The Markets Were Down Big, Is Everything Crashing? + Will Clintons Testimony Expose Trump & Epstein?

Key Takeaway

Markets experienced a massive selloff driven by AI uncertainty, weak labor data, and hawkish Fed expectations. The key insight: GDP is growing at ~4% while job cuts hit 17-year highs—a "jobless growth" era where AI accelerates productivity without creating proportional jobs. This represents a fundamental decoupling that will reshape how we measure economic health. Your action: Don't react to daily volatility. Anchor decisions to your macro thesis and ensure wild diversification across uncorrelated assets.

Episode Overview

This episode analyzes the February 2025 market crash that wiped trillions from stocks, crypto, and metals. The host explores two competing AI narratives causing investor panic: (1) AI disrupting enterprise software (threatening companies like Salesforce and Adobe), and (2) massive AI infrastructure overspending with uncertain ROI. Additionally, the discussion covers alarming labor market data showing January 2025 job cuts at 17-year highs (108,000 cuts, up 118% year-over-year), while GDP grows at 4%—evidence of "jobless growth" where AI drives productivity without creating jobs. The episode examines investment strategy during volatility, the psychology of market fear, and structural economic shifts.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Markets Were Down Big, Is Everything Crashing? + Will Clintons Testimony Expose Trump & Epstein? from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Morning everybody. Welcome to another Tom Billu show live. This yesterday was a lot of fun. Despite the markets starting to climb their way back. Yesterday they got absolutely clobbered losing trillions of dollars across basically all markets including gold, silver, stocks, and crypto. Is this the beginning of a bare market or was it just a trans transient drop? And we're already seeing it coming back. We're going to be talking about all that and what it means to have a drop that rapid regardless of whether we come back today.

There's also more economic bad news as January layoffs surged to a 17-year high. According to Poly Market, this one's fun. Kla Harris is now the frontr runner for the 2028 Democratic nomination, but she is getting absolutely drugged on Twitter for putting 67 putting 67 putting 67 [sighs] [sighs] [sighs] in her handle in an attempt to appeal to Gen Z. We're going to talk about that. There's interesting strategy going on there. Uh but if you're going to do it, you better do it well. In conspiracy corner, we're strapping in as claims of Epstein's Fortnite account being active after his death are actively being scrubbed from the internet in real time.

It is so wild. I cannot believe that this is really the timeline that we're on. I'm getting sucked into the vortex. I'm not going to lie. Uh they're starting to get to me. The Clintons have done an about face and are now ready to testify regarding their uh knowledge of the Epstein situation. But in a very fascinating turn of events, they want the hearing to be public so that the whole truth can belong to the American people. people. people. Many a games of foot, boys and girls and Whimo, they have admitted that their cars are at times not necessarily being driven by people, but they are being influenced by people in the Philippines.

And I think that came as a shock to a lot of people. And that only came out because of some testimony in front of Congress. So, going to be very interesting to see where that all plays out. What's real, what's not, what's a bunch of hype? Everybody already believes that we're in an AI bubble. Uh, and is this only going to fuel those kind of speculations? that things aren't quite what we're being told. All that and more today, boys and girls. All that and more. Happy Friday, by the way.

Cheers, wherever in the world you may be. may be. may be. It's five o'clock somewhere. And if you've been looking at your investments account, it might be an urge to grab that bottle. Um Tom, what is going on with these markets? Yeah, yesterday was uh a lot of fun. The markets got absolutely hammered as a massive series of sell-offs rocketed through practically every sector from precious metals to AI and crypto. It really was a bloodbath. The crash is being attributed to massive forced sell-offs in what is being described by analysts as a classic riskoff event driven by a confluence of a whole bunch of factors.

The big concerns are over excessive AI spending by big tech, weakening US labor data, which many believe signals a potential economic slowdown, uh, and fears of tighter monetary policy under a possible hawkish Fed shift, which that one we're going to want to talk a lot more about with what is wash meaning to the market. It's very interesting to see Trump just banging the drum about we have to lower rates, but the guy that he nominated, the market is responding to as if he's going to come in and be more hawkish than what we've been seeing with too late Jerome Powell if Trump can be believed.

Uh, so it's pretty fascinating and the sudden move looks to many like it's a mechanical unwind of overcrowded trades at a time when liquidity is drying up causing a cascading effect across many asset classes. And this is what happens when you've got a whole lot of people trading on debt and when the um the price of everything is going down, you get all these forced liquidations which then causes the market to freak out. Now, there are two distinct but ultimately interrelated AI narratives that are driving some of the selloff and it's important that we tease them apart so we can get a slightly better understanding of why the markets market is acting so skittish right now.

I liken it to a horse, by the way, that like has heard something and is getting jumpy. Um, and so it's going to dart off in weird directions every now and then. All right. The the first of the AI narratives that seem to be having a bigger impact of the two is that AI is beginning to encroach into the software application layer. If you're not paying close attention to this, I don't think a lot of people understand how good AI is getting at coding. and Anthropic's release of uh a new legal marketing and enterprise automation tool for its Claude co-work product sent an absolute shockwave through the software sector.

You guys need to try this stuff for yourself. So, we are using it here at Impact Theory. I never know how much you guys know about what we're doing on the gaming side and all that. So, we're constantly looking at um how we can interface with AI. And the team that we have is just like at first they were like, "This is all crap. It doesn't work. It's not very interesting." And then slowly over time I was like, well actually like you know it's completing some of the lines of code for me.

And then it was like whoa like it's actually helping give me ideas and it's not like I can just turn it over but it's doing a lot. And then they had it not our team but uh Claude they built like a a compiler of some kind. I forget, but it was like a like really low-level compiler that does a lot of heavy lifting. And it coded from scratch, I believe, with one human offering like guidance and nudges when they were like because they used like 16 different bots to go in and code this thing and they would occasionally run into the same problem.

And so the guy would go in and nudge them. There's no doubt much like Whimo isn't fully driving itself. It's not doing this stuff on its own. Um, but utterly fascinating to see how far it can go. So, we're seeing that stuff firsthand. That's working its way into uh the narrative and the response has been immediate and brutal. If large language models models can start doing the work that companies like Salesforce, Service Now, Adobe, and SAP charge billions in subscriptions for, then the moes that people thought they had around these businesses may be a lot smaller and more shallow than investors assumed.

The S&P 500 software and services index lost roughly 830 billion dollars in market value in just six trading sessions. So this appears like a straightforward repricing based on concrete product releases that demonstrated that AI really is moving in on the competition. The second narrative is that there and we've talked about this one before that there is a massive overspending overspending overspending uh in the AI sector and that concern has been going around for months. Big tech continues to pour what I will call stupid amounts of capital into AI infrastructure.

Listen, this is one where we should both be glad that it's happening. This reminds me exactly of what happened with the internet. And of course, at the time it felt like all that fiber optic cable that you're laying is really stupid. Why are we doing that? That doesn't make any sense. And then you grow into it and you're glad that it's there. But for a minute, the returns take a lot longer to come back than people are expecting. And so right now, investors are increasingly uneasy about exactly when and quite frankly how all of these infrastructure investments are actually going to pay off.

Keep in mind, a lot of them didn't pay off to the investors of the internet. they paid off to all the rest of us. So that's where this starts getting crazy. And Alphabet's announcement of 175 to 185 billion in 2026 capex, which is just abbreviation for capital expenditure, the money that they're going to spend on infrastructure is way higher than what Wall Street was expecting. I'm talking it's like 50 or 60 billion dollars higher than the expectations. And that sent the stock down roughly 5% after hours.

despite the fact that they had beat earnings on revenue. Like, it's wild. So, they're doing incredibly well and still getting hammered because people had already priced in even more than that, uh, or I should say even less of that spend, so more profitable dollars left on the books. Now, if the anthropic news was proof that AI is genuinely eating into the enterprise software, would you not expect that to be bullish for companies that are building and deploying it? I certainly would have, but it wasn't. Nvidia fell over nine% on the week.

