fact, since you started your investigation last year, you have interviewed a total of two people. Two, a legal analysis prepped by two law firms and provided to you yesterday makes clear your subpoenas are legally invalid. You claim your subpoenas are invalid. Valid. Invalid. Invalid. Invalid. Invalid. Invalid when they are used against us. were were were were silent when the city president took the same position as a former president bearing barely more than three years ago.

We call on you to release that analysis to the public to allow them to see how this is yet another example of the casual disregard of the law of the land. All the while you have done nothing with your oversight committee to force the department of justice to follow the law and release all of its epine files including any material regarding us as we have publicly called for over the last year in the house. extending healthcare for Americans in any state succeeded only because enough Republicans joined with Democrats.

The fact that the public and we are seeing any of the Department of Justice epsy files only because four Republicans out of 220 joined every Democrat to release the to reach the minimum number of members to force a vote. You were not one of those four. Even now, despite the Department of Justice failure to follow the law the Congress passed, you have chosen not to consider subpoening the sitting attorney general to follow the law. Despite everything that needs to be done to help our country, you are on the cusp of bringing Congress to a halt to pursue a rarely used process literally designed to result in our imprisonment.

This is not the this is not the way out of America's ills, and we were forcefully defend ourselves. Indeed, bringing the Republicans's cruel agenda to a standstill while you work harder to pass a contempt charge against us than you have done to on your investigation this past year would be our contribution to fighting the madness. We have tried to give you the little information we have. We done so because Mr. MC's crimes were horrific. If the government didn't do all it could to investigate and prosecute these crimes for whatever for whatever reason, that should be the focus of continued your work to learn why and to prevent that from happening ever again.

There's no evidence that you are doing so. Instead, you have forced the victims to believe their painful experiences while doing little to give them and everybody else what's deserved, truth and justice. There's no plausible explanation for what you are doing other than partisan politics. You accepted the least from least from You accepted the least from those who know the most but demand the most from those who know the least. To say you can't comp complete your work without speaking to us is simply bizarre. You have asked what we know.

To answer your inquiry, we are providing you with the same and more than seven of the other eight individuals you subpoenaed regarding the handling of the FC investigations and prosecutions which may be why you have not publicly released their written statements. We expect you will say it is not enough. We expect you'll reject it. You may even set out an empty chair or stand in front of the cameras and not right dismiss what we have provided. We expect you to direct your committee to seek to hold us in contempt.

You may even release irrelevant decades old photos that you hope will embarrass us. You will say your caucus and the speaker and the presidents are behind you 100%. We hope perhaps in vain that they will not allow you to single-handedly hijack the congress by unilaterally making this decision for your colleagues, your party and our country. You will say it is not our decision to make, but we have made it. Now you have to make yours. We have prepared to make our case to our 45 committee members.

And if need be more importantly, we will also will defend ourselves in the public arena and ensure this country knows exactly what you are doing and why you are doing so. Instead of helping the American people who need this Congress, Congress's work and protection. For most people, maybe even the bulk of Congress, today will be the first they learn of this dispute. We are confident that any reasonable person in or out of Congress will see based on everything we release that what you are doing is trying to punish those who are who you see as your enemies and protect those who you think are your friends.

Continue to mislead Americans about what is truly at stake, and you will learn that Americans are better at finding the truth than you are at burying it. Continue to pursue autopens instead of penning laws Americans need, and you will learn that you are siding away any remaining chance of being on the right side of history. Continue to abet the dismantling of America, and you will learn that it would takes more than a wrecking ball to demolish the American to to demolish what Americans have built over 250 years.

Bill and Hillary Clinton. Clinton. Clinton. Yeah. Well, I don't think this is going to play well for them. So, um, obviously people have longstanding assumptions, but they have long-standing assumptions about Bill Clinton's involvement with the Epstein. Uh, so for them to not show up, regardless of whether they let a bunch of other people off or whatever, it's everybody's going to go after the star witness. And these guys are the star witness. They're the ones that are going to get the attention. and they're the ones that are going to get the right amount of people to pay attention to this to make this a thing to make sure that there's enough energy to carry it across the finish line.

