The insane Lindsay Clancy Trial, Putin Meets With CIA & The Pope, & US Dollar Ultimatum To The World

Key Takeaway

When a decision affects your health, family, finances, or safety, do not outsource your judgment. Use experts as inputs: ask why a recommendation is being made, identify risks and alternatives, track your own outcomes, and seek a second opinion when something feels unclear. If you notice you are becoming unsafe, overwhelmed, or unable to function, state it plainly to someone you trust and create immediate distance from the situation while you get help.

Episode Overview

Tom Bilyeu examines the Lindsay Clancy case through the lenses of personal responsibility, mental health, medication, empathy, and public safety. The episode also covers U.S. dollar sanctions against Iran, Canada’s tariff response and economic strategy, speculation around CIA-Russia contacts, social-media attention harms, political speech, and claims about China’s poverty data.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The insane Lindsay Clancy Trial, Putin Meets With CIA & The Pope, & US Dollar Ultimatum To The World from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Billy Show live. This one is going to get spicy. Spencer Pratt's viral video on Lindseay Clancy highlights what I'm going to call cultural insanity gets censored by Tik Tok right as news breaks on Alan Smith murdering his family. And we're going to discuss what they have in common. That one is not going to be comfortable for a lot of people. So get them typing fingers ready, boys and girls. I want to hear from you in the chat.

Bessant warns the world that if they don't meet our behavioral expectations, they can expect to exit the dollar system. That is uh an interesting flex at a time where people are already exiting the dollar system. We'll see how that's going to work out. Mark Carney promises to match US tariffs dollar for dollar while his economy has spent the past decade collapsing under brain dead policies. We're going to go through that. Rumors are flying that CIA director Ratcliffe flew to Moscow because Putin is likely planning a limited military incursion to test the resolve of NATO.

That's all rumors as the most recent reporting is trying to downplay that. But still, nobody knows exactly what's going on even though people in the mix are saying that the relationship between the US and Russia is in a deep crisis. So, we're going to find out over what exactly. All right, let's talk about it. Lindsay Clancy, if you guys don't know this story, she murdered her three children, but somehow someway the public response has been so crazy that the response to what happened has eclipsed the act itself.

We're going to be going into all of it. Now, if we start at the beginning, you have a mother who tricks her husband into leaving the house to run an errand for the kids. While he's gone, she strangles all three of them to death in the basement with an exercise rope. The children were five, three, and 8 months old. She then slits her wrists and her throat and jumps out the second story window. She lands, I guess reportedly head first, which snaps her spine, paralyzes her, but doesn't actually kill her.

She's in the snow. It slows her heart rate down and she ends up somehow surviving it. Now, she's never denied it. The husband says she said directly to him when he found her uh that she did it. Her lawyers have never denied it. Their defense is that, okay, she did it, but she wasn't criminally responsible due to postpartum psychosis brought on by a slew of drugs that had been prescribed for her by various doctors uh in the months leading up to the incident as she sought treatment for postpartum depression.

Now, all of this is an absolute tragedy that I wouldn't wish on anyone. Not my worst enemy, literally nobody. But for the health of our society, we've really got to be clear-headed about what's going on here. And we've got to figure out what is the kind of solution that is respectful of what a tragedy it is to be a human and to be wrapped in these meatsuits and to be so subject to our biology and at the same time be protective of society. Now, this should have been a private tragedy that perhaps found its way into advocacy for caution around prescription drug use.

But that's not at all what it's become. What it's become is a spectacle for people whose leading emotion isn't for the grieving father or for the death of the children. The leading emotion is an outpouring of empathy for the woman who actually strangled her children to death. Now, I wouldn't expect anyone to have a single positive emotion about what this woman is uh going to go through being sentenced, whether it's prison, uh the fact that she is uh paralyzed. I wouldn't expect people to be happy.

I don't think she's up for the death penalty. But I if that kind of thing were to happen, I would not expect anybody to have a positive emotion. This should not be something where people are like, "Yeah, she got what she deserved," or anything like that. that this is an unimaginable tragedy that is dark and horrifying. But for the sake of society, we have to recognize that this was a monstrous act. And yes, while we are all products of our biology and our environment both inside and out, flooding our culture with empathy for that truth without thinking through the consequences of needing to sequester people who break bad is exactly how we make society unsafe for everyone.

This is the same underlying psychological response that I think is completely unhinged that is pushing people to want to get an illegal drug user safer needles instead of yes forcing them against their will or otherwise into prison and cold hard detox. If you want to advocate for effective therapy inside of prisons, that's a debate that's worthy of being had. But damn, instead what we have is people saying that the father did it. And I don't know. Yep, we have that clip. So, let's play it right now.

This is uh Lisa Rena, I believe is her name, from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, uh giving her take on this chitchat. All right. He did it. Patrick did it. Patrick's the one who did it. Not Lindsay. Patrick did it because, you know, I also heard that women typically don't strangle. So awful to even say, but that isn't what a woman would do. They don't strangle, right? I was actually in therapy today and my therapist and I were talking about it and she said, I said, "Well, what do they do?" She said, "Well, they poison or I said,"Oh, or drown them." Like, we literally had that conversation today.

Okay. Um, all right. Pause it for a second. So, here's the thing that I think is completely deranging about that. Um, so something can certainly be atypical and say, "Okay, here's something to look at. This is outside the norm. This is exactly what I would expect the police to do to go through and say, okay, this is unusual." Uh, you're certainly always going to look at the person closest to them to see if there's reason to suspect that they did it. But remember, Lindsay herself is saying, "I did it." Her defense team is saying, "Yeah, she did it." Uh, nobody is saying, nobody credible is saying that she didn't actually do it.

They're just saying there were extenduating circumstances. So the fact that this has become a thing now admittedly I think she's one of the highest profile people that's pushing this sort of lunacy uh but the very thing that is a through line through my read on this situation at a societal level is that we are mistaking feelings for facts. We have started propagating this idea that if something feels wrong then it must actually be wrong meaning factually. So, this feels like it couldn't be true and therefore it isn't true.

And this is exactly what I've accused Candace of. And part of the uh debate that was absolutely maddening uh between her and Andrew Wilson was that that one thing didn't get pinned down. It is very okay to have a feeling. Uh it is very okay to say, "I'd really like this feeling makes me want to go seek out what the evidence is." But if you don't go down the path of seeking out the evidence and finding out what's really going on, you end up building a worldview that is completely deranged because it's never making contact with the actual facts.

And when you do things based on, well, this is what feels right and this is what I think that we should do, then you end up creating policies that aren't effective in the real world. And this is why I really think people have got to just lay out what are their priorities. what are they trying to drive towards so that you can find out if your feelings based policies are actually moving us towards that thing. So living in Los Angeles I have watched this change. I've been here now for whatever 33 years pushing 35 years somewhere in there and I've watched LA go from it was pretty rough when I got here to going through a golden age and now declining even worse than when I got here in terms of homeless people being all over everywhere.

Uh we're cancelling um anti-amping laws and that's flooding more sidewalks with homeless people doing drugs. There's footage of uh guys whether this was in LA or not I I I can't tell you but guys like jerking off in front of kids. It's like it's so wild. I get it. A thing that I remind myself of all the time is there but for the grace of God go I. Given that I am in a meatsuit and that I am completely beholden to my biology. If my biology breaks I'm going to be in real trouble.

I certainly understand that. But the reality is that when your lead emotion is empathy, not, hey, we've got to protect everybody. We've got to start drawing boundaries around things. We've got to sequester people that are breaking bad, that are mentally ill, that are on drugs, whatever. We've got to remove them from society because protecting society is incredibly important. And one of the ways that we do that is by getting people who are a danger to themselves and others off the street. And we don't just go, "Hey, I feel really bad that this person is addicted to drugs, so I'm going to let them do whatever the hell because, hey, being addicted to drugs would be rough." That is a completely nonsensical response.

Another nonsensical response is to say that she has no responsibility whatsoever. Lindsay has no responsibility whatsoever because she has been prescribed all of these drugs. And this was Candace's take. Let's hear it directly from her. I'd love to know your thoughts on a Lindsay Clancy case in Massachusetts. I made my thoughts clear on this the moment that she um was arrested, the moment that it made the news. Lindsay Clancy is obviously not guilty. There are a fleet of doctors who should be imprisoned for what they put her on.

I regularly speak out against big pharma. Uh they get away with murder all the time and in this case they are getting away with the murder of really her three children but also completely destroyed her life. Lindsy Clancy in my opinion is not guilty. I'd love to know your All right. So once again one of my uh core beliefs in life is that we all have to take personal responsibility for the things that we do. We have to take responsibility for every aspect of our life.

Even though because we are all products of our biology, I get the limitations of that in reality. But if you don't put that forward as the way that you approach the world, you end up devolving into the kind of madness that we're seeing right now with people saying that this person isn't responsible. It's her doctors. Now, assume for a second that her doctors are um evil people who kidnapped her off the street, uh forced her to take drugs actively against her will, spun her out into some psychotic state, knowing that when they put her out that they would be uh putting their kids at risk, and you've got secret footage of them confessing that they're trying to reduce the world population.

Okay. If you have something like that, then yes, I would say that the doctors are responsible. If however you have somebody that has uh gone through a very horrific thing, postpartum depression seems about as real as you're going to get, that there really is this phenomenon that's tied to your hormonal dysregulation post having children. That's a real thing. Uh I imagine it is excruciatingly difficult to go through and I have deep empathy for anybody that goes through it. But that does not however mean that you can hand over your thought process as you go through the medical system.

uh having gone through not postpartum depression but having gone through a medical system with Lisa that just could not find the answer that started recommending to us things that I thought would be long-term detrimental to her health. So, we ejected out of that system and I said, "Okay, hold on. Do not pursue the things that they're telling us to do." I thought they were way crazy. I thought, "We need to figure this out ourselves." And it was a very frustrating, excruciatingly long process. And ultimately, even Lisa realized she couldn't like get me to solve all these problems because I wasn't inside of her body.

And so, there was no way for me to begin building a map of you ate this thing and it has this effect on you. Same thing with my anxiety. There was no one that was going to solve it for me. I go to the doctor. What does the doctor say? Take uh anti-anxiety medication every day. I was like, nope. Hard pass. And this was, by the way, whatever, 13, 14 years ago, maybe more. 15, 16 years ago. So, this was a very long time ago. we didn't have access to all the information that we have now.

I was just completely paranoid about allowing somebody to put me on a drug that I was going to take every day. I was like, "Nope, we're we're definitely not doing that." So, this is where people have got to maintain responsibility for themselves. I get it. We wish that we could abdicate our responsibility. We wish that doctors were all knowing, but they are not. They are humans. Maybe one day we'll be able to abdicate all of this to AI, but even that I will say is extremely dangerous.

It is much smarter for people to say, "Okay, I'm going to use these other things as tools. I'm going to use a doctor as a tool to understand what they're recommending, but I need to find out why they're recommending that. I yes, I know none of us want to have to think through the biology of all of this." But for Lisa to solve her problem, she had to learn the biology of how she responds to food. She had to learn about the microbiome at a time where there was precious little information about it.

I had to learn about anxiety. I had to try everything that I was eating to figure out, oh, what is causing this? So, it is very complex. It is very sad that medicine is not perfect. It's very sad that there are financial incentives that cause doctors to just get sucked into a funnel where they want to just recommend everything. We have a pill for that. I don't even think you have to go to malice to get to that point. We just have a system that has this default belief that drugs have no consequences.

That you can take any drug that you want. You can take a whole host of drugs and everything is going to be fine. Now listen, drugs are a miracle and I am glad that they are there. But the unfortunate reality is each one of us as an individual must take responsibility for our own care. And if we don't do that, we will find ourselves in situations like this where we're having people essentially completely disrupting our biology from the outside rather than us going, "All right, hold on.

We got to slow the roll." Also, if you don't feel that you can be trusted around your children, you need to raise your hand and say, "I cannot be left around my kids." Brutal. Fair enough. And that would be the kind of thing I would certainly expect the partner to say, "Hey, we've got to do something to make sure that you can't be put in a position where you can put the kids in danger." Where that all happens. We will have to see in the fullness of time about what those conversations look like, what efforts were made to sequester her, uh so on and so forth.

But at the end of the day, if people are not taking responsibility for their own actions, if people are leading with empathy instead of saying there have to be discriminatory boundaries, we have to say some things are okay, some things are absolutely not okay. And as we respond to this, we may be saying to ourselves, hey, I'm just glad it didn't happen to me cuz things like that could happen to me. If we don't do that, what we're going to end up with is the kind of deranged cultural slide that we're seeing right now where people are infantilized.

Nobody is being held accountable for their actions. You have people using drugs on the streets. You have schizophrenics walking around stabbing people on trains. Like, it is absolutely wild. We have a system. I forget the name of this guy, but it just happened recently. This was the guy that was running around punching women on the street, screaming about his son, Isaiah. If anybody remembers his name, let me know. But that was completely wild. His own family had begged the court system to institutionalize him because they were like, "This guy is dangerous.