Broadcom dropped 7% and AMD cratered 15% even after posting again results that came in ahead of guidance. All of that tells you that something important is shaking down. The markets aren't selectively repricing software down while repricing AI infrastructure up. It's repricing risk across the board. You're seeing people change their relationship to risk in real time. I think this is what I'll sum up routinely as the market is skittish. Everybody has a narrative. Nobody knows if their narrative is entirely true. You see something that runs against your narrative.

You're that jittery horse. You bolt in a direction that causes this cascading liquidation, but then everybody calms down because you're like, "Well, wait a second. That didn't break as hard as I thought it would. Maybe there actually is still money." and then the economy or the markets start rebounding which is exactly what we're seeing right now. So investors are simultaneously worried that AI works well enough to destroy existing business models but they're not confident enough that companies the companies funding it will be able to get a riskadjusted return for the staggering amount of money required for the infrastructure buildout.

It is so fascinating. One of the most interesting things about markets is that they're aware of the previous thing. So while we're talking here and we feel like we're in an enclosed bubble and we're discussing all of this, the markets largely price this kind of thing in these narratives are understood. And this is why history never repeats. It rhymes. But it's it is always always always edging up on being true that markets follow the path of maximum pain because you're aware of the historicals. Everybody tries to be the smartest guy to make a move that would have made sense back then, but the timing of everything changes because everybody is so hyper aware of what happened before.

So the very fact that everybody is talking about AI mimicking the internet means that it won't play out the same way because people are going to try to adjust to it and you create this butterfly effect, this self-reinforcing loop of well I know that it played out that way and so I'm going to try to be early but then that changes the timelines, the dynamics and all of that. And so the very thing that you're using to guide your decision-m ends up breaking the predictability of the markets and so markets remain eternally unpredictable.

It's wild. So that framing is exactly the kind of environment that produces these broad indiscriminate selling rather than a clean rotation from one sector to another, which is what I think people were expecting was going to happen. But in short, if you want to wrap it all up, the software sector is getting punished for being vulnerable to AI and the AI sector is getting punished for spending too much to build it all. Both fears are making investors skittish and feeding the same riskoff behavior. Outlets like Bloomberg and CNBC describe this moment as a hard reset in valuing growth stocks where growth alone no longer suffices.

You need a clear path to returns. And wait, there's more. Add weak economic data and generalized recession fears to everything that we just went through and you begin to understand why the pullback gained the momentum that it gained and spilled out over into other areas. While there wasn't exactly anything super acute, downbeat labor indicators helped fuel the broader economic anxiety with many people calling out that the cooling job market may have been a key trigger for the rapid de-risisking. Jolt's job openings fell from 7.2 million expected to 6.54 million actual.

Challenger job cuts hit 108K, which is the highest January since 2009. And weekly claims rose to 231,000, stoking concerns about employment decoupling from GDP growth. Okay, that is a big deal. In a normal economy, when GDP grows, businesses expand production. They hire more workers. Employment rises roughly in tandem. When the relationship decouples, GDP can even grow. It can even accelerate while employment growth stalls, slows dramatically, or actually turns negative leading to fewer new jobs, rising layoffs, or stagnant hiring despite on paper what looks like a healthy economy.

And this creates a situation often called jobless growth or jobless boom where the economy produces more output without needing proportionally more human labor. It's the opposite of what economists expect from historical patterns. And when you realize that typically GDP is linked to changes in employment either direction, when that decoupling happens, it typically stems from structural shifts that boost output per worker without requiring more headcount. Now, hopefully all of you have just had two letters trigger in your minds because we are living through exactly such a structural shift right now.

GDP has been growing like crazy. We're sitting at around 4% by some reports driven I would say by AI adoption largely strong consumer spending at least at the top of the K. We very much have separate economies and the AIdriven productivity gains are almost certainly involved in this decoupling of GDP go up as we hire more people. But despite all of that, employment growth really has been weak. the layoffs have hit the high levels, highest January uh for 17 years if I remember correctly. Um you're having the highest level of layoffs since the great recession.

Job additions were minimal in 2025 as a whole. Hiring plans are remaining low and some are calling this moment the efficiency era or the great decoupling. and AI and innovation itself are accelerating output without proportionally creating those new jobs potentially making the concept of jobless growth the new normal and if that's the the impact of AI which I think we all kind of expect that certainly is what I expect uh this could really be disruptive to our ability to assess the state of the economy many analysts like those from trueflation and house of AI also are highlighting rising bankruptcy bankruptcy bankruptcy slowing growth indicators and a widening 2 to 10year yield gap.

It's the highest in four years on bonds as potential recession signals adding to the list of things that may have driven this bizarre synchronized selling. It's typical that when recession risks rise, investors are going to reduce their risk exposure across the board. It's a pretty natural response when you're worried that your money is going to be trapped for uh very extended periods of time, that there may be a better place to get yield. Um, and then we talked about this briefly in the intro, but add one more log to the fire and you've got WSH's nomination for Fed chair, which somehow um people are responding to like he's going to come in and be super hawkish and keep rates tight.

They're calling it the WASH shock. Uh, I think ultimately people just aren't sure how to read that he historically has been hawkish, but you combine that with Trump's ambiguous comments on rate cuts, but with his own statements about needing to lower rates and he's been so pushy about that, people again just skittish feels like the right word. Now, supposedly the speculation about Kevin Walsh being hawkish and pro- quantitative tightening is also draining liquidity from tech, crypto, and metals because people are not convinced that those are going to keep going up.

Liquidity, man. You got to keep your eye on liquidity. Where is the money coming from? Where is it flowing out of? What's it flowing into? Follow the liquidity and you can normally follow the gains. The consensus view of what just happened seems to be that all of this is a broad freefall from systemwide de-risking rather than any of the isolated events. That it's reminiscent of past unwinds, but without that single black swan to make the cause super obvious to anybody paying attention. attention. attention. And if you want to take a conspiracy angle on this, there are some people who believe that they and of course they are not specific about that.

Uh but presumably government big banks are crashing virtually every aspect of the economy trying to drive people into the US bond market. Why? Because we have to keep the appetite for US debt sky high. Now, is that really what's going on? Probably not. But uh I will say that the Epstein files did break a part of my brain. And so, uh, I'm so much easier to look at something and see coordination behind the scenes. Deep dive on my thoughts on that coming out on Tuesday. Keep your eyes peeled.

But yeah, that's where we are, man. Um, are you part of the SE that thinks that Okay, hold on. I'm going to save that question. First off, in moments like this, how do you actually react from an investing standpoint? People have asked, "Is Tom buying still? Are you Do you just set it and forget it? You put your phone down?" I know one of our co-workers here, he's not our one of our co-workers here, he's not here today. He was stressed out pacing yesterday talking to my Drew, should I sell my crypto?

Should I sell my crypto? I'm like, put your phone down. It doesn't exist. Stop thinking about it. So, like, how do you react when you see like big swings like this in the market? I I am a macro thesis investor who does not trust his ability to see the future, who understands that um you're going to get wild swings and the reason the best advice in the universe is to buy low and sell high is because that's the advice nobody can take. myself included. So, I put a thesis together and I think about what the thesis is, I don't make quick moves.

I'm not trying to time the market. Um, so while I have in the last six months, I have moved um a reasonable amount of things around, it's never been based on something went up or something went down, it's based on adjustments to my thesis. my thesis. my thesis. So, when I look at the price of gold, everything that I just said makes sense to me. Um, but in terms of the short term, what makes sense to me in terms of the long term is I think that you're going to see a return to what I'll call um the physical world.

