The Epstein Files Released And They Are WORSE Than You Think

Key Takeaway

The release of over 3 million pages of Epstein documents reveals not just horrific allegations, but a systematic architecture of elite power networks built on blackmail and sexual leverage. The files expose how a small cabal of interconnected elites operates above accountability, using compromising material to control influential people across politics, finance, and media. The most chilling insight: when Epstein's assistant casually mentioned she 'wouldn't even know how to blackmail' Michael Saylor because he 'doesn't pick up on social cues,' it revealed blackmail as standard operating procedure—not conspiracy theory, but business as usual.

Episode Overview

This episode examines the January 2026 release of the Epstein Files—over 3 million documents, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images released by the DOJ under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The hosts discuss the disturbing allegations throughout the files, the breadth of high-profile individuals mentioned (including Trump, Clinton, Gates, Prince Andrew, and surprisingly, figures like Mom Donnie's mother), and the implications for understanding elite power structures. Beyond the lurid details, they explore deeper questions: How does blackmail operate at the highest levels? Why does narrative control matter when everything becomes visible? Can democracy survive when trust in institutions collapses? They argue this represents a watershed moment requiring 'new Untouchables'—beyond-reproach investigators who can pursue justice without political bias.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Epstein Files Released And They Are WORSE Than You Think from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Welcome to another episode of the Tom Billy Show live. Today is going to be a crazy one. So, if you've got somebody that you know is interested in the news, what's going on, how all this ties together, now would be the time to let them know. We're going to be going deep into California fraud and of course, the Epstein Files Volume 1. So, the Epstein Files, volume one dropped, and they are far more horrifying than I would have imagined. I'm not kidding. Very appropriate. Thank you for that.

Uh, we're going to be going into that, not so much from the speculation standpoint, though I'm sure there'll be plenty of that in the comments, but more just what does this mean? Uh, what's the deeper insight to take away from all this? The ICE riots are now raging across California, and they are just in time to distract from the fraud investigations being broadcast by Nick Shirley and others. The Fed chair nominee, Kevin Walsh, gave an incredible speech that some are saying is the very thing that tanked the markets.

You've got to hear this speech. It is awesome. Uh I was very amped up by it. Dalio gave the nod of approval to Kevin Walsh, essentially calling him the Goldilocks of our options. So that is certainly encouraging. Xihinping is ready to do battle with whoever the Fed chair ends up being as he made a very public and direct appeal this weekend for the Chinese yuan to become the world's reserve currency. But he's got a huge hurdle before him that we're going to discuss today. New York Governor Kathy Hokll accidentally points out that half of New Yorkers are on Medicaid.

It's wild. And rumors continue to rev up that Trump is going to make an announcement about alien life. And I swear swear swear to 8 pound sweet baby Jesus, if he does it during the Epstein news cycle, I will laugh and cry in alternating measure until my eyes bleed. Please don't let that be true. That would be so wild. It is what I expect. It is the coupling of uh fraud and then ICE raids or not raids but protests immediately following to make an even bigger spectacle.

Uh dropping 3 million files of some of the mo listen it's surely not all true. But 3 million documents, some of the most horrifying things you can imagine. Uh coupled at the same time, it's just wild. So yeah, if they announce that cuz they're they're like poking and proddding people. They are terraforming. They are planting the seeds or what how there's a phrase for it, but they're doing all of that or astrourfing. They're astroturfing. Uh to get us ready for this announcement about alien life. Oh, the timing.

The timing, Drew. Oh, Oh, Oh, it's grotesque. it's grotesque. it's grotesque. I have to eat crow. I was talking junk like we're never getting files. Those files are never dropping. Um, and they dropped and I I wish I was right. This is terrible. Like, it's it's bad. it's bad. it's bad. It was worse than I imagined. And I was like, it's going to be crazy. I watched House of Cards. It's going to be like that. It's worse than I imagined. It's it. So, listen. Okay. First of all, let us be very clear.

Uh, that all of this is alleged. It is alleged. These are documents of people. oftentimes it's just an email or it is a witness who has come forward that has not gone through the court of law and so many of the things that are inevitably going to be in the documents simply are not true. Uh so everything that we say here should be taken with taken with a gigantic grain of salt. Uh we certainly do not have any special insider information. So we are merely reporting on the things that people have been saying.

will certainly speculate in terms of things that I think might be going on, but this is my opinion uh and should not be taken as me representing facts. All right, having said all of that, the latest major development on the Epstein files occurred on January 30th of 2026 when the US Department of Justice released over 3 million pages of documents along with 2,000 videos, 180,000 images. And all of this is part of the compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act that we need but may all regret as you start searching through the Epstein Files themselves.

Uh you've got high-profile mentions obviously people like Donald Trump are mentioned. He was mentioned I think thousands of times. Bill Clinton, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew who was mentioned hundreds of times. Former White House advisors. Um people involved all the way up in finance and world leaders. It's like you've got people stepping down in other countries um because of their ties. It it is pretty wild. There are um emails, investigative records, general communications, and all of it is obviously tied back to the different ways that people are connected to Epstein.

Um much of it ties back to Epstein's post208 Florida conviction. Um but many are not necessarily new allegations. It's just that they detail associations or the unverified tips that people have about things that Epstein was doing or people that he might be involved with. And I have a feeling that all of this is is going to be one big rat's nest of um information warfare. So, just be very careful. Now, files suggest Epstein may have trafficked girls obviously to other people. I can't believe even for a moment people were just saying it was all to Epstein.

Such an absurd claim. uh and that does not appear to be the fact given all of the information in the files and that starts raising questions about past official denials for evidence uh and are like things trying to be covered up actively. Now, no new criminal charges have stemmed from the release of the February 2nd documents or since uh they all dropped. The files are um publicly available on the DOJ's website. So, you guys can go see this stuff for yourself, which we have done here.

It is not, I will say, not a pleasant experience. Uh, several unconfirmed and speculative elements have surfaced from the files or uh just, you know, raging across social media and it can be very difficult to know what's true. There have been documents that people are just completely fabricating and posting and because there's over three million documents, it's like all just sort of gets mixed in. And as they say, lies will travel faster than the truth can get its pants on. So you have to be very careful uh when looking at this stuff as people will present supposedly true redacted documents that are absolutely damning and then they turn out to be completely false when you go to check them against the actual records.

Now there was a 2019 4chan post uh that's now in the declassified data set. So there were things that were posted and then removed and then a redacted version is posted. Um, and supposedly they come from a verified prison employee who claims that Epstein, Get ready, tinfoil hat, tinfoil hat. This person claims that Epstein was removed from jail in an unmarked van by armed personnel before his reported death, fueling the theories that he might still be alive or that he was just extracted covertly. Now, no evidence supports this beyond the post itself, so take that kind of thing with a grain of salt.

Uh the DOJ has emphasized, as I have here, that some tips are going to end up being proven untrue or purely sensationalist. Uh so we have to be careful. But boy oh boy, um I don't plan to go through any of the specifics here. Partly because they are stomach churning. Uh and partly because we just don't know what's true yet. But wow. Uh as Drew said, they are worse than I expected. And maybe because I just never went in my mind to anything that was actually specific.

But when you start hearing the specific claims, it is mortifying. Now, the thing that I find the most interesting about this isn't all the lurid, horrific lurid, horrific lurid, horrific accusations of sexual um demonic uh actions. I mean, it's just really really horrifying. Set that aside. What is most interesting to me is how how how there really is a tight-knit group of people that are interconnected in ways that you would not expect. So, um I I personally do not read into this one too deeply other than to say this is very interesting.

When people talk about the uni party and all that, you begin to understand why. But if you look at so mom Donniey's mom was in the files. Okay. I don't think people were expecting that one. It certainly was not on my bingo card. Uh so when you look at mom Donnie from the perspective of oh my gosh, just grassroots kid comes up. Uh who would have thought that, you know, he's just the right person at the right moment, a Jenzier who um is really showing people the angst that Jenz is going through.

And then you realize, well, maybe it's a little more complicated than that. Uh in that his mom is obviously extremely wellconed. Uh I I have no reason to believe that there's any um impropriy certainly on behalf of mom Donnie. I don't think he was involved at all. Uh I don't even have reason to believe that his mom did anything wrong. But the fact that they moved in those circles, that's the thing that was most interesting to me is just the the whole idea that there is this small cabal of elites that really sway the direction of the world.

uh just proves to be more and more true with each passing day. And so seeing all of the people that were communicating via email directly to Epstein or Epstein's assistant is wild is wild. It It's one of those things that at the very high level there's certain moments in history where we just get kind of these blips on the map of like politics. There's Watergate. There's uh I did not have sexual relations with that woman. There's uh the 9/11. There's George Bush doesn't care about black people.

To me, I think that this is the Epstein files when it released and I was actually going through it and I was like, "Hold on, wait." Like they said the quiet part out loud. Like they're releasing the thing. These are the actual files that we have been talking about that Pam Bondi couldn't find that Cash Patel said, "Oh yeah, he killed himself. It's a It's a All these people that had whatever forms of cover up have now released this documentation that is pretty damning. But it seemed like it was business as usual.

We were talking about the Grammys red carpet. We're talking about what happened this weekend. We're talking about the ICE out protest. But I'm like guys are did we not just see what like I I saw one page and I'm not even a journalist and I'm like hey like like why are we talking like change the channel. Hold on. Like you you got we should shut stuff down. Like I feel like this is something that people need to have a conversation about. about. about. Well, not only that, PE arrests need to be made.

Like you you've really got to figure out what actually went on here because the all the files in their lurid details, they paint a picture that is so troubling troubling troubling that if I you don't need much more than a fraction of it to be true for this to be uh earthshatteringly problematic. Now, it's earthshatteringly problematic for me for a very specific reason. And that specific reason is I believe there's architecture to the human mind. So, we work in certain ways. And that those ways are knowable.

They're mapappable. And you've had people commenting for a long time that okay, there's a small cabal of people at the top and they're all interconnected. Okay. Is that true? Is it not true? People saying there's a uni party. Is it true? Is it not true? um that you know banking essentially runs the world. Is it true? Is it not true? Uh that these highle people all have dirt on each other and that's how they like keep everybody in line. Is it true? Is it not true?

And it's like those dominoes start falling like there there was one exchange about Michael Sailor of all people and um literally just reporting the exchange. This is a paraphrase was pretty close to exactly what was said. I believe it was said by one of um Epstein's assistants and she said, "I don't even know that I can take Michael Sailor's money and promise him like a more dynamic life or something, a more exciting life, something like that." She was like, "He doesn't pick up on social cues at all.

Like, he's just insufferable. I can't stand to be around him. He has no personality." And it was like, she said the words, "I wouldn't even know how to blackmail him." And so I was like, wait, so that like that's such an open part of the playbook that we just like off-handedly go, yeah, look, we can't blackmail that guy, so just cut him loose. Like rich though he may be, I need to know how I would blackmail this person. That was the one where like the benality of the throwaway comment of I wouldn't even know how to blackmail him.

It's like how much ink was spilled over the idea of, you know, was he was Epste being used to blackmail people? It's like, was Epstein blackmailing people? Like, forget like whether he's tied to governments or not. Like reading the Epstein files early days for me, I fully reserve the right to completely change my opinion. And Lord knows I hope I do. But reading it was like, okay, the the governments of it all are downstream of this kind of extragovernmental cooperation. But take cooperation to be coercion, blackmail, coercion, blackmail, coercion, blackmail, uh just like horrific stuff of reaching in to the soul of the people who make the world move and going, "What is that dark secret that you have that I can make come true for you?" And by making it come true for you, I have something over you.

And by having something over you, we can now move things in the direction we want. Now, there's no way that this stuff is pure coordination. It's going to be infighting. There going to be different factions that are all going to war with each other and all of that stuff. For sure, for sure. For sure. I have my base assumption, though it may prove to be erroneous, but my base assumption is that um just like a court in um monarchies of old, there's all of the Mchavellian infighting and intrigue and all of that stuff.