He's going to end up hurting somebody." And they're ignored because people are leading with compassion. It isn't that we shouldn't have empathy. We should. Empathy is gorgeous. It's amazing. It's actually a healing thing that brings people together. But if that is the lead emotion that we allow to uh define our policy, determine how we treat people that are a danger to themselves and others, we are going to end up in a just insane position. Now, if you look at there's a GoFundMe right now that is designed to support the parents.

It's already passed a million. It's got a goal of $2 million and the donations are pouring in. People are creating all kinds of content talking about how they stand with Lindsay, they support Lindsay, they understand Lindsay. You've got money coming in from Australia, Bise, the UK, and more. We're talking about tens of thousands of people from all over the world. And you even have there was one reel. I don't think I pulled it. Maybe I did. Drew, check the list. But there was an OBGYn uh who did a whole reel showing her support and she was saying, "I myself have a story.

I'm not ready to talk about it yet, but I'm going to talk about it one day. And there's just this incredible undercurrent of people who are making out like because they had similar impulses but managed to control them. That their dominant emotion over what just happened is empathy instead of being like, "Hey, I get it. I get how you can feel those things. I get that being a parent is an overwhelming task, but we are all expected to keep this in check." But that's not been the response.

We found her. It took it got taken down. Oh snap. That's wild. I wonder if she pulled it herself because of an absolute avalanche. I hope of backlash because it was absurd. Again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't have empathy for people. Like, think about somebody in the inner cities. They end up getting sucked into a gang. That loop is a deep and abiding tragedy. But that doesn't mean that you don't lock people up who run around shooting people. And speaking of which, the thing that I'm going to find very interesting is how are people going to respond to the guy that just shot his family.

So this happened yesterday, I believe. Um, from what I understand, it's very early in the story, so take this all with a grain of salt. We may find out over time that this is not exactly how it played out. But the story, as I understand it right now, is you have a guy who's living with his parents. Uh the parents basically told him, "You need to go get a job and move out." And he got iate about that. Comes to a family party with a gun.

Uh shoots and kills, I'm not sure if he was included. Okay, so eight relatives. So he'd be the ninth person killed. So uh kills eight relatives including including four kids at a Sunday dinner, then shoots himself while he's burned the house down around him as well. Uh will people be like, "Well, what drugs was he on? What about all the pressure that he was under to get a job and move out? If that's the response, we have completely lost the plot. The reality is, I get it.

We're all under pressure. It's brutal. Mental health issues are real and people need to seek whatever treatment they can, which they need to be a part of to help figure out what's going on. Or if we say they're incapable of figuring this out for themselves, then we have to remand them into custody again as that family was doing for their uh child but could not get anyone to take them seriously because we're so empathetic. We want to let that person go live their life and no, they're going to be fine.

They're not. We've got to protect society. So, it's going to be very interesting. What was the guy's name uh that just did the shooting? Brad Ireland. No, that's the guy whose kids were killed. Uh Allan Smith. So Allan Smith. Um again, we may find out that he was on drugs. We may find out that he was under a lot of pressure. None of that can take lead. It's not that you don't feel for them. None of that can take lead. Um I ran a poll in the chat and I said, "Who did it?

The daddy, the mommy, the drugs?" 73% said the mommy. 18% said the drugs, 10% said the daddy. Wow. So, we really do still have some people that believe it was him. That's wild. Uh, okay. Well, at least chat, thank you. Uh, that there is um some hope in that response. I am very very happy to see that because thi this is something I've talked a lot about in sort of different aspects but this story brings it all together for me which is what we have here is what I'm going to call the feminization of our view on society.

You want women to have that overriding impulse to mother to nurture to care for. Uh, and of course we're talking averages here, but you want that push. When that becomes an unbalanced pathological uh, force in society, then you start seeing things break down. And this is like classic End of Empire stuff. And the more I look at what's happening in the US, the more I realize that what ends up happening is some people need to be chased by a lion. Some people, what I mean by that is some people need to be subject to the difficulties of just staying alive.

And when you are subject to the difficulties of staying alive, keeping a roof over your head, having to provide for yourself and your family, you realize how hard it is. And therefore, you prioritize things that make sure that safety, security is present so that people can have the safety. Obviously, the push for safety can go too far. China, I'm looking at you and we'll talk more about them later. But the compassion side can go too far. And so what we see here in the west is that compassion is going all the way to the point where it's just becoming uh a rotten foundation that is allowing things that will destroy structurally that will destroy the peace and prosperity that we've been experiencing now for apparently too long for the human mind to deal with it.

um it will destroy it at a structural level that will be very hard to unwind. And how we get that balance back, that one's tough. I so far it seems that the only thing that gets that balance back is that the compassion goes all the way to breaking the empire. When the empire crumbles and you no longer have those protections and the barbarians are at the gate, then things get so difficult that eventually you revolt and you go back the other way. But if you look at this from uh I know this is uh memeable, but when you look at this from the fall of the Roman Empire, this gets just abusively clear.

Things go so well for so long and they try to prolong the um this weird balance at the end where you're trying to plate the people that want you to basically uh run deficits and inflate the currency, uh tax everybody to death, redistribute the wealth. you try to plate them long enough so that you can um basically stay wealthy and in power as long as you can. And so the decline ends up being slow for a very long time until there's that, you know, sort of um not instantaneous, but that abrupt end to the empire.

But you see all this kind of stuff. You get uh the presence of what I'm calling the feminization of society where you're trying to take care of everybody. you're trying to pay for everything. You're no longer aware that everything is a trade-off. You're no longer holding people personally responsible. And it just devolves into madness. And if we must go through that pain and suffering, it will be a tragedy the likes of which um we haven't seen in our lifetimes. But that seems to be the path we're on.

I think the thing that's most interesting for me is that the law works on precedent. So, because this last case went this way, if there's a case argued in the similar way, can go a similar way. Um, meaning she'll get um she'll be put in a mental hospital but not in prison. No, I'm just I'm say says stating the table for how law is presided in America. It's based off a precedent. You use a formal case to make your claim and then that's how you settle a case.

right now. If we really get to a point where she can say, "I had the drugs and that's what made me do it." If a school shooter is on SSRI, is that now a viable defense? Yes. You know what I mean? And and I think that there's this kind of slippery slope. I can understand if it's they call them crimes of passion. You know, you get stabbed 14 times with the cheating spouse in the shower. Even that is like, "Yes, that's crazy. I lost control. I snapped." But you can kind of at least walk them through where that snap happened.

But I don't know, man. You had to strangle three kids with an exercise band manually. So, and it's three kid. Like one kid, you snap out, the kid is blue. Then the second kid and then the third kid was like, "Wait a second." The other two and they started moving. So, you had to get up from where you were and go get the kids. I have kids. I can't get one kid to stand still. You had three kids in the basement at night and they were just sitting there crisscross applesauce waiting to get I don't know, man.

I don't know. That's that's tough for me. It should be tough. It should be tough for everybody. The reality is that what you're looking at is so pervasive in the culture right now where we don't realize that getting the kind of prosperity that we have is brutally difficult. And so when we see this [ __ ] we don't immediately go, "Yo, [ __ ] that. No way. Uh, hard pass. Straight to prison." Like, if you want to do reform after the fact, I'm here for it.

you want to look at all the realities of the case. But what you're seeing is somewhere along the line, this broke. She premeditated it because she called the stores to like plan everything. She needed to figure out like uh how long her husband was going to be gone. So, she knew the duration of time that she was going to have to get this done. She then asked him to go to the store to do it because she had this pre-planned. So, this is somebody who knows I have gone off the rails.

And instead of saying, "Yo, you got to remove me out of this situation. And I'm months and months and months before I'm having all these dangerous thoughts about this. You've got to get me away from the kids. I had somebody on the show that had um jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. And he said, "As soon as my feet left the platform, I regretted it and I can't believe that I survived." And he said, "Now I have a protocol and I know when psychologically it's happening.

So I'll literally just go, I need help right now." And so he's been hospitalized many times. But that's the response. That's somebody who goes, "Oh, I get it. I'm a danger. I cannot be allowed to be put in these situations. I need somebody to help me out of this. And so, yeah, great. If she had raised her hand and said, "Listen, um, I think I'm a danger to myself and to my children. We're going to have to get me out of this situation." If she did that and then there was a big habaloo about that and people were like, "Hey, I stand with you.

I had similar thoughts. I totally get how you find yourself there." Yeah, cool. But she killed all three of the kids. That's where something else has to trip in society where we go this is a deep and abiding tragedy. Mh. Uh I think the the only internal response if you feel smug and you're like well that would never happen to me. You're a fool. If instead you go there but for the grace of God go I meaning I am beholden to my biology just as she is hers.

And whether that she just got a bum deal from how her brain is wired and she's more likely to have these extraordinary impulses the postpartum depression has dialed up for her. whether it's she doesn't have the intellectual horsepower to deal with her own uh medication treatment, whatever it is, but we it's all luck of the draw as far as I'm concerned. There there is speculation that she did ask for help. That's the whole montage of that's why she was on that many type of drugs. Mix love it.

So, let's say she begged for help. She told everybody, "Hey, please somebody get me away from my kids." And they ignore her. No, you're going to be fine. Go babysit the kids. Do you think that that means she's good to go now? Not her fault. I'm just offering it started off with Yeah. Yeah. I I love making a question as hard as we can make it. That's why 10% of the chat is saying no, it's a drug's fault. And Candace is saying she's been uh taken out by big farmer because in this society right now, inatient hospitals are now forprofit.

There's no longer like the mental hospitals that we throw people in that they traditionally used to have. Those were all shut down. So now it's either I'm going to spend x amount of dollars on rehab and I have a legitimate systemic problem or I'm going to go to a doctor, get a pill, come home and figure it out in 3 to 6 months. But let let's be let's be very clear in terms of the options that are on the table for her. So let's say I am literally begging everybody, you've got to help me.

I am absolutely derailing here. Okay, so she's got the wherewithal to realize I'm in trouble and I need help. Now, she's got all kinds of options up to and including um I'm going to walk down the street and not come back until I feel fine. Uh I'm going to go live in the forest. I'm going to kill myself without killing my kids. Like, there are a whole host of options. If you have the wherewithal to ask for help, you have the wherewithal to walk down the street and say, "I can't be near them." She does not take that exit ramp.

And so what I'm saying to people is I understand why you have empathy because you know there have been several times in your life where a a break in in one direction or the other and it could have been tragedy. I almost ran someone over one time with my car when I was 16. I think about that to this day and I'm like, "Holy [ __ ] my entire life could have changed. I I missed her by maybe two feet." And so it's like, "Holy shit." And because I was acting stupid at the time, ironically, trying to impress her, it's like all of that is like, whoa.

I just think how narrowly I avoided that. But had I hit her, that would be on me. That's there's no one else to blame. You can even say, but at 16, your prefrontal cortex hasn't developed. And while that's true, you don't just get to go, "Oh, they get a pass." So the thing that has to to click over in society is there were plenty of times where she could have taken a different path. She did not. It is a great tragedy that she was more susceptible to this than the next person.

But nonetheless, the thing that we have to do is sequester people like this. We have to draw discriminatory boundaries around things and people and say this is not okay. We are actively going to discriminate. This person has to be removed from society. It's sad. It's a tragedy. I really don't want it to happen to anybody. I certainly don't want it to happen to somebody I know. I don't want it to happen to me. But nonetheless, we've got to draw these discriminatory boundaries. My beef with this whole thing is the response.

My beef with this thing is that people are making all of these reels talking about their deep empathy for her instead of saying here's the structural reform that we need. Um, yes, this woman has to go away for ever, but here's what we want to do to make sure that this kind of abject uh tragedy does not happen again in the future, but that's not what we're getting from a percentage of people. I'm not saying that everybody feels this way, but I'm saying enough people are out there putting crazy ass ideas about uh it's all the doctor's fault.

Nobody has responsibility for their medical treatment. Uh it's not her fault because she was taking drugs or because she had postpartum depression and hey girl, I went through the same thing uh with my kids. And so it's just empathy, empathy, empathy. That is why in Los Angeles anyway or in Seattle, Seattle now smells like urine. It's wild. I grew up around Seattle. It did not used to be like that. So, uh, LA is an absolute [ __ ] show. You've got people doing drugs out in the open.

You've got people with schizophrenia walking around committing crimes and they're getting out and out and out. If you guys haven't looked at the arrest records of a lot of these people, they are long. Uh, the fact that the families are speaking up and saying, "Hey, this person's a danger." And we're still not locking them up. There is a thing that's happening where we are leading with compassion at a time where it is dangerous to lead with compassion. That is the thing where I'm trying to wake people the [ __ ] up.

We have let a very powerful, very needed feminine impulse, whether you find it in a man or a woman, a feminine nurturing impulse, we have allowed it to become pathological. We need to stop immediately. We need to put that in check. That is not a call for the masculine impulse to become pathological and this to turn into a police state. Once again, China, I am looking at you. I'm not asking for that despite the fact that many people in the DSA are. I can always work them into a conversation.