So, you're going to see that silver can't be in in a delobalizing world. Silver cannot be controlled at the paper level. It's going to be in terms of price setting, in terms of who has the power to manipulate, may not be the right word, but I'll use it. uh to manipulate it. It's going to be like China being able to say, "Well, we own the physical uh the physical silver." And so given silver's role in manufacturing, I'm paying a lot more attention to that than I am a momentary dip.

Copper is interesting to me. I haven't bought it yet, but like that's like as I think about thesis movements. I think about okay if copper is needed for energy energy is needed for AI then it's like oh I could see moving something over to that not as a reaction to metals going up or down a reaction to I believe at a macro level the world is going back to something more physical because we can't trust each other anymore so there isn't going to be this globalized like we're all just at the casino trading on paper.

we're now at the casino and I don't trust that your mark or your voucher is good. And so, no, no, no. I'm going to need you to put the chips on the table and I want to walk out with the chips. Meaning, I want to walk out with the silver. I want to walk out with the gold. And so, that's driving my thinking. So, uh, Bitcoin goes up or down, has it changed my thesis on Bitcoin? If it has, then cool. I need to start migrating money out.

If it hasn't, which it hasn't, then I don't touch it. So, I haven't sold any of that. Um, so I try to be in a position where I don't need to be smart. I need to be directionally correct and I need to be wildly diversified. And so the momentary stuff is interesting to watch in terms of human psychology. It's interesting to watch in terms of early indicators that maybe there's something not that I'm not understanding. understanding. understanding. But what business has taught me is trends are incredibly important.

You can make a lot of money with trends, but you have to understand what a trend is. A trend is merely, call it 80%. It's 80% cultural energy. That's it. So it means it's psychological. So when you're pursuing a trend, you might be pursuing something that's terrible. Like I'll give you an example. Low fat was a trend. I could have made millions of dollars as a food manufacturer pursuing that. But I had a macro thesis which was if you focus on metabolic reality, you can build a bigger company.

And so we focused on metabolic reality. But then there were trends that were both metabolically true and a thing that was just people were hyped on. And so if for whatever reason people are just pretzels are the thing, can you make a pretzel that sells? That's not an example of something we pursued, but it's an example of like there could be billions of dollars in pursuing that trend. But anchored for me, the way that I move through the world is always anchored on a broader thesis.

And so I approach the markets in the same way. And just to to beat something to death, I do not believe I can see the future. So, I'm I'm spread across as many different market forces as I can get. That's interesting. Um, you brought up Bitcoin. Bitcoin is definitely down more than 27% just this past month. It hit one of its all-time lows at 60 yesterday. Um, it kind of bounced back, so it's now in recovery from at least the last couple days. Um, Michael Sailor tweeted, "Huddle, he's not he's not letting go." um some people have bought more I dollar cost averaged in.

Um is it one of those situations where like you said the overall thesis of Bitcoin is still the same so people should still kind of have that same idea or do you think this Epstein rumors and he has he has involvement and all those things are kind of muddying the waters a bit? I mean, I'm sure that that is some of what's influencing the cultural energy. Uh, again, for me, and I'm certainly not giving people advice, but if you want to understand how I approach the market, um, I would look at information about Epstein and say, okay, does this influence my thesis about what this is, it does not.

And so, given that it doesn't influence my thesis, regardless of whether he was paying the people that were coding it in the beginning or not, the thing that got created um, means something to me in my mind. So I look at this as currently it is a proxy for high volatility tech stocks. And so in in any high volatility thing you have a lot of potential up and down. So can you stomach the down to get the up? So far I've been able to so I'm cool there.

Uh I don't keep buying more. I dollar cost averaged in over a couple of years and was like, okay, that's all I'm going to deploy into Bitcoin and now I'm going to focus on spreading out is also partly at the beginning of my journey of understanding this and so um I didn't understand all the different economic forces at the time and and so um at that time I might have told you that oh I'll probably buy more but as I've gone I've been like no like that's one of the chips that I have on the roulette table.

We'll let that ride. that is what it is. And now let me look at um other things. So even when it goes up, I don't sell. Uh when it goes down, I don't sell. I look at this stuff in four-year time horizons because that's traditionally been the sort of real viewpoint into Bitcoin. And Bitcoin over those time periods has always gone up. Uh the reason that I think that it will continue to go up is right now it's this highly speculative tech stock but over time based on the the call it mathematical fundamentals mathematical fundamentals mathematical fundamentals it really is an escape raft from an inflatable currency and so I even myself have certain paranoas around gold.

So gold soothes my anxieties in some ways and creates anxieties in others. So yes, I want money there, but I don't necessarily want uh an overabundance of my money there. So, Bitcoin gives me something similar. It doesn't inflate and it's far more mobile. And the big part of my thesis is kids today don't grow up where Bitcoin is a question mark. Is it a scam? Is it whatever. They just grow up with, oh, it's an invest investable asset class. So given that more and more people are growing up, they're digital natives.

For them, it will be easier to understand than physical gold. Like if you've ever seen the real where the person is explaining a landline a landline a landline and they're like, "You guys, it's this phone and it's like stuck in your house and uh like everybody has to share it." I can see somebody explaining gold like that. Like gold is actually a physical thing. Somebody's storing it in a vault somewhere. It doesn't exist in the cloud. Like yo, that's wild. I can't believe people do that.

Like what do you do if you want to take it somewhere? Like you can't. That's crazy. I can't put gold on my phone and spend it. Like what the [ __ ] And so when I put myself in the shoes of Gen Z or Gen Alpha and think about how they'll think of digital assets assets assets to them, it's just like obviously everything should be virtual. So until that thesis breaks, I leave it alone. Gotcha. Um you brought up the job market. Some people are saying that those two things are connected.

It's a AI bubble that's popping and all these layoffs are then driving the downturn. We've seen a lot of companies that fundamentally they grew their revenues, they grew their profits, but it was short of expectations, so it's dropping. Amazon example, Google is an example where traditionally we would look at companies and say, okay, you have a profit margin, you're doing good, your business is growing, the revenue is going in a positive direction, your price is going up, but instead the capex expand is a bit too much or to your point, investors are skittish, so now they're pulling back.

Do you think that this is also a moment where we're starting to kind of reanalyze fundamentals or is this just still just the skittishness of the news? I I wouldn't say that people are re um looking at fundamentals. What I would say is everybody has a narrative about where they're going to get the most returns for their money. That's always a bet on the future. And so you're looking at data that gives you an indication that you now see the future more clearly than you thought you did.

So when you see something that says oh this is even more capex and your vision of the future over the last couple months has been changing into okay everybody acknowledges now that AI is a bubble. It's just a question of what part of the bubble are we in because there's billions of dollars to be made in a bubble. bubble. bubble. Um it's just are you able to get out at the right time. There are plenty of traders that think that they're going to be smart enough to get out at the right time and so some of the skittishness is like is today the day?

And so they're very quick to react to pull back out of the market um because they think okay cool I found the time where it's now the issue but everybody is trying to read the tea leaves of the announcements coming out the labor data the investment data the earnings reports all of that stuff to say oh the price that we have in the market right now and this is why you can have a company that actually posts hey we're ahead of what we said but if the narrative that's been priced in is different than their guidance.

It doesn't matter. The the price is actually about the narrative and the expectation of the investor, not the whether they beat or didn't hit expectations. expectations. expectations. So if people are forming an opinion that AI infrastructure isn't worth it, we're never going to get our money back. That we're late stage in the AI bubble. Uh and now we see so I already believe those things and then you tell me you're going to spend more money. Now, that tells me you as the person running Alphabet don't share my assessment of the future.