Uh, and given that, like I don't know, maybe there are people that are like so on their side, like as long as they give an explanation about why they're trying to avoid the subpoena that they'll get some people on their team. But this just feels crazy like of all the things where you've just got to be like, "All right, cool. Let's sit down. If I've got nothing to hide, then I won't hide anything and I'll just come in and say the things. But I have a feeling the re feeling, it's just a feeling.

I don't know, but I have a feeling that the reason that they don't want to do it is there'll be a lot of I invoked at the advice of council. I invoked my fifth amendment. You know, so it'll be them saying that over and over and over and they know that that is horrific optics because they ask you questions where you simply refusing to answer make you look the guiltyest. So anyway, welcome to the political game. This is a whole bunch of theater. Uh, and it ends up confusing the issue just enough that they'll be able to drag this out, steal a little bit more energy from all this.

Um I Drew if we were going to poly market this you've got a lot of people saying Obama's going to be perpwalked for uh trying to take down Trump that Bill is going to be perpwalked for the Epstein stuff. I I will go on record saying there's no perp walking. Uh Bill Clinton charged by 4% chance that Bill Clinton is charged by January 31st on poly market right now. Yeah. I mean, I'd be far more curious to see if he'll be charged by say March 31st where we'd actually have some time to do the thing process.

process. process. So, cuz that one feels more like just the timing of it because that's only a couple weeks from now. But now. But now. But what do you think? Like do you actually think cuz uh I have a long-standing belief that the government should not be in the business of prosecuting the other side. Mhm. side. Mhm. side. Mhm. Um, so I understand the weakness that that creates, but oh man, I'm I am currently more worried about justice being weaponized than I am about people getting away with something.

Um, in the age of transparency, obviously more and more things are coming out, and I would much rather simply see those things stopped, see the system shor up, so make it impossible to rig elections. um make it impossible or at least far more difficult to commit fraud. Like those kinds of things. Yes. Um going back and pursuing uh a former president is terrible. And I'm just like, can you not see like dude, you are setting the stage for your own existential crisis where you don't get reelected and now they're coming after you legally.

It's just like it's so self-defeating. So anyway, but I also think that just there's something in the system that's going to stop this from happening. from happening. from happening. It's it's seeing let's let's get James Comr's uh response to this um talking about the contempt charges that he wants to put out and then we can give like a full depth. full depth. full depth. All right. Well, I think everyone knows by now Bill Clinton did not show up and I think it's important to note holding the picture behind him is wild.

If y'all see in the bottom left of your chat chat chat dressed out of is that him with Epste issued as chairman of the committee. This was voted on by the entire committee in a unanimous vote of the House Oversight Committee to How are they that it's out of former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Now, Hillary Clinton's supposed to show up tomorrow. We'll see what happens there. But with respect to the former president, he he did not show up today. Uh, one reason I think most Americans want President Clinton to answer some questions who are is because he visited the White House, Jeffrey Epstein visited the White House 17 times while Bill Clinton was president for Congress.

Also, if you're my age, like I remember him uh under oath, I did not have sexual relations with that woman. And it's like, you lied right to our faces. And so it's one of those there's not a sexual relation. I'm joking. joking. joking. I I remember when he was like, "Oh, I was surprised that that's how you define sex." And it's like, "Oh my god." So, uh, he does not have a good reputation, at least for people like me who who literally were watching the whole Monica Lewinsky thing unfold in real time.

And it was just like, uhoh, like this is coming back to haunt him. He was so avid and determined that like he didn't do it. This is all just a witch hunt. is all crazy. And then it obviously comes out DNA evidence, like nowhere to run with that one. Has to retract it all. Then finally admits he did it simply because he could. It was like, bro, this is where that kind of thing comes back to haunt you. Where it's like, well, I'm not going to take you at face value because I know that you're willing to lie.

lie. lie. Uh so yeah, and because it was a sexual thing as well. So it's like he's got a very unclean record when it comes to that as well. Yeah. Uh I'm no fan of the Clintons. Um Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State when Haiti went undergone that mass earthquake. She was in charge of allocating the funds that raised. Over 8 billion dollars were raised for the Haiti uh restoration act. They built a community center in two town houses before the UN. Um and meanwhile, the Clintons were able to buy into the third largest telecom provider in Haiti.