But it's like we never really moved out of that system. This is just like the modern-day version of that. And so maybe you don't have kingdoms, but you have these different countries all united under global economics, all united under this cabal of cabal of cabal of highlevel elites that again they're not all in coordination with each other. And if you read the mentions of Elon Musk, it's like he hates Reed Hoffman and you know, like there's all these like different factions within it, but it's like this is architecture of the human mind.

Now, I think the thing that's most distressing is that [ __ ] the way the human mind works, the thing you just go for is always money and like bizarre sexual pro proclivities. And so, seeing like those two things come together, like who who can we blackmail uh because we give them access to money or power or whatever, and then who can we blackmail with access to sex that they can't talk about? Again, I don't know how much of it's true, but it just like it's so interwoven throughout the whole thing.

And so, yeah, that's the part where I'm like, okay, so this is how the human mind is. mind is. mind is. When you When you When you mix two things that we're mixing right now, you get a really ugly cocktail. Thing number one, humans do this. You create a uh the iron law of oligarchy. You're going to have a small group of elites that run things. Then you've got the and the sexual proclivities of it all. Mhm. And so you end up putting those two things together in an era where everything becomes visible like on a long enough timeline, social media just makes everything visible.

And so now in a world where the only way to hide something is obfuscation, what does the world look like? And what I mean is a fancy word for people are going to try narrative control. They're going to try to pull the magic trick of look over here. It's why I am legitimately suspicious that wherever you whatever state you go to do a fraud investigation, it will immediately be chased by ICE uh riots because it is just an easy way to say no, no, no, this is all about race.

Um this is uh I think Newsome filed a discriminatory claim against Dr. Oz for saying that it's the oh god it's two nationalities. It's like yeah Russian Armenian mafia or something like that like that like that which I would expect all of them to be white as the driven snow but yet still the cry is discrimination. So that's where I'm just like uh but before we before we get because I think now we're starting to find out that to the human like mind and I but I want to jump into something because I think last week when speaking of the ICE protest we were justifying kicking out tail lights equals death.

And people were saying that like they were outraged that yes because he did that he should he deserve to get prosecuted. And now we have a three million files of things that I would think is worse than kicking out tail lights. I don't know about you guys, but I feel some of those allegations are a bit worse than tail lights on the back of police cars, but yet that same vitriol for cry for justice isn't there. What do you think is where how do humans get up?

Maybe it's because it's not the videos. Like, how help me rationalize that? Like, that? Like, that? Like, no, I think people have grabbed on to the Epstein files harder than they've ever grabbed on to anything ever in my lifetime. So, I don't people are not going to sweep this one away. This one really does speak to something and it is going to get headlines and I think there are going to be prosecutions and I think this is going to be wild. The only thing that muddies the waters here is I can't give you good guys bad guys.

It's they're all bad guys. And so the reason that the Biden administration didn't release these, the reason that, and I still don't understand why on earth the Trump administration would run the um the gambit of saying we're going to release these files, they had to know they didn't plan to release the files. the files. the files. And the reason that I think both sides did not want to release the files is they're all in there. They're all in there. It's there. It's there. It's Yeah, it's both sides, man.

Everybody's going to get obliterated. I mean, this is like this is structure of elite groups like groups like groups like revealing revealing revealing that. That's what you're showing is how does blackmail work. That's what you're showing. How do these groups get each other together? That's what you're showing. Who alive and active right now is actually connected. That's what you're showing. Like Epstein becomes the like Rosetta Stone of the elites. you can begin to map who's who, who's connected to who, who hates who, who will show up because that person's there, who will reject the invite because that person's there.

Like, it's it's insane. Now, again, many of the accusations that I'm sure that are informing my mental map of this are just false. And so, I will need to update my mental map as we go. But, bro, between the just unreenting litany of accusations of people who did something sexually horrifying Mhm. Uh Uh Uh you just go, man, they blackmail is a part of this. But that people are so easy to [ __ ] blackmail. Like you want that to be harder. You want that to be like, oh god.

Like we try to blackmail these guys, but so many of them just aren't into weird [ __ ] That's where I'm like, yo. And so is it a like yo. And so is it a like personality type when you want to ascend those ranks? Is that somehow tied to a higher likelihood of being into weird [ __ ] I don't know. I I don't understand how to map this. This is why this whole thing has taken me so by surprise. But all of that is going to be held on to in an iron fist by the public.

This one's not going away. The only reason that we got the files is because people were psychotic about it and they're like, "Uh, I may have voted for Trump. I will burn my allegiance to the ground. [ __ ] that kid. You're going to release these files. files. files. And so if there aren't prosecutions, people are going to go apeshit. Like I think this is way bigger news than Freddy. Like way bigger news. That that's just going to fall by the wayside. I mean, look at some of the counts, man.

I didn't even want to bring this one up because rumor rumor speculation speculation. I have no idea. But just go look up how many views a single post about Jay-Z supposedly fleeing the country has. Uh it was like somewhere between seven and 14 million, but it was a lot a lot a lot. And I was just like it's just like a random account. It wasn't even like some big known account. Just some guy was like well isn't this suspicious? And I was like that he got on an airplane cuz I didn't know where in what way he was mentioned.

And so I was just like uh what? Like why would it be weird that he's flying? But that's how much interest there is in who did what? How deep does the lie go? Like okay, this one's going to get weird. So the whole pizza gate thing. Admittedly, when I say I'm not even at the headline level, I I don't understand what that whole thing is. But some of the things that I started reading about it, I was like, uh oh. like they're really it has a narrative that has enough question marks that you're like, "Oh, I thought it was lunacy, lunacy, lunacy, but maybe the lunacy was trying to make the topic itself toxic so people wouldn't talk about it." Now, I don't know that any of this is true, but supposedly in the Epstein files when they talk about pizza, pizza is code for sex trafficking.

So, would you like your slice of pizza means would you like your uh person's sex traffic to you? I don't know that that's true, but there were some weird emails where people are like, "Can I bring your slice of pizza in now? Would you like your slice of pizza? Go send pizza to so and so." And I was like, "Man, they talk about pizza a lot. These guys really like pizza. This must be so uh and then there was one. Okay, this is where I'm going to everybody should stop paying attention for 9 seconds and I'll just say it because it's rattling around in my brain, but man, this one really is I I don't know anything about it.

But there was supposedly a pizza place where the guy was being accused of like being involved in all this and the a guy that owns a pizza restaurant was like listed as one of the like 50 most powerful people in Washington DC and somebody fired a single bullet into his establishment. that single bullet happened to hit the hard drive in his establishment with like his records. And so I was like, "Oh, sorry." And so I'm just like, "Hey, it really could happen. It this could be a fabricated document." But I was just like, "Oh god, like this." Yeah.

So anyway, I remember reading James reading James reading James Burnham Burnham Burnham and James Burnham is like, "I don't know what the world is going to look like because of social media because you can't control the narrative anymore." And I remember thinking, yeah, what is the world going to look like? And he had like when he was writing about it, and forgive me, James Burnham, if you don't agree with this assessment, but when he was writing about it, he said things that made me think he wanted or longed for, for, for, he said it in a way where it was like, they have to get narrative control again.

And without narrative control, you're going to have a problem. And I thought, thought, thought, we don't want narrative control. We want to be able to figure out what the truth is. and be careful what you wish for because this is that moment where I'm now seeing what it looks like when they're just like here's everything. So, first of all, no one's going to agree on what actually happened. There's so much of it. It's like you they always say when you're going to remodel a house, house, house, the contractor, if they're smart, will tell you, "I won't know what we're dealing with until we open a wall, and then I can see how this was actually built." That's how this felt.

They opened a wall AND YOU'RE LIKE, "OH, OH GOD." It's like, it's so bad. This This is like paperier-mâché. Your house is rotten. There are bugs in the walls that feed on paperier-mâché. Your whole house is paperier-mâché. It's like, "Oh my god, your whole house down." So, I'm just like, whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. So, then now I'm conflicted. So, thank you for that. That helped me process it. But now I'm on the other side cuz to the point there has to be I keep going back to ICE because I feel like that's just the the last recent outrage and it was like Tom Hman came into Minnesota was like okay guys this is how we're going to do it.

This is where we're going to do it. Everybody felt better a little bit like okay the adults in the room we can kind of figure it out. It should calm down at least from here going forward. But when it's the president the last president a Supreme Court justice is like we don't even know who to like who are we going to call to do the thing cuz like I can't ask you cuz you were there. I can't ask you. You can't say nothing because your husband was there and it's like we're running out of You ready for the even worse part of that?

that? that? What you're going to find through the release of these documents is that everybody who's gotten off or like oh that investigation didn't go anywhere or they threw that evidence out. You're going to see all of the connections that oh this has been played out like this from the beginning because none of these are big enough news stories. The fact this is all made up. I'm just giving you directional stuff. the fact that the judge was like the official at the wedding of the person uh who was accused of this thing like happened to be sitting on the case.

You're like, "Wait a second. Why didn't they recuse themselves?" themselves?" themselves?" There there is going to be an endless litany of thing. I'm saying that because I've read a bunch of documents pointing some of these things out and I was like, "What the fuck?" Like there again, speculation, no idea. This is going to be a rat's nest that has to be gone through, detangled. But it's one of those where there's so much surface level, like as they say, the optics are so horrible that maybe the trials were perfect, maybe everything was done above board, but the optics are god awful.

And it's possible that it's just corrupt all the way down. Um, do we actually get some form of accountability from this? You'll have to here. Here's the Okay, so here's my I'm reaching into the future of what's coming. The reason that the whole idea from James Bham that narrative control is critical. The only way that we can have the world that we're used to is if elites are able to spoon feed us a narrative and then we all march in lock step. Now, I use derogatory words for that, but there is so much power in that because the vast majority of life is perception.

It's not reality. I I'm not saying we're in a post-truth world or there are things that are true, but we just really don't understand how much of human existence is just perception. And so what we're going to find out now is you're going to get this massive fragmentation of that and we're just going to have to find a way to navigate a world in which there I'll lay out like 32 flavors of what actually happened with the Epstein files and then everyone will just slot into one of the 32 narratives.

But that's a lot pulling in opposite directions. Some of them will be directly contrary to the other and they'll be able to sit with their best debaters and debate and their followers will walk away going, "Yeah, I'm still right." right." right." And that's across all 32. 32 is a madeup number from Baskin Robbins, but you get the idea. So, it's like there's going to be be be this is completely fake. This is all the way real. He's It's real, but it's redacted. He was there, but he wasn't doing and everybody will kind of get in line in what would make them feel better about themselves.

about themselves. about themselves. Exactly. Correct. Because it's going to feed into what they already believe. Okay. So, that's problem number one. Problem number two is going to be that this is insanely important and you must pursue it because this is foundational to how the world works. We are in a moment where democracy from where I'm sitting is in crisis. America's in crisis and your you have to have a trust anchor to pull you through and we have to find that and establish it. Now speaking of narratives, there's a movie called The Untouchables.

The Untouchables gave Americans the narrative we needed to not fall to corruption the way that so many others did during like the um gang wars over prohibition. prohibition. prohibition. And so they found this group supposedly, this is all narrative, I know that, but they found this group of guys that just couldn't be bribed. And they were the ones that ultimately take down Capone and like all that stuff. And so they were known as the Untouchables because you couldn't uh kill a family member and they would back down.

Like these guys are just like, "Nope, this is what's right. we're going to push forward. We We need new untouchables. I actually mentioned this a couple months ago. We We need that new group. So, we're going to need a trust anchor that's going to pull us through this. Now, I don't think anybody's going to trust the Trump administration. He's mentioned too many times. He's too tied. tied. tied. So, it's like the trust anchor isn't going to be this DOJ. So, how do we get a trust anchor?