So, you're now doing in my estimation really dumb things. I want the [ __ ] out. Like, if you're going to be that dumb and keep investing in capex at an even higher rate than you told me before, like you're getting more drunk, you're not getting more sober. And so when you combine that with okay, people start making that move and then that forces liquidations and then the market looks bloody red and then everybody is convinced that it's never coming back that this is the beginning of a decade long bare market or whatever anxiety ends up hitting them, you see this kind of cascade.

of cascade. of cascade. Gotcha. Uh okay, we need to now talk about the job market. Um because this has been a brutal couple months for layoffs. Um, January has been 200% over December and 118% year-over-year. Um, and it doesn't seem like it's getting better. better. better. No. So, yeah, the the job market is going to be rough, I think, for the foreseeable future. US employers announced 108 uh,000 over 108,000 job cuts for January, which is up 118% from the same period a year ago and 205% from just this past December.

And no January has had such a brutal drop since 2009 when the US was climbing its way out of the Great Recession. Roughly 40% of January's layoffs came from just two companies. And why it's these two companies is very important. It's UPS and Amazon which outlined plans. So they were already telling people that there's going to be 30,000 cuts at UPS, 16,000 uh cuts at Amazon. And this wallup to the transportation industry came primarily from UPS unwinding its delivery partnership with Amazon. Now to put all of this in broader context, Amazon's cuts bring the technology industry job loss total to over 22,000.

The healthcare industry also announced more than 17,000 cuts, which is its highest total since April of 2020 during the COVID pandemic. The biggest reason given for all of these plan cuts cutbacks were a combination of contract losses like with UPS and general market and economic conditions. AI was cited, but most of the um Amazon cuts were not credited to AI. Though, if I'm being honest, my instinct is that um the biggest reason for Amazon's cuts is AI and they just do not like the optics of openly admitting it.

I think that they're they know that there is going to be a huge cultural backlash to AI. If you want a preview of it, look at how gamers talk about AI. Uh it is it is an intense immunological response against AI. Uh you're going to see that more and more across more sectors as we see um more and more jobs taken. Like when it's all theoretical and it's just anxiety, people are like somewhat able to metabolize that. But as it becomes manifest, excuse me, as they lose their jobs, uh yeah, people are going to get aggressive.

And to make matters worse, hiring has also cratered and companies announced a merger uh of 500 5,300 new hires, the lowest since uh the lowest January data since 2009. And that was just it it that's just when the data began being tracked. In a separate report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed job openings fell sharply in December to 6.54 million, which is down nearly 400,000 nearly 400,000 nearly 400,000 on a monthly basis, and more than 900,000 just from October. And ADP estimates that the private sector added just 22,000 jobs in January, which is again the weakest in three months.

Andy Challenger, one of the people behind the data, noted that most of these plans were set at the end of 2025. So companies knew that they were going to be making these cuts because they have a less than optimistic outlook for 2026. And Wharton professor Muhammad L. Aryan called this data sobering, warning that layoffs occurring while GDP grows at roughly 4% represents the accelerating decoupling of employment from economic growth, just like we were talking about earlier. And that all of this comes with profound economic, political, and social implications.

And this follows an already difficult 2025 in which US corporations eliminated 1.17 million jobs which is the highest annual total since 2020. But obviously what was going on in 2020 was catastrophic. So the question becomes, is this the um beginning of a trend that is only going to accelerate or are some of the moves that the Trump administration is making in terms of deregulation, in terms of tariffs to force people to onshore, is that going to begin combating some of this? There's the whole debate about what he's doing might be good for industry, but it seems to be terrible for farming.

And so middle America is getting hurt where other places, the cities are potentially going to get a boon. And so, do we again just exacerbate this um sense of a divided America where you've got a K-shaped economy, you've got some areas responding positively to tariffs, you've got other areas that are getting obliterated by tariffs and by immigration laws. So, obviously farmers already struggling from that. So, everybody trying to get their heads wrapped around exactly what's happening in the job market is going to be increasingly difficult because we have these disperate forces that are pulling in opposite directions.

But I really believe the one that people need to keep their eye on is I think we're living through the moment right now where AI goes from theoretical job loss to actual job loss. And that's why you're seeing that decoupling from increased productivity means that we're able to grow the economy at a GDP level all while we need fewer people to do it. And like yeah, this is one of those examples where the fears are now becoming reality. And I have said for more than a year now that AI is going to take us to a truly magical place.

Like really really magical. You only need to grant me one assumption that it will be able to drive energy costs to next to zero. And if it can drive energy cost to next to zero, that means it will drive labor labor costs via robotics to next to zero. And now you live in a world of abundance. But it's going to take I mean somewhere between somewhere between somewhere between seven and 15 years to go through that transition and it is going to be so disruptive to the human psyche that that will be in my estimation a very bloody 7 to 15 year transition man.

So I did a poll are you nervous about your job security? 35% said yes I may be next. So in this moment where people don't know which way is up, we're getting promised the age of abundance, but right now rent is do. What are some ways they can navigate this moment? this moment? this moment? Yeah. Honestly, you need to master AI. So you're being um assaulted, let's say, by a technology. That technology is knowable. It's usable. We're living in a really fascinating moment right now where all of us can master those tools and at least be the last man standing.

So if you think about it right now that your job is just to be the last person let go from your job and the only way to do that is to be the one that is the most efficient with AI that buys you a lot of time that other people aren't going to have. And then on top of that if you really do master that well enough and you're entrepreneurial-minded you can use that to extend your future in the current world order. I don't want to over dramatize it, but the way that the world works now, the economy that we're used to, uh you can use AI to start a business cheaper, faster than it has ever been able to do in human history.

That won't suit everybody's personality, in which case just stick with being the last man standing. Um, but it really does unleash people. When you think about what Claude just did with its um coding where it was able to build a compiler from scratch, man, uh that's crazy. you can vibe code uh something that like core to um technology is is completely insane. And so I don't expect a noob to be able to do that. You will for sure hit roadblocks. You won't understand how to get it out.

But it's going to be able to help you do a thousand things long before you have to get to that point. So um yeah, you may hate that the tools exist, but at a minimum arm yourself with those tools. Um, but at the same time, those tools might not be as bulletproof as we think because the chief safety officer of Whimo, just as a company sometimes employs remote operators in the Philippines. Um, let's hear his uh testimony. Yes or no. Does Whimo employ humans located remotely to help its vehicles navigate difficult driving scenarios?

Um, Senator, they provide guidance. they do not remotely drive the vehicles. Um as you stated, Whimo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets an input, but the Whimo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic. dynamic. dynamic. So, uh when I'm teaching entrepreneurs, one thing I'm always saying is, okay, you want to get to cause and effect. So, questions like this, if you really want to pin this guy down, you're like, I want you to give me three examples of what that input might be.

Like, get him tactical. Figure out what it is. Like are they accelerating? Are they deacelerating? Are they hitting brakes? Are they turn? Like what are they doing? So is it and also I would like to know like is the guy sitting there with his hands on a on a wheel and like he's mimicking all the moves that the car is doing and then his movements take over if the car like taps out because the the response time would have to be so real. So one of the things that people need to understand is is how all of this came to be.

Now, first of all, just accepting that Whimo might not be as automated as we first thought, given that Filipinos are on essentially permanent standby to do their thing uh with the wheel is pretty crazy. We just saw Whimos chief safety officer testifying in front of the Senate. Uh and what came out of that hearing is absolutely wild. A way, this started because on January 23rd, a Whimo robo taxi hit a kid near an elementary school in Santa Monica during morning drop off. The kid sure ran out from behind a double parked SUV.

Can be very hard to see even for a human. I get that the Whimo vehicle breakd down to six before the impact, but it still hit the kid who sustained minor injuries. Kid was able to stand up, brush himself off, but all of that triggered this hearing. And the hearing itself is where things got just absolutely bananas like we were just talking about with seeing this guy try to dodge and avoid everything. But there was a senator uh Ed Marky I think was his name. And he kept pressing the Whimo safety officer, the the guy that we just saw, Mauricio Pena, uh on something that people don't even realize, which is that there are these remote human operators.