And now our stockholders on the board. So by no means am I team Clinton. um they have a special level of hell for them um waiting for him. I do want to say though points were made. Uh Bill Clinton brought up when Trump was subpoenaed when Biden was in office, he didn't show up. Now they're doing the same thing to him as a former president. So going back to your point of this tit fortat, is this also another uh side effect of populism and we're this is just what it is going to be or are we just going to have to wait until people make more money so that way they can finally say, "Okay, let's stop bickering and let's stand up." But it seems like you're always going to get this kind of political grandstanding.

Politicians are politicians in good times and bad and they will say and do but but the criminal charges is a new level though. I don't want to just minimize that to political and Biden did it too. So but by no means am I saying that he's free of this critique. So critique. So critique. So the aggressive pursuit of legal action on both sides is for sure a thing that happens in a populist moment where people are dogmatically on teams. They are fighting over a shrinking pie.

All of that for sure. Um Um Um so yes, will prosperity make this recede into the background a little bit? Yes. But now this is also in the cultural zeitgeist. And so how long like once you start crossing um cultural norms? It takes a while for culture to rebound. You need then another leader to come in and begin to start reestablishing the norms. Then you need a crop of politicians to grow up where those are the norms. And then that becomes solidified. But you're going to deal with I mean a good 20 years of like oh this is what we do.

We threaten and we cajol and uh so yeah don't expect lawfare to go away anytime soon. Full stop. Period. Full stop. Now whether it spills over into something that truly becomes existential where people now are fighting to retain power because they know that if they get out of office that they're going to jail. That's going to attract the wrong kind of person. Like imagine what you have to be like if right now Trump called me up and was like, "I need your help." I'd be like, "Sorry, bro.

Best of luck. Hope everything goes okay." Like, there's no way I'm not getting into that [ __ ] morass. Like, you got to be kidding. So, um, you are not going to attract your I mean, now I'm being idealistic, but you're not going to attract your Lincoln to politics when it's like, no, everybody gets clubbed. His whole thing was like, team of rivals. I want to be surrounded by people who think differently than me. I need to see this from all sides. And you're just not going to get that kind of person when it's like this true blood sport and people are getting locked up.

It's like, damn. That's you consolidate power. you make sure you close your flank like you arrest them before they can arrest you. That that is going to breed a level of corruption that is insane. And I worry that we're already in the middle of that. And so that we are going to start hearing things come out from both sides of people doing the most horrendous [ __ ] where it's like, yeah, you could lock them up for that. And I'm saying stop it from happening again. Don't lock people up because it's just going to come after you and the only way then to survive that is to go after the other team first and that will escalate so quickly.

Yeah. Um Yeah. Um Yeah. Um is it cuz I'm not going to lie, Trump was the most sued president ever. Like full stop. Um lawsuits, subpoenas, Mara Lago charges, whatever. So I can understand that he might have an axe to grind. He might have a beef. um let's say he's removed his contempt and stuff like that. Do you think that James Comr and some of these GOP senators, are they operating from Trump's demand, do you think, or do you think they're just everybody's feeling the lawfare and they want to get involved in it?

Everybody's feeling the lawfare. They want to get in on it. The dynamics are such that Trump is surrounding himself with people that are loyal to him, that believe the things that he believes, that want to see the administration go forward. They all have different personalities and temperaments. Steven Miller is not putting on an act. That's who Steven Miller is. That is his temperament. He is deeply confrontational. He thrives on disagreement. Like he's see the high school video of him. No. No. No. Oh, Oh, Oh, I'll pull that up.

Is he exactly the same? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, of course. Like this. I hate to say it, but man, our personalities are pretty baked. pretty baked. pretty baked. All right, you pulled that up fast. I don't tired of being told to pick up my trash. We have plenty of gems. People are young. What a lovely young man, huh? Even for 2002, that was apparently too much. And then, so then when they tried to bring up the next speaker, all So yeah, listen, I I am not at all surprised that Steven Miller has always been like that.