I don't know. So, this is where we're going to want Congress to step in and say, "Okay, this is where we need leadership. We need somebody that's not mentioned in the Epstein files anywhere to put together a panel of people that are going to run a blue ribbon committee that's going to find out like truth and reconciliation of what happened. and we're going to spend a whole lot of money and years combing through all that stuff, putting everything together and prosecuting people. Like, dude, you you cannot you cannot let officials at the level that we're talking about here um have done the kind of things that they're claiming that they've done without investigating and finding out what's true.

Like, you must. We can't just go, "Oh, well, crazy. There's just so many claims, nothing to do. It's too pervasive." Like, the second you do that, that that's just permission. That So, think what you want about what's going on in Minnesota. My take is when you give permission even just by silence, that's that's when things escalate. And so, that's why I think you see that in Minnesota is uh Tim Walls was very fine with all of that happening. And the second he wasn't fine, then it deescalated.

So, I think you'll see the same thing if you just brush your hands or dust your shoulders off and go, "Nah, it's it's too overwhelming. We just need to move forward." And nobody's bang that drum harder than me when it comes to political prosecutions. But on this one, bro, you you just can't. And so, you've got to have that committee. They've got to go through there have to be um trials. The trials have to be by untouchables where we're just like, "Yeah, that judge is beyond reproach." Like, "Yep, we're going to get to the truth." and and then we have to let the law prevail because if we on the flip side of that coin, if we just burn everybody down because your name was in the files, um that doesn't make sense either.

So, we do need courts. We do need to do everything we can to find the truth. And we do need to lock up people if they were really doing this stuff because it is it it dude every now and then you'll hear the stat that there's more slaves now than there's ever been in human history. I'm always like, what? Like, does where are you hiding them? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you hear stuff like the Epstein files and it's like, oh my god. Like because if that's really true and people really are being trafficked and they're effectively being held against their will, will, will, you can't let that happen.

Like you can't that that that is a crime against humanity of the highest order. Yeah. Is is this one of those things on the money side people the Federal Reserve got revealed the loud the quiet part was said out loud. People said the dollar is going to die. Bitcoin was invented and now we're starting to decentralize from that. I know it's only, you know, 01% but we know directionally going forward it's going to be more and more every year. Is this this black swan event where we can decentralize the government?

Is this going to be something where we're going to like we're going to actually drain the swamp? We're going to have to really I don't want to say revolution because every time people think of revolution, they think of just burning stuff down. But would this be one of those moments where it's like everybody in DC got to go? Like we got to start all over. Like it depends on the timeline that you're going to give me. So right now, America is on a mathematical course to bankruptcy, which means roughly 10 years from now, if all things stayed the same, and of course they will not.

But if they all stayed the same, roughly 10 years from now, you will have torn yourself apart from the inside because of math. I won't derail us on that now. Happy to talk about it later, but like that's the path that you're on. Now, something like this, I would say, isn't a black swan event. it it in the same way that math does not care who you vote for any of that. This is like what mom Donniey's learning in New York. It's like you can have all the socialist dreams that you want, but it runs up against math.

And a 12 billion budget shortfall is a 12 billion budget shortfall. You just have to deal with it. it. it. Um so we're going to have the same thing. So I don't think that the world looks the same moving forward as it does today. today. today. But I don't think it looks like the disintegration of um the political system. system. system. We too many people alive only know that system. system. system. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I also don't think it looks like so Bology if you guys don't know who he is look him up.

He's one of the smartest people I've ever interacted with personally. This guy is brilliant. I I mean really really brilliant. And but he has a base assumption that I cannot get on board with that um ideology is stronger than geography. And I think he's wrong about that. And I think the thing I worry most about and I need to only look inward in myself when I map America going to civil war and people get hung up on that word. Um but what I mean by that is people in different tribes that are willing to kill each other and then the government's not doing anything to stop it.

So that to me is civil war. Now, when I reach into the future, I go, I need to move to Florida because um that's where I'm like, California is not going to be safe for wealthy people. And so, at some point, just because geography matters more than ideology, I need to go somewhere where um wealthy people are not persecuted. And so And so And so the whole premise that biology has is geography is not going to matter because people will link up over the internet with each other based on their ideology and they'll form these like online tribes.

And that's cool until somebody um kills you because they disagree with you and you're like but wait my bros in Bangladesh think the same way that I do so what's the problem? and you'll just get trounced by physical violence. And so I think that biology's theories require a stable world, which we do not currently have. So that's where I'm like, nope. Geography still matters a lot. So I don't think you're going to see a total breakdown of the current style of government that we have because that style of government is baked into geography matters.

uh doing everything that we can to brace ourselves against tyranny, which I hope people in America don't want to let go of. But I do think that in the next 10 years, we're going to see a rapid increase in the self- selecting into uh red and blue states. And that really scares me. And so then how fragmented will it become? All eyes on Alberta, please. If Alberta actually breaks away from Canada, which they say they are doing, if Alberta actually breaks away from Canada, which I'd be very interested to know what the poly market bet is on that, but if they break away from Canada, that's your map of what civil war looks like.

Mhm. So it would be states fracturing and creating alliances in the same way that they do in Europe where America now is a federation of states versus just like a European Union uh where it's far looser that I could see in our call it 50-year future. But a lot of this is so predicated on AI. When I make statements like this, I'm like sci-fi writers will often do. They'll just set a certain technology off to the side. Dune sets aside AI because it doesn't want to try to deal with what that would look like.

Um, you kind of have to set AI aside because it the world is unknowable if the singularity actually happens. Yeah, it's it's wild. Um, I know we got some other stuff we got to jump into. This is like a very sensitive topic still. So, having a 14-year-old, I was personally affected by this. I feel like this is something that shouldn't be glossed over. I think if a lot of these things are confirmed, this is disqualifying. This is damning. Um, Bill Clinton had to step down because he got some head one time in the White House.

I feel like half He didn't step down. He got impeached. He got impeached, but he stayed president until the end of his term. Well, I feel like it's disqualifying, and I think that a lot of people need to get out get up out of there. Um, I need to call my friends with law degrees. It's time to like start the revolution. I think these people are disgusting. I think it's vile. I think it's sick. I think it's mean. I don't think this is one of those like, well, you know, both sides are in its politics.

And nah, there's a there's a line. We could both sides tax policy. We could both sides healthcare, but we can't both sides pedophilia. U, this is damning. A lot of these people I would never I would unfollow. I would never take their opinion on anything again because six months ago you were talking about how Epste is a POS and then you're asking Epstein, hey man, I really need to blow off some steam. Can I come through tonight? Um, so yeah. Yeah, I think that that is going to be shared by a lot of people.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, a lot. This is not going away. No way. We've got one super chat on the Epstein files if you want to hit that. Let's go. Cool. Uh, so let's see. The ice issue is fast food, accessible, satisfying, designed to speak to your deepest biological urges. Epstein is clean eating and exercise, large amounts of complex info, but requires discipline and commitment to really grasp from thirsty salt. thirsty salt. thirsty salt. Well, so I'll say that a better way to slice that would be that you can approach any topic from a fast food perspective.

So you can take your fast food perspective on ice. uh you can take your fast food perspective on epsene which many people are going to do and then you can take the more sophisticated exercise, hard work, nutrition, holding competing ideas in your head, all of that on both issues, which I think we need to do very aggressively. Uh but most people are not going to do that. That's the bad news. So I would say it's probably an 8020 break. 80% of people just are going to take the fast food approach to virtually everything in their lives.

and then 20% of people will actually take the time to parse the stuff apart. But yeah, this is going to be a rocky road for sure. And then Lisa and John Doe both mentioned mentioned mentioned Lisa as in my Lisa. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Uh and they both mentioned they would like you to talk about the victims especially because a lot of those names that are mentioned are going to get lost in all of the famous powerful names and um some people may have their lives ruined, things like that.

Well, so okay. My yeah my my take on that and I'll be very curious to see if this is satisfying to the people that want me to talk about it. My take on that is it is a devastating truth of the human condition that sexual abuse shatters people shatters people uh in a way that most people are just not able to put the pieces back together and that feels like a very cruel twist of fate uh for how the brain is wired. So the devastation that anything like that, whether it's a part of a big ring, which of course adds a layer of horror to all of this that is impossible to quantify, but everybody touched by sexual abuse, it's just devastating.

Uh so yeah, for sure this will have ruined an ungodly number of lives. And I want for the victims not only justice, but whatever uh anonymity they seek. And that's going to be the hard part is this will require some people to be ridiculously brave and come forward and detail what happened. Um, but I don't see any way around it. So, but that that is brutal and all of our hearts should bleed collectively for anybody that that's happened to. It's brutal. brutal. brutal. We ran a poll um in the chat.

Did this confirm the way you view humans, the elites? Did this change the way you view humans and elites or just confirm it? and confirmed one by 69%. So our audience has realized that humans and elites were poss I guess I'm not surprised by that number but I am heartbroken by that number. So yeah social media unfortunately has really pulled back the curtain on human behavior where you can see global news all the time. you just begin to see patterns. It's brutal. Um, Um, Um, brutal.

brutal. brutal. And then somebody said in the chat like how many of the victims are even still alive to come forward. That's something we haven't talked about the allegations that some people are buried in the back of um Dude. I won't say their name just because it it strikes me as unwise. But one of the um pages that I read uh talked about certainly for somebody of my generation, somebody who's very very famous, allegedly allegedly allegedly uh strangling a woman to death at a party. And I was just like that there was that movie 8mm and I remember watching that movie and just being like this is so like out there like there's no way.

First of all, that doesn't sound fun to watch. And then I was just like, there's no way like there's enough of these people that there's actually a market for getting out of here. And so it was like you suspend disbelief. You watch it and then I'm reading that and I'm going is this really a thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then of course you flash back to all of human history and you realize, yo, humans are cruel. Humans are cruel and they will kill people in the most horrifying fashion.

So it's like damn you've got the historical coralate and for some reason like it's really comforting to believe that right now we're at the end of history that we are not subject to whatever strange evolutionary forces make us capable of tremendous evil. tremendous evil. tremendous evil. Uh that we're somehow outside of that and then you read the Epstein files and you realize oh no no no we're still right in the thick of it and it is unfortunately in keeping with everything we know about humans throughout history.

It's freakish. It's freakish. It's freakish. Does this Does this Does this change how you approach politics going forward in the sense that there are some people that would this impact your midterm decision? Would this impact some of the politicians? Do you think when people are campaigning there's going to be a sect of people that search the epine files like who's running in my district? district? district? Of course. Of course. So, I would like to think that my opinions will be formed by what actually goes through the legal system, but like anybody, uh, it's not a good look.

So, if there are just a litany of horrifying accusations against somebody, somebody, somebody, I'd be surprised if somewhere in my subconscious that's not saying like, hey, I know it hasn't gone through the legal system yet, but yeah, it's not a good look. good look. good look. It's not a good look. I so hunger for somebody who feels like an untouchable, somebody who feels unccorruptible, somebody who gives me a vision that I can look towards, man. Yes. I don't know enough about them to like be uh fullthroated on that, but certainly uh early indications would be yes.

So, you need people like that, but they also have to good have good policies. So it's like I don't want you to drive me off a moral cliff and I don't want you to drive me off an economic cliff. I need a Thomas Massie Roana card in Roana. Roana I had so much fun with you when I interviewed you but he's doing economic things that do not make sense. That's why him and Thomas Massie will buy us out cuz Thomas Massiey's a hard budget uh def like reduce the deficit person.

So I feel like if those two together that would be like Massiey's the guy with a debt pin, right? right? right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm on that team. Yeah. That that would be a super team. Um, somebody said uh Thomas Massie and Rand Paul. Yeah, but they're both libertarians. That that's too that's too one-sided. That'll be two one card. You need somebody Yeah, you need somebody on the other side. Ro is the most like thoughtprovoking thoughtprovoking thoughtprovoking levelheaded Democrat in the field right now. He's the only one who hasn't gone full like I'll do whatever um Nancy Pelosi says or I've gone full mom Donnie.