Now, when a Whimo gets confused and encounters a scenario that it can't figure out on its own, it basically phones a friend. So, I'm trying to figure out like is is homeboy there? Hands on wheels. I just like the Gran Turismo, you know. I'm saying like I kind of it almost has to be something like that. Otherwise, the delay would be uh impossible to use. So, anyway, the humans look at the situation and supposedly give the car guidance. But again, how they do that fast enough, I don't know.

Whimo calls these people in the Philippines. A fleet response agent. Most people had no idea this was even happening. Marky, the senator that was pressing him, asked, "Are all of these operators based in the United States?" Of course, right now, that's going to be politically like uh electric. Pñena obviously admits no. Some of them are in the Philippines. Then the Whimo rep went into what I'll call corporate speak mode and said that these people don't actually drive the vehicles. want to be very clear about that they provide guidance but I want to know what is the guidance he called it one additional input but we don't know what that one additional input is we just know that the Whimo uh is being influenced by something outside they were quick to point out Whimo is always in charge of the dynamic driving task as they call it uh and that might be a technically defensible position but as one Carnegie Melon professor pointed out an accelerator pedal.

The gas pedal is also just an additional input. So, we've got to get to the bottom of exactly what is going on because providing one input could be sufficient to say that that thing is driving depending on exactly what that input is. And I doubt that it's like plugging in the cigarette lighter. So, although young people are like, "What? What is a cigarette lighter?" Drew. Ah, they used to be in cars, boys and girls. Now, when Pena had a clear opportunity to say that the remote assistants aren't drivers, he didn't say it.

He danced around it. Um, so the only thing that I think we can take away from this and say is the thing that's clearly going on is there is a gap between what autonomous vehicle companies market and claim is actually happening and then what they actually deliver. And their marketing right now is full autonomy, but clearly there's something else that's going on. And they've built a very sophisticated system clearly, but if it still needs a human to bail it out, that's where things could get weird.

What they should be doing is just being totally transparent. And instead of saying, "Hey, we have this incredible technology," say, "We have this incredible technology and human safety net. Here's how they work together." They don't do that, though. They bury the human part because admitting it undermines the cool ass narrative that AI and robotics is going to change everything. And by the way, to Elon's credit, he's been banging the drum. I'm never going to do it the way that Whimo is doing it. He thinks the way that Whimo is doing it is technologically a dead end.

And so seeing that they're having to employ human drivers is pretty damning. Um but I would also like to see this kind of same scrutiny put to Tesla, I want to make sure uh that we're not in a similar situation where a human has to uh inject itself. Now there's also an obvious question to be asked around cyber security. It's super unnerving. You've got people overseas who can influence the behavior of vehicles on American roads. That is not going to sit well with a lot of people.

And uh Marky also made the point about latency that I was talking earlier where how long is the delay between like this thing is about to happen and it's got to go all the way to the Philippines. A human amount of response time has to then take place and then that gets sent back and in that time it's very possible that the action becomes outdated. So, the fact that Pñena also couldn't tell the Senate how many of these operators are domestic versus overseas, which I'm going to one man's opinion, and it's just an opinion, but I have a feeling he just knows the answer is terrible.

And so, he doesn't want to give it. Uh because when you're the chief safety officer and you can't provide basic workforce data like that, that's not ideal. Uh and I would say either you don't know, which is a problem, or you don't want to say, which is an even bigger problem. So, this this one's pretty wild. And I think we're going to see a lot more stuff like this. We've had things like this in the past with robots with robots with robots where this is the third instance.

Uhhuh. Where it's like, well, okay. Well, it's actually people that are controlling them and yes, the robot is the only thing in your house, but like we've got a fleet of people in Bangladesh or whatever that are, you know, on places they were doing the that was a robot that was folding your clothes for you and washing your dishes just to find out they're remotely operated. Uh Elon got caught during one of the Tesla stock market things. market things. market things. Yeah. Technically didn't get caught because he said he was doing it, but it was like, bro, you know, you're hoping people don't notice.

You're hoping that that headline doesn't make it. Yeah. On X, it was Optimus Robot serving popcorn not realizing there was somebody behind and then now Whimo U to its detriment. So is is this just like founder hubris? Like I need to get the investors and I need to get excitement. So, I have to kind of pump fake as opposed to waiting the extra 6 months, 12 months of development to actually get there. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. Is it like the beta? How real do you want your answer?

Hey man, I've seen the Epstein files all the way. You ready? Only real. Only real. Only real. Let's give you Epstein levels of truth here. Okay. Uh, [snorts] so this is how as as an entrepreneur, you have to make a decision. Am I a hype marketer or am I the guy that builds my audience slowly over time? If you're a hype marketer, it's all about controlling psychology. Odds are you'll make a lot more money and way way way more people choose the hype marketing path because when you do it well, it is truly extraordinary because ultimately um it isn't just the product, it's how people feel about the product.

It's the company. It's the energy that they put out on social media. It's what people think of it. So, um think about this. Uh, I believe that Microsoft made an MP3 player long before Apple launched the iPod, but the iPod when it came out was all sex appeal, all branding, and so it meant something. meant something. meant something. Whereas the one by Microsoft was all features and benefits, and they all looked different, and there was no aesthetic appeal to them, but it was like, oh, this thing has, you know, uh, 500 megabytes and can have, it was a zoom.

It It was a bigger storage capacity. It was color, but that didn't matter because it wasn't like it wasn't cool. It wasn't cool. And so Jobs was the king of hype marketing. Now the problem is when you're trying to control people's psychology, their psychology can break very quickly. And so we see that in the markets. markets. markets. And so um when now to really exacerbate why these guys end up being uh leaning on hype marketing is if they're a public company or they're a private company, but they have to raise capital.

Raising capital is a game of psychology. Raising capital is about getting somebody so excited that they're going to take a risk by giving you a ton of money for you to scale your company because, and this is critically important for people to understand, because none of us make decisions rationally. We make decisions emotionally and then we rationally justify the decision that we made. Hype marketing is very powerful because it gives you the emotional justification why you buy the iPod instead of the Zoom. And so when that decision is about the what company gets the investment dollars and what company doesn't, then all of a sudden you get an Elizabeth Holmes who comp just completely commits fraud by now people close to the matter say that she really believed she was going to be able to pull it off in time.

And so she was just like ahead of herself with the hype and then as she just couldn't like get it done in time, the lies just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Um, and that's probably the right way to think about how something like that happens versus that she's some sociopath that just, you know, wants to lie and get people's money. It's more like, no, no, no, I'm going to be able to pull this off. I understand how the game of hype works. I understand how I have to control people's emotions, their psychology to get them excited about my product to get me the investment dollars because it actually is existential for my company.

And so, people just fan these flames. Now, as somebody in the gaming industry, I think about this a lot with this game called No Man's Sky. No Man's Sky makes all this hype. We've done this revolutionary thing. Oh my god, it's going to be incredible. They launch, people are pissed. It does not meet expectations. People are talking about suing this guy, saying that his claims were fraudulent. All of that stuff. But they spend the next 10 years making the game awesome. game awesome. game awesome. And I thought, now the question becomes if, and by the way, it becomes an incredibly successful game.

Had he just built, you know, an audience slowly, like, here's where we are today, but we're going to make it better and better and better and better. Would he have gone out of business? Or did he need that burst of revenue from the hype? He had to hunker down. He had to weather that storm and it was nasty, nasty, nasty, but it gave him the money to actually make the game good over 10 years. And it's one of those I really hate that. And so I often get asked why I teach Impact Theory University because people, if you've never encountered me before, you don't know my story, you just assume that I made my money selling courses, which of course I uh was extraordinarily successful and wealthy long before I ever sold a course.

