From Minnesota to Iran, How Economic Pressure Causes Unrest! + Trump Takes on Housing & Senate Bills

Key Takeaway

The tragic shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent during a Minneapolis raid highlights escalating tensions in America. While the shooting appears unjustified based on video evidence, the incident serves as a critical reminder: pick your battles carefully with federal agents. Comply first, fight later through legal channels. When federal agents have weapons drawn, driving away isn't heroism—it's putting yourself at unnecessary risk. Save your voice for the courtroom and political arena, where you can fight without sacrificing your life.

Episode Overview

This episode analyzes the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a US citizen and mother of three, by an ICE agent during a large-scale operation in Minneapolis targeting alleged fraud in the Somali American community. The hosts examine video evidence suggesting the shooting was unjustified, discuss the escalating civil tensions in America, and debate whether citizens should comply with or resist federal authority. They explore qualified immunity, DOJ use-of-force policies, and the dangerous consequences of treating every government action as tyranny worth dying to oppose.

Full Transcript

Transcript of From Minnesota to Iran, How Economic Pressure Causes Unrest! + Trump Takes on Housing & Senate Bills from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Thank you guys for tuning in. It continues to be a wild string of events. Kind of praying for uh this to chill. Bad for the show perhaps, but boy would it be better for life. A woman was shot to death by an ICE agent as she attempted to flee an altercation with ICE. Scott Besson, who was also in Minnesota for the uh fraud unveiling, if you will, says that there's $600 billion in annual fraud. That's 10% of government spending. Representative Luna has referred Minnesota Governor Walls and Keith Ellison to the DOJ for being complicit in the Somali fraud.

Trump says that he's not restrained by international law, only his own morality. But apparently he feels restrained by the military budget as he's aiming to blow it up massively in 2027. And with that budget, he says he plans to hit the Mexican drug cartels on land to stop drugs flowing into the US. It's only going to get wilder as we approach midterms. The Iranian uprising continues to escalate as the government cuts off internet and cell service, but fails to slow the movement. A lot going on there.

Trump is taking a shot at reducing housing prices with a bold new plan that I'm very excited to talk to you guys about. And RFK Jr. finally flips the food pyramid, which in my estimation has been the American government doing its best to either intentionally or unintentionally kill the American public. It is crazy what we have done to the American people with the things that we have recommended. Absolute either lunacy, stupidity on behalf of policy setters, uh, or intentional malice. I'll let you guys decide, but it has been catastrophic.

So, seeing that one flip is very strong magic. I'm extremely excited. Drew, how you feeling today? I'm good. Happy Friday. Um, happy Friday. I kind of forgot that it was Friday. was Friday. was Friday. Um, we had a lot lot to talk about. Um, but first I want to shout out Morgan Xavier on the live um chat. She dropped a bunch of super chats before we actually went live. Unfortunately, a couple of them disappeared. So, if you can slack me either in the chat or in the uh Discord, Morgan, we can read those out.

Um, and I think you did like two or three, but there's four in here that I can see. Oh, you can see them? Yep. Yep. Yep. Oh, I got timed out. All right. Well, let's go. Cool. Go through them right now. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. She I think she asked a question about the AI crisis and stuff like that. like that. like that. Yeah. Hi Tom. I made a clip from your October 29 uh show. Um because my 13-year-old son struggles to read and write due to an ADHD working memory disability.

I refuse to let us this define his potential and play that clip for him often. Your words give us the strength and motivation to reject the prognosis that his opportunities will be limited. I tell him this his potential just needs to be unlocked and he will get as far in life as the work he is willing to put in. I love I love all that you say with one concern. The digital world doesn't allow us to thrive. It seems to degrade us. Path number four rejects our biological coding for IRL connection and society is in chaos because we no longer value each other.

I plan to use fiction to explore path number five. Embrace we are more than biological. Reject atrophy of our abilities due to tech and AI. Seek IRL connection with fervor. I message you on X. Would love your critiques. Lisa in Canada. Canada. Canada. This is in response to the Will Kane interview yesterday. interview yesterday. interview yesterday. Got it. Uh yeah, so that was interesting. Um shout out to Will. Super grateful that he had me on. Uh it's always risky when you ask somebody questions like he asked me.

Uh that you're going to end up tumbling down some terrifying rabbit hole. Uh so listen, I get what you're saying about the digital world. I think it's inevitable. That's a debate for another day. Um, I don't think that the digital world has to separate you from creating fulfillment. Uh, but remember, I have a frame of reference that we're already inside of a matrix. Whether the matrix is created by our own mind or we're actually living inside of the matrix, it doesn't matter. You're interacting with a representation of what's real and not what's real itself.

Uh, so I don't see the further degradation by engaging with virtual worlds. I see people that don't know how to manage their own minds. And so, yes, if you're not having meaningful relationships with people, you have a problem. I don't think that that is necessarily uh torn us under by digital things. So, you look back in history and starvation was the thing that was tearing us apart and technology is the thing that has made that less and less and less of a problem. Bacteria ripped us apart.

Technology has made that less and less of a problem. So um the fact that we have some sort of imaginary line that we feel that we're now crossing uh that suddenly makes it the bad thing, it only becomes the bad thing depending on your relationship to it. So um I find people don't have good relationships with virtually anything in their lives. Take food. So um I got similar arguments back at Quest that you know food shouldn't be made to taste good and because people are just going to abuse it.

Uh and I take the exact opposite approach. people have an obligation to themselves to get their [ __ ] together. So anyway, uh not derailing too far down that rabbit hole. Yeah, we got to talk about Minnesota, man. man. man. We got to talk about Minnesota. Indeed. Let's jump into it. Here it is, guys. A tragic game of Fafo unfolded when a woman in Minneapolis was shot dead by an ICE agent when she attempted to flee in her SUV. This kind of stuff drives me crazy. Video evidence shows that she may have hit the officer with her vehicle as he opened fire.

The shooting has ignited a national firestorm over immigration enforcement, federal power, and local control. It happened on Wednesday morning, January 7th. 37year-old Renee Nicole Good, a US citizen and mother of three, was shot and killed by the ICE agent during a large-scale operation in Minneapolis. The operation targeted alleged fraud in the Somali American community and involved over 2,000 agents and had nothing to do with Good. Apparently, Good was simply someone who hates ICE and was allegedly attempting to alert locals to the raid. Now, for my money, it is obvious that Good should not have tried to flee.

And it's obvious that the officer should not have shot her. But apparently the agent that shot her, identified as Jonathan Ross, had previously been hit by another person fleeing an immigration raid. He got his arm pinned to the vehicle and was hospitalized after being dragged by the car for roughly 100 yards back in June of 25. This whole thing is so unnecessarily tragic and is a result of the escalating tensions between Americans. If people want to know what a modern civil war looks like, it looks like this [ __ ] Barricades have gone up in Minneapolis, creating autonomous zones reminiscent of the Chaz in Seattle.

That didn't [ __ ] work out. These aren't going to work out. Everyone right now is picking a side, and everyone is so convinced that they're right. They believe that the side of the political aisle that they didn't vote for is completely illegitimate to the point that they will obstruct and resist and put themselves in harm's way. Now listen, we have a second amendment for a reason. And that reason is to resist a tyrannical government. So if Good felt like she was prepared to pay with her life to resist the government, so be it.

But that means that she and I'm sure many others have completely given up on democracy. And I for one do not think that we are anywhere near that. This whole thing is just absolutely heartbreaking. After watching the video like a dozen times, I do not think the officer should have shot, but it is ultra high risk to flee in a vehicle when federal agents have their gun drawn and are surrounding your car. What are you doing? Put your hands up. Comply. Use the media. Use the political system to have your voice be heard.

If people really think we have already crossed a line where you need to resist the federal government, we are in for a world of hurt. You don't have to look far around the world to see how bad things can get. So, I would say this is a time everybody needs to calm down. Now, I get it. This incident is going to be hotly debated for years to come, but federal officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Christy Gnome and President Trump, say the shooting was selfdefense. They claim Good weaponized her vehicle to run over Ross.

And I'm telling you, looking at the video footage, it's going to be easy to make that case. It'll be debated, but there's enough there. They're even going so far as to call it an act of interference or even domestic terrorism. Local witnesses characterize the story differently, of course. They say good posi threat. I would agree with that. Uh the street was icy and her movement seemed like an attempt to leave. That seems very obvious to me rather than an attack. Experts note that conflicting orders were being given by the officers surrounding the vehicle.

That's going to add to the confusion they were reaching into the vehicle without clear cause. That can escalate situations unnecessarily. This all just seems like one big cluster [ __ ] But this is exactly how these things get out of control. Now, we're going to see how intense the fallout gets, but protests have erupted nationwide with thousands marching in the rain, chanting against ICE, and some even barricading streets. If you guys haven't heard the stuff coming out of uh New York, we have a clip. We'll play it in a second.

Uh but calling for Christine Gnome to be hung, saying, "Save a life, kill ICE." I mean, it is escalating in a very dark way. Minnesota Governor Tim Walls has been vocal disputing the federal narrative as propaganda. uh and he's calling it verifiably false. He called the ICE presence a reckless mobilization that's not keeping people safe and demanded state involvement in the probe. When the FBI took over the investigation and cut out the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Walls expressed deep doubt about a fair outcome, saying it feels very, very difficult that we will get a fair outcome.

He even put the National Guard on notice as a precaution and urged the Trump administration to leave Minnesota alone and give us a break. This is a dangerous escalation, boys and girls. Wall says his stance is about protecting his state, ensuring transparency, but many see it as intentional misdirection from the massive fraud that is in fact being perpetrated in his state. And it is entirely possible that he is involved in it in some way. We will see. that needs to play out in a court of law, but it is not looking good.

And in a divided country, words like what he's speaking can be interpreted, not only as stoking division, but many are accusing walls of fullblown insurrection. fullblown insurrection. fullblown insurrection. We're going to follow the story closely uh as the investigation unfolds into whether or not this was a justified shooting. Right now, you've got VP JD Vance saying that not only is this justified, but that the ICE agent is protected by absolute immunity because he was acting in service of his role as a federal agent. Now, from what I can tell doing some research, that is an overstatement to say the least.

Legally speaking, absolute immunity is a known term and it is a total shield from lawsuits or charges. Usually for high level officials like presidents or judges, as we saw in the recent Supreme Court ruling uh for federal law enforcement agents like ICE agents, it's what's known as qualified immunity, which is very different than absolute immunity. And that means that Ross is protected from civil suits if his actions didn't violate a clearly established right that any reasonable officer would know. In criminal cases, the supreme the supremacy clause can block state prosecutions if the act was necessary and proper to federal duties, but it is not automatic or absolute.

So experts like legal scholar Steve Vladic is pushing back on Vance's claims on X, saying that his use um Vance's use of absolute is misleading because state charges from Minnesota could still happen if evidence shows uh that excessive force was used. Former prosecutor Dave Aaronburgg told CNN that qualified immunity might hold in court, but calling it absolute ignores nuances like video evidence of conflicting commands being given by the different uh the different agents that were surrounding Good's vehicle and that there was no clear imminent threat.

No charges have been filed yet, but the DOJ is reviewing. is reviewing. is reviewing. So, man, this one this one's going to get wild. People are looking for that spark. I want to jump over to Jessica Tarlov on Fox News where she actually broke down what immunity meant um and kind of reading what is a justified shooting and then we can kind of talk about policies. We're not going to play the actual video. Um there's plenty of links and stuff like that. We don't want to get demonetized, but I think Jessica did a good down of breaking down exactly from a law enforcement perspective what are you supposed to do and kind of the order of operations.

So Jesse, you just said this woman is in severe crisis. She was boxed in. If you watch the whole video, she was boxed in. That's what she was boxed in. I said the team was boxed in. Okay. The team was boxed in by once she moved over, she pulled to the side and then she actually waves another ICE officer past her. Right. So, she's in such severe crisis that she can be polite in traffic and say, "You go ahead." And then you hear her actually audibly saying, "I'm pulling out." Right?