And so that is not what I'm calling for. What I'm saying is there is a very sensible middle- of the road thing which is personal responsibility. You've got to take responsibility for being the driver of this very complicated um biological machine that we call ourselves. Now I'll stay away from right now the fact that we are all uh automata. We do not have free will. But nonetheless, we have to act as if we do and we must put structures in place to keep people who are derailing from causing harm to other people.

And that is actively not happening in the west. Right now we are moving in the other direction and we are looking at people who say things like what I'm saying as if they are unloving uncaring whatever that is not at all the reality. There is another thing that must be taken into consideration which is safety, security, discriminatory boundaries, being able to say this behavior is worse than this behavior. And if we cannot get our heads together and think like that, put laws in place, enforce those laws with that understanding that this is a balance between two competing forces for compassion and personal responsibility.

They need to hold each other in dynamic tension in the middle and not spiral off into madness which is what we are seeing right now. We are going to be in for a rough time. This is why society doesn't move in either direction very long. You move in one direction too long and you get mouse China. You move in the other direction too long and you get the just insanity that we have on the streets right now. This is crazy. Wild. Moving on. Scott Bessant has launched economic D-Day.

He had a press conference on Monday where he talked about the blowing up the global financial system. You described this as an economic D-Day, but D-Day wasn't a threat of an invasion and the US didn't give a timeline to Germany. So why not impose the sanctions today? Well, we we are giving everyone the opportunity the to remedy bad behavior. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system? We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period, but they should know that that will move very quickly and that we are serious.

Secondary sanctions are a very powerful tool. And we here at Treasury, uh this is Gene Wang, the acting under secretary for terrorism finance. And in the terrorism finance department and in OFFAC, the reason we are able to use secondary sanctions is because we do not take their use lightly. So we believe that a warning shot and a level set of expectations is appropriate. And if people do not want to meet our expectations, then we expect and they should expect that they should will leave the dollar system.

Okay. Thank you all. Yeah, he's going to peace out on that one. All right, so you guys heard it. Scott Besson has launched Operation Economic Outcast. His goal is to isolate Iran. He's calling it an economic D-Day, not because he's storming the beaches and doing it all at once. He's going to be obviously far more thoughtful than that, uh, which I think is very wise, but any entity that launderers money for Iran should be isolated. So the reason that doing this ends up making sense is right now whether you should have been at war with Iran or not, you are at war.

And if you keep trying to prosecute it from a military perspective, you are going to stay in the quagmire that we are in right now, which is we are running out of munitions. We are putting ourselves into this very um untenable position where we would not be able to defend ourselves should something else pop off. And you are in an extremely unstable world right now. So uh we went into what is clearly an ill-advised military campaign that we were not able to see all the way through.

We almost certainly should have been applying the economic pressure from the beginning. But this stuff is complicated. Has a lot to do with the relationships that we have to do with each of the countries. And so at least we're getting to it now. Now, this is a double-edged sword. There is no doubt that the more that you weaponize the dollar, the more rapidly people move away from it. Bessant himself has acknowledged there is a slowm moving uh train to get out from under the dollar to end the dollar's status as the world reserve currency.

But you have a period right now where you can still use that to your advantage. They are pressing the advantage in the short term to essentially restabilize things in the Middle East to get the straight of Hormuz open back up. There are signs that that's actually working. Traffic is back up. We reported on this on Monday. Traffic is up through the straight of Hormuz by 400%. Now that's off of a very weak baseline. So we have a long way to go. But it does seem that the Iranian grip on power is actually beginning to loosen by using economics with a nice uh warning period ahead of time so that people can decide which side they're on, whether they're going to keep doing things that are um against US sanctions or not will force everybody to raise their hand and say what side they're on as we move forward.

Now the real question in all of this is does the US have the teeth to actually see this through? And I think that's an open question. I think that enough people are moving away from the dollar already while you're going to get some benefit out of this and you might even get the Iranians to come to heal. You might be able to get the people to uprise within the country. And if you're able to do that off the back of what looks like to be roughly um July's inflation was I think 87.9%.

That's very very close if not exactly precise to the decimal point. So inflation is running hot. Food inflation is running even hotter at 128%. So now you've got real economic pressures. You also had the real which is the um Iranian currency versus the dollar. Uh it was back in March it was uh 1.53 million per dollar. It's now 2.02 million per dollar. So it is falling fast. If you stretch that timeline out even farther, the uh inflation against the US dollar, the real has just been falling off a cliff since the Iranian revolution.

So the Iranian revolution from an economic standpoint has been absolutely disastrous for Iran. The economic sanctions have been absolutely punishing and their contraction of the economy is now I believe at 4.5% for this year. So they are on track for absolute economic devastation. So it doesn't take a lot of additional pressure from the US to really cause internal problems if we're already seeing the kind of runaway inflation on food that we're seeing. So we may get what we want out of Iran. We may get them to come to heal.

We may be able to get the straight open back up. We may be be able to get people going forward. But you have the compounding problem that started when Biden froze Russian assets and the world suddenly realized, yo, even a nuclear power can have their uh assets frozen if they're in USD. Now you've got even allies, and we're seeing this play out. You've got even long-standing US allies saying, "Man, I I've really got to look at alternatives here." Now, Bessant, maybe more than most, is well aware of this.

Because Bessant himself said his sort of uh wakeup call was when that happened with Russia and even France was like, "Yo, we've got to start looking at alternatives. We can't be in a position where the US could choke us off economically." And so this is one of those when you use that weapon, that weapon may be effective, but it may serve to further isolate you. So now you've got people with more incentive to exit the dollar system. So then the question becomes, what do you do about that?

We're going to go very deep on this in the third hour, but I'll give you a speedrun right now. What you're going to run into is you have a problem with your debt. This is exactly what we're seeing in the bond markets right now. the bond markets are struggling more and more because fewer and fewer people trust the US to be the place that they're going to park their reserve currency. Either because they think that you're going to uh continue to launch wars and that the wars that we already have cooking may spiral into something bigger and essentially become World War II and then you're going to print your way and therefore your debt is far less attractive at the current interest rate.

So, we're going to need you to raise that up. Or just your own current rate of deficit spending is going to continue. And so, you're still inflating your currency to the tune of about $2 trillion a year. So, I don't love the idea of being there. Oh, and we watched what you did to Russia. Oh, and we watched what you did to Iran directly. Oh, and we're watching now what you're doing with secondary sanctions and putting everybody in the world on notice and even saying the words out loud.

you can expect to exit the dollar system if you end up using your dollars to further support Iran. So if I am even an ally of the US, I look at that and go, "So wait, you're saying if I want to do something with my money that you don't like that you're going to freeze my money?" Yeah, no thanks. I'm going to get on this however slowmoving train uh to get away from the dollar. And so that creates that problem in the debt markets. Again, we'll go deeper on some of the um really sort of counterintuitive complications that that can bring uh when we go deep on um the bond market in the third hour.

But this is one of those that even if it works with Iran, even though I agree that it's what you need to be doing right now, this is a very costic tool in that it's going to burn you almost as much as it burns your opponent. And so, welcome to uh latestage empire behaviors. What we should be doing is fiscal responsibility. What we should have done, if we really thought Iran was a threat, we should have moved a very long time ago before they buried everything uh so that we could actually go in and stop their nuclear program.

But alas, we didn't do that. Uh and this is sort of the story of really doesn't have anything to do with America. It has to do with the way that the human mind works, which is when you're safe and prosperous, you keep wanting to push it off, push it off until it's too late, and you pay the consequences. Um, there's reports that Iran is saying that they have a two-year plan to avoid the sanctions. And just to ground us or economic D-Day and just to ground us, we have had sanctions on Iran since 2018.

We have we cut off trade with them since '95. Yes. But this really is a whole another level of it. There are five more um sections sectors that are falling into this. So um when you're looking at the secondary sanctions, you've now got digital assets are in there, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. So things that weren't in there previously. Um so you've got nearly 60 individuals, entities, and vessels that are designated across China, Hong Kong, the UAE, Singapore, Switzerland, Europe. So all of this stuff is it's definitely a deeper level of sanction.

Now, how much impact it's going to have when China is just telling you straight up, we are going to be completely dismissive of these sanctions. We do not acknowledge them in any way. we are going to do what the hell we want and bestin said no one is above the reach of US sanctions so that we are in fact theoretically going to put some of these on China but this is where the reality has to be faced that China is powerful man they are a powerful economy and the you can think of this as a Mexican standoff or you can think of this as something far more graphic which is two guys that are holding each other by the nuts yes you can squeeze the other guy but he's going to squeeze you right back and if the US is being ignorant to the fact that they are in a very weak position from a manufacturing base standpoint, from a um rare earth metals standpoint.

If they're really pretending like that's not a problem, that's going to come back to bite us. Thi this is I'm sure you've all heard the phrase the balance of power. This is the balance of power. The balance of power is these two great powers each holding the other's testicles and just being willing to squeeze them to death. So don't think that you get to walk away scot-free. There were years, decades where we had the entire world by the nuts and so we could squeeze anybody, do what we want, get what we want, all was well.

Those days are over. And when we globalized, we gave away that power. And that's just a reality that we have to face. This is what I'm talking about when I say eventually these policies, they make contact with reality. And one of the realities that we were not being honest about is that ambition grows in the Eden. When things are going well, people get more and more ambitious. I am literally going out of my mind that people are pointing to China as if we should say the US is bad, but the China China is good.

So, let me get this straight, [ __ ] You're saying that your beef is that the US has an authoritarian leader in Trump and so you want to go away from and Canada, I'm looking right at you. You want to go away from the supposed authoritarian leader who is still subject to voting and instead you want to get in bed with the actual dictator who has a million people in concentration camps and when they don't like the data they just stop reporting on it. It it is absolutely crazy to me.

And as just a reminder, the US is far wealthier than China. So they are a little more uh rife with inequality when you look at household wealth than the US. So they certainly don't get a pass there. And their poverty levels are higher than the US. So and they're far more authoritarian than we've ever thought of being. So yeah, that one's crazy to me. That that one is people who are pushing forward emotional brain dead policies. It it's crazy. It's crazy. No, since you brought it up, let's jump over to Canada where they are now matching the US tariff dollar for dollar.

This is Mark Carney's tweet. Uh in addition, we are introducing 7.5 billion in new and enhanced measures to support Canadian workers and businesses. This builds on nearly 25 billion in support introduced since the implementation of the US unjustified terrorists defending Canada jobs, industries, and families. There's also this video where he was talking about when he went to China earlier this year and said that China will lead the new world order. Um, this is my conspiracy theory. Uh, it's not a conspiracy if it's true. He said it and I believe the progress that we have made in the partnership with China sets us up well for the new world order.

That was the weirdest way to say that by the way ever. I have a feeling he was like [ __ ] I shouldn't have said new world order. This is he was virtual signaling to the Illuminati to let him know that he he took the uh pledge. So this is so crazy. They got the little babies in his basement waiting for him. He got his goat head. He about to go ham. that escalated very quickly. Uh so even minus the goats, Carney is out of his mind.

The thing that you have to understand about what's going on in Canada is that Canada, their economy is declining and has been declining rapidly since 2015. Canada keeps insisting on putting absolutely brain dead policies in place that are terrible for Canada. And at a time where your economy is weaker than it has been in I mean modern history, it is a very foolish time to launch an economic war with the United States. That doesn't mean that the United States isn't acting like an [ __ ] I don't need you to think that what the US is doing is nice or kind uh or in Canada's best interest.

You don't need to believe any of that. You can think that America's being mean. But the reality is that Canada is not in a position to go to economic war with the US. But despite that, Canada via our man Carney here has just announced that they're going to match American tariffs dollar for dollar. So those duties hit September 8th. We're talking about steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp, paper, electronics, all the fun stuff. And when you do that and you understand the position that Canada is fighting from, you really begin to understand what the issues are.

Let's go through some of the statistics. Statistics Canada published its own autopsy in March. This is data coming out of Canada. Since 2015, Canadian output per person has grown by.8% a year. When you see this charted, it is really horrifying. It is literally starting in 1997 the amount compared to compared to America but you can compare it to all developed economies and it's just as bad but compared to America you just see that rate going down down down down so if you think of America as a straight line from 97 till now it just goes down down down down in like this catastrophic cliff these guys have been making absolutely horrific decisions as far as dollars getting to their citizens.

Okay, so they're 08. The American number is 2.1. Americans have been getting richer two and a half times faster than Canadians for a decade. Okay. The cause is where is Canada putting its investments? Canada should be putting their investments in oil. That's right, boys and girls. Canada is an energy producing nation, but they have stopped investing in oil and started making really stupid decisions because there are some complexities around Canadian oil as to why they would have stopped making investments when they did when there was the um shock that happened in 2015, which is the thing that began their decline.

So, there was this um external impact that hit them, but then it met, and this is why Alberta's all kinds of pissed off. it met incredibly stupid regulations around energy that then exacerbated the problem. So, you get this shock where OPEC decides we're not going to hold back. We're just going to keep pumping out oil. Uh there were all kinds of um export restrictions that were put on, I believe, in the US. And so, the US now didn't need as much oil from Canada. And so, Canada gets this like double whammy uh economically on the price of their oil.