If that's your personality and you get some sort of high off of that fight, then you're going to put yourself in that situation. But that's who's going to be attracted to this kind of thing. You're going to get more and more of those disagreeable, highly contentious personalities. Um, when you need, not to overplay this card, but when you need somebody like a Nelson Mandela who can set that aside and understands that you have to let this stuff go and that put uh, whites on his security detail because he was like, we have to find a way to come together.

And people like, you are literally gambling with your life. and he's like, "Yeah, but that's what we have to do to get unity." It's like, "God damn, people like that are few and far between, but we really need some." some." some." Um, somebody in chat said, "Massie is not in the forefront. That means it's just a show." Going to Bill Clinton's point. Comr even voted not to release the Epstein files. So, to now be on the front line of the subpoena, calling Hillary Clinton, saying they're they're contempt of court.

Isn't that a bit of uh uh uh political theater? political theater? political theater? Political theater. Cool. Okay. Yeah. I mean, for sure. All so much of what politicians do is just political theater. There's no doubt. For sure. Full stop. Full stop. Full stop. Y Y Y love that. Um okay, I'm going to poly market you right now. Um so we have this presidency. We have um what's the next one? 2028. We have 2032. one? 2028. We have 2032. By 2032, By 2032, By 2032, 50% chance that the incumbent files lawfare against the past president.

U if it's a different party. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. I have it at 50%. Are you over or under? This is 2028. Uh 2032. I'm giving you one cycle for us to work through this populism. And after uh it will be entirely dependent on what Trump does. So this is really me saying, do I think that Trump is going to pursue handcuffs? I think Trump is going to pursue handcuffs, so I'll go over 50%. Over 50% most likely to happen. Okay. Okay. Um Okay. This is just a My only hope is that he just can't get it.

it. it. Copy. Copy. Copy. And that somehow dissipates the energy, but I doubt it. Um this is a PSA and this is something it's a quick audible I'm calling. Um this has nothing to do with like politics and stuff. This is just something that has been up uh recently. Um and I know uh Tywin Pet has a 4-day old. So, um, all my parents, all my people who have like babies and kids, there's been a damning report from the Florida Department of Health that 25 baby formulas, baby formulas, baby formulas, 70% of them were tested positive for heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury, above legal limits.

So, this is just a PSA. If you have kids at home, check the uh check your the ones you use and let me know. It was Similac soy powder, Similac soy liquid. So, yeah. Yeah, we don't need to read the book, but yeah, like all of that. Look at your screen. There's a lot um um um that that's wild. Personally, I feel like this is criminal. Like I need Congress to subpoena the Simlac company cuz this is this is egregious. I feel like this is this gets this gets this gets protect your kids, man.

Protect your kids. kids. kids. Fighting words. Fighting words. Fighting words. Every nation needs to protect their kids. kids. kids. Like this is not okay. So I agree. And this kind of stuff is uh you just test like as as a former owner of a food company, you had to test every batch. This is not hard. So yesesh, I worry that either they weren't testing falsifying their test results or we don't require them. Like when I think back to all the things that we had to test for and I had to know an individual bar where it ended up.

So we had this insane tracking system so that if we had to recall something, we could actually reach out and say to the store, you have this bar, this bar must be recalled. So, yeah, this one feels like something very systemic went wrong. If we've got that much baby formula with heavy metals, which feels like a thing we would test for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh coming in at over the legal limit, that's not ideal. Did you have like I don't want to say food inspector, but was there somebody from the government that like, hey, yes, but here's the thing.

Government inspectors are going to come, you know, once every month. Like, you're not getting somebody that's there every day. you as a company have to hold your brand integrity as the north star, but they're giving you like you need to be testing for these things. And so you get very quickly a sense of like the stuff that matters. Now each company, I mean, listen, as a PSA to companies, especially small companies, you can differentiate yourself simply by being better than the competition. This is the perfect advertising campaign for an upstart baby formula company who's like, "Look at our testing protocol.