She she signals exactly what she's doing. she starts to move forward and everyone should go and watch the New York Times has about three and a half minutes of footage coming from every angle and this is what they brought up to President Trump when they were meeting with him last night when he said uh you know the officer the brave officer and after he tweeted I I it's hard to believe that the officer is alive when he walked away completely unscathed. We can see that on video as well but the footage contradicts the administration on almost every level of what they've said.

Renee Good waving the vehicle by the officer was to the side of the car when he drew the gun. He leaned over the hood for the first shot. You can see that on the angle, too, that he fired two more shots at arms length on a 90° angle. And it almost doesn't matter actually what she was doing because she didn't have another weapon. D according to DOJ policy, which they should be in compliance with, it says deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.

Firearms must be discharged at a moving vehicle unless a person is threatening deadly force by other means than the vehicle. And no other means of defense exist, including moving out of the path. He could clearly move out of the path because he did. And that's why he was unscathed in this. I don't know why it wasn't good enough for Secretary Gnome or the president or the vice president to say this is a tragedy. We need to investigate this. And not only do we need to need to need to So with that breakdown, you know, your deadly force is only justified if they if the agent's life is at harm by a weapon other than the vehicle, that's when it is justified.

Does this kind of change your interpretation of it or have This doesn't change my interpretation of this at all. That is my interpretation of this. He should not have fired. That is so obvious watching this over and over and over. Now the argument is going to be made. Listen, this was a dude that was drugged down the road in another incident just like this. So, he knows how deadly this can be. And I get that. And this is one of those things where th this is a tragedy.

I am not clocking this guy as just somebody who's out here looking for any excuse to shoot somebody. Now, look, investigate the guy. Maybe he does have a long-standing history of using his firearm inappropriately, in which case, [ __ ] him. Go to jail. But watching the video and knowing that this is somebody who's been in another altercation with a vehicle like this, got his arm pinned, they drug him 100 yards down the road, I get why this guy would uniquely think, no, no, no, this really is a weapon, she's weaponizing her vehicle against me.

So my critique to her is, first of all, this is a federal agency. Once you decide that you're going to stand in defiance of a federal agency, which by the way, as citizens, we should all reserve the right to stand in defiance of a federal agency. But we need to understand what that means. You are saying, "I'm willing to put my life on the line the line the line and I believe this thing is so justified and the government is so unjust that I'm prepared to die for this." And I'm just saying I think she misread that situation so grotesqually that have your voice heard a thousand%.

use the political machinery a thousand%. You still live in a country that has freedom of speech. You are going to have your opportunity to say the things that you need to say. But as a mother of three to put your life at risk at this stage of what is early innings from where I'm sitting of an actual civil war in slow motion. Uh it's not time. It's not time. Look, there are lines that the government could cross where I'd be like, "Yep, this is what the Second Amendment is for." I'm just saying we're not there yet.

Democracy has not broken down yet. Do I get nervous? Yes. But man, this is the kind of tragedy that plays out when you're like, this is the moment. This is where I'm like, I don't have to listen to you. I can drive my car off if I want to. I'm just like, listen, I've been roughed up by the police. I know what that moment is like. I know the adrenaline. I I'm sure I've told this story before, but speedrun uh was in a friend's apartment. She was gone.

I was alone. Police knock on the door. They say they got a 911 call from inside the apartment. I know that can't be true because I'm alone. Uh, nonetheless, they they don't battering ram the door down, but I tried to like peek out to see if it was really cops. They smash the door, send me flying, grab me, throw me up against the bar, hands behind my backs, guns drawn. You better hope that everybody in this apartment's okay. Like the whole nine. And what did I do?

I complied the [ __ ] out of their commands. I was like, "Listen, I know they're wrong." And yes, does it hurt to be uh thrown around, have your arms yanked? Is it scary to have guns drawn? Yes. But do you [ __ ] comply? Yes. You deal with like whatever this is going to be down the road if I'm like, "Hey, everything they did was wrong and bad and I'm going to pursue it." it." it." But Jesus, man, you don't drive off. So yeah, th this is where people you turn the engine off, you chill, and it's like if you're getting conflicting reports, keep your hands visible and empty.

And so this one is just stupid. It's stupid all around. Clearly from where I'm sitting, a bad shot. I think first off, it's a tragedy cuz there's a child that's now orphaned. And as a father, I empathize with that 110%. And even if she didn't have kids, it's a loss of life. it. But I just want to it's important to start there though because I think a temporary situation has now led a permanent this kid's life has changed forever now. Ever. And I think she has three kids.

So that's the first thing before we even get into the minutia of the video. The second thing is too often times we we expect the victim to be more composed than the trained professional. It is your job. You signed up. You got the 50k signing bonus. You decided you want to become a part of ICE agents. you decide you want to go and raid neighborhoods, that's completely fine. You have that jurisdiction. But it's also your uh responsibility to deal with your PTSD. It's your responsibility to deal with your itchy finger finger.

It doesn't matter what video you you show me. It doesn't matter what angle it is to kill somebody who's an American citizen while you are an immigration enforcement officer. Doesn't make sense. To kill an immigrant, to kill an illegal immigrant, crazy. Yeah, but at least if it was like it was a bunch of illegals running around and I had to maybe I can twist my arm. I'm like, "Okay, kind of okay. You were scared. Maybe." But I ain't going to front. This a white woman in Minnesota.

Like if if white people can't drive in Minnesota, I don't know where white people could go anymore. Like it doesn't make sense. This is what I'm saying. This is why I'm first of all, I'm glad it's a white woman so that we can not deal with that uh the other element of it. Th This is don't bad shoot. I want to be very clear that to me I'm not part of the investigation. I'm a guy commenting on the internet. Cool. Maybe in the fullness of time we learn something and we're all like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, great shot." Right now, this looks like a terrible shot.

He shouldn't have taken it. Absolutely horrible. Uh, deep problem. My PSA is to all of us citizens, pick your moment carefully when you decide that you were going to resist the federal government and say that they are an an unjust force because that has real consequences consequences consequences and because I worry that we could at some point we're not there yet, I don't think. Yay. let's make sure that we all calm down uh and that we never find ourselves there. But there are things the government could do where it's like, yeah, and now we do have to stand up.

So, I worry that you've got people that don't really think about the consequences. The wife gets out of the car, she's filming it all. They're not thinking you're about to get shot and killed. Uh they're thinking this is good content. They're thinking that we're just and you're wrong and they're not thinking this is insanely dangerous. At least that's how I'm reading it. Maybe they knew it was dangerous. Maybe they've talked endlessly about no, we we can't let the tyrannical US government be like this anymore. We need to start a revolution.

Maybe that's where they're at. But woo man, like when you take that step, you really better be committed because when you get into dangerous situations, even as unjust as this shooting seems to me, um it didn't have to play out. She could have made her point without putting herself in this kind of danger. Again, that's not me letting the cop off the hook or saying that this is all her fault. I'm just saying I beg of everybody that can hear my voice right now. You can't control the cops, but you can control yourself.

So given that you can control yourself and I identify as one of you, that's where all of my words are going to go. I don't identify as a federal agent. I don't think that I'm going to be able to sway the federal agency, agency, agency, but people that hear my voice right now can hear, hey, know what your line is. Where where does it become second amendment time? If we're not there, don't put yourself in this kind of situation because it gets so dangerous and I don't think people are being honest about how dangerous these situations get and so yeah, just please boys and girls be careful.

Yeah. Um, Yeah. Um, Yeah. Um, and I think again like I'm seeing a lot of people in the chat talking about like there was lawful orders like this is not the arrest video. This is not her getting pulled over and she's trying to pull off. This is not her again running for her life. as we just broke down your your life wasn't imminent like to to me that's a choice that's not a reaction that's a choice you are so emboldened you think that you can kill people without remorse you watch too many John Wick videos you've been playing Call of Duty all night I don't know what it is but to anybody that says the shooting was justified I don't think this woman did anything to lose her life maybe I'm just a soft life apologist I don't know but she did nothing to warrant losing her life life life and and so to even and it sounds like even to the letter of the law that if they don't car vehicle as weapon, great.

You can't shoot somebody unless they have another weapon that they're using to endanger people. I mean, the assuming that what she just read is accurate. That's pretty [ __ ] clear. She's not waving a machete. She doesn't have a gun. She's merely driving off. And so, if the law says uh get out of the way, then you get out of the way. Bad shot. Um, so I think you and I are saying slightly different things. Maybe both are just equally true. Um, yes, stupid shot. You've got to train that out of people and uh he's going to need to be investigated and there's going to need to be consequences.

Um, dear boys and girls, are you really saying that you're at the Second Amendment? Second Amendment? Second Amendment? That's my punch line because this stuff gets dangerous. And whether this guy goes to jail or not, she's still dead. So, I'm just saying, damn. Like, stop [ __ ] around. [ __ ] around. [ __ ] around. Uh, real quick from the chat, uh, somebody said, "We get it. Don't jump in the tiger cage, but the point is there shouldn't be a tiger in the cage to begin with. The tiger is supposed to be a trained peace officer." Yeah.

Listen, the of course there needs to be a tiger in the cage. You give them a gun for a reason. So, the Yeah, but again, we're not talking about cops. We're not talking about FBI agents. We're talking about ICE agents. These are people that deport people. These are immigration. Your job is to catch people that are here illegally. So you're saying you're more on the UK side. The vast majority of law enforcement should carry a stick. And that's that's that's again, we're not talking about law enforcement.

We're not talking about cops. We're not talking about FBI agents. We're not talking about CIA. We are talking about people that are trying to find illegal aliens. They're going door to door trying to find illegal aliens. So the fact that you're masked with a gun surrounding my car, I can understand why I would not want to be I'm not illegal. I got my papers. I want to drive away now. So, it's it's one of those things that we're we're blending these things. Which argument do you want to have?

Uh, should immigration officers be armed or because now it feels like you don't see this woman as somebody who's trying to resist the government. You just see this woman as somebody who, oh god, wrong place, wrong time. I'm scared. I'm driving off. That is not my read on the situation as of right now today. This was somebody who intentionally put her car in the middle of the street, was trying to alert people that there was an ICE raid going on, which is a thing that's happening all over the place, especially in sanctuary cities, which is standing in defiance of the US government.

And I'm saying I still consider the US government to be a legitimate authority, which means you don't get to do that. And so, so we can have the should ICE agents be armed? I for one am perfectly fine with that. uh does not sound like you are. So you think ICE agents should not be armed full stop. No, I think that we shouldn't conflate ICE agents with cops and FBI agents. But what does that because I think manifest that down to something tactical. So you're okay with them having weapons?

They just can't draw them or them or them or I think yes there in this specific situation to have a weapon drawn at a lady in a car is automatically like you're trying to intimidate people. You want to have your authority be uh you're trying to present your authority in a way that it doesn't necessarily need to be. The thing that gets me is that like for cops, if I'm pulling somebody over, I don't know what you have on your belt. There's there's a lot of different situations.

These people aren't supposed to be even around her car. Like it so it's one of understand that. Why aren't they supposed to be around her car? She's obstructing justice. the the the entire pro the point that ICE was on that street was they were going door to door to knock on um people's uh they were going door to door to try to see if they could find agents right there was a bunch of uh cars lined up on the streets like you said she was in there beeping hey ICE is there Ice is there now they said you have to move your car ma'am you have to move your car ma'am what does she do she reverses one gray SUV passes the second gray SUV passes the guys then come and surround her car she sees her surrounding her car she pulls off to the right tries to swerve to the right get shot we can slow motion Whatever angle you see, it's low moes and she kind of goes there.