I do for me that's my fundraising mechanism. So I don't have to use hype marketing so that I can build my video game quietly without having to uh convince anybody to give me money. I just generate it over here teaching people how to run businesses. So, uh that I am eternally afraid because I'm terrible at hype marketing first of all. So, let's start with that. It's just not my skill set. Uh and then second, it puts you in such a vulnerable position. It it is it it's an all or nothing gamble.

And so, it either works and hey, you're a hero or it's catastrophe and everyone loses their money. And so, uh, just being true to my I can't see the future clearly. I'm an iterative builder, so the first things are always going to be terrible and then they're going to get better over time. Um, I would rather be generating my own funds that I can then push to that product line. But that is that puts me in a a rare group. And by the way, it will make it harder for me in success because if I can pull this off, it will be a much longer, much more arduous journey because I'm not using hype.

But it it is what it is. It helps me sleep. Cool. I know we had a couple super chats, Mesa. We do. First up from Marushia Dark. Uh they said, "Recently been getting into Quest bars after learning you made them. They're everything you said they were. 10 out of 10. Would recommend. Your peanut butter cups even give Reese's a run for their money." Bro, those things are ridiculous. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, they are ridiculous. I had a couple months I was like addicted to those. They're so good.

Yeah, they're freaky. Uh, and then Stoic Anarchy said, "Bitcoin wallets with 10,000 to 100,000 grew by three wallets in the last week." And that's a complete statement. Okay. So, basically, we've got more Gigantor hodddlers. Gigantor hodddlers. Gigantor hodddlers. So, but only three, not 3%, three. 10,000 to 100,000. So, like Gigantor, uh, uh, uh, maybe for the average person. Wait, wait, wait, wait. 10 10,000 to 100,000 Bitcoin? 100,000 Bitcoin? 100,000 Bitcoin? No. No. No. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh Jesus. I thought they were saying I'm like is is that large?

Yes. That would be astronomically low. Got it. If they I'm not sure what they're trying to convey because if we're just saying $10,000 to $100,000 group by one two three then it's like completely stagnant. completely stagnant. completely stagnant. Multiple of us uh asked like is what are you trying to say by this? And uh no response yet. response yet. response yet. Entirely sure the takeaway. That's all we got. Okay. Okay. Okay. Oh, I will say though somebody mentioned truth Devon said Tom we are living in neon future.

So, a little plug for the old comic. old comic. old comic. Truth Devon, first of all, thank you because anybody that even knows Neon Future Exists, which is a comic that I wrote like five or six years ago now. It's crazy how long ago. Uh, that was, but it, yes, was my attempt to predict what happens when AI takes over and people violently turn against it. Uh, which is what I think will happen. I really want to revisit that like in a year or two as this stuff goes to see how close I got.

Uh, I think I got pretty close, certainly with where we're at right now. So, yeah. Ah, I miss writing comics, not going to lie. There's no money, though. No money in comics, much to my dismay. So, there we are. are. are. Here we are. Um, okay. Let's grab our tinfoil hats cuz we have quite quite a lot to talk about. Um, so the big one that I think a lot of people were looking at was the alleged photo of Epstein in um, Israel. Yeah, this is crazy.

This here's the problem, boys and girls. I assume Drew is about to tell you this. This this got AI. This got AI. It's AI. It's AI. It's AI. This is Yeah, this is But how? Look at that [ __ ] thing. It looks so real. And a lot of people are And a lot of people are looking at these two pictures. So they were just like, "Oh, no. That Yeah, it was it seems like a paparazzi. It seems like a Yeah, Google Gemini got you guys." So, guys." So, guys." So, dude, it but it's so real.

Like that's one of those where because I distrust everything that I see online. I just immediately was looking, is there a community note? Is there somebody in the comments? Thankfully, the one I saw, because it's not on all of them, but the one I saw had a community note that says this has been photo or uh that this is AI. And I was just like, "Oh my god, I guarantee a distressingly high percentage of people who see this photo now believe that it's real where they're going to be like, bro, I saw the photo.

It's obviously him." And yeah, so the lie can travel faster than the truth can put its pants on, as they say. Like this is crazy. The what was the movie called Mountain Head Mountain Head Mountain Head where they're off the whatever four billionaires are off on their trip and they're like trying to contend with that they have this AI solution um but the guy doesn't want to integrate it because people falling for the AI is actually really good for the business model. But then it gets to the point where like somebody makes a thing with AI that says like whatever Iran launches nukes or what I forget what it was but like and then people go absolutely crazy causes the country to go into revol correct and so no one will believe that it's AI and we we are racing towards something like that like it's crazy man you have to spend so much of your time now as you get information just checking to see not even if it's accurate checking to see if it's real.

Yeah, but you have to one stop your emotional response to it, the people arguing in the comment, like you have to get through so many layers just to verify it. Um, it's going to be trickier before it gets better. Yeah, it's already tricky. And yes, you're right. It's going to get even trickier. trickier. trickier. U, all right, the rabbit hole continues. Um, so this is from a usual whales. And of course, I'm just going to say allegedly at the top of this segment because we don't know if any of this is true, but allegedly.

Um, newly released Department of Justice documents show that investigators reviewing surveillance footage from the night of Jeffrey Epstein's death observed an orangecoled shape moving up a staircase toward the isolated locked tier where his cell was located at approximately 10:39 p.m. on August 9th, 2019, which contradicts official accounts per CBS. Um, Um, Um, yeah, I don't know what that's supposed to mean. presumably that you've got uh a prisoner moving towards that given the orange. I assume that's what they want us to read into that. But the only thing that I'll really take away from that is a thing happened that goes against official reports.

Why is that important? Because it does slowly seem that more and more things go against official reports. When they launched released all the footage and they were like that's every second of it. No, it's not. It's missing two minutes, three minutes, whatever it was. Uh, also that's not facing the correct door or whatever it was. Like there were all things that were like that's not what you said it was. Uh, then there's now all this stuff about the noose. Do you have anything on that? that?

that? Uh, I don't. What's the news? So they're saying that the noose that was turned in where they said this is what he choked himself with. Uh, does not match the liature marks on his neck. So the thing being supplied as this is how he killed himself. They're like no it's not. Uh, so now you've got a body that's been choked by something that couldn't have been the thing that they turned in with it. And so people are saying the actual news has never been recovered.

And then honestly, I don't need anything more than mysteriously all of the cameras weren't working. The second I heard that, I was like, "Guys, come on." It's like if somebody cleared out Fort Knox and they were like, "Yeah." Like, can you imagine? Every one of our guards called in sick and we had like uh a power outage and so all the electronic doors were accidentally set to default open when the power goes out. Isn't that wild that it all happened when the guards were gone? It's like, huh?

Like, bro, you actually have to have been hit in the head with a tackhammer to like buy into some of this [ __ ] So, yeah. This is crazy. This is one of crazy. This is one of those. I don't know what the [ __ ] happened, but I definitely am suspicious that what I'm being told happened happened. I'm not saying he's alive. I'm just saying something in the official record is weird as [ __ ] But wait, there's more. Um, Epstein was killed allegedly. August 10th, 2019. The Epstein file show his YouTube account.

Username Little is Jeff One. The file also shows he used the same username on the video game Fortnite and he was an avid player showing frequent in-game purchases. Fortnite tracker shows his account reach silver one level four of nine one two three four brown silver go respectfully respectfully respectfully I hate that he's not bad I don't like that chapter 5 season one was released on December 3rd 2023 and rain until March 8 204 Jeffrey Epste's Fortnite account was playing from Israel in 2024 four years after his death.

Yeah, I don't to be honest I don't put a lot of stock in this one only because that that would be a level of stupid that he has not displayed up until this point. So he has been crafty in the extreme. He supposedly was speaking with people in like draft emails. They were using like Fortnite and Roblox uh chat to avoid surveillance. Like these are people that seem to have pretty um [snorts] deep ways of avoiding detection. and for him to be like, "I don't need to create a new account.