And this is going to sound weird, but it happens right at a time where Canada oil prices start going up up up. And because Canada prices are going up up up, everybody's like, "Oh my god, like we want to build the next well and the next well." But the problem is that you can spin up all of these oil wells faster than you can get more people to work those oil wells. So the cost of everything is actually going up precisely because you're building so many wells and you get this weird reinforcement loop where the more wells you authorize and start building, the more expensive the work becomes and therefore the more expensive it is to get the oil out.

But it's all happening at a time where oil prices are getting higher. And so now you've you can justify a more and more expensive oil well. But if you're thinking long term, you realize this is eventually going to normalize and it's going to start crashing because you're going to start producing a ton of oil because you've brought in all these wells. So that's exactly what happened. The the numbers go way up and then they crash way back down. And when they crash way back down, now everybody's in a terrible position because they have all these wells that aren't going to be able to break even.

there's just this absolute economic catastrophe that happens and now Canada pulls back on their capex and their capex in terms of investment in oil it peaks in like 2014 starts declining in 2015 as all of this madness is happening then 2018 2019 they start putting these terrible policies in place right as the oil price is beginning to recover. So it wouldn't have been fun no matter what because the math is just going to do what math does. But had they not put the policies in place that curtailed the uh tax incentives to invest in oil, they almost certainly would have been able to build their way back out of this.

So on top of all their absurd redistribution policies that they've been putting in place since, hey, guess who came into power in 2015? You'll never guess. Trudeau. So you get all of this anti-energy, left-leaning policies, redistributive policies that are weakening Canada's economy. you get the continued uh decrease in the amount of money that ends up in the hands of the workers and on top of that you get just the overall economy is falling and falling for a host of reasons but none of which are being helped by the policies that Canada puts in place.

Okay, so that's the backdrop of now Carney saying let's go to war with the US. So, and by the way, who's he getting into bed with? An authoritarian regime. It's so wild to me. Thi this is uh I think this guy to the south of me is an [ __ ] and I'm gonna paint him as the worst thing since Hitler. But the reality is the guy that I'm going to choose to get in bed with and set myself up for the new world order is the guy that's actually doing the things that I'm saying Trump would probably do if he could.

But you go with the guy that's actually doing them. It is very bizarre mental gymnastics. Yeah. Is it just self-preservation at this point? China's giving him a better deal in the short term. So, no, this is suicide. This is emotions. This is Carney saying, "I don't like this guy." This is Carney making a bet that the world is moving away from an erratic America, and so we're going to go to a stable authoritarian government. So, I would rather be with the stable, authoritarian guy who isn't afraid to shoot his people, uh, isn't afraid to purge his military, isn't afraid to put people in concentration camps, isn't afraid to lock people up.

I won't name names, boys and girls, but I've had people on my show in recent memory who are from China. and when asked the most blloise questions about China and then they give a very blloise answer so blasze that I stop asking questions about China because I realize oh I'm going to get a political response not a real response so imagine blas question about China blasé answer about China and what's the first thing they ask me to do when they walk off set Drew um can you remove that section about China correct why because they're afraid of their government So the reality is when you live inside of that government and you have to be like, "Ooh, I've got to watch every milktoast statement that I say and we're going to jump ship from." Admittedly, America's acting erratic, but I'm going to jump ship from that and go to, drum roll please, the authoritarian leader.

It's so stupid. So authoritarianism when it breaks bad, it breaks really bad. So, is that the person that you really want to invest in? Now, that's not me letting America off the hook. America, stop doing dumb [ __ ] Trump, please, for the love of God, stop doing dumb [ __ ] Anybody that says that I don't call Trump out for doing dumb [ __ ] is dumb themselves. I've called it out so many times. Uh, it's [ __ ] stupid. And you can point to a lot of the things that they're doing that are going to cause them problems.

So, but does that mean that as your economy is declining that you go from having a trade negotiation with your closest physical partner who remains still either the biggest economy in the world or tied for first uh but certainly is logistically infinitely easier for you to trade with at a time where you have found yourself falling to the absolute last place in terms of developed economies. China is last place. Now, I haven't brought this up yet cuz I don't think it's nearly as important as the things that I just walked you through, which is the actual what happened of it all, but they are projected, and these should be heavily discounted, but they are projected to continue to be the worst economy in the developed nations up through like 2060.

So, this is not somebody that anybody thinks is making the decisions that are going to put them back on a path to growth. Uh, these guys are in decline with no signs of ending that decline. And instead of getting their [ __ ] together, what are they doing? They're leaning on these former globalist principles. They're saying, "Hey, China, give me cheap [ __ ] Hey, China, uh, hollow out my automotive industry, please. That would be amazing." instead of saying, "All right, I [ __ ] hate Trump, but I'm going to do a deal with the US because it's in the best interest of my citizens to do a deal with the US because we've got to find a way to bring jobs back to Canada.

We've got to find a way to invest in energy infrastructure here in China, which unfortunately is oil. I'm sure they would like to get away from that, but Canada is not going to be What's that?" You said here in China. Here in Canada. Sorry. Thank you, Jesus. Yes. Here in Canada. Canada, Canada, Canada. Uh, so yeah, the fact that they're not doing that is But Canada doesn't Canada doesn't make it its own cars. It's already It could like it can come up with a car brand and spin it up.

Yeah, that's not necessarily what you want to do. What you want to do is get the manufacturing from uh with tariffs, it becomes a different question. But yes, you want to make things yourself. It doesn't have to be the automotive industry, but you want to make things yourself. You want to be as involved in that process as you can. And a lot of the trade agreements that we've had between the Canada and between Canada and the US have been around you guys make some of the parts and then we assemble it here or vice versa.

And so there's been all of this cooperation between the US and Canada, but that stopped in earnest really under Trudeau. So from 2015 until now, relationships have just been getting worse and worse and worse. What they should be doing interesting you what part of that do you disagree with? because something happened in 2015 that started Okay. Okay. Let's take a step back. Where we are right now with Canada, you're saying that this has been a slippery slope since Justin Trudeau came in in 2015. That's part of the problem.

The real thing was the oil shock. That's what started all of this. And so I'm saying you've got the oil shock. It was very real. You had the overbuild out that was very real. You had the crash of the oil prices which should have been predictable, but whatever. That was very real. Now the question becomes, okay, we know that that's our primary like source of revenue. How do we get that moving again? Which they did not do. Instead, they had Justin Trudeau. They started pushing harder and harder to the left.

They started doing the same thing that much of the West is doing, which is importing immigrants to try to lower wages to try to mask the fact that their economy was getting worse and worse and worse. They started importing things from China because it's cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And they've obviously started straining the relationship with the US. It's not easy to work with, but straining that relationship. They started straining the relationship. We have strained it together. Okay. But what you have to figure out is okay, I've got the US.

The US is being problematic. Do I make sure that I uh create a scenario here where we improve our relationship as much as we can with the US or do you move away from the US and partner up with China? That's the realistic question. There isn't the third option of I get to preserve my dignity. I get to show that I'm sovereign. Uh and somehow do what? Insert like what's the policy here? Work with the EU, work with Austria. It's not going to work. They're not big enough economies.

So, uh the EU is fractured enough. The EU when collective is a big economy, but they're also declining. So, you've got the EU shooting itself in the face economically, not going to be a good long-term partner. You've got the US bullying people. You've got China um trying to paint themselves as like, hey, we're okay, but we're the very we are the thing that you're saying Trump wants to be. And so it it is just surreal to me that people don't go, okay, I want to partner with China, but I'm very concerned about the authoritarian nature.

So I know that they'll put me in a position where I am beholden to them. Do I want to be beholden to an actual authoritarian regime? Probably not. But let's say that I can overlook that. Do I want to deal with the distance between the two of us? Logistically, moving things between the two of us is going to be very difficult. Ultimately, what I'm going to rely on is importing things from China, getting things cheaply. Now, we we just watched globalization happen. And what it does is it hollows out your industry.

It doesn't need to be automotive. It can be a thousand other things, including, by the way, if China really solves um let's say that they solve nuclear and they've got nuclear technology that's better than anybody else. probably I mean maybe Canada can pull off like wind and um ocean currents and getting hydroele electricity that way but they're they're too far north to expect um solar to be the big solve for them. So, you're probably not going to import Chinese solar, but I don't know. It It sounds like you're saying Canada is doing this as if there's some self-destructive person.

Canada is doing this as self-destructive. Those people are nameable. Justin Trudeau and Carney. But the two trade greements that we did have were both ripped up by Trump. It's just I I think it's But ask yourself why. Okay, so Trump is trying to make you the 51st state. Make it as ugly as you can. But even before that, that we already had a trade agreement. He renegotiated the first trade, the USMCA or NAFTA, I forgot which one was first, but he uh renegotiated that one on the during his first term.

That was what caused the initial fracture before us because why why did Trump do it? Yeah, I don't have any good answer for that. Okay, the good answer goes something like this. I'm going to be overly generous for sure, but just to paint uh a very easy to read picture. Uh globalization has absolutely cratered the US. Uh, so Trump, I like to think, realizes, okay, we've got to return manufacturing back to the US. Uh, China is the big enemy, all eyes on China. Um, I'm going to start flexing my muscle and I'm going to get people to start relying on us and start decoupling as much as possible from China.

And so whether that's Mexico, he didn't make people decouple from China. He made people decouple from us. No, he didn't make people decouple from us. He um acted like an [ __ ] He gave them an emotional reason to want to decouple from us. But my so my base assumption that I'm operating is that in trying to partner with China it's going to be worse for the Canadian economy. If you don't share that assessment then I get why if you're like but China's going to be great for the Canadian economy then it's like okay well at least we can argue about that base assumption but if the read on this is well this is a a reasonable and right reaction to the US acting like a bully.

Of course you would break away and of course you would punish your citizens. I'm just like no that's nonsensical. So, I'm perfectly willing to concede Trump puts people in a position where they hate him so much that they want to do things that are terrible for their It sounds like you're saying that we're the best greater of two evils, so suck it up. It doesn't matter how I treat you. That Sure. We'll round it to that for the sake of argument. Yes. Correct. And you you should suck it up and deal with it until you're in a strong enough position to get out from under it.

So, this is where people really should say we need to look at China. They're just saying it for the wrong things. China shows you what it means to play the supplicant as long as you have to with the great power until you can be dismissive of them. Xinping wrote that down god knows how long ago, 15, 20 years ago. And he said, um, we're going to bow to the great power while we're weak and then once we're strong, we will be dismissive. And I quote, we will be dismissive.

And what are they being now of the US? Dismissive. Why? Because they got powerful. So when you're talking about great power politics, if I were advising Canada and I'm just like trying to make sure that Canada is as strong as it can be, I would say give up on all the green [ __ ] Doesn't matter. Uh you guys are an energy powerhouse. You need to lean on that. You need to make that your industry and you need to start negotiating deals in such a way that everybody becomes reliant on you guys.

So you're going to have to be able to deal with the OPEC power of them trying to [ __ ] you up. Now what that looks like, I'm I'm not an energy expert. I'm not going to be able to give you the answer to that. But in terms of like what you need to look at, what are your resources? How do you like make sure that you're as strong as humanly possible? So, we're going to um do everything we can to get our our industry booming there.

We've got to make sure that we have good relationships with the US. Let's let's let's start with an analogy, right? Cuz well, tell me which part is breaking for you. There's some base assumption I hold that you reject because I think that you're saying Canada should just suck it up and eat the cost. And I'm thinking let me say yes. And I granted you that. But but what I want you to understand is why I'm saying that I am running the base assumption Canada should do what enriches their citizens.

Yes. But I think that you can accomplish that goal in multiple ways. It's kind of like if you have a supplier Quest Nutrition, if you have a supplier, you you were good with them. You had a trade deal 30 years. It was good. Yep. They have a new owner. The owner says, "Hey, I'm in town now. We're going to renegotiate your deal." Okay, this is weird. We had this other deal for 30 years, but okay, I'll renegotiate it. Cool. 5 years later, that owner comes back and says, "Hey, I know I renegotiated that first deal.

That first deal was bad, too. Now, this is the second deal." So, in this analogy is amazing. It's brilliant. It shows the power of your mind. I love that you bring things like this up. Now, let me do the thing I do. And then the last thing, so then the last thing will then be, can you blame that company then to say, "I need to find a more stable supplier. That's not going to change every 8 years." Of course not. That that is precisely what they should do.

Okay. But what I'm saying is you don't fit, [ __ ] you guys. I'm going to find something better. You go into a private meeting and you say, "Fuck those kids. We're going to get rid of them and I'm going to put together a 30-year plan of how we're going to get out from under them." But when we meet with them, we're going to be like, "Oh my god, guys, it's so good to see you again. We love you guys so much." And it's like, "Look, I brought some butter so that you can [ __ ] me in the ass and it's just easier for both of us." Uh, that is how you deal with it while you grow stronger.

This is exactly what China did. Remember, China put nets up around Foxcon to stop their employees from committing suicide so that Apple could get cheap iPhones. Okay, that's evil. But it's exactly how you build what is now rivaling the US for the strongest economy in the world. I get that we don't like that. I get that it's icky that that worked, but it [ __ ] worked. And it was an expressly stated policy of the CCP to do that. Suck up to the US and to the rest of the world.