The reason that I'm saying they had an opportunity that they weren't looking, they could have focused on their mission at hand. This person is weird. They tried to intimidate her. She wanted to leave. Okay, now it's time for her to go. Let me get back to the mission on hand. Or is it like, no, I'm going to stop anybody that's getting in the way of us doing this. And that's the obstruction of justice. Obstruction of justice is a civil it's a it's a it's a misdemeanor.

They should be arrested. They should be thrown out. Where's a firing? Where is a firing? But you and I both agree that it's a bad shooting. What I'm trying to figure out is um you do not seem to want ICE to have weapons or is it that okay um you've got somebody in the street with their vehicle, you can have a gun, but drawing it on a person who is um obstructing justice that we don't do. Is that where you're trying to? Yes. Got it. So you're saying training should be such that uh if you are clearing people out and they refuse to leave or whatever and they're blocking you can ask you can pepper spray but you can't and I'm putting those words in your mouth but you can't use a gun.

That's how you would want the official handbook to read. to read. to read. You should only use a gun if your life is actively threatened. is if your life is actively threatened. Oh, as soon as you get into that, he's gonna say, "I did feel like my life was actively threatened actively threatened actively threatened because I because I was I decided to get in front of a car that was driving away." Then that's your choice. It's the same thing. It's the same. But again, this is America.

The Trayvon Martin thing. George Zimmerman followed a kid, beat him up, and said, "My life is threatened." And he got off. So the whole like stay in your like he's going to get off. He's not going to get prosecuted. This is going to be a nothing burger in two weeks. My frustration now is that no matter what happens, it's always, oh, law enforcement, listen to them. They're fine. Lean back in your chair. And for certain situations, I can say that if they were in the south side of Chicago and a bunch of gang members were firing back, then oh yeah, I'm not saying throw out pepper spray and tase and say, "Hey guys, put your guns down so I can come arrest you." I can understand if there was a a bunch of illegal people flying in all different directions and they were all former gang members from Venezuela and you have to get a little bit physical.

I can understand all these situations, but I don't see anywhere in this video that you can kill people. Like, it just it didn't make sense to me. me. me. But we both agree. So, I want to make sure because I feel like you keep coming back to that argument. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh we're on the same page. So, now I think the difference is that you're like, she should have just stopped and waited to comply for all these things these things these things clearly clearly clearly and only and only and only but puts themselves in this situation and doesn't comply.

In that statement, I can equate it to she shouldn't have had a miniskirt. That's why you the guy followed you into the alley and took advantage of you. And I think that it's like victim blaming. Like she should have did this thing when she didn't have the gun. She would let two cars pass. She was about to then drive off cuz she let the cars pass that was blocking. So she completed she stopped obstructing at that point and was ready to kind of get out of the way, but then she still got shot.

shot. shot. Have you heard about those people? Oh god, I forget the couple. It was something like um they spent all this time raising money for people. Forgive me if I get the countries wrong. Uh raising money for people in Afghanistan and um then they actually went to Afghanistan at one point and tried to hike across and they were murdered. murdered. murdered. I haven't heard it but I got so roughly what maybe it's not Afghanistan but an equally uh high-risk country that's very dangerous. Um, at what point do we go, "Hey, probably shouldn't have gone there." Get the intentions.

Get that you want to show people that they're people, too. But also, reality is it's a hyper dangerous area and something bad might happen to you. I'm not trying to victim blame, but I am trying to say you have dramatically increased your risk of a bad thing happening to you by going and doing that. I'm not saying it's okay that they did it. I'm just saying, damn, like there there are situations that you can do a risk assessment of ahead of time and go, is this the right risk assessment?

So, I want to make sure that you and I don't become ships passing in the night. I'm trying to pin you down on policy because at some point this has to be written as a set of words that can be read in a court of law. And if the set of words that can be read in the court of law are only pull your gun when you feel like your life is truly in danger, you're going to get some percentage of these shootings. And this is why people get so wound up.

So, uh, it's never going to stop because it is a high-risk situation with humans wielding deadly weapons. You put those things together and there will be some percentage of people getting shot. Now, can we improve it over time with better training, better selection, paying people better? Yeah, probably. And I'm certainly not saying that what we have is the peak of what this is ever going to be. But I'm saying when you put people in this kind of situation, it is it is a very high-risk situation.

And so some percentage of the time people are going to get shot. Now the one to me that is the most horrifying of all time and it [ __ ] haunts my dreams is the guy um something Tempa or something like that and uh he's in a hallway and there's like three cops have guns drawn on him. Oh god, we could probably find this. But um in fact if anybody in the chat knows who I'm talking about and they're telling him like like really weird things like lift your legs, put your legs down, put your head behind your head and turn it all around.

It was so confusing. I was listening and I'm just like [ __ ] watching a YouTube video and I was like, "Fuck, what are they asking him to do?" And he moves his hand too fast and they shoot him dead. And I was like, "God damn." Like that [ __ ] was so terrifying because he was mistaken for somebody else. Like it didn't have anything to do with him. He doesn't even know what's going on. There was no way for him to avoid that situation cuz he was just walking down a [ __ ] hall and all of a sudden they're looking for somebody else.

They come across him and he's trying to a [ __ ] like I don't know what you want me to do but I'm really freaking out. He was laying face down when they shot him. Absolutely wild. So it's one of those where okay if we know that this kind of thing can happen anywhere. Just wrong place at the wrong time. Don't put yourself into an even worse situation. I'm not trying to shame her, blame her. I'm just saying we as a country are increasingly deciding where the line is for the Second Amendment.

I understand this is not the argument you're making and it's very difficult because we're both very um animated about two separate issues that are in some way colliding right here. Uh my thing is thing is thing is unfortunately we're at a position where people are making a decision as to whether they think the US government has crossed over into illegitimacy. illegitimacy. illegitimacy. Because of that there's going to be escalating escalating escalating violence against agents of the federal government. Some outright violence. Uh, obviously we've already seen um I think it was in DC the um I don't know what agency they were part of but they got shot.

Uh we've seen attacks on ICE all over the place. So this is escalating. It is only going to escalate further. And so my PSA is uh these things can turn deadly very fast. So make sure that you're willing to that it matters so much to you that you're actually willing to put your life on the line. Otherwise, comply, stay calm. These things are scary and dangerous by their nature. I do not trust anybody's training. Um, period. period. period. Um, Um, Um, someone in chat said something that I think will bridge the two of you.

Uh, potentially if you guys agree with it, uh, local police should have been put in place to keep protesters out of the way of the ICE agents. And then some people are saying um maybe Drew would have rathered the ICE uh like the ICE agents aren't the ones dealing with local people. They're only going for illegals and there's police to back them up. Uh let's let's take a step back, right? Because you said from a policy perspective. So let's go to the very top, right? Um Obama, he deported everybody.

The most deport deportionist president ever. I know I made that word up. Um, up. Um, up. Um, not one American citizen was killed in his apprehension or deportation. You know why? Cuz he was doing it at the border. Kids in cages. We stopped it at the thing. I looked the We stopped it at the thing. I looked at illegal uh your record. Did you have a criminal record? Yes, I found you. I put you away. So instead of us kind of splitting hairs on whether Renee Good turned the wheel fast enough or complied fast enough or whether the officer had PTSD or didn't have PTSD or was able to process in that real time, we could just not have people in mass trying to grab people out of communities and that would avoid escalation.

That would avoid protest. Your policy is ICE could be done better. Yes. So how well I think you're pushing it farther than that. So if if you can take Christine Gnome's word uh they offer these cities will go take the people out of your jails that we know are illegal and we'll deport them and the sanctuary cities have said no we will not allow you to do that. So now you've got this antagonism between the states and the federal government and that's the thing I'm worried about.

So you've got walls escalating, you've got Mam Donnie escalating, you've got plenty of why where why is M Dani escalate? He's saying we will not cooperate with ICE in any way, shape, or form. So same thing, ICE has made the offer to New York. We'll go into your jails. We'll remove the people that we know are legal. They're saying hard pass. Absolutely not. And so part of what is playing out here is you've got Trump who's authoritarian by nature. So he loves go in with guns, [ __ ] kick doors down.

If people get unruly, they got shot. It is what it is. There's no doubt that is part of this problem. Then you've got um people that feel that the US government, our own citizens feel the US government is illegitimate, that it is to be resisted. Um some will resist in her way, banging pots and pans, trying to get people, blocking roads, that kind of thing. others are going to be far more escalatory and violent. Um, but that's a decision people are increasingly making and I just see a pot that is boiling and I'm like there isn't going to be a backing off of the um ice going in and pulling forcefully immigrants out as long as sanctuary cities say we will not cooperate in any way, shape or form.

So to get to that, we would need the concession of okay, cool. Let's cooperate, state and local and federal agencies. Let's cooperate on identifying these people, getting them in peaceful moments either in jail doing foe. I don't know that um Obama did this, but I would be very surprised if he didn't where you send them things like you just won the lottery, but you have to come collect it. And so they'll pick people up that way. They obviously didn't actually win the lottery, but they go in and they pick people up and they're like, "Gotcha." And they take you out.

um arresting them on a parking violation and you take them out or a traffic violation. So, we have to end that antagonism. And antagonism. And antagonism. And yeah, anyway, yeah, anyway, yeah, anyway, but but let's play that analogy out, right? Um we're worried about illegals coming to a country. There was millions that came in, right? Where did they come in through? The southern border, right? So, if they came in through the southern border, the illegal millions of illegals that we need to get out of this country, what state share a southern border?

Texas, Arizona? I don't think California is going to be an issue. is going to be an issue. That's going to be a sanctuary city. I don't think San Diego is going to be like, "Yeah, come on in and come get everybody." Uh everybody." Uh everybody." Uh LA is probably your bigger offender. But yeah, yeah, yeah, Arizona, that's a red city. That's a red state. Phoenix is a red state. They still wear cowboy hats. Texas, y'all own Texas, right? Texas is the is the uh Republican mecca, right?

So there's no illegals in Texas or Arizona. Is that 0%. We got to fly over those two states and go into Minnesota streets. No, this is a political thing that Trump is doing to put his emphasis on to put his emphasis on certain other states for sure. So, while Minnesota, yes, um the Somali fraud is real and we need to stop that and they need to be prosecuted and all that, I get that. But the fact that you skipped over all these other states that you could have done that you could have did these things.

So, again, man, Trump is trying to flex. This is not about politics. This is not about helping you. Oh, this is 100% about politics. But I'm saying this is not about I'm doing this for the American people. Trump is trying to flex right now. Trump is get getting paid. Trump's boys is getting paid. Trump's oil boys is getting paid. They're not doing this to make Minnesota, American people in Minnesota feel any better. Your rent's not going to go down. Your eggs ain't going to go down.

It's It's not about that right now. This is Trump trying to do this on the local level. I'm going to show you that I'm going to make I'm the law and order president and I'm going to do this on the international level. I'm going to steal somebody in Venezuela in the middle of the night. that those are the two like that's what's frustrating me I think with this entire conversation because it's going it's giving me flashbacks of all the Black Lives Matter stuff of like what do you mean if if a cop yells at you you're supposed to drop and everything is just stop and there's this like assumed authority that is going in one direction that we're not saying okay wait why are we even in this situation how did how does this even come and we're spending more time talking about tire angles and um sanctuary cities and stuff like that as opposed to like what's the administration that's causing this.

What's the environment that this plant is growing from? What's the soil that is causing these fruits to pop up out of the tree? So, yes, this apple sucks and it tastes like [ __ ] and we shouldn't eat this apple anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. But instead of us blaming the apple, let's connect it to the branch. Let's connect it to the tree. Let's connect it to the roots and the soil that has laid this out. out. out. I agree with all that as the uh king of cause and effect.

But at the same time, you have to deal with where you are. I think about this a lot with um investing. So, hey, all these weird scary things coming down the pike uh with AI, it's going to we're going to be post capitalism, but I don't invest like we're already post capitalism. So, we can walk through and have a debate about how we've ended up here. We can certainly talk about the fact that um Trump and maybe we should just be having these conversations sequentially. So, the thing that I wanted to cover today was this woman got shot.