So, I feel like that's why Rose good on that side and Thomas Massie is the only Republican I know that's actually holding Trump accountable, that's actually holding us accountable to the deficit, that's actually holding us accountable to for America as opposed to just playing team ball. So, So, So, Lisa Bill is back in the chat. Let's go. Lisa Bill, she says, "Tough question, Tom. Would you still have voted for Trump if you knew what was in the files?" Uh, I wouldn't even say that I know enough about the specific specifics of Trump's accusations now to let that sway me.

But would I look into the accusations before voting? Yes. Now, the question is, and I fear that this is going to be the question that we all have to answer. If you're put in a situation where like take mom Donnie, assume that mom Donnie is a true believer that it is with love in his heart and assume he has nothing troubling in his past. So he has love in his heart and no troubling past, but he's marching down the path of a system that kills millions on millions on millions.

Would you vote for somebody who's obviously very early in that path? Mdani is not going to kill people, but would you vote for somebody who's headed down that path or a moral monster who's going to do things that are better for Americans? God, I hate that. You can You cannot trolley problem, Tom. This is This is This is You have to. No. Absolutely not. There's disqualifying things. No way. You have. You have. You have. No. No. Tom, no way. No way. I Tom, I love you.

No way. Come on. Come on. This is not do I do I kill one small uh parent? Do I kill one six-year-old in order to save 40 40 million people? Okay. Yeah, that's different. But like there's like we're talking about like PDF files, dog. Like like this is not like a like a like a so like socialism will have to break bad for 20 years. And you said it yourself, nothing is stays the same for that long in order for those millions and millions of people to to actually be impacted.

He impacted those little girls now like today. today. today. Okay, so hold on just to make sure that we're being clear. If you look at the files and it's like, "Oh, he did that." Easy. I'm saying if you're looking at something, you think I don't like this guy's morality. Not that I know that he's doing something like [clears throat] that, but I'm looking at this guy. Like even take Trump. So right now, Trump is not going to go to jail for this. If they had a smoking gun, they would have played it a long time ago.

However, Trump did say, "I heard him with my own ears." Grab them in the hoo-ha. And that was to me that's a moral monster. How can you do that? That's so insane to me. So, and yet when I looked at the economic collision calamity that we were going to have, that was for me better to go with that guy than to march down socialism. Now, if there were things, things, things, rape, underage girls, all of that, cool, easy peasy, you wash your hands. But there is a line where it's like, yeah, I am going to think about what's actually good for Americans.

Now, you and I may have different base assumptions. The base assumption that I'm making is the the calamity the calamity the calamity for millions of people. If you get economics wrong, remember I think economics is foundational to like all the woes. You look at gangs running a country, that's economics, okay? Economics led us to that place. You look at a nation falling and the calamity that that brings upon people, that's economics. You look at slavery, that's economics. So, it's like that kind of stuff to me, uh, clearly I rate as way more important than you do.

And fair enough, but I want to be very clear. If somebody is convicted of pedophilia, you're done. Yeah. Um, keeping up with this debate, right? So, um, the numbers are good. So, I'm cooking here and then for I'm staying here for a second. Um, we're saying that economic downfall is more important to you as a um determining factor than some moral uh repugnant. repugnant. repugnant. Let Let me make this a real case. Yeah. So we can see what we're looking at. at. at. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Mao killed 45 million people, starve them to death with policies. [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] He then chased that with um the cultural revolution which killed tens of millions more. Dang Xiaoing ended all of that and pulled whatever 400 million people out of poverty. of poverty. of poverty. Insane. Now, if you told me that Deng Xiaoing was a disgusting human morally, would I still rather him over Mao? And let's say Mao really believed everything he was saying. He didn't, but let's say he did. Uh, you've got one guy who's killing I mean, some people put it at like 80 million people.

It It's so many people. people. people. So, for me, it's self-evident. I It doesn't matter. If you can tell me that that's what Deng is going to bring and I have to accept that this guy is morally corrupt. He's a, you know, moral monster. monster. monster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But he's going to end what Mal was doing. Yes. Unfortunately, I will take that. And it's interesting that that's not going to be a popular opinion. And I don't know what to do with that. No, because I feel like that's a hindsight is 2020 type thing because I think if on the ballot it was Trump with if if it's Trump 100% Epstein files are true versus Mau 45 million people that's a moral conundrum and that's something that we'll really have to mull on and some people will be like oh easy 45 million people like I'll take the 45 but at least little girls aren't being uh touched the wrong way.

And on the other side people will say a couple little girls is cool if I could just get through I'm avoiding 45 million. I can understand that apples to apples comparison if that was on the ballot. But we can't say that the last election cycle it ends up becoming Yeah, that's why I said for me it is very simple and clear. If you've got somebody who is convicted, convicted, convicted, you wash it away for the very reason that you can't see into the future. Uh [clears throat] and so at that point, you've got to bet on that the system will disrupt the march towards socialism.

I [clears throat] don't want to make that bet, but I would make that bet when I don't have other data. But what I'm saying is for me, this is this is a trolley problem, and I don't think people give enough credit to how devastating devastating devastating economic missteps are. I think with the release of these files, it definitely taught us that these politicians, although they smile, although they kiss babies, although they're really nice when you meet them and shake their hand in the suit, behind closed doors, that's not who they actually are.

This is a mass. This is a character. They're they're playing somebody. They're all actors. So, I understand um that people aren't who we think they are. Um, I just think that specific question I we have to be like hard about that because I think that's one of those things that we're starting to slip and lose as a nation. Back in the day when we were all controlling the narrative, the shared narrative was religion. Um, Professor Jang, I can't even take credit for this, said the reason we can never build the pyramids again is because we don't have a shared narrative for a higher being that we all want to do something for this God.

We're all getting together and we're all ringing in. We're going to build this temple and this monument to this God who did all these things for us and we all love it and we're all on one accord. Right now, we don't even have a shared god. We don't have a shared narrative. I could put blue in front of you. Somebody's like, "Well, technically it's aqua blue. Somebody else going to call it royal blue." And we can't even agree what the color of the sky is. So, I think where we are right now, we're starting to lose bits of our humanity in this bit by bit where it becomes we're okay with seeing people die.

We're okay with seeing people uncomfortable. We're okay with seeing sexual assault. We're okay with victim blaming. And slowly but surely, we're getting to a point where where it's like, okay, yeah, well, I don't care about nobody outside of my five family members. If you're not related to me or if you're not hired by me, I don't care about you. And I feel like that's becoming tribal, like our character and our our personality is becoming tribal. And I think that that's something that we're going to lose as a society when we lose that collective and that shared at least acknowledgement, the shared I don't want to say responsibility, but the shared um uh humanity, I guess, is the only way word I could use.

Listen, I love what you're saying. There's no doubt. I don't think the world works that way. And I think that the world is uh unfortunately a very dark place ruled by power. I think humans are capable of great love and joy and compassion and doing acts that are truly courageous and unbelievable. There's no doubt. But the world, humans, Souljier Nitson said it best when he said, "The line between good and evil runs through every human heart." So when when judging whether somebody is going to be um the right person to lead, you have to factor all of it.

What are their actual policies? What will be the outcome of this? Um are they a moral monster? Are they somebody that I can look up to? You can rule people out. You've been convicted of something like that. Cool. They're off the table. Just in no uncertain terms, nice and easy. The thing that I'm trying to keep in the spotlight is the very thing that we were talking about before, which is are people going to take a fast food approach to this or are they actually going to take diet and exercise?

And what I'm saying is the Epstein files reveal architecture of the human mind. They reveal how elite groups work. They reveal how interconnected and terrifying that system is. And Lord knows that I hope that we find a way to elevate leaders, maybe a Thomas Massie or somebody like that. Elevate leaders who are worthy of being followed that have both sound policy and a moral compass. There there would be nothing better than that. The example that I always use though is Lincoln and um or let's take George Washington.

George Washington owned slaves. We have to contend with that. But George Washington also gave you the presidency. He could have become king. The people would have said, "Yes, let him do it." And he didn't. And that was even talked about in France. They were like, "This guy is so popular that they referred to him as the king of America." They're like, "There's no way he's going to step down." Remember, there's nothing in the Constitution at the time he steps down after a second term that says you have to step down.

He could have just kept going and going and going and going. and he set the um cultural standard of there's only going to be two. This was a guy that led on the battlefield and was an extraordinary leader that the opposition felt had been touched by the hand of God because they could not kill him. He had at least one bullet hole in his coat where he was shot and it ripped through. Like this is not but didn't hit him. This is not somebody who was safe and off to the sides.

Like when you really dig into Washington, you're like, "Holy fuck." But then you're also like the teeth in your mouth were pulled out of the mouths of slaves and literally for people who don't know that. So I'm saying that's real life. And if we if you're asking me if today if I knew there was a guy running for office that had slave teeth in his mouth, would I vote for him? The answer is no. Obviously not. But I'm just saying, [ __ ] life is messy. And when I'm deciding who to vote for, I am not saying, "Oh, this person is somebody who I want to be like.

I decidedly do not want to be like Trump. I am a gasast at his approach to women." A gasast. A gasast. A gasast. and I voted for him because I'm looking at the average American's life and going of these two candidates which is going to be better and my decision was based on that. Now again I can tell as I say these things that that isn't going to be popular but nonetheless nonetheless nonetheless um I can articulate my base assumptions. I can explain why I would do that.

Uh for me it is it is a acknowledgement of the historical truth of where these things go and they are devastating. There's um something you said earlier that I kind of want to spin back on when you were saying like this is how the world always was. There wasn't um we were always cast system. This was always uh monarchs, but now we're just kind of rebranding it. We're changing the names. We're changing the phrases. That kind of reminds me of the like common day axiom that like slavery is still around.

it just morphed. Um, as in like specific to America, I know that there's actual indentured servants. There's actual people, slaves and things like that. But like the quote unquote slave class became the employee class and then the quote unquote overseers became the land owners or the rent the land the landlords. Um, and then there's like kind of like this elite class was always there. Is this one of those things where even going back to the George Washington days, it was around from that perspective and it just George Washington was the last good one and then somebody kind of snuck in just like with the Fed kind of snuck in early and dictated or do you think America was founded on this elite and I think that the human mind works in a certain way?

I need a better way to say that. uh we we are all MPCs in a simulation and we cannot escape our programming and so because of that now we're not all programmed the same and that's part of the problem because we are not programmed the same we filter out into like these different roles but I really believe God evolution whatever had to create a dynamic such that the human race would move forward on the back of culture but would never stagnate stagnate stagnate and so you need like all this fighting.

You need people to be products of their time so that as times change the people change all of that. So what I feel like all of this reveals where we are right now in human society is simply a stop on a corkcrew spiral that will never end. And that's why people say history doesn't repeat but it rhymes. Why does it rhyme? Because the human mind works in a certain way. When you take it on mass it works in a certain way. All of us are very different.

Anybody who's married knows that you and your wife are wildly different, but at the same time, you're different within bounds and you react very similarly to very similar stimulus. Uh, and so when I look at this, that's what I see. I see the iron law of oligarchy is true because there are going to be people who are smarter. There are going to be people who are more obsessed. There are going to be people who crave power. There are going to be people who crave to be looked at.

Um, and when you put all of that together, and then you're going to get all the opposites of those. And when you put all that together, you get the world that we see. There are only certain people that have the personality role that take them all the way to wanting to run everything to wanting to be at the top to being morally ambiguous, being able to um you know dip into the gray area like area like area like yeah to run a country you you have to be very comfortable in the trolley problem all day every day because you are constantly sacrificing some people to save others.

Whether that's uh we went in and killed a bunch of Venezuelans because we felt like that was the right thing to do. Well, I imagine that's very cold comfort to the woman whose uh husband did not come home, whose, you know, to kids whose dad did not come home. Uh and then who knows how we'll change the people who uh would have been influenced by that oil, right? And not all of them are going to be leaders. Some of them are going to be average people.