Play nice until you are strong enough and then you can be dismissive. And then he put out a notice, I forget what year, 2016, 2017, something like that. And said, we are now going to be increasingly dismissive. And now we're into the full just dismissive dismissive phase of this rise to power. It is an absolutely brilliant way. Now, I want to go back to the analogy that you laid out because it's genius. And let me tell you how this actually plays out in the real world.

So one of the things that Quest was beholden to is protein. Now why is Quest beholden to protein? Because the protein that we used, whey, is a byproduct of an industry, Drew, that is orders of magnitude larger. And that's the cheese industry. Now, not a lot of people know that whey protein is simply the [ __ ] they scrape off the top when you're making cheese. You cannot make more whey protein. because way without increasing the size of the cheese industry because it's just a byproduct of an industry for whom that's a rounding error.

They don't even [ __ ] think about it. Whatever you guys want it. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Whatever. And so when we got into the business, it was you're fighting and scraping for every gram of protein that you can get. Now, in the beginning, we were psychotically weak because we were tiny. We were buying protein like one bag, two bags. And I remember when they were like, "Guys, you got to buy a pallet or [ __ ] off." And we were like, "Holy [ __ ] can we afford to buy this pallet?

What if we lose this money?" I mean, I can't remember how much it was, but it was tens of thousands, if not might have been 50,000 plus. And so we're like, "Oh god, like, are we really going to do this?" It was a super big gamble. So, we end up saying, "Okay, yes, we can do it. Protein lasts for this long. We think we can do it, and if we grow, we're going to be okay." So, we end up buying it because we're in a weak position.

Now, by the end, Drew, we were the second fastest growing company in North America. We were eating everybody's [ __ ] lunch. If I wanted more protein, I could go in. I was never going to be a dick, but I could go in and be like, "Hey guys, we're going to need some more of that protein." We knew that was putting somebody else potentially out of business cuz they just couldn't get the protein. And so once we were strong, it was a different ballgame. But no matter how big of an [ __ ] they were on the phone, dismissive of us, talking to us like we were little bros, all of that stuff, it didn't matter.

I had uh an obligation to my wife if nobody else because my house was on the line. So it's like if I do what is emotionally gratifying, which I literally have a rule in business. Never do what's emotionally satisfying. So you can imagine I'm looking at Canada going, "You're doing what's emotionally satisfying. This is bad for your [ __ ] citizens. Look at the goddamn charts. They're falling off a [ __ ] cliff." I'm not making this up. I'm not like, "Oh, Canada, hey, this is going to be bad one day." I'm saying look at the last [ __ ] decade.

You guys have shot yourself in the dick, in the face, in the foot over and over and over. You can point to the policies. You can point to the the historical beats. Nobody is confused about how Canada's ended up in this situation. Okay, it's this is why I didn't give a presentation of like all the predictions. All the predictions are [ __ ] terrible for Canada. Let's just talk about what's actually happened. So the things that have actually happened are bad thing happened to them from the outside and then they responded like [ __ ] idiots.

And so I'm saying I get it. It's emotionally satisfying to tell the US to [ __ ] off. And by the way, I understand why you go in a back room and you say, "Gee, listen, bro. We're on your team. We want to get this [ __ ] done. We want to find a way to get the [ __ ] away from America." and Drew if they did that and the quiet whisper whisper and their numbers start ticking up on the back of China then be a dick to Trump then say [ __ ] you then be like [ __ ] we don't need you anymore slap your 80 lb dick on the counter and tell everybody to get the [ __ ] out America you can you can piss right off we don't care about you we're going to match we're going to double your tariffs for every dollar you do we're going to do $2 [ __ ] you because big daddy China's got my back and life is getting better for my citizens I'd be like yeah I don't like it because I'm American America and I'm going to be hurt by that.

But I get it. What I don't get is them doing [ __ ] ass [ __ ] that is emotionally satisfying and terrible for their [ __ ] economy. Somebody put in the chat, it took Drew 20 minutes to understand TDS. Um, so that's what it's coming down to. This is just TDS. No. Okay. So, it's so interesting. I don't I didn't take it that way. No, no, no. I know you don't. and you're you let this stuff roll off your back. But here as a public service announcement, I really I always want people to understand how you think about the world.

Whenever I misrepresent you, you will always speak up. I trust you to do that. Uh the reason I find Drew so advantageous to my own thinking is that I have a belief system that pulls me inextricably in a direction. Drew has a belief system that pulls him inextricably in a different direction, but he's very smart and he sees things that I miss. So, I don't think this is Drew failing to understand Trump derangement syndrome. This is Drew going, "But these guys should be going to war for their own side, and if they see a path out of this, they should be taking it." And the thing is, he's right.

And if I wasn't articulating that, that is a very important thing to articulate. Which gave me the opportunity to point out, I'm talking about where the rubber meets the road here. I'm talking about the fact that this actively has proven to be bad for their people. Uh, so anyway, want people around you that see the world differently than you. Don't brush them off. Some of them are unhinged. Drew just happens to not be the unhinged one. Uh, okay. We got to jump over to the CIA, will they?

Won't they? What's happening in Moscow right now? Putin met with the CIA and the Vatican in the same day. And I just think that that's interesting. Um, people are thinking it meant there was an imminent strike to the EU. This was Russia going against NATO. Some reports came this morning. It might just be Iran war uh nonsense. So, we're still speculation, but let's see what Give us the read, Tom. What's it looking like? All right, we got a lot of speculation that something big is going on with Russia, but the question is, is it really?

CIA director John Ratcliffe landed in Moscow. It was the first known trip to Russia of his tenure. It is not often that the sort of spy, the head of the spy uh division of the US is going to roll up in the Kremlin. I think the last time it happened was back in like the 201s. So, this is not a thing that happens very often. So, for him to do it, it is a big deal. For it to be a sort of unannounced trip. More details are coming out about it.

So, it's probably a bit of misperception when it first happened. But, it is very interesting and it tells people that something is going on, especially when the people closest to the situation are saying that the relationship between the US and Russia is in crisis. So, if this is being built as a deep crisis and we're sending the head of the CIA, it's like, okay, what's going on here? A lot of question marks. Now, one of my favorite conspiracies, and it is a conspiracy, but my favorite conspiracy, just because it's like I don't see how we don't end up here at some point, but this is conjecture conspiracy.

everybody should have a tin foil hat strapped to their head for this one, but that basically uh Russia believes that Ukraine has crossed a red line. They have said literally exactly that in recent days that they've crossed a red line that their targeting of what they're calling civilian infrastructure is completely unacceptable that they're being backed by Europe and if Europe doesn't stop providing that support now that this red line has been crossed that they're going to and then he gets very vague but the sentiment is I'm not going to sit on my hands forever in regards to Europe.

Okay, with that looming in the background, then Ratcliffe showing up on the ground there with giving people little to no information about why he's there. People go, "Okay, this is Russia uh leaking intel that made its way back to the CIA where we look at this and go, "All right, these guys are about to make a move to test NATO's resolve." Now, all of the grumblings that I've heard, nobody is saying that they're going to like hit him with a nuke or anything stupid like that, but that there would be some limited incursion on the border of a NATO country so that they could send a message and maybe even more importantly see what the response is because he knows Europe itself is divided.

He knows the US and Europe are very divided. He knows that Europe is beginning to build up their military presence but isn't quite there. And so if the US doesn't join in that if he's going to make a move now would be the time. And so if he's going to get some sense of what's going on that that might be a play. Now I've been hearing that grumbling for a while and so far absolutely nothing has come of it. I think that Russia is probably in a pretty gnarly situation.

They just had a massive explosion in one of their uh their energy infrastructure that's 6,000 miles from the uh uh meters kilometers kilometers 6,000 kilometers from uh the border. So almost certainly wasn't Ukraine sending uh any sort of drone or missile or anything like that. Would have had to have been either just complete coincidence accident or sabotage from the inside. But nonetheless is not a good day. They've been building that facility for 7 years. The second they turn it on a part of it explodes. Uh that's not going to make them feel very good.

And then Ukraine has shown that they can hit a ton of their infrastructure. So this does not feel like a war that Russia is by any means winning. And so the question becomes, who's got more energy, who's able to put more pressure on the other? And I can see Russia escalating if they feel like they're in a truly desperate situation. Uh but right now it's sort of same as it ever was. It's possible that things are brewing in the background that are about to spill over.

Um but basically now as more information comes out about Radcliffe's trip, it is people trying to downplay, downplay, downplay. This is not a big deal. Um nothing necessarily came out of the talks. They are over. he's back. Um, so right now there's really nothing concrete to report. Um, other than this idea that people are now talking pretty openly about the US and Russia's relationship being in deep crisis. So, we'll see what comes of it. I feel like they they had strikes yesterday. I'm trying to look at the exact article, but Trump was talking to Glenn Beck yesterday.

I don't have the audio, but he downplayed it saying it was none of the above. It was semi- routine. It was nothing. It's not semi- routine. We know that cuz we don't send the CIA over there uh very often. But um that it isn't uh because of some imminent attack makes sense to me because I don't think Ratcliffe is who you would send if that were the case. Uh if you really had imminent attack, that's going to be the kind of thing that you either want um Rubio or Vance on.

So, I would be shocked if they sent Ratcliffe, but that could be me not understanding Trump's relationship to him. Yeah. Um, we will monitor the situation. Um, also in crazy situations, have you seen this Nepal flash flood footage? It looks like it looks like the end of a movie. Terrifying. And we know this is an AI. No. No. Yeah, it's real. There's a flash flood. 300. You guys are going to want to watch this. This is a look at your screen kind of thing. You kind of start seeing people running.

It's like, wait, what's happening? Kind of like the birds how they're the first ones to like move and stuff. It's so weird because in this shot you can't see anything. Yeah. Except people running. It's just like, "Oh, this is weird." And then Holy Jesus. It's still going. No way. Not done yet. It's not done yet. Oh, those guys are all dead. They're all dead. Every single one of them. Sheesh. Holy [ __ ] What happened? There's no way. Yeah. Flash flood near the But bro, that was bigger than like a five-story building.

Crazy. Crazy. What? But what what what waterway did a dam break? I think it's cuz it's a valley, right? They live in a valley is what? Hold on. Yeah, but what was the first thing that like I mean look at that cause of it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh when I clicked it, that's hit early Wednesday when triggered by an apparent earthquake induced avalanche into the river. Oh my god. So this is basically like a tsunami from a river. That makes a lot more sense. Okay, so earthquake drop.

So here's something that uh not a lot of people understand. Water is uncompressible. Think about that for a second. When you jump in it, I think people think that water is like the ultimate compressible thing. But in reality, everything that goes in it displaces water and you you actually if you dip a toe in the ocean, you have technically raised the water level of the ocean. Now, obviously, the ocean is so big, your toe is so small, you don't notice. But, uh you'll see this a lot in like where the ice sheets cleave off and fall into the water.

If you're a boat nearby and you think, "Oh, that's cool." You have to be very careful because if enough falls in and all that water is displaced, then it will literally create like a little regional tsunami. Uh, which is pretty crazy. There are all kinds of like um evidence of in Alaska, you'll get these like glaciers and mountains where you'll see evidence of a water level like I'm making this number up, 800 feet, 1,000 feet up, whatever, just like crazy heights. And people like, "How on earth?" And it's because on the other side of the um bay, something cleaved off, fell into the water, and then it just sent this huge gush of water.

So, if you guys weren't looking at your screen, it's it's sort of hard to convey how big of a wall of water that was. This is like the pathway of it. It came down like there was a ice earthquake up here. It slid down, slid down, came through, and then to Ryan's point, the people at the bottom of the valley kind of got hit the hardest. Bro. Yeah. Bro, it's one of those things that happens so infrequently that you can sort of lull yourself in. But what's gnarly is that in that video, I mean, how many people were there?

A hundred running. They're all toast. Like no, not a single person survives that. There's no way that that was a wall of water so big it looked like uh it looked like AI. It just so the entire pathway they say there around thousand people still missing on a cat for so thoughts and prayers. That is so brutal, man. Also uh breaking news. uh Facebook Meta, they threw 17 billion and said, "Leave me alone." They have settled all the states lawsuits about Instagram and Facebook hurting minors.

So, they were for 17 billion. Yeah. They were supposed to go to trial in New Mexico and California. Some other states have signed on to have their own lawsuits. So, instead of dealing with it, they just cut the check. Some people claim that the trial, if it would have went and they would have been found liable, it could have been like a trillion dollar lawsuit, something crazy like that. So they just cut the check and go. But I never understood where does this money go? And there's going to be like kids to the attorneys.

So first of all, whatever law firms were involved in this just took whatever 20% of that. So um they're going to be riding high on that for a very very very long time. And then it'll be a class action. So people will get a notice that says you may be eligible for payout funds from this lawsuit. Go here and do your thing. very little money usually ends up making it to people. Um, so unfortunately the whenever you look at this stuff, the people that really win are going to be the people uh in the law firms.