How did this play out? The conversation I think you're interested in having is what is the um underlying cause and effect that has led this to be a problem, especially now if you're linking it to Black Lives Matter and the assumed authority going in one direction and but how do we end up where uh there are so many more um interactions with African-Americans. So that's like okay for sure a conversation can be had. I didn't go straight there, but I get I kind of get where you're putting the pieces together.

Uh Uh Uh I'll say it in one sentence. The my frustration right now is that with the political turmoil that Trump came into power in going from 2020 to 2024, y y y the backlash from DEI and all these other policies and how he has implemented his ICE policy is antagonistic and not for the benefit of the American people. Okay. Um, so if we put a button on the first conversation and move quickly to that to address it, I think that um, populism drives me crazy for the exact thing that you're pointing out now.

The kind of person that comes to power is the strong man who promises to slap your enemy around. That's who we vote for. So, first of all, we all need to look at ourselves and say, "Okay, this is the kind of person that comes to power in moments like this." uh they come to power in moments like this because they the the economy is legitimately broken and it's always the economy. So, uh self-inflicted wound that we have done over very extended periods of time. Um, now you're in this situation where you have somebody that is um, putting forward, hey, here's the thing that I want to do and you've got all these other populist leaders at the ground level that are pushing back because they feel that they're in a tribe and they also are not fighting for the American people.

Tim Walls is not trying to make the American people's lives better in Minnesota, no matter what he tells you. So you have populist leaders that will do and say anything that they need to do to get reelected and now they're colliding and everybody's on a team and you're either pro Trump or against Trump, pro Tim Walls or against Tim Walls and nobody is thinking about the American people. Everybody is just thinking about being right. And so if you want to get to the systemic underlying cause of all of this, all of this stuff is economic.

And so then we end up abstracting away from the real the the sort of headline conversation that we were having and we start getting into okay how do you fundamentally deal with the fact that humans will always have unequal outcomes because God saw it fit to give us unequal talents and okay we can have that conversation but that gets very heated very fast does not tend to be very productive and so where these things need ultimely imately to play out is how do we get to the physics of the situation of the economic situation that is leading us to this?

That's the real like dealing with the underlying root cause. Now you can go up a level to the um the root cause of you have two populist antagonistic forces that are coming at each other. Uh how do we resolve that? But that's going to be something that will only play out over time as you bring back prosperity. That's the only solution to a populist uprising. That or enough suffering that people are like, I just can't tolerate any more dead. And that's the current position we're in right now.

Prosperity is the only way that's going to s solve all of these things. things. things. That's the only thing history shows us is a solution. So, uh, you either cause enough people to suffer through a civil war, a revolution, where we've all lost so many people and struggled even harder economically that we just all that rage ultimately burns out. Uh or you could get something like the French Revolution where Napoleon comes in and goes, "Wow, you guys really want to kill a lot of people." Cool.

I'm gonna aim that at Europe and so we're going to go kill other Europeans. Uh and so that was very prosperous for France. But it it really isn't until you suffer for long enough that you're willing to make concessions that you get to the other side of this. And so, look, I guess hope against hope, I'm hoping we can back away from that edge. And I in moments like this, I just feel it escalating. And even like you and I can't agree on the important thing that we need to discuss right now.

Um, it's tough, man. It's tough. And I know you well enough to know that you're well-meaning from top to bottom. I hope you know me well enough to know I'm well-meaning from top to bottom. But we still look at this from wildly different frames of reference. Um, I don't even hear you saying anything that I think is wrong. It's just like we just are um animated by very different elements of a very multivariate problem. And this situation is only going to get worse because as you called out in the beginning um there were now protests because of this shooting um and people in NYC were saying some pretty damning things.

Um things. Um things. Um this is wild. Yeah, this is crazy. St. St. St. Then they go on to say save a life kill. And then [ __ ] Charlie K for good measure. I don't I don't know if he's just become like a avatar for the right. I guess um um um you you said it, but I feel like that's that's not like I don't see prosperity happening anytime. It's going to be an economic blood bath before the age of abundance comes. So, I mean, we'll we'll transition back to like what's really going on with the economy in a second, but first just to address and admittedly now we're playing at the headline level or sorry, we're playing at the surface level what I call with my wife, we're arguing about the tea when the underlying thing really is economic.

Uh, but it is now manifesting as tribal warfare. And I agree that this isn't going to play out in the same way that the civil war played out uh between the north and the south. But I I am very confused by people who are like, "How would we even have a civil war anyway?" What? Like uh look at what's happening in Minnesota where you have the governor standing against uh the president in league with other sanctuary cities. So it will be a red blue divide. Um, but to but to that though, Tim Waltz did call for the National Guard after the shooting cuz he knew it was going to be a [ __ ] cell.

So, it's one of those things where although I can be in opposition of the president, I could still be on the side of law and order. Yeah, we'll see if that's what he means. I'm not entirely sure that's what he means. Now, I'm also not entirely sure that he means we're going to stand against President Trump with the National Guard. Uh, but that is certainly a uh an interpretation that you're seeing people use. And I wish there was enough there uh to say that they're intentionally misunderstanding him, but I'm not sure that they're intentionally misunderstanding him.

So, that needs to play out. I don't have confidence that it's um that he's going to escalate like that, but this is how it would play out. You will see more and more lines like this being drawn at the state level. Uh that there are certain states that are one party states and they will draw a harden fast line. They will group up with each other. Um, and that's how if it were to escalate, it would escalate in that fashion because then Trump is going to do more of cutting off federal funds, then it will become clear that they aren't able to balance their own budgets and that they rely on those federal funds and things will just escalate, escalate.

So, we'll see how that ends up shaking out. My hope is that it doesn't get any more violent and that it remains these small pockets of violence. That's always been my pitch is that small pockets of violence were already there. Those are happening with increasing frequency and I hope that they don't spill into something bigger. But when I start seeing how many people think that ICE certainly is illegitimate use of force and seeing now that they're willing to um certain we we've seen both call it more than peaceful resistance all the way to outright violent resistance.

I don't know where it stops. I don't know if it's an escalatory cycle that just spirals spiral spirals. Trump is certainly ratcheting up both at home and internationally. So, I expect that to trigger people to get more um to give more push back. So, he's certainly not going to chill anybody out. He's going to be a huge part of the problem. But yeah, that hearing chants like that certainly does not say to me, oh, this will calm down. This says that if this weren't the winter, uh we would probably be seeing this pop off a lot harder, a lot faster.

But thankfully this is happening in the dead of winter which tends to mute these kind of things. But I mean look at that for people that are looking at their screens. You seeing all the barricades. the barricades. the barricades. Um Um Um we'll see. we'll see. we'll see. Yeah. And they were similar um barricade setup during 2020. I want to say Portland was it? Uh you had Portland and Seattle. Um I I I feel like this is more of a a response, but I yeah, I guess that we'll see what happens.

I think it's still very very early and even after this happening yesterday, the NYC uh protest coming out, it's to your point, it's going to get worse before it gets better. better. better. Well, yeah, and I mean I don't want to shorthand it just to that because um you can do thought experiments to start looking into the future. Okay, thought experiment number one, the one that I really want to believe is true. uh the growth has been incredible. So if you look at um some of the things that have been reported, I think it was either Q3 or Q4 had like 4.5% growth.

So and they're um projecting even more in Q1 of 2026. So it's like if we can get that growth going and make sure that it's being felt by your average American, that will be huge. That will go a long way towards um soothing some of these concerns. If people see, oh [ __ ] housing prices really are going down. As you reduce uh illegal immigrants in an area, housing prices start going down. If we really do start uncovering the kind of fraud that Besson is talking about, which we're going to cover in a minute, um then hey, all of a sudden we can get closer to balancing the budget, inflation goes down even more.

We are going to see it is an absolute mathematical certainty. We are going to see rates come down in 2026 barring some unforeseen thing which is always possible. I do not think I see the future clearly but as of right now today with the pieces on the chessboard given how much debt has to be refinanced in 2026 they are going to lower rates more. Uh the Fed itself, certain um people on the dot plot or whatever they call it are signaling that we'll get up to a hundred bips uh this year in rate reductions.

So like all of those things like they will start making people feel more prosperous like money is easier. It's a short-term solution but nonetheless. So anyway, if you couple growth with that, jobs coming back, Trump getting a bunch of investments in the US. Uh if Iran actually does fall, China starts getting isolated, the US is controlling its hemisphere, the US is able to keep the petro dollar going longer because in this fantasy land, Iran falls, we control Venezuela, that doesn't fall into civil war. Like, okay, that the sort of growth scenario, yay, I could see people calming down just because life is getting better.

things are are are but we're still inflating the dollar and we're still going to overspend and we still have budget. So you would be doing it at a uh noticeably slower rate. You would in this thought exercise exercise exercise uh it would be something that people feel in their wallets. Now some of this is going to be whether the tariffs get rejected or not. If the tariffs don't get rejected, which by the way the numbers are showing it has not impacted inflation the way that people thought it was going to.

So that means that the sellers and the importers are eating most of the cost and the American public isn't. So it's generating all it's tax you might as well think of it that way. It's generating this tax but it's not yet being passed on to the American people. So it's like [ __ ] generating hundreds of billions of dollars very little impact on the deficit. Now if they block that different issue but there is a growth scenario. There's a path however narrow that path is. There is a path where you grow your way out of this and people start calming down because it's actually working.

Now, there's another path where it doesn't work. Trump continues to escalate because he just cannot have anybody um push back against his authority. His comments recently about um I don't adhere to international law. The only thing that could stop me is my own conscience. It's like damn. So, that you don't want to be in that position. You want somebody who's like, I'm here for the American people. I will stop. If the American people don't want me to do something, I'm not going to do it. So, yay.

That's what you want in a democratically elected leader. You do not want a democratically elected um authoritarian death spot, which it's like which way is he going to fall? So, we'll see how that goes. So, if he continues to escalate, if his growth trajectory doesn't work, and that only makes him more fish in terms of, well, if I can't win at home, I'm going to win internationally. and he goes in, god forbid, by force, grabs up Greenland, isolates us from Europe. Europe's already talking about we need new partnerships.

That is a paraphrase, but directly out of Mcronone's mouth. And it's like, hey, there's a world where out of spite those guys start finding a way to justify our relationship with China. China. China. And that would be terrible. Or even just that they're trying to isolate the US and now they want to start buying. Let's say, in fact, the more I think about it, the more it's probably going to be something like this. [ __ ] America. [ __ ] Trump. Uh, we're just going to start buying oil from Saudi Arabia in euros.

That alone would be a huge blow. We're going to stop buying debt. They don't have to crawl into bed with China. They don't have to be nice with Russia. They could just be like, "Fuck you." to America in terms of the petro dollar, in terms of uh US debt. So, there are plenty of ways where isolating people could be a problem. And so if all of that angst just puts him in this ultraaggressive position, it's going to make the people that are already being aggressive against him be even more aggressive against him here at home.

And so then this just escalates, escalates, escalates. If you keep seeing unwarranted violence in the immigration raids, then that's really going to stop being popular. So, it'll be one now where he loses legitimacy in the eyes of a lot of people on the right who want the deportations but can't stomach the way that he's going about it. It will also force the people that are going to defend him no matter what to start sounding like just absolute lunatics because there are some things you just can't justify.

And so, but they will. And so, that'll cause the right to tear itself apart. And so, um yeah, that would be the horrific solution. And if all of that hits and we don't grow and the economy, we just keep marching faster and faster towards having to hyperinflate the currency, that that is a disaster scenario. So you have no international allies. You're not helping the people here at home. All of the sudden, all the people that promise to spend money here aren't spending money here. China makes a move on Taiwan because they see that you're weak.