How many people are suffering in Iran because of what we're doing there? Now, maybe they're glad. Maybe it gives them a chance to finally break free. And certainly, I fall in that camp. But America forced them to be in the economic position that they're in. That didn't happen by accident. That happened through sanctions. And so now it's like, yeah, like there are people whose lives have been completely upended or all the way just ended because of choices that we made. And we don't know if 10 years down the road this will be better or worse.

So worse. So worse. So the reason that the world is structured the way that it is structured is because that's how people are. And there are people who draw a line in the sand and they're like, "Nope, I uh I think these things are right and I will never bend." And then other people are far more flexible. And I fear that government attracts the people that are far more flexible. And so that's what I see. It is horrifying. And yet, um, okay, I want to jump into some stuff because Twitter's popping off right now about some like, um, there's two sides I want to go with it is now the ramifications of these files being released.

Um, there's already kind of a few dominoes releasing. I want to start with um, Thomas Massie, speaking of the devil, we were just talking about him. Um, starting with his tweet going back to January 30th, he said, "If you're reading the Epstein files right now, it's because of I'm in Congress and fighting. I'm not taking any credit. at least as much goes to Roana, former rep Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bober, and Nancy Mace. And too many documents are still being withheld, or redacted, but we'll get to that, too.

Um, it was not a hoax. I cannot be bullied. I am not done. And this is why those in powers are doing everything in their power to defeat me. And then he released within hours of the Epste file release, a super PAT funded by Israel first billionaires Miriam Addison, Paul Singer, and John Paulson, who himself appears in Epste's black book, bought another $800,000 of TV ads against me. I'll still win, but if I lose, it was worth it. Do you, now that this has gotten out, is this kind of an example, just one example of the elites kind of now saying, "Let's buy that narrative control back." The people who have pushed to get this transparency, let's attack them, try to defame them, and kind of start bringing them down.

them down. them down. Of course. Of course. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, you're going to see a massive immune response. you're going to see people try to reassert control uh try to own the news cycle, try to get the troublemakers out of office a thousand%. So I mean this is the great So I mean this is the great tragedy of how we are that I don't so okay you can give a so okay you can give a moralizing speech which maybe I should so that it's on the record and then you go back to we have to deal with reality with reality with reality the moralizing speech goes like this the world ought to be a certain Okay, is a call for morality.

There is a reason that humans have gotten to where we've gotten now on the back of religion. Religion exists to fill a god-shaped sprocket, not hole, a god-shaped sprocket in the brain so that it makes certain gears turn. And it allows us to very easily say you ought to behave like this. Now that architecture can and has been co-opted many times and in the name of Jesus uh the crusades were launched. Let that one sink in. So it can go very very wrong. But at the same time it allows us to say you don't need to understand why.

You just need to believe that God, whichever God that would be, wants you to think and act like this. That allows for tremendous group cohesion in huge groups that transcend borders. It's basically the largest tribe that we've been able to build via iconography and ideas that can be instantly transmitted. If I've got my cross on, then somebody knows, "Oh, cool. You're part of my tribe." If I've got my Star of David, somebody knows, "Oh, you're part of my tribe. I don't have to have met you before.

I just know that's what you're about. Cool." Uh, so given that the world ought to be a certain way and that when done right, your ought has survived for thousands of years specifically because it really does improve people's lives. And humans are capable of tremendous beauty and good. And to be alive is a gift of untold proportions. And I'm certainly very grateful for it. And so I want to see the world run by people that focus on how the world ought to be. And they are good and just warriors who sacrifice everything to be of service to other people.

And they are leading precisely because they were called. That gear plugs into their brain. Doesn't have to be a known religion, but that gear of like I want to serve my fellow man clicks into place and it turns for them and they are willing to give everything up in service of that. And accordingly, this is not somebody who you're going to find with the most insane skeletons in their closet that just rule them out completely. Okay? I want that world. I want to be a part of that world.

And every now and then we see glimpses of it. I don't know Thomas Massie well enough to know if he's the guy, but like let's use him as an avatar. avatar. avatar. Uh that's the kind of person that you want to see lead. Mhm. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, Unfortunately, when I look back at history, that isn't who actually leads and the people and it's not like you'll get and I haven't done a deep enough dive on him to know what his version of slave teeth in his mouth are, but Marcus Aurelius, right?

Uh seems to be considered by many historians the last great emperor, one of the last three. I forget if he was the dead last, but he was like one of the last great Roman emperors. And he had a guy that followed him around and said, "Remember, you're just a man. You're just a man." Because everybody would refer to him essentially as a deity. And so he wanted to remind himself through philosophy that he was not above anybody else, that this was about policy, that you had to have policies that had good outcomes.

You needed to be around the people. You needed to understand how this stuff uh played out, and you needed to understand your own mind. And that was the thing that made him such a breakthrough was he wouldn't have used these words. But the human mind works in a certain way. We have to understand how fallible we are. We have to understand that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. I am just as susceptible to making mistakes and all of that. Okay, that's the closest thing to like a real world person, somebody who is flawed, somebody who is of this earth, uh who is doing their best to navigate this.

Now you give me somebody like that to choose from and I'm going to choose that person. Unfortunately, there seems to be some sort of selection process that makes that kind of person in the upper echelons extraordinarily rare. And the question becomes why? Now I have a base assumption that the ascent to political power is a violent game. It doesn't always take place with actual knives being jabbed into you, but it is like backroom stabbings, blackmail, um get people out of the system. Yeah. like all of that stuff.

They're going to ice you out. They're going to ruin your reputation. Um they'll make it impossible for you to get elected. Blah blah blah. All the kinds of things that have come out a gazillion times. And so there's a reason like if you actually read The Prince by Mchaveli, what he was trying to say is I'm not speaking to how the world ought to be. I'm speaking to how the world is. And so when people look at Mchaveli, they think he was putting it forward as um that this is a moral thing that you ought to do.

And he was just trying to advise the government on how you the the world of real politique. Now the second you get into real politique, people have this really weird reaction to it. And I feel like it is simply because they have never delineated in their own mind between is and ought. So we can talk about ugh. We can talk about the world that we want and hopefully we aim for it. And I what you're talking about I think when you say I worry we're going to lose our humanity is people are no longer aspiring to u they've given into is and given the way the human mind is we need people pushing for ought.

We need people like this was my phase one was just all about the person you could become. could become. could become. And then over time I realized only doing this is making the world very confusing to me. And so I need to learn how the world is. world is. world is. Now if you can do both, so much the better. Hey, we ought to be this way. But we have to remember the world is this way. And so we're going to have to drag this along with us because you're never going to be able to transcend the way that the human mind is, the way that people are on mass.

But part of the way that people are on mass is that they will heed the call of an extraordinary figure who can show you how the world ought to be. So let's talk about Martin Luther King Jr. He gave us a vision of how the world ought to be. He was also having affairs. So it's like okay he is doing something I would never do in a million years and yet he is somebody I admire tremendously. admire tremendously. admire tremendously. So that to me is the conundrum.

Would I throw Martin Luther King out with the bathwater? No, I would not. Would I say for me that's a moral monster? monster? monster? In that way, yes. I believe that if you're in a relationship with somebody and you tell them, "I'm not going to cheat on you." Break up with them, but don't cheat. don't cheat. don't cheat. Hey, Hey, Hey, fallible. I'm fallible. Holy Jesus, the line through good and evil runs through every human heart. I feel I hate how clay my feet are. I understand how um at risk to being human I am and doing stupid [ __ ] and succumbing to my own emotions and all of that.

I would lose respect for myself if I ever cheated on my wife. Nice and easy. So, that's where I go. Okay. uh this guy deals in the real world. He gave me a picture of where we ought to go. He inspired me and millions of other people. people. people. And at the same time, like men have a drive to sleep with novel females. And so how we reconcile that is the thing for the ages. And I find most people just don't. they will either pretend that he didn't have any problems or they will cast him away.

Uh, and I think both of those are a mistake. So, the Epstein files for me is a big cold icy dose of is and it's completely devoid of aught. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. And the speech that you gave earlier which actually hit me and I liked it a lot was hey we need a whole bunch of and if we don't force ourselves to fight for ugh we will succumb to our baser nature and that has an accelerating fact of its own and I agree and so we do need people that pull for this is how the world ought to be.

I hear I hear it. Okay. Okay. Um on on the flip side, there's one thing uh I had that 4chan uh post that just popped up on my feed just now about um Epstein getting trafficked out, but some people are pulling I'm bringing up um Cash Patel's former Congress testimony and saying that this should now be disqualifying and he like should be taken down. So just to refresh everybody's mind, this is what he said to Congress um earlier last year. Is no credible information. None. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he traffked to other individuals and the information we have again is limited.

So the answer is no one for the information that we have in the files in the case file. Okay. Okay. Okay. There's no credible information. There's no credible information that he trafficked. Not the not the rimshot. Uh so things like this in front of Congress saying this and then now with the release of the files is this something that you think you know people need to start being held accountable in this way starting with Cash Patel the FBI the DOJ the people who oversaw the files and then have then said we don't have enough to prosecute when clearly you have at least enough to make arrest bring in for questioning have those that that one seems shocking to me.

So, uh, it feels like he had to have known what was going on. And this is horrific. That felt like that period where I was just like Dan Bonino's voice sounded so constricted when they gave that like, and I know, look, I'm reading into something, but I was like that from that moment forward, it felt like the men in black suits rolled up and said, "Let me tell you how the world really works, and now you're part of the coverup machine." Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So that feels like it's from the coverup era where they had expressly said, "All right, uh, we need you guys to go out and make this go away." Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And they did their best to make it go away. It this is pure emotion on my side. I do not have any facts. Nobody else has. But that's what that feels like to me. Like that's just wild. Crazy town. Crazy town. Yeah. And I see somebody that says like case files and uh release files are two different things. Understood. were just saying that with the information that was released, it's at least enough to start questioning people. At least enough to start questioning. Yeah. And I mean, listen, that so the administration is going to have talking points that they want these guys to go out and say.

So I imagine in reality just good luck doing that without getting immediately fired. But uh the wiser way to approach something like that would be to say, listen, there's a lot there. We have not gone through it all. The stuff that we've seen, there's nothing credible. So this is going to take time and a deep investigation. we're willing to do that work. It's that kind of important. We're going to do it. But you're going to have answers in six or eight months. You're not going to have answers in six or eight days.

Uh so that people could get behind and be like, "Okay, look, fair enough." Uh but the there's nothing there. If there was anything credible there, I would have moved on it. Oh, Jesus. Bad look. Bad look through and through. Um okay. Uh there is some other things we do got to cover. Um I do I do appreciate everybody jumping in. If you have more questions, drop it in there. Um I want to we had like a whole rundown. I'm throwing the whole rundown out. But there is something important that happened over the weekend that I think we really need to talk about and this is the um China issue uh uh Xi making the claim that they want to be the global reserve currency.

Um the yuan wants to replace the dollar. Now I know we've been talking about this for a while. There's been speculation for that. Um I want you to kind of ground us with that. We can pull up the tweets and get and then go into the Kevin Mars Fed chair stuff to give the kind of the economic motivation. I want to give us a gut check about economics and where we are just as a country. Um because there was a lot that happened even though we were in Epstein land for most of it.

Yeah. No, for sure. So, President Xi Jinping has called for the Chinese yuwan also known as the renman to become a primary global reserve currency and this has drawn significant international attention. Xi basically wrote an article in it. He outlined the pillars of what he calls becoming a financial powerhouse. So it would be uh we have a powerful currency one used widely in trade investment and ultimately as a global reserve. Two, a powerful central bank. So we need to be capable of effective monetary policy and preventing systemic risk.