So that's bad. But I if the question that people should be asking is is this going to change behavior? Because I have growing concern about the impact of tight dopamine cycles on uh the developing brain of a child. And what I mean specifically is when you look at the dopamine cycles on reels, you can see what it does to kids, the inability to be bored. Um, I recently spent time with a family and um, one of their kids obsessed with football. But by obsessed with football, I mean that he watches football sort of out of the corner of his eye and he scrolls on TikTok for like reals about football at the same time.

It's so wild. Uh so this is where parents need to be very careful. You want to talk about personal responsibility, parents have got to be careful about how much exposure they let their kids have to uh phones, reels specifically. Uh if kids are watching long form entertainment, um we know what it looks like to have a generation raised on um say Scooby-Doo. We don't know, well we're starting to unfortunately know what it looks like to raise a generation on reels. Um, and in terms of their ability to pay attention, their ability to be bored, their ability to not act like a drug addict when you take their phone away at dinner, um, is pretty bad.

So, yeah, I would be highly encouraging of parents to think about it's very different. It's, I think, also negatively impactful if parents, uh, anybody of any age does it too much. U, but it's always going to be very different when your brain is developing versus when your brain is not developing. This is one of the things that I think about. It's one of the reasons that um the DNA of Kaizen, the video game that I'm building, is Minecraft. Because Minecraft to me is the thing where you have to be most self-directed.

Uh you've got to set a goal for yourself, work almost in I I hate to say this, but almost in like a boring way to go get your resources, think long-term planning, and build towards that. Uh it was a very conscious decision uh in terms of making something that could actually uh elongate people's attention span instead of just doing things to shorten short shorten. Um so yeah anyway parents be careful man. It's rough. It's rough out there. It's wild. Um okay yesterday the Democrats got the call.

So if you were on X, you have seen a number of them saying something along the lines of American politics blame Jews for anti-semitism violence Hassan [ __ ] Um there's Do we have that clip? We should play that clip. The Hassan [ __ ] clip. I bet as I Sorry. Is this something totally unrelated to that? No. This is all the Democrats disavowing with Yeah. Yeah. But we should play the clip of what he says. So in in response No, no, sorry. So, there's a clip that Drew will uh do his best to find for us quickly where what he says is um if Jews aren't careful, if they keep making um I don't think he says the word Zionism, but if they keep going to bat for Israel, basically being Zionist as their like core issue, someone will come and take action.

That someone will come and take action. That's exactly correct. All right. So, let's because this stuff always gets sensationalized. It is far better to hear it directly from him. I think what he said is problematic, but some of the ways that people are spinning this is maybe a bit too dramatic for my taste. But here we go. And you want to know why? Because people don't [ __ ] with Israel any longer. And if and if Jews in America keep putting uh this this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone's going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.

Okay. All right. We're teaching people the wrong lesson. I don't But yeah, let's see what he says. Don't know how people don't recognize how dangerous this predicament is, how dangerous this is for Jews. You're running around basically tying your entire identity to a country that inevitably will be seen as basically Jewish ISIS. And you're saying as Jews, this is all we care about. You're making anti-semitism worse. And you want to know? Okay, so um it's a re Yeah, there you go. Thank you, sir. It is a really stupid thing that Hassan just said, basically saying that Jews are putting themselves in a very dangerous situation by going to bat for Israel.

Now, the way that this is being treated, though, is as if he were telling people to go and do something bad to the Jews, uh, which is definitely not what he's saying. So, there's no need to spin this off into something bigger than what it actually is. What this actually is is somebody who is so convinced of their rightness, so convinced that Israel is doing something uh so completely beyond the pale that anybody that is going to bat for um Israel or Zionism is now basically a terrorist, likening them to uh ISIS.

So, he's basically calling the entire state a terrorist state. We'll see how well that ages. Uh the thing though that what I really think people need to pay attention to is this gets into the quote from Church Hill and Church Hill said you have enemies good it means that you stood for something. So going to somebody and saying hey that thing that you really believe don't go to bat for that because this could be dangerous for you is definitely the worst way to approach the world.

If you believe in something you absolutely should be standing up for that thing. Now getting to debate about that thing that makes all the sense in the world to me. But we are going into a period in history where only the people who believe in their position are going to make it out culturally on the other side. So right now the cultures that believe in themselves are going to take over. That's just how cultural energy works. And so I'm not asking you to believe one way or the other about the state of Israel.

That is a separate debate and I'm happy to talk about that as well. But the thing that I found interesting about this comment is that that what he's saying is, hey, somebody might come and say because that you stand for something I don't like, I'm going to hurt you. And his advice to them is don't stand up for that thing because somebody might hurt you. What the [ __ ] is that? That is the exact kind of appeasement that gets people into a dangerous situation where the strong people in the world just come and roll them over.

And so everybody from a cultural perspective is going to have to answer the question, how much do you believe what you believe? Now listen, if you end up going to bat for something that really is uh terroristic that the whole world turns on, then you're going to have uh a big battle to fight and you're going to be fighting it all on your own. But it is a god-awful message to tell somebody, you're so wrong, people are going to come hurt you, so just stop being wrong.

That's [ __ ] idiotic. take it on the merits of the case if you want or recognize that people can and should stand up for their beliefs and their values and say, "Hey, this is what I believe in." And certainly at the uh point of culture, I'm going to stand up for what I believe in. And if somebody comes and does me harm because I'm standing up for what I believe in, [ __ ] that person. That is the whole idea behind the first amendment is that you say what you believe and that never should v violence fall upon you because of your belief system.

So if if an American citizen like Hassan [ __ ] is going to bat for things that I disagree with vehemently, remember this is a kid that goes to bat for Mao, the most murderous ideology on the planet. You don't hear me running around saying, "Yo, if the DSA keeps talking about Mao and uh promoting this communist stuff, they're going to realize that they're going to be associated with the most murderous regime of all time and people are going to do something, man. Like, you're just making it worse on yourself." He has a right to say what he wants.

Now, I'm going to go hard in the paint on arguing why that is an extremely stupid view to hold, but I'm certainly not going to say, "Man, this is going to get dangerous because you're saying the thing." People should be able to say what they believe, and people should know that violence is not going to befall them because of things that they say. I want to hear that energy come out of his mouth. But we don't. We hear him say unhinched crazy [ __ ] like let the streets run with the blood of capitalists and all that stuff all the [ __ ] time.

That is what people should be going after in this one. He's got plenty of other [ __ ] where he talks just unhinged stuff on Jewish people if you want to like pin him down for anti-semitism. But here like this is a whole another crazy idea that he's putting forward that I don't hear people talking about which is anybody should be able to stand up for what they believe in and say the thing. Now, it's different if you're not a citizen, and we can get into that with the visas and all that stuff, but if you're a citizen, you should be able to say what you believe is true.

And by the way, even non-citizens should never have to worry about violence. But nobody should say a thing and then have violence befall them, ever, no matter how unhinged. That is one of the very things that makes America great. This is the very thing I was talking about earlier with China. You can't just say what you want. you have to worry about the violence of the state or uh being put in an interament camp. Okay? That is not a position that you should ever want to see in America and we should like hammer that [ __ ] down immediately in the realm of ideas anytime it comes up.

Um, speaking of China and the DSA like teaming up for MAL, uh, we got to talk about this when it comes to poverty. Really fast. Let me set this up. Okay. The reason that this clip is so important, you have people in the DSA and on the farther extremes of the left that are very anti-American. Okay, fine. Tell me what you're for. And the problem is the thing that they're for is China. China is in a worse economic position than we are. China is way worse for its citizens.

China has more household wealth inequality. China has more poverty. China is authoritarian, like literally run by a dictator. China has rolled tanks into their town in modern history, shot their own citizens in the face. If you let me go back a little bit farther, but we're still just in the 70s. They starve their own people to death. Like this is crazy that the thing that people are saying that they're afraid of with Trump that their solution to that is to get away from a supposed king wannabe and go to an actual authoritarian dictator.

So with that, this guy who I love and rarely see, I don't even think this guy gets nearly enough views. How many views does this have? 9,000. This is crazy. I don't know how I found this guy, how the algorithm knew that I would be into it, but he breaks everything down from the position of data. So, here he's got somebody uh that is going to bat for China trying to paint a very positive picture of China, and he just says, "Let's look at the data." All right, with that, take a look.

Anytime you bring up the fact that China's eradicated abject poverty, someone will inevitably bring up the fact that poverty is defined as $3 a day and no one can actually live off of $90 a month. And they're right. But that's not China's definition of poverty. That's the World Bank's definition of poverty. Nope. That's entirely wrong. That is China's definition of poverty and it's not the World Bank's definition of poverty. National Bureau of Statistics of China. This is a Chinese government website. They publish an annual yearbook, the 2025 yearbook.

Section on poverty has this footnote. It says, "China has eliminated absolute poverty by 2020. So, the National Bureau of Statistics of China will no longer release the data on rural poverty population and poverty headcount ratio. You can refer to yearbook 2021 if needed. If you're a China proponent, that should give you some pause. The United States is much richer than China, and we still report on poverty. Why is that? So, that's wild. You uh say, "Hey, we solved that problem, so we're not even going to look at it anymore.

We're not going to report on it. But what if it starts moving in the wrong direction? What if the things you reported before weren't actually quite true?" No, no, no. It's good. This is what I'm saying. This is the kind of stuff that China does. They obfuscate their data all the time. When they want to stop reporting on something, they just stop reporting on it. And by the way, if you want to get disappeared real fast, call them out on it. So, this is where I'm just like, boys and girls, what are we doing here?

Here's the 2021 yearbook. They write that uh poverty has been ended. It was the current rural poverty line which is annual per capita consumption expenditure of 2300 yuan at 2010 prices. The PPP conversion factor for 2010 is 3.33. So to convert 2,300 yuan to purchasing power parody adjusted US dollars, we divide by 3.33 and per day spending that's a $1.90. In 2010, the World Bank's absolute poverty line was not coincidentally $1.90. The World Bank has updated their poverty line since then to $3.80 a day where it is now.

But that's a poverty line for poor developing countries where you'd struggle to get enough calories to live. It's not an appropriate poverty line for an upper middle inome country like China, which the World Bank defines China as. poverty line for upper middle inome countries is $8.30 a day and 21% of the Chinese population is below $830 cents a day% so you've got 20 21% of the country is still below the poverty line uh as determined by the World Bank. That is wild for them to then say, "Hey, we've eradicated poverty.

All's well. You've eradicated poverty by a definition that doesn't match the country that you actually are now. Now, that is not to take away from China. What China has done in terms of pulling people up out of abject poverty has been absolutely extraordinary. But obviously, as you start doing better, then the expectations go up for where your entire nation is going to be. Obviously, if we had 21% of our society living below the poverty line, I don't think anybody would be like, you know who we need to mimic?

We need to mimic the US. It is again another thing where I'm just like what are we doing? We're letting China control the uh vision of what they are, the vision of what it means to be under authoritarian rule. And we're not thinking critically about the very reason that people don't want Trump to be a king is because we don't want to live under authoritarian rule. But the very people who bang the drum loudest about hating the fact that Trump is has authoritarian tendencies, the people that they hold up as the um place that we should try to emulate is the place with the actual dictators.

It's crazy. Who just hides the data when they don't like it? The United States says, but China uses a much more strict nonbgeois holistic definition of poverty called the two no worries and three guarantees. Introduced by the Communist Party of China at the 13th Party Congress in 2016. The two no worries are no worries about food or clothing. And the three guarantees are safe housing, adequate health care, and compulsory education are all guaranteed. So even if a Chinese citizen has over $3 a day, the World Bank defined poverty threshold, if they don't also have adequate food and clothing, safe housing, compulsory education, and adequate healthcare, they are still considered in poverty by the Communist Party of China.

And that's just for rural residents. In urban areas, they also guarantee basic utilities like electricity and plumbing. Wait, you could lack electricity and plumbing in a rural area of China but not be considered in poverty? Really? If that's true, that seems like a bad definition of poverty. Agreed. Regardless, here's the National Bureau of Statistics, China. They report nationwide per capita disposable income for the bottom 20% of households to be about 10,000 yuan per person. That's about $3,000 adjusted for purchasing power. And that's per capita. So, a family of three in the bottom quintile would be living on something like 9 or $10,000 per year.

That sounds like poverty to me. China also reports something called the nationwide Engle coefficient. Engle coefficient is expenditure on food divided by total consumption expenditure. And the logic is if you're poor, you're going to be spending a lot of your money on food because you need food to live. And as you get richer, you're going to spend more money on food, but it's going to be a smaller percentage of your total spending. So Jeff Bezos probably spends a lot more than I do on food, but it's also not the same proportion.

It's not the same share of his income. China reports that the Engle coefficient nationwide, the average Engle coefficient is 29.3%. It's higher in rural households, 31.8%. So that's percentage of their spending that they're spending on food. For contrast, we can look at the sum of food away from home and food at home divided by total expenditures for the lowest 20% income people in the United States. And we see that it's about 15.7% of expenditures for the lowest 20% income people in the United States is spent on food.