Uh, and now you're put in a position where like gamers today are just so pissed because all of their graphics chips, graphics cards are going to AI. Um, and you now feel that shortage. We could feel that shortage if TSMC ends up getting sequestered by China and they start slowing delivery or outright um, embargoing it or saying we'll only give you access to these ships if we get access back to Venezuela. I mean, there's oil. There's all kinds of ways that this could play out and it goes everything from, oh wow, we might actually grow our way out of this to, holy Jesus, we have no allies.

China's getting stronger again. Uh, and we have put ourselves in a position where Trump is incentivized just to be more and more draconian. draconian. draconian. Out of those two scenarios that you laid out, one where we grow our way out of it, international peace comes down, Trump gets everything he wants, cart blanch versus the other side, Trump gets internal resistance, this just happened. Things get worse before they get better. We get isolated on an international level. Do you have a read on which one of those scenarios you think is happening more?

happening more? happening more? It's almost certainly going to be a middle road between the two. We won't grow as much as we want. Uh things won't play out internationally as badly as we fear. Russia still isn't able to uh do away with Ukraine. China is pumping so much money into their economy. They're clearly in trouble. So, they don't have uh any great shakes. They're clearly aware of their own demographic issues. So, there's a lot of weakness there. There's a reason why when we went into Venezuela and China just spent God knows how many billions of dollars on prepayments on oil that they were like, well, okay.

And they just backed off, right? If they felt that they were in a stronger position, they would make a bigger stink about it either through sanctions or whatever. Um, so yeah, it it'll be somewhere in the middle. This is going to be extremely messy. there are going to be bigger problems. Right now, if you look at poly market, uh Trump is on a one-way ticket to losing in the midterms. It's not even close. It's something like 7030. So, um yeah, and if he loses at the midterms, becomes lame duck, gets virtually nothing else done.

I do the thing that I worry about in that scenario uh which right now is the most likely. The thing I worry about in that scenario is that um if they impeach Trump, the left comes in and they get a populist leader who just wants to put everyone in jail on the right, then now you have the the escalation on that side, which I think would ultimately break us. So, if either side gets into a arrest them all stance, it's game over. I can't believe we've been talking about this for an hour already.

All right, let's jump into some super chats. Time flies when you're having fun. Let's do it. Uh, yeah. Uh, yeah. Uh, yeah. First up from Stoic Anarchy. I lived in Minnesota and was jumped by three guys. They were pulling out my buddy from the car. I backed into the car, blocking me, and drove off and got 18 months in prison because a car is considered a deadly weapon in Minnesota. Yeah. Well, uh I hear that. It sounds like the language for an ICE officer is a little bit different.

So, um it sounds like if we can trust the things that were read that that's going to play out differently for them, that super sucks for you. And I cannot believe that you got 18 months if the way that you laid the story out is accurate. Um the part where he stabbed somebody, right? If if the way that you laid the story out is accurate, that's horrifying. So, um yeah. Can we queue up three? Uh, Eric and second super chat uh from Andrea2798. Andrea2798. Andrea2798. I would feel more of a peace with everything if this stuff happened organically.

People feel away but can't actually articulate it. Sounds like a color revolution by people who know how to get it done by using good-hearted people. people. people. Interesting. So they think that there's more of a conspiratorial angle going on. I don't think you need that right now. Would are there conspiratorial elements propping this up? A thousand%. Look at the NOS's. Look at some of the stuff that uh Mike Benz is talking about. It's absolutely uh one of those it's so blackpilling. I loved and hated researching Mike because it really did make me think differently about how the world works.

I thought the NOS's were like people that were really trying to help. And so to realize how much of it is horrifying uh was really disillusioning and very uh sad. But given the state of the economy, if you just showed me our balance sheet and I knew nothing about what was going on, I'd be like, "That country is in trouble. I don't know what country it is. I just know it's in trouble." Um, so economics drives everything. I wish there was a better way to uh quickly encapsulate encapsulate encapsulate why that is.

The um speedrun of it always sounds so clinical. I don't think people understand. But we we want to be economic units. economic units. economic units. Economics drives the vast majority of how we survive. Uh it's how we pulled ourselves out of having to fight with wolves all the time to stay alive. Uh it's how we fight against the cold. Watch, if you watch three or four seasons of Alone, you will suddenly very quickly understand, oh, this is why we're economic units. We don't want to starve to death.

Got it? Um so because we are just never going to go back to that. You die way too fast, way too painfully, way too young. Um, so we're economic units by our own design. And there in lies why all of your problems are economic in nature. And it's so easy to manipulate. The other Oh god, I said I was going to speedrun this. The other problem is why can't we all be the same level of smart? We're not. And so smart Mchavelian people are always going to take advantage of people that are not as smart or not as Mchavelian.

Mchavelian. Mchavelian. Period. I'm going to stop there. Always. Uh, Always. Uh, Always. Uh, always what? always what? always what? Smart Mchavelian people will always take advantage of those that are not. Smart Mchavellian people will always go as far as they can go until they meet sufficient force. sufficient force. sufficient force. I see. I see. I see. So, I hate that that is true. Um, but that is true. The law of nature is that um you're going to go get resources wherever you can and uh if humans that are good at collecting the resources that you want, especially women, um they're going to go and take them by force.

And unfortunately, we have a an algorithm that runs in our brain that says they're the other person. They're not human. In fact, I almost pulled it. There was a clip of somebody saying either ICE agents aren't human or Christy Gnome isn't human. And I forget which one, but they they literally said they're not human. And I was like, "Oh my god, this is how it starts." And so that algorithm is alive and well. And when people believe that the other people are not human, then of course you can kill them.

And we do. Humans kill in the most horrifying fashion possible. Like it is wild. We are super capable of that. So that. So that. So um and to all the Twitter uh the YouTube lawyers in the chat talking about vehicular homicide DUI is legal because of vehicles of all those things are happening because you're a civilian. So civilian rules are different than a law enforcement rules just like you can't walk around with a gun in every state as brazen as a cop can. Rules are different depending on if we're looking at the civilian or we're looking at the law enforcement agent.

Um read a book. All right. From one civil unrest to another. Let's jump over to Iran. Iran. Iran. There was a I thought you were mispronouncing Elon. Sorry. Like what's he doing? All right. So, yeah, things continue to pop off in Iran. There have been major escalations to Iran's revolutionary uprising over the last couple of days. If you guys have been paying attention, it is wild. As of today, demonstrations have hit over 340 spots across now all 31 provinces, including major cities like Thrron, Isvahan, and Zihadan, if that's how you pronounce that last one.

Uh the protests have exploded in scale, intensity, and spread out geographically, turning what was already super serious unrest into the most widespread challenge to the regime in years. And if you're just now catching up on what's going on in Iran, the uprising began December 28th over skyrocketing prices. Hey, it's all about the economy, currency collapse, general economic pain. That is always what's what pushes these things forward. And it's all hit a tipping point roughly Thursday, January 8th. So marches now have filled the streets. Buildings and vehicles have been burned and people are chanting death to Kamani openly.

I even saw a photo of women with their hair down uh totally uncovered hair lighting cigarettes with photos of the Supreme Leader. That is not something you see every day. the exiled crown prince Reza uh Palavi. He called for a coordinated chance at 8 p.m. because he wanted to see if people were going to back him or not. Uh this was on January 8th. It drew massive turnouts and uh obviously came with huge risks and people still did it. The regime has responded as you would expect a nationwide internet and phone blackout uh that kicked off on Thursday evening and as far as I know is still continuing.

Now, people are trying to smuggle in um Xlink. Wow, guys. Starlink, thank you. Uh they're trying to smuggle those in so that people can use Starlink to get the footage. Uh we'll see how well that goes, but there is some footage coming out because of that right now. Uh security forces have reportedly ramped up and the use of lethal force um recently. The Thursday ended up being the bloodiest day so far and reports confirm that live ammo is being used and raids are being conducted on hospitals that are treating wounded protesters.

Uh rights groups like HR, ANA uh and Iran Human Rights and others have put the death toll somewhere around 42 to 45 people uh since things popped off. There have also been more than 2,000 arrests. And on Friday, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Ali Kamani broke his silence, slamming protesters as vandals and rioters backed by foreign enemies. He specifically called out Trump by name, uh vowing that they will not retreat and warning Trump that he's going to be overthrown just like other arrogant leaders. Uh the judiciary chief promised decisive maximum punishment without leniency for the people protesting.

But despite all of that, the protests continue to persist. Now, where this gets really interesting is if you zoom out to the bigger picture, what's happening in Iran right now is happening at a crazy time given the potential implications to America's fight to keep the pro dollar firmly in place. Isolate China as much as possible. Iran falling right now is a big deal because they're obviously a top oil producer and they've continued to supply China despite US sanctions. So you had Venezuela and ch uh Venezuela and Iran I believe making up something like 70% of China's oil supply.

So, if the regime were to fall now through a legitimate uprising and not the US coming in and [ __ ] around or even just get significantly weakened, oil flows could slow or even halt in the short term, which would spike glo global prices. Uh, it would force buyers to lean harder on the US and USfriendly suppliers, which obviously is good for us, like Saudi Arabia. And this would bolster the petro dollar and put some wind into the US sales at a time where we risk overextending ourselves.

So the timing of all this stuff is absolutely fascinating. Now, China buys about 1 to 1.5 million barrels a day of cheap Iranian oil at discounts of up to $10 below market. The unrest in Iran has already cut exports by roughly 20% in the last week. So, if it drags on, China could end up losing its supply from both Venezuela and Iran in quick succession, causing a spike in their energy costs. Now, given that they're already being forced to pump historic amounts of money into their economy just to keep it going, that would be a way far cry from ideal.

Now, odds are that Beijing is hoping things settle down in Tyrron nice and quickly as a regime change could end the sweetheart deals that they have and force China towards pricier, more transparent markets. And losing Iran as an ally would also isolate Moscow further and weaken the anti-West block that has been building for years. Uh, but that's all speculation at this point. So definitely do not want to get out over our skis here as just because Iran right now is unstable doesn't mean that it won't go right back to business as usual in the near future because when a regime falls, you never know who's going to replace it.

Power vacuums are never filled the way that you want them to be. They can be filled with somebody that's just as bad or somebody that's even worse. So only time is going to tell on that. But given Iran's role as the largest global purveyor of terrorism, there's certainly some cause for optimism right now. But we're gonna have to watch and see how this plays out. out. out. Yeah, there were some unverified reports that uh Kamehahi, the leader, that's it. I tried. Oh, uh, Kmeni. Kmeni. Kmeni.

Kmeni. It's And we're mispronouncing it. I think there's a like Kamani or something like that at the end, but I'm not even going to try. So, Kmeni will do uh for us. Yeah. Um there was unverified reports that he's like fleed and went to Moscow. Trump has uh doesn't seem true given what the things he's saying. So yeah. Um what's just like how he laid it out with us with the ICE situation? What's kind of the best case scenario that happens in Iran versus the worst case scenario?

case scenario? case scenario? Oh, Iran goes back to being a US-friendly democracy that um much like the UAE, Saudi have entered the modern world and realize we've got to diversify away from oil. This is all going to be about commerce, not religion. they become secular again. Uh and yeah, they start selling oil in a way that is um above board ideally for us that's friendly to the US. So uh that they join people sanctioning uh if we put sanctions on somebody that they adhere to that would be wonderful.

I doubt we're ever going to get that far. Uh but that would be incredible. So, let's say even if they didn't do something that was specifically pro America, just seeing them go to uh back to being a secular democracy would be incredible. Uh so, we will see if they're able to pull that. We'll see if they have the will to do that because I don't know that they do. And they've been um a tyrannical religious government now for almost 50 years. So that's I mean you could easily clock that at three generations maybe four given how fast generations seem to be speeding up now that have been raised where it's like they don't even remember what it was like to be a secular government like I remember even me and I was technically I think I was alive or no maybe it happened just before I was born but um when you see images from before the revolution revolution revolution did it look like an American city it's crazy women were dressed consistent with the western ideals of the time and so now to see like how much they've clamped down like wowza it's crazy.