I'll just use my old account." Like, that seems [ __ ] impossible to believe. So, again, I'm not saying that I have some clear sense of what's actually happened. And this is very much conspiracy corner. So, maybe all of this is total horseshit and the dude just killed himself in a cell. But if you want to know, um, you start putting all these things together and it just feels like, okay, the only thing I don't know, or sorry, the only thing I know for sure is that what I'm being told isn't accurate.

accurate. accurate. Now, what parts of it aren't accurate? That's where I don't know. He could still be dead. Uh, but there is there's just too much weird [ __ ] This Oh my god, this is crazy. Um, so I'll start at the at the top. Um, Jeffrey Epstein won the Powerball lottery twice. I I haven't done the research. I don't know if this is actually true, but if this is actually true, what? Like, come on, man. Yeah. Uh, allegedly, um, he won 29.3 million in the form of an anonymous trust from the Oklahoma Powerball lottery on July 2nd, 2028, the day after he started to serve his 18th month jail um, jail sentence in Florida.

And then this is a newspaper article that the trust is keeping the Powerball winner a mystery anonymous. Um, so here's what makes this fascinating and it goes back to the oh the Fort Knox the doors just happened to be unlocked on that day. Like uh so this Powerball they had a computer glitch. I'm not making this up. A computer glitch. So they couldn't do it publicly. So they this one that Ebstein's trust apparently won uh was the one that they did privately with just auditors. Come on, bro.

So, not only does he win Powerball twice and like tens of millions of dollars, by the way, uh but that Oh, look at that. How crazy that you won the one that was done behind closed doors. Isn't that weird? So, yeah, bro. This is uh my whole deep dive basically goes something like this. I'm having an interaction with Gemini. This this real story. So, I'm writing a different I'm trying to brainstorm what my next uh deep dive is going to be. And in one of the questions to the AI, I mention Epstein.

And it just goes, I can't help you with that. And I didn't even understand what it was saying it couldn't help me with. And so I'm like trying to figure it out. And then I'm like, wait, is this about Epste? Can't help you with that. Can't help you with that. I'm like, can you just acknowledge that Epstein is the thing that's triggering you? I can't help you with that. I am programmatically unable to address that. And I was like, oh [ __ ] So I'm like, now I'm being manipulated.

So you've got people behind the scenes making decisions. The more stuff that they can hide, they're going to hide it all. And it is wild because there's so much stuff to track that at some point you just throw your hands up because you you can't spend all the time validating all of this stuff. So you either knee-jerk go, "Yeah, it's just all fake. It's all bullshit." And now you're down conspiracy lane. Or you spend inordinate amounts of time trying to verify one or two of these things, right?

And it is just insane. And if you lean on somebody like a Mike Benz, shout out to Mike Benz. If you lean on somebody like Mike Benz who just does a relentless amount of research on things like this, I don't know if he's looked at this, but things like this, he never comes back and goes, "Oh, don't worry. There's nothing here." It's always like, "No, no, no. This is so corrupt and so horrifying. You cannot imagine how interconnected all of this is. This is pure insanity." And when you then put that in context of the fact that we have $ 38.5 trillion in debt, we have stolen the future of god knows how many generations.

Uh our likelihood of going to civil war, revolution, or um war with another country skyrocket uh because of the way that we do this. And now all of a sudden it's like you you have it it is a rat's nest. It seems almost impossible to tease out, but you have a moral obligation to do so. We absolutely have to get to the bottom of this. This this one feels like that load stone of like, okay, well, it's not going to be the only thing of corruption.

This may be one of 3,000 uh rings that are like this. I'm not saying that he's the ultimate boss behind the scenes. I would just like to remind everybody there's only so many people of power in the world. So, um you don't have to go super far there. I don't believe that you keep going deep down and you find, oh, actually it was Moolok and actually we opened a gate to hell and like this is not going to be a Clive Barker novel, okay? This is going to be you're going to find that there's a handful of guys that are doing the most shady [ __ ] and it's all going to look like it's not necessarily NOS's but it's going to look like that.

It's going to be a web focus on the web. It's the interconnectedness. It's the iron law of oligarchy. It is the fact that it it is so advantageous to network. And full confession, confession, confession, Drew, as the producer of my show who is financially incentivized to grow this channel as much as he can. What is one of his key initiatives? Get Tom out of the house. What is that a key to? Get Tom at the right parties. Get Tom around the people because he knows. It doesn't have to be nefarious.

He just knows networking matters. So you take this thing where it's like you're likely to help the people that you know. When you're in a room with people that can make something happen, like if somebody knows me, their ability to get on this show goes up a thousandfold. There is a handful of people that could call me up and be like, "Bro, I know that my new book doesn't really speak to your audience, but please, man, like I did this solid for you four years ago or whatever.

Like, have me on. Would you please?" Of course. This literally happened to me yesterday. Not for someone to come on my show, but for me to go, they they're just launching a show, so they don't have a big audience yet, and they're like, "Hey, I really want to get you on the show." And this guy has done me a solid in the past. He's a super good dude. I like him a lot. So, I'm like, "Yeah, of course." Now, if somebody off the street asks the same thing, I'm going to say no.

So you take that sort of basic foundational thing about the way that humans work. Then you exacerbate it with power and money and global influence and all of a sudden you get like these networks that if they're good, okay, great. Then good things happen. If they're bad, holy Jesus. But looking at just it's a network of interconnected people that are hiding things from the public, but there's no way to get rid of the um elites. So don't even come at it from that standpoint. But getting this stuff pulled out into the open, tracking down how these webs work, following the money, tracking where this stuff actually goes, demanding transparency, audits, like these things are critically important.

And I'll I'll button this up by saying the appeal I'm trying to make is that these webs are knowable. We just have to have the um willingness to push to make the demands that we see this stuff. And one of the things that really hit me was looking at geopolitics and how there's really only like what are you going to give me 25 countries that matter? It's like all of a sudden, okay, 25 countries times I mean maybe a hundred people in each country that matter.

Probably not that many, probably 15. But even if a 100, that's only 2500 people. people. people. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So it's like you can map that out. So all of a sudden it's knowable like who all these people are, what the interconnections are. In fact, Drew, will you look up a fact for me? How many total players and staff are there in the NFL? NFL? NFL? We'll get some Jeopardy music while he looks that up. I'm so curious to know. All right. Ballpark. right. Ballpark. right.

Ballpark. Um, okay. There's 60 to 70 on a team. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. How many teams? 60 to 70 * 32. Drum roll, please. um 1920. I'mma add another 30 to um 100 100 with coaches, staff, teachers, high office, people in the building. Um 100 per team. Uh Uh Uh what's that give us as a total? 5100. 5100. 5100. Okay. So there it would be easier to track track track the people in the world that really matter that can really be pulling strings and moving things like this.

uh it would be easier to track them than to track all of the NFL. So th this is not however grand the conspiracy it it's small enough to map. It's smaller than the total uh people. So that that was the thing that as I got deeper into geopolitics and stuff I was like wait I keep hearing the same names over and over and over like this isn't a huge group of people. This is this is knowable. So it becomes a question of will. Do we have the will?

And then you're going to be fighting against people who want this stuff to be invisible. Mark my words, over the next five years, you're going to see a battle of what the average person is allowed to know. I mean that you are going to find a battle around malinformation where it is a true thing and people are not allowed to know it. And that is uh that's a super red line for me. So, but we're living in a very weird time. I get it. Previously, it was just easy to keep most people from knowing something and letting people know everything is dangerous.