And food is nice to use here as a comparison because it's universal. The greater percentage of your consumption you're spending on food, the poorer you probably are. And that's true even across countries or across time. And it's a little unfair to try to compare the United States to China in terms of poverty because the US is a much richer country per person. But he does seem to think that poverty is widespread in the US relative to China. China is the only country on earth to have completely eradicated abject poverty.

Even the United States hasn't done this. We still have about 10% that are below that threshold. Of course not. That's absurdly wrong. The $3 a day poverty line is again intended for developing countries and it would be difficult to get enough calories to survive on. That's why starvation sometimes happens in developing countries. Using the appropriate poverty line, you see that poverty is about 11 or 12 times as common in China than in the United States. The United States is a much richer country than China and poverty in China is widespread despite the fact that the Chinese government chooses not to report on it and that he chooses not to understand that.

Thanks for your time. Yeah, that's wild. 11 or 12 times more poverty in China than there is in the US. Uh and yet people are still carrying water for China man, still going to batform. This is wild. This is why I'm saying you cannot do vibes. You can't do feelings. You've got to really get down into where the rubber meets the road. The reality is if you have authoritarian leader, you are going to have problems. You are not going to have the personal freedoms that we have here in the US.

Things that people take for granted here, they just don't exist there. There are trade-offs. When you can point the entire economy at one thing, you can move very quickly in that direction. But as they're learning with their housing, if you point everybody in one direction and you give people incentives to only show growth regardless of whether it's uh needed, wanted or productive growth, um you now move very quickly in the direction of a cliff. So this is one of those things I am not saying that the US does not have its own problems.

We do. The very thing I'm trying to drive home for people is as the DSA continues its rise, as they begin to brain the entire Democrat party, the thing that you're going to be up against constantly is this sense that there is a mythological nation out there where socialism is working well. First they tried to do the Nordic countries, then the Nordic countries clap back and said, "We're not socialist, dumb asses, and stop calling us that. If you're going to mimic what we're doing, then you're going to have to do a very broad-based tax.

It's going to be very high on everybody. And also, you're going to have to make it lighter on corporations so that they can actually generate more capital that they keep and then deploy against their workforce so that the workforce has more money so that we can tax the broad-based workforce. So, and by the way, the whole idea of a homogeneous country, again, homogeneous in thought, so that culturally, in fact, you have to be homogeneous in a very specific way. You've got to be homogeneous and believe that you shouldn't stay on um the country dole, basically government dole, uh for any longer than you absolutely have to.

And if people don't share that value, then you're going to have a problem, which is why they're moving away from immigrants. Or the other delusional belief that there's actually this really great socialist experiment out there is the Chinese Communist Party, which again, there are great things that you can point to. There are tremendous lessons that you can learn from China, but obviously eradicating poverty by a middle inome country standpoint is not that one. That they are richer than the US, that is also not accurate. Uh so when we begin trying to at least this is how I look at it, rebuild America and get back to uh broad-based prosperity where we're actually manufacturing, we have a thriving middle class.

As we start doing that, we have to make sure that the policies that we're putting in place are going to lead to that because the policies that are being put forward by the DSA, by the uh increasingly DSA influenced Democrat party, you're not getting policies that are actually going to lead to that kind of prosperity. And there in lies the problem. I get the empathy. I get the desire that they want to help. But the reality is all of those policies have to be run through the filter of whether or not this actually works.

And that we're not doing. Um, switching. Oh, yeah. Rest in peace to Dolly Parton. What's your favorite Dolly Parton memory? That would be tied to my mom. So, if you guys know the song Hard Candy Christmas, uh, my mom is probably the one that most uh had the biggest impact in terms of instilling Christmas in this thing that I just absolutely love. Uh, it's my favorite time of year. It's my most important rituals. Uh, and so Dolly was certainly a big part of that. But my mom is just a big country music fan.

So Dolly was very everpresent in my house growing up. Um, also her personality is just absolutely hilarious. All right, this is going to be a hot take that I have a feeling uh people are not going to like. But here's what I love about Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton was somebody that understood the powers of her femininity. If you ever saw uh the movie um Aaron Brochovich, there's a great line in that movie where he's like, "How on earth did you get uh those people to tell you something that they wouldn't tell me?" and she goes, "They're called boobs, Ed." Uh, that was something that Dolly completely understood.

She came from like the most impoverished area, uh, I believe in Tennessee. And when you see the photos of her house, it's like the yard is basically just dirt. And so for her to go from that on the back of her musical talent, her personality, her savvy, and be able to um, own her own music. She turned down Elvis when he wanted, I think it was um the one that Whitney Houston ended up covering and making super famous. Elvis wanted to do it, but he was going to take the publishing rights and she refused to do that and she held on to them herself.

Obviously, a much smaller song than it would have been had Elvis um been the one that uh for her to keep it instead of letting Elvis do it. And then obviously she reaps the rewards of that later when Whitney Houston gets a hold of the song. So, it's this just really incredible story of somebody who understood her femininity, was not easy to push over, but knew how to use being an attractive woman uh to navigate the world. And I always thought that was very um powerful.

It's something that I've always told my wife like, listen, I get it. If you're an attractive woman, like there are things that you can get that I'm not going to be able to get. And don't be ashamed to uh use your femininity and your feminine ws in order to uh she's brokered better uh deals, negotiating equipment before. Uh it's really quite incredible. Just by being um a little flirtatious, having a smile, it goes a long way. And we've sort of lost that. Not sort of, we've lost that.

That's become something that's very much uh frowned upon, demonized. Um and people react as if the male gaze is assault in and of itself. Dolly understood how to use it to her advantage. I think is very smart. Um, and we just the chat just told us this. Tim Curry just passed too. Oh [ __ ] RP Tim Curry. Damn. Devastating. Yeah. In the same week, two of the coolest people in in human history dead. Man, that's rough. Tim Curry was great. Uh, I've actually never seen Rocky Horror Picture Show, if you can believe that.

Uh, but he did play Pennywise and uh, that book had a huge impact on my life and so I'll always have a a warm spot in my heart for Tim Curry just for being a part of the IT franchise. Uh, me it was scary movie, too. He was hilarious in that. Um, okay. We got some super chats. Yes, we do. We got a lot of super chats. Let's go. All right. First up, do we have the the one coming up that we Oh, yes. That's what I was pulling.

Super thanks. Sorry. Shout out. Yes. Man, do I hope he's in the chat. Yeah, it hits differently than super chat. So, please super chats. you see super thanks come in like post uh live. So yeah. So our apology that we missed it cuz this was a big one uh which there was an attachment he wanted me to show you. So I sent it to you in Slack. You can look after if you want. And this is uh this was a $100 super thanks if I'm not mistaken.

So Mr. Sper 007 says uh with a $100 super thanks. Thank you. Says AI becoming reliable, understandable, productive, and governed by enforceable safety guardrails is the problem my pending utility patents address. Sort before store governs inputs before propagation by upgrading AI's operating environment. Would you review the briefing? Uh this document looks very robust. I will certainly look at it. Your timing is phenomenal. Uh given that I'm interviewing Connor Ley today, uh who's all about AI safety um and I would certainly love to better understand if there are actual solutions.

Um I don't know that I'm the right person to make heads or tails of this. That would be the only catch. So I will certainly look at it with a sincere desire to understand what you're putting forward uh as it is a big problem that certainly needs a solution. So um yeah, thanks for sending it in. And boy, do I hope that this is really uh a breakthrough. That'd be incredible. Next up, George. And thank you, by the way, for the insane generosity. Yes. George Hansen Ben with a $40 super chat made up of two $20 ones, my man.

Uh, my wife went through four arduous years of postpartum depression with treatment after last child out of six. Took both of us to the brink of personal and family meltdown to get us through it. It's brutal, but it took me being around our family almost all the time to protect her and the kids and the intervention of her family members. All parties have to recognize what's wrong and want to fix it. Uh, want to fix it. It's with it. Man, that's brutal. That's brutal. Yeah. I don't I don't wish that on anybody.

Hormones are uh hormones are an incredible reminder that you are trapped in your biology. You are your biology. That's it. There is nothing else. And you fail to understand that at your own peril. That's brutal, man. Well, I'm glad you're on the other side of it. I'm very sorry that you went through it. Um it's it's brutal. I would love to see a breakdown of how many divorces can be from a time perspective tied exactly to uh pmenopause menopause because that is also itself a very wild ride and people that are not ready for that um that don't understand it that don't know how to navigate it I imagine that's a big part of the reason um that what is it 70% of all divorces are initiated by women um and I don't know if there's something trackable to that period.

Um, but ah man, I have a gut instinct which is absolutely worthless. But I have a gut instinct that the kids leaving the house happen to coincide with perry menopause. And so you get this double whammy of I don't need to stay anymore because the kids are grown and um my wife may be going through something hormonally that isn't fully understood. And so uh it can really run away with you. It's interesting. Very interesting. Meadow Time Farms says, "Sssri can change you fundamentally. We're taught to trust doctors blindly until a bad reaction rips the curtain back.

They prescribe without real answers. Take zero liability and walk away while you rebuild your life." Yeah. Nobody should ever trust any literally anybody. Not your doctor, not your spouse, not your parents, not AI, nothing. Uh just Yeah. Whatever you say is real. Um this is I will admit that I'm glad that I have a contrarian streak in me where um sometimes someone telling me something just because someone else is telling me something uh I will push back um because when we were going through Lisa's gut issues some of the remedies that they were putting forward I am so glad now that we didn't do um knowing that it really is just diet.

Um so yeah it was some pretty crazy stuff. Chipper Tracy, thank you for the $50 super chat says, "What is scary is the medications we are exposed to in the public water due to people excreting what they take through their urine, SSRIs, aderalls, birth control, etc." That's wild. I haven't looked in I've heard that before, but I haven't looked into it. I don't know to what degree that actually is impacting people. But yeah, we'd be better off didn't have. And it said like it's it's a small enough amount to where it doesn't it's not a pharmaceutical dosage, so it wouldn't do anything.

Right. So, there is in the water. Um, but scientifically there's been no meaningful research that it actually impacts people outside of a few like probably outlier situations. I didn't look into those. The one thing I will say is the more that you can avoid exogenous substances getting into your body like microplastics, uh, the better. Um, so even though we don't have any studies on it yet, I would say the default answer is don't ingest any chemicals if you can avoid it. Um, so if you can afford a source of water that doesn't have it, it's probably a better bet just to get the source of water that doesn't have it.

Um, but fair enough. If if we don't have any evidence yet, uh, that's something, but lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. So, just keep that in mind. Bye, Brida. Not sponsored. Does does that actually like clear it out? Well, but if people are worried about their water, I think a big thing I was taught growing up in Texas, because Texas has weird water systems, is regardless of where you think you're getting your water from, just run it through. Unless you've got a fridge that has a built-in filter, you clean, right?

Yeah, basically filter is a default. Uh whether that solves this problem or not, I don't know, but yes, filtered water, a very good answer. Big Diglers says, "Halting trans shipments China exports uh to third-party country to the US in service of decoupling helps tell the story behind the story here. Uh Canada and Carney are being primed by the US as demonstration for target uh econ economic pain warning to others. Yeah. So basically use one group uh as a warning shot to everybody else. Yes. Um this is going to be a messy time.

There's no two ways about that. I think there's really two things. focus on there. We've talked about both, so I'll speedrun it, but you've got you need to pay attention to if you are in a weak position, be very careful. There's no reason to make enemies of the guy that you're counting on for a lot of your stuff. Even if the deal gets worse, that is the position that you want to put yourself in to find a way out of that without burning that relationship down.

So, you want to build the um exit craft before you announce that you hate the person that is going to require you to have an exit craft. Like that's the part where I'm just like that doesn't make any sense. I understand why they're moving away from the US. I get that. But make sure that your solution is actually better. Make sure that you're seeing in the data that we're moving in a good direction. They're not doing that. I think they're being emotional. I think they're being spiteful.

And I think it's going to be bad for their country despite me understanding why they would want to strategically move away. Um and then uh the other part, give me the thing again. So you've got moving away from Carne and Prime. Canada. Oh, and then just that Canada itself, they're in a bad spot from an economic situation. So, just start focusing on policies that are going to help you, man. Uh, that's a big one. And then, um, the last thing, a third thing I'll add is that the US needs to understand there will be backlash and there's going to be continued problems from you continuing to weaponize.

So, when you see people start moving away from your system, and remember, Bessant knows this. Bessent has commented on this before he was in the administration. So, Bessant full well knows that the more that you weaponize the dollar, the more that people are going to try to find a way out of it. Um, so um yeah, there's there's more there to explore to be sure. Big Diglers with another 20. Thank you for the 40 total. Big dig says the world will see the pain of the US dollar in in intentionally inflicts on Canada for not decoupling from China.

Uh assesses their own position and in theory realizes the pain of not acquiescing to the US is worse than decoupling from China. Yes. for sure. But the question is, will more countries act in their economic best interest or will they do spiteful things? Most people do spiteful things. And what I'm I I don't have enough historical information to tell you if this is a thing that repeats, but I know enough about humans to suspect that it does. Uh, humans do not vote for things that are actually in their economic best interest.