Yeah. And then worst case, you know, Russia or China, somebody gets involved or ends. or ends. or ends. Worst case is, yeah, you just get another religious desperate that they go and they kill as many of the protesters as they can find or even Kani just remains in power. But now he's pissed. Uh, and they kill a bunch of people, jail a bunch of people, and you've got another 30 to 50 years of um tyrannical Islamic rule. And they continue to be the biggest purveyors of um global terrorism.

and they continue to strengthen the China Russia anti-western block. They become a continued problem for Israel. Think what you will about Israel. Uh so yeah, that would be the catastrophe. And if you get somebody that replaces him that's even more aggressive. Uh which there's nobody on my radar that that would be, but um that obviously would not be ideal. That would be a negative spiral. Um, I mean it's one of those things where we talk about protest and we talk about political unrest and then we go across the like across the sea and see some of these other countries and like oh no they're like really protesting protesting.

protesting. protesting. So this is the argument. So when whenever I give a black pill on America and this was uh in my conversation with Will Kaine yesterday. This is one of the things he's saying is like where you going to go? Yeah. And I always am traumatized when people respond like that because smart money will find the pockets. And when you look at what Warren Buffett is saying where he's like, I'm going to diversify away from the US. Cool. Does he stay till his dying day in Omaha?

Yeah, probably. Uh but when you've got like let me give you a real stat out of the UK. In the UK right now, the United Kingdom, 3,000 new people enter or go on welfare every day. every day. every day. And every day the UK loses 45 millionaires due to immigration, meaning they're just leaving. So somehow people tell themselves a narrative that uh because America, let's say, is still the safeest, that we're still the most trustworthy, um that people still trust us. There's a very big difference between being the least shitty and being awesome.

And we are transitioning rapidly away from being awesome into being the least shitty by a little bit, I guess, maybe. But it's like that's you don't I brought this stat up to Will Kane and he did not seem bothered and I'm like whoa. So we've gone from in the late 90s these are approximations but they're very very close. We've gone from like 72% of all global trade being in dollars to now it's like 58%. And so some people hear that and go oh we're still the bulk of world trade.

I look at that and go bro you've slipped by like whatever 18 points. I don't think it's quite that many. you've slipped by a lot and you can't turn a blind eye to that. It's not like you slipped and now you're holding. You're still declining and you're still making bad choices. And in fact, you're making those bad choices faster than ever before unless all Trump's craziness actually ends up paying off and we keep growing and blah blah blah. But as of right now today, I would not cash in on that, especially given that it looks like he's going to lose the midterms.

So, it's like all of this stuff is um it is a weakening America. And so, acting as if like uh let me say it this way. I was asked the other day uh God bless the person $100 um super chat and basically they just wanted me to say everything is going to be okay. It is very easy for me to tell you at the individual level everyone you're going to be fine. Uh if you're here and you're paying attention to your finances and you're not overly sentimental and you just say, "Where do I need to put my money uh to make sure that I'm okay?" Yeah, you're going to be fine.

There will be opportunities somewhere in the world. And the fact that so many countries are in trouble at the same time um means that America isn't going to immediately crumble by any stretch of the imagination. But you start getting enough people like Warren Buffett going, I have to diversify away from America and you're going to get other people diversifying away from America. I am now looking at my portfolio and saying how much more I've already diversified away from America uh to a certain degree but how much more can I do that?

Um so yeah maybe some people are fine as long as the decline feels managed and slow they're okay. I'm not that guy. So uh the individual is going to be fine but as a country we are moving in the wrong direction and I think people should be worried about that. Martin Mulun 8166 America will be fine if we stop spending like drunken sailors. Mhm. sailors. Mhm. sailors. Mhm. aka Trump. aka Trump. aka Trump. But we're not going to. We're not going to because he just increased the budget.

Let's talk about Trump. Trump had a bunch of things happening. Um I feel like this next section is just pretty much going to be a deep dive on the economics because we got Trump, we got Scott Bess, we got uh a lot of things happening. Could you queue up four? Oh, perfect. You're already on it. Look at that. Um so yeah, let's let's level set in some of the things that Trump announced um and how that's actually going to ultimately impact our uh budget. All right.

Well, the good news is that Trump actually is trying to put money in Americans pockets to make sure that he doesn't lose the midterms. So, finally, someone is doing something to address at least one of the structural forces that are driving housing prices up. And I'm going to stand up and clap on this one. Trump recently said on True Social that he will be immediately taking steps to block large institutional investors like private equity firms and banks from purchasing additional single family homes. I think he's been watching the Tom Billy Show live and he heard Drew make that pitch because Drew said that like episode two or something.

He called on Congress to actually turn that into a law emphasizing people live in homes, not corporations. not corporations. not corporations. I actually said that too, quote unquote, but I I'll leave that alone. I'll leave that alone. that alone. that alone. Hit that subscribe button. Hit that subscribe button. You heard it here first. All right. Trump framed it as a way to revive the American dream, noting that for too long, buying a home was the ultimate goal, ultimate goal, ultimate goal, sort of, and understanding why that's a good headline, but not the real underlying truth is going to be important.

We'll get to that in a minute. Uh, but skyrocketing inflation and costs have priced out families. Very true. Forcing more into renting, very true. Now, needless to say, merely telling investors that they can't buy homes does not solve inflation, which is really the problem, but it's at least a step in the right direction. I do want to applaud him for that. Trump teased that he'll have more details on additional housing and affordability proposals in his upcoming speech at Davos in two weeks. So, stay tuned for that.

No executive order has dropped yet, so we'll see. But the post uh tanked stocks for firms like Blackstone. Blackstone dropped. Blackstone dropped. Blackstone dropped. Drew is feeling good. Uh they're down 9%. It's wild. Uh and other companies that are also involved in the space are down. For people that do not understand the impact that institutional investors are having on housing prices, the context goes like this. Institutional buyers like Blackstone, JP Morgan, Apollo, they come in, they've spent years scooping up tens of thousands of homes, especially since the 2008 crash.

This is where you buy when there's blood in the streets and people are panicking. You actually get things at a discount. Now, these guys leverage our money. Basically, people that buy through them, they leverage that to go and buy all these houses. They buy in bulk, often with cash. Then they renovate them and rent them out for steady profits. All makes sense. It's a great investment. I understand why they do it. But the practice jacks up prices, reduces inventory for first-time buyers, and turns neighborhoods into corporate landlord zones.

Supporters argue it adds rental options. True, it stabilizes markets in the way that uh cartels stabilize markets. Sure, but housing is the only asset that people understand intuitively. And in an inflationary environment, you have to own assets. It is not optional. You must You cannot both have an unbalanced budget, driving up inflation and housing prices that are out of reach. You This is exactly how you create the catastrophic K-shaped I can't get ahead economy that we have now. This is the thing that's driving populism. Now, Trump's move aligns with his campaign promises on inflation and cost of living relief and is especially welltimed given that the midterms are coming and polls show that housing is a top voter concern.

And no wonder as median home prices hit $400,000 last year, up 50% in just 5 years in some areas, while wages continue to lag. If implemented, this could free up roughly a 100,000 plus homes annually for families. Potentially cooling prices by call it 5 to 10% in hot markets. Though experts say supply shortages from zoning and building rags, and I agree with this, are a much bigger concern. We should be focusing there as well. So, we'll see if there are any downsides to this that could say spook investors, um, slow new rental supply, or even just face legal challenges as government overreach.

I have to admit, I am conflicted. It's like I don't want a bunch of executive orders. I just want deregulation that allows the market to do what the market's going to do. So, a bit of emotional conflict for me on this one. But in the big picture, uh, when you're in a populist moment, at least this is a swing that you can expect from a populist to reduce wealth inequality. And we've got to do things to reduce wealth inequality. So, while not uh the method that I would propose to get this done, I get why people have been calling for this uh and it's better than doing nothing.

So, nothing. So, nothing. So, um, and then also, uh, Asterric, he just approved the $200 million bond purchase. Um, I don't know if we saw that. So, I did. So, uh, looking at mortgages and saying that he's going to be buying up up up hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages. Um, again, that isn't the game. It's QE by another name. Uh, so you'll forgive me if that one I don't like. Eric, what's up? Um, yeah. So this is the yeah this is the tweet that he said.

Um Biden ignored the housing market and instead was immersed with high crime, open borders, runaway inflation and the Afghanistan disaster and a military that he left in chaos and confusion. Everything was broken. But I as president of the United States have already fixed it. Now I'm giving special attention to the housing market because I choose not because I chose not to sell Fanny May Freddy Mack in my first term. A truly great decision and against the advice of the quote unquote experts is now worth many times that amount.

an absolute fortune and now has $200 billion in cash. Because of this, I am instructing my representatives to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds. This will drive mortgage rates down, monthly payments down, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable is one of the many steps in restoring affordability, something the Biden administration absolutely destroyed. We are bringing back the American dream that was destroyed by the last administration. Make America great again. again. again. I like the emphasis on the all caps there. there. there.

That's like an SN SNO skit or something. Yeah. So, okay. Okay. So, between Blackstone uh getting kicked out, uh inst institutional investors getting kicked out, the 200 million the $200 billion mortgage bond buy, how do you think the housing market's going to shape up? shape up? shape up? I So, this is just QE. So, that one I don't like. And I don't know this, but I worry that this could I'm thinking out loud. This is very dangerous. But I know lurking in the background is a bunch of insolveny at the level of the banks.

And so if he's looking at that and going, "Okay, we're going to start driving the cost of houses down. That's going to make these mortgages less attractive. So I could be creating a problem for local banks that are holding these mortgages, so let me go in and buy these up uh to avoid some down the road insolvencies." So again, this is just money printing. This is just QE. So um that one I'm I'm not getting behind. doing things to address the structural forces. Yes. Um I don't love a populist attempt at this by going in and telling people you can't do this.

Um but we've talked previously. You presented something very similar to this. I think my take on it was um let them buy it but just jack up the taxes that they have to pay like you know per house as they go house one no big deal house two more expensive house three more more more so that they are able to participate in something that is clearly a good investment because remember they're doing this on behalf of uh people in the stock market. So it's um that's not that's not that's not my ideal way to do this with the top down control.

Ideal way to do this would be to reduce nonsensical legislation that is making um housing impossible to add to the supply. Like you want to like deal with this at the supply level. Let let the most local person make this decision. And that's going to be a person who's financially incentivized to get it right in a local market to say I want to build five houses instead of one. And by doing that you unleash the power of capitalism. a game he obviously knows well, but I just think he loves telling people what to do.

And so he gets so turned on by the idea that I can just tell them you can't do this anymore. Uh so yeah, it's um I I don't love that and it's not going to have the great long-term consequences, just really address the structural problem. Uh so I'd prefer he do it in a different way, but it is better than nothing. So it's one of those where it's like, man, I'll take what I can get at this point. It's like we need to make housing affordable, but I don't want anyone to think that I'm suddenly confused about the principles at work here.

Uh it's just in an imperfect system sometimes you got to take what you can get. Yeah. Um he's getting a lot of criticism. A lot of people are saying it's not going to work. It's not going to matter. The reason if he cured cancer, people would be like, you know, they'd find a reason to hate it. hate it. hate it. Yeah. The Blackstone uh institutional investors thing though I'm excited about because that 500600,000 it seems like a small number in the grand totality. You know there's 25 million houses in in America.