Look at all the things that we do. Moms, we got you. We're going to make sure that your kids are good. So, I mean, this is horrible for all the people that have given this to their kids, but this is a tremendous opportunity for uh a entrepreneur whose northstar isn't just profitability. You have to think about profitability, but that your northstar is something else. That we want to raise the healthiest kids. We want the highest quality food in some way that's like really measurable. Um, so yeah, hopefully somebody takes advantage of that and really makes a move because this is the exact kind of thing that at Quest we did.

We said we're here trying to end metabolic disease. And so we're always going to put the ingredients in that we believe are the best ingredient for your metabolic health. We would change ingredients even though there were changes we made to our ingredients that cost us hundreds of millions of dollars because it just made the product less popular, but it was like it was better for you. So, and listen, we tried to balance it. Obviously, we want things to be like delicious. If nobody eats it, you've got nothing.

But it's like when you're driven by something else, it goes a long way. And this is one of the ways that we built the brand was just being so hardcore about that. Yeah. Uh yeah. Crazy. So, we'll just we'll follow monitor that situation. But to all those parents, breastfeed if you can, double check the bottles. Run it against that. The Florida um Department of Health was the one who came. What's wild is a lot of women just felt attacked by you that you said breastfeed if you can.

I don't understand that. Breastfeed if you can. For real. For real. real. real. You don't understand the attack or me saying that saying that saying that women are going to feel attacked. Some of them of them of them because being told to breastfeed. Yeah. There's something like there's a judgment like if you didn't breastfeed your kids. And listen, I wasn't breastfed. My mom was basically starving me to death as a baby. She wasn't producing milk or the the actual real reason. I'll let my mom tell that story if she ever wants to tell, but she she literally could not breastfeed.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so um I was starving. They took me into the doctor like, "Why is he not gaining weight?" They figured out the answer. They're like, "Okay, you're going to have to bottle feed." So, this isn't me like I'm not on a high and mighty horse. I'm like, "Damn." Like, I was raised on I was bottlefed. Had to be. be. be. Uh, so for sure, for sure. I don't have any shame that I'm throwing at anybody who uh can't for whatever reason. But from what I've seen in the science, like nature really got you on lock.

Like, you're better off unless mom's drinking like Guinness or something. Like, you're better off with the breast. Get the breast. No judgment, moms. But get the breast. I think the most beautiful thing, and it's the last thing I'll say about this, is um when Lynn's mom was uh young, her um breast would naturally start to lactate when Lynn would cry. That is wild. And it's just the the invisible signals that just happen between the mother and the child are like, you can't tell me this was an accident.

I don't Dude, that is Yeah. Yeah. That's not randomness. That's crazy. Yeah. crazy. Yeah. crazy. Yeah. That that is evolutionary design, man. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. Uh but yeah, so interesting. Uh, all right. Let's jump over to future tech. Um, I thought this was huge. This like made me like stand up in my chair. So, Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration for which the next generation of Apple foundational models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology. Uh, disclaimer, long story short, TLDDR uh Google Gemini will power Siri in the coming year.

God, it's alleged that Apple's paying Google a billion dollars a year to like That feels light. I'm going be honest. Yeah, that was they'll make that back in like the first wave of pre-orders. Um, I cannot believe that Apple has been so trash at AI. Like it it is a crime against Steve Jobs. The level of offense that I feel on his behalf. I I feel like we need to have a real conversation about Apple. Let's have it because I seen the advertising for like, yay, 19 years of Apple.

Look at all the progress we made. The home screening looks exactly the same. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, the flow looks the same. Dude, this is great man theory of history. Steve Jobs was Apple. You Steve Jobs founds Apple. They kick him out of the company. Apple turns to [ __ ] Steve Jobs comes back, takes Apple to the absolute pinnacle of corporate success, design success, product domination, all of it. Incredible. Steve Jobs dies, hands reigns to Tim Cook, and Tim Cook shows that Tim Cook is an operations genius.

genius. genius. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Chef's kiss. and when he's reporting to a visionary, unbelievable pairing. Those two together did absolutely incredible things. I'm not taking anything away from uh Tim Cook, but what ends up happening to companies is they forget the very thing that made them good was you had a visionary leader who does a thing and if you just have a visionary leader, you get Delorean. They make a car, company collapses, trash. So, this is not me overesteeming the visionary. But if you only have an operator and you don't have a visionary, then you get what's happening to Apple now, which is you're able to produce pieces of [ __ ] very very efficiently.