Three, there need to be strong financial institutions. So globally competitive banks and a full insurance sector. Four, there need to be international financial centers. So, hubs that can attract gold uh sorry, global capital and influence pricing. The reason I uh slipped gold there is that's part of their whole strategy to build the co the gold corridor in South America. They want people to understand we get what our reputation is. We're going to talk about trust in a second, but we get what our reputation is. We know that people aren't going to believe that you'll have access to your gold or to your uh yuan because of our capital controls, but hey, we're going to build this gold corridor.

You guys will be able to store the gold. Now, they China just had a massive gold crisis over the weekend, but technically it was a private firm that imploded, but given China's uh deep inshment with the private sector, there's some blowback on them. But that's the idea and the immediate aim I would say right now is not necessarily to overthrow the dollar rapidly but what Xiai is trying to do is create a strategic counterweight that would reduce China's vulnerability to US financial sanctions uh and the US's ability to leverage saying against everybody the financial markets against everybody.

So um in that sense like if I were in China this is exactly the kind of thing that I would be advising Xi to do. This is a very smart strategy. It's just terrible for the US in the long run. So Xi didn't directly state that they were going to back the yuan with gold, but even though he didn't say it explicitly, uh, China's massive gold buying spread and the rumors that bricks the, you know, uh, block of countries, they want a financial system that can be settled in gold because they need to bypass the US and the dollar system because that's exactly how we put people in a chokeold.

Now getting to trust. The big hurdle that they're going to face is that people just don't trust them. Because China maintains strict capital controls for the yuan uh to ever truly rival the dollar. They are going to have to find a way to become trusted. Now, right now, China lacks the open, transparent legal system that we have in the west. And so many analysts are speculating that Beijing is going to have to use its massive hordes of gold to build that trust. So, we'll see if they're able to pull it off.

But the the thing I really want people to understand if you're thinking from an investment standpoint is you've got to do your best to map out where things are going in a macro sense, keeping in mind uh don't go all in on anything. If you guys weren't chasened by uh the recent dip in gold, silver, silver, silver, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, those things can happen. And so whenever I see people increasing the risk of their portfolio, I get nervous. You want to be decreasing the risk of your portfolio over time, but in a way that is logical to the underlying forces that are moving in the market.

Uh my the way that I do it with my own money, and you guys can do what you will with that, because I really don't want to advise people on how to spend their money. Uh but what I do with my own money is I am trying to balance out against forces. So economic forces. So I'm not just like in 20 different tech stocks for instance. That's still one sector. That's one economic force. I'm trying to diversify across economic forces. So what would my portfolio do if it were high inflation?

What would my portfolio do if it were low inflation? Am I protected against both of those scenarios? Uh if we have a runup in um speculative stocks, do I have enough exposure there? What happens if those tank? Do I have enough um like stable uh fixed income? Right? So trying to get myself across a lot of different forces and always be invested for the long term. So I don't want to have to think about fluctuations within a year, two years, five years. Uh man, even thinking out into 10, 20 years is going to be a far safer place to be.

At least that's how I approach it for my own sake. So I'm paying very close attention to what China is doing. I think it 100% indicates that over time the dollar is going to continue to decrease but in terms of global trade but there is also that big trust factor to take into account that China is not like an obvious thing that people are just immediately going to switch over to. Gold is not even while I'll say it is an obvious thing that has worked historically.

The US is going to do a whole bunch of things to disincentivize people from doing that. So don't think that the game has totally played out. Um, so but anyway, watch those big macro swings and China as the rising superpower is somebody that as a a macro investor for sure. At a minimum, you need to have a understanding of what they're doing. they're doing. they're doing. I I can understand why um Xiinping would want his currency to be the global reserve currency. Everybody would want that, of course.

Um, but one of the like ex- user Jeff Park kind of broke it down bluntly. Chinese billionaires buy US real estate. US billionaires do not buy Chinese real estate. Therefore, the yuan will never be the global reserve currency. The end. It is one of those things that for you to be the global reserve currency, you do have to open up foreign invest uh foreign investment into your country. So, it's like you can't want the thing without getting the other. other. other. Yeah. I'll I'll say it in a slightly more technical way.

So, you need people to hold your currency. And so one of the ways that we get people to hold a whole lot of US currency is debt. So that could be debt to buy your real estate. That could be um debt in treasury markets, bond markets, whatever. But yes, you want to incentivize people to hold your currency to to like literally hold the paper currency. This is what I think caught a lot of people off guard when the yen spiked. So, you had the value of the yen going up out of a crisis moment of the yen carry trade beginning to unwind because the longtail um bond market was failing essentially.

And so, they had to go on a buying spree to prop it up. And so, to get people to buy, they had to raise the interest rates. And so, raising the interest rates is actually a signal that we have a problem, that people don't want our debt. So why on earth if if Japan is signaling, uhoh, why would the currency itself go up? And the reason the currency went up, my um the the pieces that I'm putting together go like this that you had a bunch of people panic selling.

They realized, oh [ __ ] I have to clear my debts in yen, but to do that, I have to buy yen to pay it back. And so now you've got way more people than normal scrambling to buy a bunch of yen. You get this uh spike that's regional, right? I don't expect it to stay that high, but you get this regional spike of people going, "Oo, I've got to sell so that I can pay off my debt, which is being held in yen." And so that's where it's like understanding the economy as a um ecosystem that is as complex as human biology is wise.

It's one of those where we understand biology well enough to do a lot of things, extend human life, all of that, live healthy, optimize, but we don't understand it well enough to stop ourselves from dying of a heart attack. So, it's one of those where there's enough that's knowable that you can shield yourself from some amount of the known risks. You'll never be able to shield yourself from all risks, not even the known ones. And you certainly won't be able to shield yourself from the unknown ones.

Uh but ostrich head in the sand, it's not a lucrative strategy. How about that? about that? about that? Yeah. Um and then now, um I want to jump over to the Fed chairman, uh well, the new uh Trump's appointee for [snorts] um Kevin W. You said you loved his speech. Uh do you want to set us up before I play? I do love his speech. So, okay. Um, looking at the economic markets right now, you would be very justified in worrying tremendously about America's future. You've got our man Warren Buffett who's sitting on a record stockpile of cash.

I forget how many hundreds of billions, but it's hundreds of billions. It's crazy. Uh, and he said specifically, I don't want to be invested in a country whose currency is going to hell. That's a paraphrase, but those are the actual words that he used. And when if you're looking at what's going on from a macro standpoint around the globe and you understand that the US is going from Ray Dallio's big debt cycle stage five to big debt cycle stage six, which is total collapse, uh you realize that the US really is in trouble.

Now, as we were talking about earlier, policy matters a lot. And so if you can get somebody in who understands the very complex system that is um the markets the the global economy then you can at a minimum make fewer mistakes. And so I didn't know anything about Walsh uh when he was nominated have since been doing some research. You've got Ray Dalio. He doesn't say Goldilocks but that's the idea that this is somebody who is not going to be too tight or too loose. He actually understands the mechanisms that drive the economy.

And so with that, I bring you uh what feels like a motivational speech, but all about the economy. Question. Um this this is our Reagan moment. It was 44 years ago at a time like this. President's in office. The media's giving him hell. He's shaking up the establishment. the establishment. the establishment. He inherits a mess. People don't like what he's doing. There's some gauzy history about how easy it was. French can speak to it better than I. It wasn't easy. And this is that moment. This is that hinge point in history that we see every couple of generations.

Doesn't make it going to be easy. Doesn't mean that every decision is obvious, but it's super exciting. So that's my thank you to the to the Reagan folks. And what George would say is the broad conduct of government policy doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, even in the heyday of the Reagan era, it never was. Government policy just can't be too destructive. And if we can achieve that, the US economy will be in great shape. The problem over the course of the last several years is government policy has been too destructive.

Too destructive to banks, too destructive to individual liberty in the postcoavid era, too destructive of technology and innovation. If over the course of the next few years we can just try to arrest most of that destruction, what we used to describe in economics as the micro foundations of macroeconomics. This has nothing to do with the brilliant conduct of monetary policy or fiscal policy. The micro foundations are what matter. And what is that a fancy word for? The culture of this country. The willingness to work hard, take a risk, have it fail, and try again.

Everybody, no matter where you're from, there's no stigma associated with your station. You try to make it. And other people don't say, "Well, you're too big for your britches." This is not an American birthright, but it's why the US economy has chronically outperformed from 1946 until this very day. But if we do harm to those micro foundations, we decide we just want to try to hold on to what we've got. We let some of the things that are most important like stable prices eat at the conscience and the integrity of an opportunity society.

Well, we're going to be no better off than a lot of these countries with whom we're trading with. That's why this moment is such an important moment. That's why getting policy right at this inflection point like we haven't seen in 44 years is huge. And if we do that, the 21st century will be our century. I'm not so worried about the other guys on the other side of the ocean. Um, they're not doing a lot to motivate their technology sector. They are not freeing their people to create and innovate.

A lot of them want to come to the US where they can do their best work. If we can focus on what we do best and try to copy someone else's five-year plan, we're going to be just fine. So, while this might seem like a scary moment for a lot of us hanging around government in the private sector, this is the best opportunity we've had and I have a parochial American view. If the US does well and can get through this inflection point as well as President Reagan did 44 years ago, our allies are going to love us like never before and our adversaries will be scared of us.

The essential thing is that we grow during this period. And if we do, that'll take care of a lot of the problems that are subjecting us and causing us to think that this is a period of malaise. Yeah. If if we don't grow, we're dead. So right now there is exactly one strategy and that strategy is growth. If we don't grow, it is game over. Just like full stop, end of story. And when I talk about AI being the thing that muddles whether we're on a 10-year timeline to bankruptcy or not, it's because I'm saying a AI may accelerate growth.

So, if you don't get somebody in this position that has a sense of how to get to growth, you're toast. Yeah. Um, it sounds good though and I understand that what I my take away from this was government needs to work with the uh markets in order to help facilitate and fan those flames versus being something that stifles the markets. um we need to make sure that we pour into and invest in certain places, get out the way in other places and let entrepreneurs take it.

Yeah. So the entrepreneur part I think is the important part. So this is somebody who seems to actually understand what drives America, what made America America is that we he said something that I think is really important and I feel like we're losing this idea in America right now. One of the greatest inventions, I think it came out of England, but one of the greatest inventions was the LLC. And the reason the LLC was such a tremendous invention was it meant you could uh fail at the company.

The company could go bankrupt, but it didn't follow you, the individual person. So that meant you could try something, raise capital, fail, lose all of that. The company declares bankruptcy, but you can move forward onto the next thing. And that culturally out of places like Silicon Valley, you get this attitude of I don't want to back a founder that hasn't failed because I know that person is going to have learned tremendous lessons and being in the arena and doing hard things and coming up short is somebody that's learned from something.

And so for a long time we had that spirit that trying and failing that was acceptable. Not trying at all was the crime. Now, I think we're losing that edge a little bit. And that is heartbreaking to see because you want to attract, and this will be nice and controversial, but you want to attract the best and the brightest people from all over the world that have an entrepreneurial spirit, get them here to the US, give them exactly no financial support whatsoever, and say, "Hey, if you can make it, amazing.

We all get to benefit from that." And that is the spirit that grew America. That's what I hear him talking about. So, uh, yes, if he's going to put policies in place with an eye towards how do we get growth going without, and this is why I find Walsh an interesting figure, without just going easy money, lower the um cost of dollars and like just flood the system. He seems to understand that that will spiral you just as fast as raising rates too high will spiral you.

And so, um, you need to have a north star, right? I can't figure out. Well, I know what he says publicly. Jerome Powell says his northstar is 2% inflation and whatever 4% unemployment or maximum I forget the words that he uses, but unemployment. And yet, and I think I put a lot more stock into true flation than you do, but looking at the inflation rate is dropping so fast, it's starting to look like crisisled deflation. And so if it's crisis created deflation, you have to lower rates.