But it's one of those things that in certain markets I don't think people realize how much institutional investors took over. So there's certain markets in Phoenix where there's six blocks owned by institutional vectors. Certain market in my hometown in Willenboro in New Jersey literally there's a whole park that like out of the 20 houses on that block 14 were owned at one time. This was peak 2020, so probably some of those got sold, but they have made strategic uh investments in certain neighborhoods. So, I think I think they own something like 2% of all homes.

all homes. all homes. It's crazy. So, just just them leaving, we're we're not going to see every, you know, market affected, but there's going to be certain markets that the price are going to drop substantially. It's kind of like what happened in Texas. Um, but I ultimately to solve this, you're right, Scott Galloway said this at the end of last year, we just need to buy, we need just need to build more like houses, period. houses, period. houses, period. This is one of those where ah god it it's so gross because it really is nimiism.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where so nimism for people that haven't heard that before not in my backyard. So it's a thing that you want done. You just don't want it done in your neighborhood. But when everybody says that then we stay in the position that we're in. And so it's like h I it really drives me crazy. Um but I get it. people are pursuing their own economic interests. But you at the end of the day, you don't want regulatory capture, not even on the part of uh an average citizen who just happens to be a homeowner.

It's like you really have to look at the health of your country and say, listen, it it is because they are economically illiterate. When I really started looking at the problem, I was like, why do people bang on about housing? I'm like, there's so many cheaper, easier assets. Like a house is like the biggest pain in the ass. you have to pay property tax in most places and you've got to upkeep and all that. It's more like a forced savings account. And I was like at one point telling people like you probably shouldn't buy a house.

Like it's not a great place to lock up your money. And then I was like, but wait a second, most people are never going to understand the stock market, but they understand a house and they can live in a house and they can form memories in a house. Like when I think about how differently my wife views a house versus me, like for me it's like, yeah, it's cool and I love it, don't get me wrong, but uh I view it as a nest egg. I view it as a place that uh it's an investment.

It's going to go up in value over time presumably. And for her, it's a nest. Like this is her home. And like she has real emotional reactions to it based on being her home. I don't. I don't. I don't. So then I was like, "Oh my god." So, it's even like in a heterosexual relationship, you're going to get pressure from your wife to do it. So, now it's like you've got this perfect thing that's an asset that forces you to save money, that keeps up with inflation at a minimum.

Uh, and you're going to get pressure in a traditional uh heterosexual relationship to do it anyway. So, I was like, damn. Yeah, you really do like need to pay special attention to that one asset class because people get it. Uh so in an inflationary environment, you can't you can't let houses become unaffordable. Yeah. Um and we have to pay close attention to inflation because on the other side, Trump has also bolstered the Pentagon budget from 1 trillion to 1.5. This is wild. I want to be clear, this hasn't passed or anything, but this is what he's pushing for.

Yeah. Um and this was Tucker Tucker Carlson's response to it. The president announced that he is hiking the Pentagon budget from 1 trillion to 1.5 trillion. just announced that. that. that. Why? Well, it's hard to know without asking him. He'll explain, but big picture, obviously, that's the kind of budget that a country that anticipates a global or regional war has for its military. There's no other reason to do that. That's not a peacekeeping. He's right. It's not a peacekeeping thing. I really think so. There are two things at play right now.

You are in Thusidity's trap. Everybody needs to just embrace that. So, China's on the rise. we're on the decline. The odds that the odds that we end up at war is 75%. So looking at just historicals, that's the number. It's not unavoidable, but the odds are not with us. Um, but there's another thing at play here, which is Trump dropped some bombs on Fort and that [ __ ] worked. He was like, damn, that was cool. I [ __ ] love the way that made me feel. Uh then he goes up and he negotiates, negotiates, negotiates with Maduro.

Maduro doesn't give him what he wants. And like imagine, Drew, you're in a business negotiation and like you're really trying to be nice. You're trying to like just get it done and like no, it's a good deal for both of us. Like we're going to make this work. Uh and then they don't do it and you're like, "All right, [ __ ] them." You kidnap them and you take their [ __ ] So, he's just like, "I've got this card in my back pocket that they know while I'm negotiating." And sometimes I'm going to be like this.

Like, he just pulls open his coat and like the little card is just sticking up just a little bit like like you would show your gun in your holster or your belt and he's just like, "Oh, I really like this." And if this is what it feels like at 900 billion, what does this feel like at 1.5 trillion? Then I'm like, dude, oh, you don't want to give us greedlin. Okay, I'll be right back. I'm going to roll down the street to Davos in a hovercraft just to be like, I can, [ __ ] I got $1.5 trillion dollar.

You guys think you've got like some hard-hitting [ __ ] No, no, no. Like, we will roll up on you in the dead of night. We will [ __ ] burrow in here from the [ __ ] core of the earth and get you wherever the [ __ ] we want because that's how the military rolls you. In fact, boys and girls, [ __ ] Jewish space lasers. We got American space lasers, [ __ ] Like, we're coming in hard. Like, we better. we better. we better. Dude, that is I guarantee in the dead of night when he is like just slowly fondling his his unit.

He's thinking of space lasers and [ __ ] what he can do with that budget, rolling up in the hovercraft. Oh, yeah. A,000%, bro. A thousand%. That That is where he goes. He's Yeah. Like it's wild. So 1.5. Uh quiet as it kept. That's what I was looking for. Can we throw this up? Um Russia rejected the US President Trump 20point peace uh plan to end the war in Ukraine. So after the peace talk summits happened, Russia kind this kind of has been silent because all everything else has been going on.

But they just requested they just rejected the peace plan. So that 1.5 maybe some of that money goes to Europe or maybe that some of that money goes to the front lines of Ukraine, Russia. How Trump is, I don't know which side it will go to, but you know, know, know, that is way too accurate, Drew. Uh he is going to use that wherever he feels he needs to from a negotiating position. Now listen, all jokes aside, I not all of it is bad in terms of dealing with Thusidity's trap, making sure that you draw lines around the Western Hemisphere, making sure that people understand that you mean business, knowing that Europe may not be the ally, that you were hoping it was going to be in the future, knowing that you need to modernize your uh military, all of that stuff, that your sanctions are only going to work as you are as well as you're able to enforce them.

Look, they they are the moves of a dying empire that no longer has seduction on its side, that no longer can get um cooperation without coercion. So, it's horrible. I really hate to see it, but it's like the only thing worse would be not admitting that that's where you're at. And so, um the the problem is if he does it through money printing, this is horrific. You you just you have to balance the budget. And so, Thus Cidities trap or not, you have to balance your budget.

And I know that people will uh be confused and they won't understand that that money is just going to come directly out of everyone's pocket. So we are all going to pay for this uh because it's going to be done by debasing the currency. And you know, look, our audience understands that, but unfortunately the vast majority of Americans don't. So you're going to get a lot of people um that I I don't even know that he's going to be able to get this passed to be honest with you.

But, uh, if he can get people on his side on it, they won't understand what it's going to do to them. Copy that. I want to speedrun this next topic really quick cuz this was, you know, as the as the Quest Nutrition founder um, of a early unicorn in the food space, somebody who was fought against big government when it comes to nutrition and food and what's best for human health. Um, how does the new food pyramid uh, it's not on there. Uh, how does the new food pyramid impact you?

Um, what was your initial reactions when you when you uh, heard about it? So this is incredible. I could not be happier about this. So there is a reality to be faced which is that you are having a biological experience and whether God whether the simulation whatever um this universe runs on rules and your cells react to food. So this is why it drives me absolutely bananas when people just talk about uh Tom being obese is purely a calorie problem. And the thing is from the perspective of um thermodynamics they are correct.

You're not going to get fat if you're not overeating. There was not a single obese person uh at the camps in Awitz. Right? Nice and simple. I don't care what disease you had. uh you can give them whatever medication you want. No one is going to be obese if you give them no calories. It's not possible. Uh but at the same time, your body is a chemical processing plant and chemicals can react in weird ass ways. And so you can get people to say produce additional heat and that will burn additional calories.

You can give people substances that will cause the fat to not be absorbed. I mean, we know all of these things. So, the body is an incredibly complex system and our food that we've been giving people already has been engineered and is doing weird [ __ ] things to the body. Um, but it's also you are what you eat. Your cells are made of the substances that you consume. So, if you're consuming a bunch of plastic, you're going to have a problem. So, when you tell people to eat a whole bunch of grains, what you're telling them to eat a whole bunch of, and most people still do not understand this, when you tell people to eat something that's made of carbohydrates, you are telling them to eat sugar.

it it turns to blood sugar in your body. Now, it may go there slowly. It may have some of its effect blunted by fiber content, but it is sugar. And so what people need to ask themselves if there is and this is a true statement if there is only a quarter teaspoon quarter teaspoon quarter teaspoon of sugar difference between in the blood between somebody who's not diabetic and somebody who's diabetic. Why does the body care so much about sugar that it regulates it that tightly? And then knowing that the body is regulating blood sugar that tightly, why would you tell them to eat a bunch of [ __ ] sugar?

And so people don't understand that a loaf of bread is a loaf of sugar to your body. It is going to break that down into blood glucose. And so if you eat bread, you're going to see a spike of blood glucose. So, and there's a whole bunch of other stuff with like the wheat and why are we why are so many people especially in the US responding to um the uh gluten allergen and stuff like that and it's a biomimic that um looks like forget there's a um cell in the brain that looks exactly like the gluten protein and so once you have a response to it this is why people get brain fog because you your immune system starts attacking those proteins in in your brain.

Uh so yeah, anyway, this stuff gets very very scary very fast. So seeing people finally understand what you should actually be eating because your body processes things based on a set of rules. And so there's a knowing way that you will respond to um animal protein versus uh a loaf of bread. They will be wildly different. Um I'm excited. Now, I don't think that you should force people to eat certain foods. If somebody wants to get morbidly obese and die, that's their business. Um, but at least letting people know what is true and being more accurate.

Now, they'll need to update this because obviously we'll learn things over time and maybe there are things that we think are great, like maybe olive oil secretly is terrible for us. Who knows? We'll find out in the fullness of time. Um, so I want them to update this as things change. But yes, uh this is a huge step in the right direction. direction. direction. Yeah. And then what do you think of some of like the second and third order consequences of this? Is it just one of those things that if people eat better, we're going to see the ramific uh all of our health?

Do you think that it has that power to change our health care costs and stuff like that or is this just kind of uh I think most people do not control their um body. they don't have discipline and so they're just going to eat terribly. But at least we're not lying to people anymore. And so when this starts showing up in um schools and things, well-meaning people that are paying attention aren't going to go, "Oh, I'm supposed to feed my kids a bunch of toast and cereal." They're going to be like, "Okay, cool.

I get what the ideal is. Maybe some of that my I can't get my kids to eat and so I'm giving them other stuff, but at least I know what ideal looks like." Um, so a step in the right direction that I don't expect to have any sort of big impact right now. The big impact is going to be um um um making food from ingredients that taste amazing but are actually good for you. That was the mission at Quest was we wanted to make food you could choose based on taste.

You didn't have to worry about being healthy. You just I like the way this bar tastes. Uh, and it happened to be good for you. So that was always the goal. But um I don't think education is the problem anymore to be honest. Like anybody that has you can get a free chat GBT account and then just say what should I eat? It's going to give you a decent breakdown. Um it's getting people to actually do it. Most people won't. So unfortunately in a world of abundance most people will suffer because they have no willpower.

That makes me very sad. This is why I say AI making all of our problems go away creates another problem which is that most people are not in control of their own mind. Do you think that um somebody just put this in the chat and it kind of stuck out to me. Do you think that there is a one-sizefitsall one-sizefitsall one-sizefitsall to nutrition or is there there is some nuance when you get personto person? Okay. Uh I'm going to give you the quick answer. There's a one-sizefits-all.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, I'm going to give you the truth. There's no oneizefits-all. And human biology is biology is biology is wild. It is crazy to me that um my brother-in-law can eat every artificial sweetener known to man in contents that like I am expecting him to just fall over and die. Uh if I ate a tenth of what he eats, I either start itching like crazy and break out and like horrifying rashes. I've actually had that happen. Uh and or I get massive fatigue and brain fog.