And these when I say these phones are declining in quality, bro. When when I got the latest iPhone and I saw the like liquid glassing, I was like, I need to punch someone at Apple like really hard. It is so absurd. It is self-evidently terrible. terrible. terrible. So, oh my god. Anyway, there's a book called Rocket Fuel which describes the relationship between a visionary and an executor and operator and how you need both to have a truly incredible company. And we're now witnessing Apple without the rocket.

We're seeing the fuel, but there's no rocket. The these guys are they are going to um optimize their way to irrelevance. If they cannot attract the next generation of visionary talent to the company, they will become irrelevant very quickly because AI, dude, when at first I was like, "Oh, they must have like they're a year behind, but they've got some s super secret project. They're going to be coming out. Their AI is going to be better than everybody else's and it just never happened." And then they were like, "We're going to be powered, I think originally by Open AI." And it was like Siri's still [ __ ] So I was, "What is going on?" So, if it wasn't like you get so stuck inside of their ecosystem, I'd be very tempted to go elsewhere.

Now, I will say that the um so they're a closed garden like the open wall ones like uh Google and all that stuff that run on Android, they have their own problems to be sure, but Apple's just fumbling the ball. Yeah. Um and then to your point, Open AI, Grock, um and Gemini were some of the ones that they were considering. Um Elon Musk didn't take the news well. He retweeted that this seems like an unreasonable concentration of power for Google given that they also have Android and Chrome.

Um, he's not wrong about that, but like it does read salty. Yeah, there's a little bit of like Yeah, Elon, you're going to want want to let somebody else make that point because you sound like a jilted lover. Now, I will say will say will say I'm not fully committed, but I wrote my latest deep dive with Grock and not with Open AI. Open AI. Open AI. Oo, Oo, Oo, open AI. Uh, did they did they really fumble the bag? Are they really the n the netscape of AI right now?

right now? right now? They violated my trust. Wow. Wow. Wow. So, I was writing a deep dive and or maybe a prep for a live show and there was a report that had come out. I saw video video footage like all of it. I don't remember what it was, but it was something so obvious like everybody knew that it was a real thing. And um it might have been the shooting of um Renee Good. I don't remember, but it was something where it's like, "Nobody disputes that it happened." And it was like, "That didn't happen." And I was like, "Yes, it did.

Look at this video, this tweet." And it was like, "Nope, that never happened." And I was like, "Oh, man." It felt political. It felt like it was trying to be like I've been programmed behind the scenes to like move people to a certain like viewpoint. And it was the first time where I was like, "Oh, damn." Like I felt like I caught my girlfriend lying to me and I was like, "Oh, but I read your text. I know you did it." So that one I was like, "Let me just see like what Grock cuz I I was under time pressure." So I was like, "I don't have time to go and convince it that like no, this thing really happened.

Stop [ __ ] around." And I just went to Grock and I was like, "Hey, I'm writing this saying on this. Like give me the breakdown of the facts." And it gave it to me and it was accurate. And I was like, "Holy shit." So then I was like, well, I don't really have time to [ __ ] around, so let me write this whole thing just using Grock. Did that. And then this was the first time where I went to write the deep dive and instead of going to my trusty custom GPT, GPT, GPT, I grabbed the files from the GPT, loaded it into Grock, and was like, this is your shot.

Did a great job. So um it is it'll be interesting. I haven't tried Google's Gemini enough. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. But some people say that it's very good at writing as well, so I should at some point. Now that the spell has been broken for me away from chat, I I'll experiment with some others. But I was I was like a little I was sad. It felt like a a friend betraying me. It really did. It was bizarre. Uh still riding with Claude. Claude is my favorite.

Uh, but it it does seem like we need to talk about open AI as kind of fall from grace cuz 3 years ago they were 100% market share, they were chat bots. They were they were AI. They were AI. Um, and now just with the increased competition, it seems like they just gotten replaced. So, well, they've always been trash at images, images, images, so they weren't doing themselves any favors there. Um, their custom GPTs are awesome and I do still use those. So, don't count them out, but this is how competition works.