They vote emotionally. So, this is a whole thing about um socialism and communism. When you do the cross-cultural study of what people will actually vote for, if people think that a policy will help the rich and help the poor, they will vote against it because even though it's good for the poor, they want to punish the rich and they will actively vote for a policy that hurts the poor as long as it also hurts the rich. So, understanding that people are voting emotionally, they're voting out of resentment, that's exactly what Canada is doing in this situation.

Uh, and a lot, by the way, of Trump's own lunacy is him reacting emotionally and doing what he thinks uh, shows he's the big dog is emotionally satisfying. It's the same idiotic behavior, but on the other side. So, this is where things go well. When everybody's calm, nobody's emotionally triggered, everybody is just looking at what is right for my people. And the people that do what's right for their people, they end up having great outcomes. And the people that don't end up suffering. Uh yeah, humans are going to human and so we've got to factor that into the policies that we put forward.

The next super chat uh would also be the type of stuff that's talked about on women of impact. So shout out women women of impact if you want to subscribe in the chat. But the question from Cat Brooker is would you advise a woman to stay with her man for financial reasons even if he is financially and verbally abusive? Sometimes a girl or Canada equating it back to the Canada conversation needs to back away even if it's financially difficult. Uh okay. So, I would treat these two things in the exact same fashion.

So, if you're Canada or if you're a woman, um, with kids especially, cuz that really makes this parallel. So, if you're a parent or if you're a governmental employee, your job is to your children, your job is to your citizens. And so, you've got to figure out what's right for them. Um, not only in the short term, but in the long term. So, you might in the very short term stay there if you've got nowhere else to go. so that you can build up uh the wherewithal to get your kids out, get them to safety.

If there's an immediate fear for their safety, obviously you immediately get out of that situation right then, right there. Don't pass go, don't collect $200, just go go. Um so it is sad that you're in a situation where you have to figure out, okay, is this immediate safety or is this um I need to build a long-term plan? But obviously being raised in a verbally abusive household is going to have massive cataclysmic results down the road. And this is why I say, you know, sort of jumping to the other part of this, the country level, I understand why somebody would want to move away from the US.

You just don't want to jump out of a non uh violent situation to put yourself somewhere where now you're exposing yourself to increased dangers. So, it's all about figuring out what is the path that is going to make things the best for my citizens, for my kids. uh and that might be enduring short-term non-dangerous um suboptimal situation so that you can build a path out. Uh but yeah, the path to getting out of a verbally abusive relationship should be being built with aggression as fast as you can uh and then ejecting out of the situation just like every country should figure out what is best for them in reality as fast as they can.

And if that means ditching the dollar, ditch the dollar. If it means partnering up with an authoritarian regime because it's actually going to deliver better results in the long run, then do that. Um, this is why the realization that the US does not have allies, it has interests is the right way to understand the world. That's not unique to the US. That's just how the world operates. Um, you just have to be very careful about what actually delivers the result that you want, not just what seems good in uh, theory.

Michael B. Gelner says, "Tom, have you watched the Sir James Goldsmith interview on Charlie Rose or read his book, The Trap? Canada is going down uh going down to hurt the citizenry by divorcing labor from capital more like the US did 30 plus years ago with WTO/GAT." Yeah. Yeah. When you look at the numbers, the the people that are hurting the most are the workers. It's pretty brutal. So, no, I don't know that guy. I haven't seen that interview. Uh but you can see it in the data.

So, that one's pretty clear. Canadian Roots says, "Now we can ban kids from smartphones like we do driving or cigarettes. Protects privacy, gives parents visibility, and lets kids develop life skills. Bring back the flip phones." Yeah, I'm a big believer that parents should be making the vast majority of the decisions for their kids. There are going to be things where we're going to stop parents. So, um, like for this is, uh, my personal thing. So, um, letting a parent circumcise their child, no beef. Letting a parent remove the girl's clitoris, beef.

Um, so there is going to be hot debate about where those lines are going to be drawn. Um, so, you know, there's not going to be the Jesse Waters uh clip. That's all you Well, no. Well, that's that's probably what put circumcision on my but they were actually debating um circumcision versus um gender transition surgery. So, that one I think is far more extreme. But that one's just going to trigger people. So, I'll set that aside for now. Though, uh if we have time after we do the Bonds deep dive, I'm happy to talk about it.

But the there it's just you you've got to make contact with reality. So why do I believe people for instance why parents shouldn't be able to make a gender transition decision for their kids is because the consequences are so dire. Um the one it's irreversible even puberty blockers you're never going to go through puberty normally. So this fallacy that it's like oh do it don't do it whatever it doesn't matter you don't develop normally. Um so given that we have this thing with you know millions of years of evolution behind it um and basically no um data on what this does long term I don't think people should take a default safe approach.

I think they should take a default danger approach given that it's so radical and the alterations to the body are unwindable. Uh when I look at circumcision if back in the day the very first time that somebody did this they had no reason to do it. I've never researched this closely, but my understanding is that basically what happens is there is a certain number of people that end up with a condition. I actually know people that have had to get circumcised as an adult because they had this happen.

Uh where you can either get infections or you can get um the foreskin begins to tighten. I don't know why. Uh but then it can create problems because you can't urinate properly, can't get proper erections. So it becomes a problem. Uh so my base assumption about religion is that religion codifies into we do this because God told us to the things that actually needed to be protected against in the first place. And so if there was some medical reason why people were like, "Hey, if we just cut the foreskin off, uh this ends up going somewhere better." Um and then you find a religious reason to do it.

Okay, great. No problem. Um, and now we've got thousands of years of history of knowing that maybe people that are uncircumcised and then get circumcised are like, "No, being uncircumcised is better." Okay, that's very useful data. Uh, but certainly we've had so many uh, if not just hundreds of millions, certain possibly billions of people go through it. Um, and and as the owner of a circumcised penis, I will tell you they they drive great. So, um, no beef. Uh, so there's no big deal there. But obviously removing a clitoris there are huge implications in terms of just for whatever weird reason that I do find utterly fascinating.

Uh women have one little nub that is responsible for the vast majority of sexual pleasure. Uh so removing that whoa uh that's undoable. So you can't can't fix that one. So I got the cl you want to play or we have Oh yeah. If you want if you want to go right into this sure we have like two more super chats but for miners. Do you support that? Look, you know, I remember having great conversations with my conservative friends about right to try legislation. The idea that the government shouldn't tell you what kind of healthcare you should have.

I just think the government shouldn't tell you what kind of healthcare you should have. And if you're a minor, you want to try. Now if you disagree with that, if you disagree that healthcare decisions need to be made by a doctor and their a parents and a patient, then I just think we agree to disagree. But you know, you want to put government inside, you're a doctor, right? I am. So you think it's okay for a parent to slash his kids? You think that's okay? I mean, do you So do you really want to have this conversation?

Are you circumcised? Yeah. Yeah, but I mean uh that's A PERSONAL QUESTION. OKAY, DOCTOR, you probably should want to move on. You probably should want to move on. Is circumcision different than catastr It's a problem. It's a problem that you think that you get to decide what happens between a parent, a doctor, and a patient. And I'm just saying that yes, circumcision is surgery on a kid's dingling. So, if you really want to bring that up, you can. I just think you guys are really selective about what's wrong.

Okay, so this is one of those things where people need to stop pretending like there's no way to draw a distinction between the removal of foreskin, which has been done a gazillion times for a very long period of time. You can see what the outcomes are. There's no loss of sexual function or pleasure, yada yada, uh doesn't impact your ability to urinate. If it does, it would only be in the positive versus the actual removal of genitalia when a kid is too young to make a decision.

uh there are early indications that there's lifelong medical conditions that can arise from this stuff. I mean, it's just the the scale is so crazy that while yes, I think an adult should literally be able to do anything they want with their body without restriction up to and including killing themselves, I 100% am just shocked that we say that an adult can't make those decisions, but whatever. Um, so but when it's a kid, like 100% you're making a lifelong decision for somebody that's only in your care for say 18 years.

So there are definitely decisions that I think the vast majority of decisions, vast vast vast majority of decisions should be up to the parents. But I think that there is a line that we can draw that is very clear and very easy uh to say, okay, yes to this, no to this. And if people want to debate whether circumcision falls on one side of the line or the other, great. Um, but to make out like there isn't a distinction between circumcision and castration is [ __ ] insanity.

Now, having said all that, this debate was brain damage. And watching the whole thing, it it made me dumber. It was very painful. And what got shown is in that debate, El Say, who, as you can imagine, from a policy perspective, I despise, uh, Els is a far better politician than Jesse Waters is an interviewer. It it was crazy. Uh the way that he stayed calm, he just moved around it. He didn't seem stumped. He was answering his questions. He's very slick. He knows how to redirect.

All of that drives me crazy. But that's a politician. Stock and trade has nothing to do with El. He's just very good at it. Um and Waters, I don't know a lot about him, but like this was bad. Bad. Uh okay, more super chats. Yes, three more. Cat Brooker says, "In 2026, Canada secured 20 new agreements with India, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, South Asian nations, and more. If you fixate only on Canada's relationship with China, you miss what Canada is really up to." Okay. So, what I would say is um the reason that I fixate on China is because all eyes really need to be on China in terms of the next global movement.

I've felt for a long time like Iran is a distraction from what we really need to be talking about which is the fracturing of global power between the US and China. Um the other things are interesting and I probably can probably should and will spend more time looking at other aspects of uh certainly India because India is going to be an interesting developing nation to watch um in terms of what's their birth rate, what's their cultural belief, are we going to send more manufacturing to them?

Are we going to bypass that and bring it back? There's no doubt that they're going to be a far more interesting part of the conversation. Um, I didn't expect to be going um into Canadian economics as much as I have been recently. So, it's possible all roads will lead to a broader um thing. But right now, if you just look at the results, no matter who they're doing it with, the results speak for themselves and they're [ __ ] terrible. Uh, so Carney moving away from the US and towards anybody is asinine.

But Carney himself is painting the picture of somebody who is cozying up to China as the sort of new big bro. Um, so it's not like I'm making that up. James says, "Canada's MSM is government subsidized. In 2025, the 3-4s of the CBC's revenue came from the government." That's wild. Imagine if all TV news stations in the US are copies of MSNBC. How does how do we wake up from NBC is now government subsidized? Yeah. Yeah, I think what he's saying is that they're ideologically driven.

It's a great point, but um it's more akin to the BBC. So, when you look at that, if you're getting taxpayer dollars, you should be under a very strict mandate to um truly give a picture of the full spectrum so that you're presenting the news, you're presenting the facts, if you're going into any editorializing that it's representing both sides. Um and we don't see that. And we don't see that because right now it's a populist moment. Everybody's ideologically captured basically. You've got everybody is just on one side or the other and they're putting all of it forward.

Uh and so yeah, you're you're not going to see the government um not have a bias. That's the unfortunate reality. So um yes, we should want the media if it's paid for with taxpayer dollars to be completely neutral. It's just not going to be. But he honestly I don't get in a twist over that because the reality is that the vast majority of humanity gets their information from an algorithm. And so if we're going to be up in arms, we should really be talking about the algorithms and what that's doing and how it's siloing people.

Um, this is one of the reasons that this podcast is a team of rivals and we have people that think differently precisely so that we can figure out, okay, I'm in my uh echo chamber whether I I actively seek people out that vehemently disagree with me. Um, and even then you hesitate on one post a little bit longer because you like what it says and all of a sudden you just get more of that. Uh, so it's good to have people that you respect that see things differently than you.

So, um, you're far more influenced. The world is far more influenced by Tik Tok, by X, by Instagram, by Facebook than they are by the mainstream media in any country. And last super chat for now comes from Sushi Florist. Hi Tom, I sent you a Discord message that there are two Tom Billies on the Discord. I sent $49.99 Monday. Hope you get my message. Just to answer that, we did I assume they mean that somebody is um impersonating me. Yeah, I was just going to say PSA.

We get fake Tom Bills in the Discord all the time chat. So, just Tom doesn't Tom will not directly DM you guys or I'm not going to DM you. I'm certainly not going to ask for money or gift cards or anything like that. Um, so yeah, please eternally be on the lookout. Just be paranoid at all times. Um, cool. That's all I got. All right. Any uh super chats? We good? No more super chats. All right, everybody. Thank you guys so much. Uh, that was a big one.

Well worth it given everything that's going on in the economy. And speaking of controlling your own destiny, boys and girls, please learn how to generate revenue. I'm doing an ITU master class Thursday, September 10th at 1 p.m. Pacific about how to use AI to launch your own company. The bet that I make, the biggest bet that I've always made throughout my entire life has been on myself. So, all of my high-risk dollars I put to use in building companies. It has obviously for me paid off extraordinarily well.

If you've ever thought about giving it a shot, nights and weekends, man, you don't have to bet your future on it, but at least learn about AI and how to use it, what it's good at, what it's not good at, I'm going to be teaching all about it Thursday, September 10th, 1 p.m. Pacific. Links in the description. Sign up and join me. It is free, free, free. All right, guys. Love you. See you Friday. Till then, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.

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