Why? I have no idea. I don't know what's different. I don't know if it's uh something that you could find in our genetics and you'd actually be able to see, oh, it's a combination of these 17 alals or if it's uh his microbiome and he just happened to have a better hand of it. Or one time when he was traveling in the mountains of Cyprus, he got dirt on his hand that happened to have a fantastic microbe that he's been carrying with him his whole life that allows him to metabolize artificial sweeteners.

And I lack I have no idea. Um, but yes, honestly there, like if you said the magic question to ask is, Tom, I'm about to be stranded on a boat for three years and I need to come back in perfect health, but I can only take one food item with me. What food item should I take? Do you know what the answer is? Because there isn't an answer. No. What's the answer? Red meat. Hm. You won't get scurvy, which everybody thinks you have to have citrus or whatever to avoid.

You do not. If you eat just red meat, it's the only thing where I'm like, if you isolated just down to that, you'll you'll be fine for years. Everything else is a question mark. Um, if you like, if you want to be a vegetarian and you're willing to go out of your way to make sure that you find, oh god, all of the different things you need to eat to get a full amino acid profile, great. But you're made of the things in that red meat.

You were not made of carbohydrates. Your body can turn protein into glucose. You don't need protein or you don't need glucose. glucose. glucose. Um, so I for a while lived on a 4:1 ratio of for every combined gram of protein and carbohydrates that I ate, I had four grams of fat. It's a horrible way to live. And if you're not careful, you go through something called keto flu. But when I say that your blood sugar be low, I'm talking like you're getting warnings from your glucose uh monitor.

You do not need to eat glucose to survive. So um you need fat, you need protein, otherwise you're toast, but you don't need alcohol, which is technically the fourth macronutrient, and you certainly don't need carbohydrate. Now, am I advising that you live like that? No. If you know how to eat a wider variety of stuff, your microbiome is going to be in way better shape. So, my advice is eat the widest variety of whole foods that you can get your hands on. Um, but whole foods.

Got you. Um, we got some super chats whenever you're using using using No, you just took it right from my mind. Go for it. Sick. Uh, first up, for $50, by the way, uh, you guys are one of my most trusted sources or most trusted voices out there. So valuable to my understanding of the world and my mental health. Thank you for what you do and for doing three lives a week. Wow. Thank you and really appreciate you guys joining us for the three lives a week.

That means a lot. Next up, uh for housing, please read order without design by beer. Uh it explains on it expands on housing elements from soil's basic economics. The book gives regulatory system examples from New York City and China. Read chapters six and seven. Can you slack that to me, please? You got it. Thank you, sir. as long as it's available on Audible, hopefully. Um, let's see. Not every healthy society has a prosperous economy, but no prosperous economy can last without an with an unhealthy society.

Really appreciate you all for putting in the time and modeling what it looks like to have different opinions. Thank you. Yeah. No, I love it when we see things differently. It uh very useful. useful. useful. Um, next up, the food problem is from corporate capture. This is from money in our election system. Corporations are not people. They have more sway than people do in government. And that is why we are here protecting profits. This new chart does nothing. Uh I agree with you that the new chart isn't really going to change anything, but at least we're not misleading people anymore.

So some people at the edges. It's another um you know thing pointing in the right direction. I definitely agree with you that what you have is uh regulatory capture like you would have in any industry. So you've got people uh the sugar lobby going and trying to vilify fat and it actually ends up working and all that stuff. There's no doubt about all that. But in the age that we live in now where the information is out there, um people just need to decide who they can trust.

People need to take responsibility for their own lives. People need to run the experiments uh on themselves to figure out what works for them. Um, so yeah, I for one am thrilled that we live in this era where there are tons of companies out there uh that are building in sustainable farming that are making sure there's no hormones being used that they keep things away from grain so that you're not not only not getting the grain, but you're not getting the glyphosate that would be on the grain that the animal would eat.

Um, so yeah, support companies that you think are doing things the right way. As long as there's not regulatory capture that makes it impossible for a company to spin up on the back of some new breakthrough, um, then we're all in good shape. But yes, I totally agree. Regulatory capture is sinister. Uh, big food, big egg, all of it. No bueno. Next up, setting aside politics. I'm unclear as to why we shouldn't deport illegal immigrants if we happen to find them in non-border states. Oh, that was going back to something that Drew was saying earlier.

Yep. Yep. Yep. I'll let I don't think that's what Drew was saying, but I'll let Drew speak for himself. himself. himself. I was about to say that wasn't what I was saying. goes in context of the administration's administration's administration's process of deport deportation that has been at least in year one less successful than Obama's with less brazen uh American citizens being killed. So it was just a comparison of there's other ways to kind of deport people than the way that we're doing it. Uh I think you were using that as a way to explain that Trump is doing something else.

He's being antagonistic. He's being militaristic. He's creating a problem where there didn't need to be a problem. As evidenced by the fact that Obama deported a lot of people without creating a problem and as evidenced that this is a political flex. Flex was the word that you used. Uh that you can tell it's that because he's not starting at the borders where you would presume there would be the biggest number of illegal aliens. He's going to blue cities. cities. cities. Facto. That was a great way to summarize it.

Thank you for that. Sorry. Last one. Also, yeah, the three lives a week is awesome. Love you guys. Nice, man. Nice, man. Nice, man. Well, loving loving that love. It uh is not lost on us. And it is I think this is going to be um better doing these three times a week because we don't have that big gap where we're like, "Fuck, we missed that topic altogether and blah blah blah." So, uh Okay. So, I I have to ask you this. Um you are Mr.

Inflation. You are Mr. Oneisssue voter. Um can I be Mr. Anti-inflation or for that? Mr. Anti-inflation. Yes. Um, we've been talking a lot about policies, war, global affairs, geopolitics, and as we're being kind of talking about it, we haven't really been talking about the amount of money that's been being thrown around, used, and things like that. Um, Scott Bessant reframes all of this saying there's been $600 million in annual fraud with taxpayer dollars. That's 10% of all total spending. Um, I'm I'm not going to cut to him uh talking about it, but in totality with Trump increasing the war budget, 500 billion, 600 billion in uh fraud uh mulling around the 200 million for the 200 billion for mortgage bonds.

And who knows what happens with all these international deals, if Iraq, if Greenland comes back and says, "All right, cool. Give us a trillion. We'll give it to, you know, whatever comes back like that." It seems in the near future, we are going to be printing more money. Full stop. We're printing more money now. Yeah. Right now. Right now. Right now. And then that has been, if I'm understanding you correctly, the reason we have that's the economic building block that all this unrest and everything else kind of gets built on.

Yep. Yep. Yep. So we can see these problems that we've been having and you based on me extrapolating all this information, locking it together using cause and effect. It seems that in the future it's going to be more escalation, more protest. We need to globalize. We need to do more things to try to bring in more resources because economics, everybody's kind of feeling that tight. Only thing he said in there, we need to globalize. We don't need to globalize. I guess the the col colonialism of everything.

Let's get Greenland. See what different that's what I meant by that. that. that. But that that is one way for him to try to grow his way out of this is go rob from everybody else. Yes, that that is certainly on the docket. Uh whether he um does something that's good for that country or not remains to be seen. We we'll see how that plays out. But yes. Okay. So, the base of the question is what exactly? Are we headed for a world of hurt? of hurt?

of hurt? Yes. Cuz even with like the fraud thing, like I can lift up this 600 billion as like the fraud. Like we need to stop this right now. But is that even going to help with us now unbalancing the budget even more? Should we be focusing on the Pentagon who hasn't passed an audit in 10 years and maybe we could get a little bit more than the 600 billion. Like it seems there's things that we're supposed to do to balance the budget. We're not balancing the budget.

This is just going to get worse, right? Yeah. Well, yes. Right now this is going to get worse. There's so many pieces up in the air right now that we have to um figure out what's going to land. Let me see if I can um speedrun all of the different things that are at play right now. Okay, so uh you've got Trump, he's looking at uh 2026. You've got an absolute wall of debt. So, we've got to get interest rates down. So, he's heranging Jerome Powell, the Fed to get interest rates down.

Okay, interest rates are now coming down. He's almost certainly going to replace Pal with somebody that's even more into lowering rates, but it's a mathematical certainty that at least in 26, we're going to have to lower rates more, otherwise refinancing our debt will make our debt obligations impossible without spending a ton of money. Uh Trump is not afraid of QE, though. He just wants to do it in a way that's politically good for him. So QE is quantitative easing. It's a way of getting money into the system where everybody feels good.

Uh, so now he just he's promising to purchase $200 billion worth of mortgages. So it's like that's QE by another name. So clearly he has no problem with that. He wants to bump the government debt um up way further with the military budget increase in 27 to$ 1.5 trillion. So that's him saying, "Yeah, I don't mind spending money as long as it's going to allow me to do the things I want to do." Okay. Why military spending? Because we've got to lock in the petro dollar.

We've got to push China out. And by the way, those are real things. If we lose the exorbitant privilege, as it's called, of being the reserve currency, which right now, because we're not backed by gold, we're backed by all oil has to be purchased in petro dollar. But that deal with Saudi Arabia ran out and they didn't renew it. So, it no longer has to be done in the petro dollar. So, now it's like, well, people keep doing it because it's convenient. But then we [ __ ] up Russia and sanctioned the life out of them.

Then we we've been sanctioning Venezuela for a long time, but escalated that go actually stopping the y. So more and more people now are going like, well, wait a second. Maybe we need to move away from the US or maybe they're going to go, we need to be more friendly with the US. We don't know how that's going to play out. So, that's up in the air in like this really terrifying way of, okay, are people going to abandon us because we're being this psychotic bully?

Or are they going to be like, well, I guess that time where we had more autonomy is over and I'm going to have to get in league with somebody because I see what China's doing, don't love that. I see what America's doing, don't love that. Europe is in disarray. So, it's like, who am I going to go with? So, maybe I'm still going with America even though I don't love it, but I'm going to be more consiliatory until I don't have to be. And then, you know, I'm always looking for that exit ramp.

We'll see. He has also the tariffs have been somewhat successful. It doesn't look like it's passing on the cost to the consumer very much uh bringing in a ton of money, but that could get overturned today. So, it's like a lot of question marks. The growth has been higher than expected. People haven't been talking too much about it, but I think they're really going to start beating their chest about it. If we see Q4 crushed, if we see Q1 crushes and we're up like four and a half, 5%, you're going to hear a lot of drum beating.

And if that's making its way to the average American and their wages are going up in real terms, he's got a shot at the midterms. So it's like you want to start watching is he able to get the growth to outpace inflation. So, it's like all of those things are on the chessboard and depending on if Iran falls and now uh the access of the anti-war block, anti- West block is weakening and the US is able to reassert itself, you know, at least for let's say another 10 20 years with the petro dollar.

Okay, cool. That could be a thing. We control Venezuela's oil if we can be beneficial to them and to us. Big if. But if we can do that, cool. Now we're going to get friendlies out of there and China's going to have to pay market rate. Uh if Iran falls cool, um maybe we get somebody that gets into place there that's willing to at least abide by sanctions and we welcome them back into the global market. That's really a possibility. Could also break the other way.

So it's like there's so many questions. 2026 is going to be this insane pivot year where a lot of these dominoes are going to start to fall. One of them being today with the answer about tariffs. I just checked. They are delaying the decision till Wednesday. Get out. Come on. We shall see. But all We shall see. But all right, that's all I got. Boys and girls, thank you so much for joining us. We are so grateful to all the people sending love for us going to three days a week.

We are beyond grateful for your time and attention. Uh we really are trying to bring you uh the information without a whole lot of uh spin. I'm not on a team, so uh you're certainly going to get my frame of reference, but uh I try to lay out exactly where I'm trying to um steer my own thinking uh and what biases my um speaking. And hopefully you guys find that super useful. Um and I cannot wait to see you guys on Monday. Have a great weekend.

And until then, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.