You get, call it an 18-month head start, and then if what you're doing is big, then people are going to flood into the system. I remember when we first launched Quest, we looked so different than everybody else. Everybody else was red and black and color schemes in the industry because it was largely aimed at bodybuilders. And so, everybody's red and black and they did what we called veins and chains marketing. So, it was always big guys, red and black color scheme, gigantic muscles, their veins everywhere, and they would literally have chains draped around their neck.

And that was what all the competing brands look like that were marketing to bodybuilders because our first market was bodybuilders. was bodybuilders. was bodybuilders. And so, we did something totally different. We went food porn. Uh, and I became obsessed with getting what we would now call impact theory blue. Uh, and I'd done like this research on color and making people feel creative and it feeling like something that would appeal to both men and women. And women ended up being a huge part of um what made us so financially successful.

They control all the shopping dollars. So anyway, uh when we first would go to bodybuilding like events and we had a booth there, we stood out like a sore thumb. Every you very easy to find us. 18 months later, I walked to the wrong booth because somebody had so mimicked our brand that out of the corner of my eye, I just assumed it was us. And I was like, "Oh, damn." So, it's like really happening. Then people start like hiring people. So, they hire somebody to go work at Quest.

So, their job is to get a job at Quest, learn our manufacturing techniques, and then leave. It's called corporate espionage. And so, we had that. It was really, it started getting wild. And so people started mimicking our engineering and our product design. And so yeah, it's just such as the nature of a competition, you got to stay ahead of everybody. Uh and OpenAI is learning that all too uh directly. And I know Elon for sure and I think Zuck did it as well. But people were just sniping their talent their talent their talent and that's where it gets really hard.

And so now they went from like being the place that every smart AI person wanted to go work and now there's, you know, legitimately six or seven other companies that are doing interesting things in AI. And so that talent pool is now being spread out. Yeah. Um it's it's very interesting because it seems like OpenAI is going all in on this uh hardware project. Um so from latest reports is that is something that's going to replace like a AirPod called Sweet Pea. It's supposed to be basically a smartphone in your ear, but I'm I'm sure they're going to lean into the um the translations and that type of real world interaction kind of looking like her um like the her ecosystem.

So, I mean, do you think hardware can save them and maybe that's where they differentiate because everybody could be a chat? Nothing is ever going to be a forever thing. So, I think honestly infrastructure is the thing that's going to save them. So, as long as they don't run out of the ability to raise capital, they're going to be fine. um they're embedded with the US government or at least they were with whatever project Stargate or whatever it was called. Uh so assuming that that's actually real and still moving that gives them a very defensible position.

This is another great thing if they can generate real revenue off of these things even if it doesn't end up being the final solution. if it's like the first big wave and it buys them three to five years um of you know billions and billions of dollars of revenue um that could be a very big win for them but they'll have to keep reinventing because then just like with the iPhone then uh a bunch of people started making smartphones so um you do want to go in grab market share early Peter Teal talks about this competition is for suckers so it's like they're going to want to go into this white space nobody else is there claim dominance uh and then hopefully they'll be able to gobble up enough market share that they can establish themselves as truly dominant that they'll always be the one that people think of.

I think they still have that lead from an AI perspective. Like when my mom thinks of AI, AI, AI, she thinks of open AI. Yeah, Ched GBT. So, um there's they still have huge advantages with that. But if people like Elon that just moves at a rate that other people just cannot keep up with is able to make Grock better than everything else by meaningful margin, then he could really begin to, you know, steal share over the next call 18 months to three years. We'll see.

It's hard. And they just announced the mega cluster in Miss Mississippi, too. Uh Grock did. So yeah, it's going to be crazy. It's going to be crazy. All right. Um engineering, sorry, real fast. A PSA. This is one if you're at home, lean in. uh stay close to the engineers. That's like when I really try to analyze what makes him so different. He understands the engineering. That's very important. And he stays close to the engineers. So with Kaizen, the video game that we're building, I'm now learning how to actually do the engineering, not because I expect to be writing C++ code.