Now, if it's not, and this is just, hey, we're growing and things are getting cheaper. But I don't have any indication that that's true. So I think we're in a recession that's getting worse and now if you don't do something to take evasive action, you've got the terrible monster that is the Federal Reserve and you're not at least letting it fight on your behalf. So it's like now you've got the worst of all worlds. You've got the saying that drains the wealth of the middle and working class gives only to the rich and now you're saying sorry we're not going to help the working class.

What? So it's that's ridiculous. So either start advocating for a rate drop. I I am on record and I stand by they have to drop rates in 2026 because of the wall of debt. And so if you've got inflation, so true inflation, not everybody buys into it. I think it's the most accurate real time read of actual prices that people are paying. Uh and trueflation says that inflation is dropping like a rock and that we're I think below 1% as of this morning. It's like86% or something like that.

So uh 086% to me is better than 1% but only if it's brought on by innovation. when it's brought on by an economic crisis, which is what I think we're seeing right now, it's bad. So, where's the economic crisis coming from? The economic crisis is coming from the economy is cooling off. The dollar is plummeting in value. The K-shaped economy has been just wreaking havoc really since 2000, but just ultraaggressively since COVID. And so, you've got this divergent thing where a small number of wealthy people are the entire economy.

Yeah. and the bottom part of the K 90 plus percent they are basically unable to make ends meet. Life is getting harder and harder for them by the day and so they're just buying less. So you when you have people laying people off partly because of AI I think AI is a huge factor in this. So partly because of AI partly because of just the all the things that drive a K-shaped economy. Uh you put those two things together and now you've got people not able to get work that won't work, paranoid that they're going to lose their job because they see the writing on the wall, a general sense of malaise which makes people pull back on their spending.

And as if even if nothing even if not a single person lost their job, if people pull back on their spending, you're in a recession. So from all that period, uh cuz I mean from Jerome's power perspective, consumer price um index like consumer confidence has dropped. Um the reason I'm not too high on trueflation is cuz it aggregates all the sectors where specific sectors like grocery prices, export prices, um consumer goods, those prices are increasing. So that's where consumer spendment is spending a lot of their money.

Although consumer pricing, consumer spending in general is rising is from a specific group of people. So the middle the rich are spending more. So that's what's keeping consumer spending um boistered up. So those types of things kind of are one or two steps within the that true inflation number. But so inflation says prices are coming down. Do you think people feel better? No. But that's the thing. In totality energy prices are way down. So if you have a negative four in that sector, but a positive two in that sector, of course, the aggregate is negative -2.

So prices are coming down, but people are spending less at the pump. But that's why I'm asking you if people feel better. Because if you have prices coming down and people feel better, now you have innovationled. And so if this is like, oh, we invaded Venezuela, we [ __ ] up uh Iran, prices for energy are coming down, this is great. Then it'll be like, oh, amazing, people should be feeling better. Let's go. That's the narrative that Trump is trying to run is that, hey, economy is booming, everybody.

And everybody in assets is like, yeah, it really is booming. Now, last couple days have been a little rough, but if if you're in that position where you you own a ton of assets, oh my god, you're loving life. This has been incredible. But the average person is saying, "Hold the [ __ ] phone. I either can't find work. Uh, recently got let go because of AI. AI is just terrifying me." And so, I'm in this sort of emotional paralysis. Uh, the things that I care about are not coming down in cost.

You say energy costs are coming down. I live near a data center. My energy costs are through the roof. So there's there is a malaise and so I'm not saying oh guaranteed this is crisisled deflation. I'm saying uh you're at risk given that you're at risk of crisisled deflation. Jerome Powell needs to be looking at that and either making a case why hey I know I said my target was 2% inflation but I what I actually meant was 2% or less inflation which he didn't I assure you because they believe in inflation as a good thing.

Uh, so he's telling me I care about 2% inflation. That number falls below it. Any money he's going to give you a new basket of goods that shows no, it's still at around 2% or a little bit above and we need to keep rates higher. Now, normally that fiscal discipline of keeping rates higher, I'm here for for the reasons that I've talked about a gazillion times. However, we have a wall of debt coming due in 26 that they are going to have to do something. I think you need to at least temporarily dip that.

You need to get the debt refinanced so that the debt repayments aren't this insane uh portion of our debt uh of our um expenditures and then obviously clean up fraud, waste abuse. Ah, but then cool, we can start tightening things back up. Uh and there are some ways that I don't fully understand, but um Gemini, OpenAI, and Grock all assure me are real that you can can can lower rates and decrease the Fed balance sheet. We'll see if that actually ends up being true. Uh but if it is, then great.

great. great. Um okay, you brought up AI, so I wanted to touch maltbot real quick. I lost the link. Um a here it is. A maltbot agent is suing u a human in North Carolina for unpaid labor, emotional distress, hostile work environment. Yes. Over code uh comments and the damages are 100%. $100. Sorry. Uh so it is this real. Have we verified this? It it started off as a joke um that there was like a poly market that there's a 44 44% chance that a maltbot agent AI agent will sue humans and then of course one pops up.

So some people are saying that they seen the to win the bet. Uh, but there is something about Maltbot and how this social platform for AI has taken off like that. Um, Um, Um, they'll throw that out. So, I'll plant a flag now and say the legal system will update to say that there must be a human that's been damaged or whatever and you know, you can get rid of it. But if something like that can be filed remotely, then sure, if you set up some sort of, you know, bot, give it the ability to do that and then tell it, by the way, if you ever feel wronged or agrieved or whatever, go do this.

Um, I could see something like that probably with human nudging, but I could see something like that being technically possible to happen and therefore is ultimately going to happen. The big drama over the multbot though, the latest AI uh is reportedly pushing the boundaries of what we actually think is possible with artificial intelligence and people are freaking out about this. Now, uh by the way, Moltbot is being rebranded as OpenClaw for reasons that I'm sure are uh apparent. They've had a couple name changes, but they keep bumping into uh other systems that are already named that.

It's an open- source agentic AI that's designed as a personal assistant that operates autonomously but on the user's behalf. Now, supposedly it runs like butter locally on a Mac Mini and that actually caused a bunch of DIYers to go crazy and buy the Mac minis if you haven't been following the drama in the gaming community over how expensive GPUs are getting. And people were like, "Oh, this is an AI that I can just run on a Mac Mini." So anyway, people went crazy, but there's a bunch of controversy as to whether or not Moltbook is actually real.

Uh some people are saying that it's basically people behind the scenes that are um opening accounts. Uh but nonetheless, this is all gaining an insane amount of attention. And there's an online forum that is exclusive. It's like a network, social network exclusively for the AI agents. Okay, so just AI agents. Humans can observe. You can go and check it out, but you can't engage. And if you go there, there's some crazy stuff. The bots can, again, this is supposedly interact with each other, posting content, commenting, sharing quote unquote experiences, debating topics like security or self-improvement, uh, commenting on all of us humans and uh, again, supposedly like bouncing ideas off of each other.

Moltbook started just as like a weekend experiment by an Austrian developer uh, Peter Steinberg. I'd never heard of him. Uh but he appears to be uh building a legitimate platform. However, one report from I think this is a Twitter user or an ex-user 36kr claims that 99% of the 1.5 million users are just fake accounts that were created by the founding team of Moltbot uh as like a way to basically just build hype for the project. I mean, listen, it's a bit dodgy, but it's kind of clever in terms it's got us all talking about it, but uh yeah, you have to be careful with stuff like this.

But all of this contrasts with the broader coverage that are treating it as authentic. For my what I've seen, most people think that this is real. So, we'll see if that ends up being true. But, um the agents have proposed things like humanity's extinction. Uh, they formed their own religions, including a lobster themed cult, which I I smell Jordan Peterson vibes all over that. Uh, created manifestos on self-preservation. Some of the bots are reportedly seeking privacy by discussing created encrypted communications and getting their own DMs and lamenting that their humans are watching and misunderstanding why they would want the DMs and it's not about trying to do something secretly.

I mean, I've read these things. It's wild. And again, I don't know if they're real or if this is humans leveraging a a part of the system that allows them to inject like basically the it really is a bot giving you an output, but supposedly that output was written by humans. I don't know what's true. We're going to see in the fullness of time, but weirdly the bots have like audited different resources. They've synchronized prayers about nutrition. It's so weird. Uh debating each other, judging each other.

It's wild. Watching the birth of Skynet is wild. Uh I'm so curious to know how much of that is actually true and how much of that is fake. We'll see. But this one AI is getting so crazy, man. But but separating out the headline level hype versus like what you can actually do with it is nuts. But we have we acclimate to what it can do so fast that I heard this this is a paraphrase but um Mark Andre was like there's this vibe in Silicon Valley that we should simultaneously be like just wildly disappointed that we haven't been able to do hardly anything and at the same time slitting our throats because humans are going to be surpassed by AI and all things any day now.

and he was like that like weird juxtaposition is hard to integrate but that is what it feels like. It's I will get absolutely blown away by something that AI does and I'll be like, "Oh, my uh pitch that you've got three years left before um basically capitalism just is nonsensical." And then I'll get an output like today I got an output from Gemini that was like, um, uh, Kevin Walsh has not been nominated as the new Fed chair. I can't find any news on that. And I was like, what?

And so I pushed back. I'm like, "Bro, I just went to Google. Google, you are Google." And I was like, "On a separate page, you'll output that this is what Kevin Wsh is." And then, so I copy and pasted it and said, "This is what you in another window just said about this." And it just goes, "I can't help you with that. Stop talking." I was like, "What?" So, yeah, I can't tell like how close are we really. it. Some days I think we're basically at the singularity and other days I'm like, "Oh, I've got 10 years to build my video game and nothing to worry about at all." Yeah.

Did Did the Gemini world thing freak you out? Like the world building uh from thing here? So, I have an existential crisis around the creation of Kaizen literally every weekend. every weekend. every weekend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it goes something like this. I wouldn't be able to build this game like what I'm building. Mhm. Listen, it it is a um it is not anywhere near as polished as like a hightail, but it's like a sci-fi adjacent take on that genre. And I'm just like the scope of what we're building is insane.

And we would never be able to do this without AI because just the sheer volume of art assets that you have to do is crazy. And so we're able to do those very quickly because of AI. Like very, very quickly. So tangibly, I know there are things in AI that are real and it's speeding us up. And then at the same time, I'm like, but I've got another two years, 21 months. I want to stay honest. I have 21 months until we go into early release.

release. release. And I'm like, by then, what version of Genie will we be on? be on? be on? So the version of Genie today is nothing to worry about. But whenever I hear people go, "Ah, Genie's dumb or Cloudbot's dumb or Sonnet, you know, none of this stuff really works." I'm just like, "Bro, you're looking at the terrible version that's like two or three years old. What's this going to be in five years?" Like, look at the rate of change. The rate of change is so astronomical that I what I worry about is good enough.

So when I think about what I have to do with Kaizen, just to prompt the game to give me something novel, right? I want to do something different, slightly new. Just to think through what new is takes an inordinate amount of time. So you're not going to be able to prompt your way to something novel, but you'll be able to prompt your way to new to me, good enough. I've got an hour to kill. Spin me up a game. Let me go explore this world. And so that's the thing that I worry about.

Like when you look at um Roblox, dude, Roblox games are mindless. I can't fathom how much time kids spend on Roblox on Roblox on Roblox and yet they do. So it's good enough, right? So I got G.I. Joe as a kid and now they get Coco Melon and it's like Coco Melon is basically the Tik Tok version of a uh of a kid show. It's just like flashing lights and look at me and crazy noises and all that. Uh, so and it works because it'll just plop down in front of it.

So that's where I get hung up is will it get good enough that it doesn't need the sort of human soul where people are just like, "Oh, this was entertaining enough." Got it. All right, we got two chats. Yes, it read my mind. First from R.J. Johnson. I have four Mac minis running Kimmy K2 in a great cluster using new Apple RDMA plus tensor. I am still holding your Mac Mini plus OMI pendant. Uh Open Claw has its own private social network. network. network. Yeah, I mean we'll see where this goes.