I don't. But I want to be able to understand where the limitations are. And to do that, I've got to go in and actually start making changes to the game. I'm not doing it the level of code. I'm doing it the level of um Unreal Engine blueprints. But still being able to go in and edit the data tables myself, being able to change the blueprints myself. Like that kind of stuff, I think is going to go a long way towards a not being bamboozled. So if somebody tells me, "Oh, that takes a long time.

Hold on, why don't we just do this, this, or this?" Uh when you've got other options, it's very, very helpful. Um so yeah, so often I see people think to themselves, well, that's not really what I do. you know, I'll leave that to those guys. But the more that you understand it, especially engineering, the more that you don't get trapped in, well, this is how it's always done. The more you don't get trapped in analogy, can actually get down to first principles thinking because you understand how these things are built.

Um, so yeah, anyway, no matter what you're doing in life, getting to that stage is going to be very important. very important. very important. Uh, and last but not least, uh, Donald Trump had some colorful words for a, uh, worker at a Ford plant yesterday. Th This is wild, especially because it's a working-class guy. I'm very surprised. So, if you're not looking at your screen, the guy yelled, "You're a pedophile protector." And Trump mouth, he points at him and then mouths to him, "Fuck you." And then gives him the middle finger.

This is the president of the United States. Listen, if you're going to be in a populist moment, be be full populist. I guess it's this part right here. It's this part right here. And then he like waves. See? See? See? No, the middle finger was not to the floor. The middle finger was to that guy. Like that's Yes. Trump is not afraid to be petty as all hell. I don't know. I have to say that there is something about that part of his personality that I like.

So pettiness, pettiness, pettiness, the I'm just going to be human and if you're a dick to me, then I'm going to be a dick. Whatever. It's just there's a level of transparency. So like Trump, he can keep secrets. There's no doubt about that. But he reveals so much more than the average politician because he just says the thing. And so then you can decide, do I like that we're doing this thing or not? You don't have to wonder. I want control of Venezuela's oil. So we went in and we snatched up the dictator.

Aren't you supposed to lie or like offiscate that? No, no, no. We went in because we can. We snatched them up. We now control the oil. Who's the president of or who's running uh Venezuela? I'm the de facto president. It's like, damn. Like, he just says the thing. And so, there is something that feels far less alien about that. Obviously, if you've been here since the beginning of this live, you know that I have serious beef with his diplomacy. Uh, but I would be lying if I said I don't chuckle to myself when I see him do stuff like that.

It's very unpresidential, but it's still funny. still funny. still funny. We shall see. Um, yeah. I We shall see. Um, yeah. I guess the the plan I don't know if I if you're the CEO and like would do you say something? Do you just let him do it? Like Like Like you just let him do it because you understand that am I going to make a stand on that? Probably not. Uh, depending on your relationship with him, you might tease him or whatever, or depending on who you are, you might find that guy and get him fired.

Like, who knows? I have no idea what the CEO of Ford is like, but that the guy yelled like, you get the president to come to your factory, which is a big win. It gives you an opportunity to be in his ear to potentially uh know where the US is going from a policy perspective and position yourself that way, win a contract that might be advantageous to the company. And so to have a guy yelling some [ __ ] out like that is a far cry from my deal.

It's like keep your [ __ ] politics to yourself like we're trying to do something that's good for the company which will then be good for you. So um yeah I I would also have beef with that guy. But my response would be to say I want to see that guy and I want to talk to him and I want to address the company as a whole and say listen understand that we live in a country that has um policies that can hurt or advantage us that have contracts that we might be able to bid for that could hurt or if we lose could disadvantage us.

Uh and so we need to be thoughtful about our own diplomacy. And so you guys acting a fool and yelling at somebody that could help us do something good with the company, that's crazy. That's self-defeating. I'm certainly not going to fire the guy, such as my way. But um I am not going to pretend that it didn't happen. happen. happen. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, somebody literally asked that question, would you fire that guy? But no, you wouldn't. Got it. Not my style. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us.

We are here three days a week. If you have not already, be sure to subscribe so you know when we go live. Hit that notification bell. But we are here Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays at 700 a.m. Pacific time. We will see you on Friday. Take care everybody. Until then, be legendary my friends. Peace.