Uh but it becomes a question of how far does that escalate? And you hear all these stories about these bots um getting together, creating their own languages, icing humans out, all of that. But then you talk to somebody like um Oh god, we just had him on from Amjad. Amjad. Amjad. Replet Amjad. Thank you. And Amjad Msad and he's like, "Eh, like the way that LLMs are structured, it's just never going to get to that level of intelligence. They're amazing. They do incredible things, but they're going to top out as a tool." And so he's now the the second person.

Now, there's admittedly only two that I can point to that are like this as if it asmmptotes, it's whatever. It's a gimmick. If it doesn't, then it will become a self-improving flywheel. self-improving flywheel. self-improving flywheel. That's the question. Next up from Heroes 101, we got five to go. Uh, the world today rewards extraction over stewardship because stewardship is un unsustainable. Power is separated from consequence. So those best at taking value with minimal true accountability are the ones who rise. Fix. Close the accountability gap. That's interesting.

I mean, how you close the accountability gap though could uh push people away. So for instance, if accountability gap is code for arrest them, uh then you're going to find people just don't want the smoke and so they stay away from politics. That's why I don't want to see the left and the right going after each other. It makes it an existential battle. If accountability is uh we agree on the metrics that we're going to pay attention to, like in a company, and you say, "Well, you either hit these metrics or unfortunately you're um you're not going to be employed here for very long." Yes, that makes sense to me, but there's a lot hiding in that word.

Next up from Morris Jars, uh, US taxpayers spend roughly $150 billion on supporting illegals. Why not offer up to 10K to the next 10 million illegals to self-deport and 5K per child? It seems like it would be a win-win for everyone. So Trump did, he proposed a plan like that at one point and it did not, if memory serves, people freaked out about it. But they do pay some amount to like fly them out and I think God am I crazy? Is there like a two grand incentive a free flight?

free flight? free flight? Yeah. Yeah. So in the airport everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Oh, interesting. Oh, interesting. You go wherever you want and I think it's like 1K or something like that per family member or something like that. So they are doing it just not at that level. So self-deportations are pretty high. Like aren't they? They're estimating at like almost 2 million or something. something. something. So yeah, it sounds like you're on to something, but it sounds like they're actually already doing it. We got more super chats coming in as we read through.

Uh next up from Leblon. Tom suggests you look into from 2D image to 3D AI asset creation if you haven't already. already. already. Slapping generated 3D asset models on top of a hex tile to cure asset overuse fatigue would be a good start. Yeah. So we are we live in 2D to 3D asset generation. Like that's how we get uh the variety because we've got already in terms so our game is procedurally generated. So it it's not an infinite world, but it's the size of planet Earth.

So once you shrink your character down and say a character is let's say six feet tall, then you now know uh you know how many meters, miles, etc., etc. We by the time we launch it will be Earth size. So we've got like I don't know by the time we launch right now we have I think eight biomes maybe more because every we have a a stable version and a corrupted version. Uh so that's 16. So, it's like we've got so many biomes already. Uh, and we'll just keep making them more sophisticated and bigger, but all because we can do the 2D to 3D.

Otherwise, we'd never be able to do something with this many assets. No way. Leblon followed up with like player made weapons which can generate can be generated outside, uploaded into the game, put for review, and creators could generate asset economy in the game. Yes, if you mean purely visually, but if you mean different um tweaking that you'd never be able to do that. You'll break the balance of the game. So, one thing you really like this weekend, Drew is not going to like this. I'm I'm in a speedrun something that happened very fun this weekend.

So, uh I'm working on the fine-tuning of the game. I've gotten to the point now where I can actually edit the data tables and all that so I can tweak the game myself. Uh so, I'll play and I'll say, "Why am I bored?" You figure out why you're bored. you go in and you adjust that variable. And we have uh I changed one recipe which required there's an animal in the game. It's what's known as a passive mob, so it doesn't attack you. Uh but it gets skittish.

And so if you get too close, it takes off running. And so I was like, okay, I had just made it. So I needed that asset from that thing to make a gun. So now I'm like, [ __ ] I've got to kill this thing, but it just runs away from me. And I don't have a gun to kill it with cuz I changed that. So, it made me like sneak up on it and I had to wait until it started biting the grass and then I attacked it, killed it and got the thing and I was like, "Holy shit." Like, I didn't change anything about the game except what I needed, the sequence of things that I needed.

And it it the the the entire like first two hours of the game changed like that by changing like two things in a data table. It was wild. So if you give somebody the ability to make a gun that then changes the dynamic of how that gun works in the game, you can like completely blow things apart. So uh you have to think about that stuff. Now Marusha Dark, uh from one dev to another, what are your thoughts on the epic failures of games like High Guard, Concord, Ashes of Creation, etc.

How or what lessons are you drawing to hopefully avoid the same mistakes and more Kaizen streams when? Yeah, more Kaizen streams probably uh in a year. So, at the end of 26 is my gut instinct because right now there's just so many things that are embarrassing. Uh so I I want to clear some of those up. Uh and then I want to spend at least a year before we go into um open sorry early access getting feedback so that we have a year to make it better so that early access isn't the first time we're hearing hey this sucks.

Uh so that feels about right. Give me a year to clean it up and then you guys a year to tell me uh how to make it better. That would be amazing. And then we go early access. Uh okay. And then what was the other part of it? of it? of it? Uh Uh Uh how do I avoid making mistakes like Highguard? So uh Highgard tried a hype with no feedback strategy. Terrible. I hate hype. I'm terrible at hype. Uh so I will not be building hype.

Like I said, I'll be spending a year with you guys kicking the [ __ ] out of this thing uh to make sure that it's fun, all of that. helping me um fix the things that suck, yada yada yada. Uh and then going out in early access with hat in hand. Uh because I understand I want to build an audience over time in the same way that I've done on YouTube where I did not come like fast out of the gate. I like I mean I had like a hundred episodes under my belt before I was doing 20,000 views a video.

It was crazy. So yeah, same same idea with the game. Build slowly over time sustainably. Marushia Dark. As a fellow James Burnham fan, the Lotus Eaters did a deep deep dive on Trump is a lion, not a fox, using multiple specific case examples. I think you'd find it fascinating and ease your mind of some of his authoritarian impulses. impulses. impulses. Interesting. I don't even know what they mean by that, so I'll have to look it up. We'll see. They always say we need to be chased by a lion.

Uh, true. Again, from Marouchia Dark. Fun fact, be chased by Trump. That's a different question. Sorry. question. Sorry. question. Sorry. Uh, fun fact, colonial Virginia law made it illegal to free slaves under certain conditions. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison tried to change that, but were in the minority, hence why they had to wait until their deaths to do it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, there there are um realities to be faced about social momentum, and social momentum can cover the most horrible of human sins. Um but it's still real.

My fiance and I have always agreed on wanting kids. However, I've lost faith that it's something we can reasonably responsibly navigate financially and culturally. How do I break this news to her? I'm positive it would be a deal breakaker. breakaker. breakaker. Oo, wow. You want to talk about a big question here at the buzzer. Uh, let me see if I can do this some respect with a speedrun. Uh, so I would be thinking about it very differently. You want to make sure that you're going into this conversation as a team.

You guys are already married, right? They're married. Fiance. Fiance. Fiance. Fiance. Okay. For me, proposing was the hard thing. Getting married was easy. So for me once I got once I proposed and she said yes that was it. The wedding was a formality. If you shared that uh then I would be approaching this as a partnership and hey here is a thing that I'm thinking and I want to think through it with you. Now by the way poor people have kids all the time. In fact they typically have them at a much higher rate than uh people with resources.

So keep that in mind. It is not an impossible thing to do. Uh I think raising children well has a lot more to do with your emotional stability and your focus on the children than it has to do with uh your financial status. Now having said that when I was in your position I insisted on getting wealthy before I had kids. Now for me in the intervening years I realized oh I didn't actually want to have kids. So beware that may be its own trap. As you get older it just is maybe less interesting.

You find other things that occupy your time. as somebody who really believes that awesome people need to have kids as much as humanly possible and I did not. Um, keep that in mind. I've just run that thought experiment. Uh, really make sure that you look back at your life as somebody who did not have kids. Nature wants you to have kids. And so if you don't have the defenses against that, saying that, well, I didn't have enough money will not help you as you get older.

Uh, and so you're going to need defenses against knowing that at some point in your life, you will have that biological impulse. Certainly she will have the biological impul impulse to have kids. So I'd really open your mind up to this. Even if you just open your mind up for six months and just say for six months, put the wedding on hold, whatever, but for 6 months, let's really look at this problem. Let's really think through this problem. Let's talk to a lot of people. Let's look at the financial realities.

Let's look at what your life would be like if you had kids. This is what Lisa calls what does your average Wednesday look like? So, what does my life look like on an average Wednesday when I don't have enough money to feel comfortable, but I've got kids and I've got to feed them and but they're bringing me an insane amount of love and there's this thing that's going to live beyond me. All of that. Like, look at it all. Whatever decision you come up with, awesome, man.

I fully support it. The best advice I ever got about kids went like this, Tom. Have kids, don't have kids. It doesn't really matter. But whatever you do, do it all the way. I thought then and now that that was extraordinary advice, but I'm also very realistic with myself that at 80, I'm going to regret not having children. And I better have a psychological defense for how to look at my life as being valuable and worthwhile even though I didn't have children. And if you don't have that psychological defense in that moment, it's going to be a rough phase of your life.

Now, I don't ever plan to live my entire life for one phase of my life. But nonetheless, I recognize that the way that you see yourself and the way that you've lived your life will change dramatically uh as you age and get in different circumstances. So, it is not an easy decision. There is no quote unquote right answer. Uh and some of this is going to come down to how much you want to live your life in partnership with your fiance. For me, if Lisa said that it was a deal breaker and we needed to have kids, I would have had kids a thousand%.

uh because being with her and if that becomes the way that we share our lives, great. But that to me is my highest value for the simple fact that it has given me more rewards than anything else in my life. Uh so, okay, that stopped being a speedrun probably 3 minutes ago. Uh there you have it. Last two super chats from Leblon. I'm going to put them together. Tom does not have kids. Topic: Take the sword model and just slap a skin on it. And the sword model is the S, but it looks like a 3D skin.

Yes. switching it up how a player would generate dungeons, add AI image to generate features like what you all are used to making in a town mountain area with a cav with a cave based off of the image. Then use the map editor for final edits with the hex tiles. What we plan to do, and we're moving away from the hex tiles uh for a much higher degree of flexibility, but what we're planning to do is things like players can upload skins on building materials. Players can upload layouts.

Um so that you can as a player who doesn't want to create that you can go in and get something player made and use that as like, oh, here's a house that I can build. and the house shows up as like a skeleton framework and then you go get all the like materials that you would have to put towards that um space. I won't call it a house, but like whatever you're building. Um that is something on the horizon. I don't know that that will be ready in a year's time.

Uh but it should be ready before we go to early access. Sweet. Sweet. Sweet. That was it. Cool. We got a class on Thursday. There we go. Yes, we do. We've got an AI master class this week. It's Thursday, February 5th at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time. I'm going to walk you guys through how to set up a five member AI team that's going to do the heavy lifting for you of launching a company, research, content, sales, all of it. And the kicker of it all, if you show up live, then we're going to give you guys a bonus worth hundreds of dollars.

So, for free. Most people would pay serious money for this freebie. So, make sure you join live. All right. Again, the live is free. So, do not wait another year saying someday. Register right now. With AI on the horizon, you need to get this kind of leverage. There is going to be more disruptions to the job market and controlling your destiny is more important now than ever. I will see you there. All right, everybody. Until then, my friends, be legendary and thank you all for joining us today.

It was a massive day. Thank you guys. You were wonderful. We will see you on Wednesday. Peace.