There there is a risk, but I am of the mind you absolutely have to do it. So, but that's going to be a battlefront. And I think what you're going to see are lawsuits against uh social media companies. If if uh Republicans fall out of office, uh you will see internationally people will in fact they'll probably do this in the leadup to I don't think they'll do it in the leadup, not aggressively in the leadup to the midterms, but they'll do it aggressively in the leadup to the 2028 election.

and they'll essentially try to internationally shut down these companies to try to bog them down to get them to censor people uh with the ultimate goal of trying to get them to censor people here in the US and not just you know trying to do different things in every different country where they just go [ __ ] like and they do it blanket across the US where they get the US to pass laws that make them liable for the things that people post on their platform and if you do that you will have given back control to the sensor ship industrial complex, but that really feels like the next battle.

Like this is not going away. There are people right now who are like my secret cabal is going to be the next one to get outed. And so how do we shut this all down? They are very good at systems level thinking. And so they're not going to say, "Oh, we're going to go violate the individual freedom of speech rights of any one person. We're going to nip this in the butt at a choke point." Like think about it from international uh military strategy. Was talking to Peter Zion.

Awesome interview. When's it coming out? coming out? coming out? Next Thursday. next Thursday. Set your alarm. I love it. Next Thursday is going to blow your mind. He and I do not agree on everything, but boy, uh, man, did I enjoy my time with him. Peter, shout out to you. That was extraordinary. It's one of the most fun interviews I've done in a very long time. Uh, yeah. So, absolutely fantastic. But one of the things he was talking about is he was countering my hypothesis on China and he was like, "Bro, if Trump were trying to uh choke out China, he would not be going to Venezuela and Iran.

That's nonsensical. There's a few places that he would go where it'd be super easy. You could literally cause civilizational collapse. That's a quote. Could cause civilizational collapse with like a couple of military carriers. Uh if you put them like it was like off the coast of Singapore, I think. And so he was like, if you really want to choke them out, you watch the interview to find my rebuttal to that. I do have one. But it made a very interesting case for there are these choke points from a military perspective.

If you're willing to do it, there are going to be consequences. But you can go and like really choke things out. And I think from an information standpoint right now that just like I teach in Impact Theory University, if you want to market, you've got to be on social media. Period. End of story. You might do other things, but like that's the core thing. So that's that is a core choke point. That is how we communicate these days. And so expect a battle to play out uh sometime between now and the 2028 election where international groups go after these.

Uh, and by the way, I'm saying those international groups will be operating in a coordinated fashion to come after um the social media companies as a way to try to censor Americans. Count on it. Um, Um, Um, the information is getting out there because allegedly the Clintons have agreed to testify in front of Congress and they said they want to make it public. Some speculation is that this could lead to a potential impeachment for Trump. Um but both Bill and Hillary have agreed and Hillary is fighting to make it public.

Um she was going back and forth with James Comey clapping. So is this the first domino that you think falls that might actually lead to transparency? transparency? transparency? The way that it's being buil is that they have something that they're planning to weaponize uh against the people basically asking them questions. But I would be a little surprised if when it plays out in reality that it plays out in a fashion that is um mutually assured destruction. I just I can't imagine that. So, we'll see. It It may just be that what ends up making it to the public is a watered down version of the questions they wanted to ask because they know, look, Bill knows too many of the things and he's willing.

He's at least bluffing that um we're going to go all in because they they have switched tac and I don't know why. They obviously see some angle that is politically advantageous to them and the Democratic party. I don't know what it is. I can guess. I feel like they have no sauce in the Democratic party no more. They're both grandfathered out. They So with them it might be mutually assured destruction, but Hillary isn't eating if AOC gets put on or if Harris gets put on. Like uh I have a very different mental model of that.

So, I believe that they are in fact hyperconnected to the Democrat party, that they're the people invited into the rooms because remember meaning and purpose. So, yes, she's going to have given up on being the first female president. However, behind the scenes, she's so connected, know so many people that she'll go into what I'll call grandma mode. Uh Clinton's already in grandpa mode, so he still wants to matter until the day that he dies. He wants to be important. He and I'm sure is connected to all of these people.

Uh, also in terms of how do you keep the, you know, million-dollar invites still rolling in this way matter like be on the front lines of the fight. And so there's no universe in which these two are not communicating with uh the sharpest minds in the Democrat party. If nothing else, then you want your legacy protected. You're going to make sure that the Democrats still love you, want to defend your legacy after you're gone. So many people go into the presidency and a huge part of their brain is allocated to how am I going to be remembered.

remembered. remembered. So there's no way that um Clinton isn't thinking about that. And so if they've got a final chip to play where it's like they feel like they're being sweated in a partisan way, they're going to play something about the files that have been released changed their strategy. And so there's either now um enough people are implicated that they feel like what came out on them just isn't that bad and they can hide behind that smoke screen, but they know things that like are either coming out in the future or haven't come out yet.

And so they've got like a strategy strategy strategy to like either drop a redacted name that we'd want to see because there like I don't know if you guys saw I flagged this in the last episode but we never got to it. There were certain things being redacted where the person being redacted is clearly the victim miser. They are not the victim. So it's like uh why the [ __ ] is that being redacted? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So um I don't know if they are prepared to squawk on some of those people.

I don't know. I have no idea what's shaking down. All I know is when you go from I'm willing to face contempt of Congress charges to actually I want to talk now and I want it to be in front of uh the whole world like I want it to be as public as possible and the other side is like no we don't want to do this publicly. It's like uhoh like something changed. They feel their leverage has changed. So it'll be interesting to see what that ends up being.

Um, Um, Um, and then on on on top of that, we also have Gain Maxwell set to testify before Congress on February 9th. Um, so it seems like directionally they're moving in the right direction, but you don't think that we're going to get truth from it. What do you think is the result? No, no, I think we really could. I really think that this could be a thing that uh Okay, I'm going to try to sum this up as fast as I can cuz I never get any response back.

So this either I'm a lunatic and nobody cares or I'm not making it land. Reading James Burnham, James Bernham, the author who talks about the iron law of oligarchy, the need to control narratives. And he goes, uh, we have a real problem that we're living in the social media age because you can't be a functioning society without shared narratives. Shared narratives require, he doesn't say force, but that's the idea. And so I'm reading that going, whoa, we draw very different conclusions. You absolutely cannot try to put that genie back in the bottle because it will require force, lies, manipulation, and even if that's what's been happening historically, we're finally at the point where we can get out from under that.

And I believe we have a moral obligation to get out from under that. And so I'm like, this really could be but but I as as I'm saying this to myself, I'm thinking, oo, but there are going to be consequences. And so what do the consequences of the way I want to do it look like? And I think they look like this. I think they're going to force us to confront that the level of corruption is terrifying. is terrifying. is terrifying. That the number of people that are doing it is it is it is small, very small.

And so we're going to be like, whoa, this is a few thousand people, man. And a few thousand people are controlling the destinies of billions. I think that it is going to uh create a level of distrust, a level of rage and anger that will echo especially because it's happening at a populist moment where people already feel they can feel it viscerally in their pocketbook that something something bad has happened to them. They don't know what it is but something bad has happened to them. This is going to be terrible.

If you have kids in the room, get them out. But the the analogy that feels perfect here is uh you went out uh on the town with Bill Cosby and you wake up and your ass hurts and you're like uh I don't know what happened but it was bad. And so now people they're feeling that and now they're getting this flood of information that's like, "Oh, this is exactly what's happening. You got roofied. Uh he has a history of doing this like all that shit." And you're like, "Yo." And so now as people find out exactly how much of the world is manipulated, I think things begin to at least have directional energy for change.

Now whether that change is pure chaos or that change actually moves in a high utility direction, that I don't know yet, but I think that people aren't going to let go. In fact, you got to play the Nick Fuentes clip on this. PE people are not going to relent on this one, especially because they've pushed. They got the thing they wanted. The thing they wanted is terrifying. They know there's more. They're gonna want to push harder. People are now doing the sleuththing thing. Expect the sleuth thing to go on for another six 12 months.

Like I I think real [ __ ] is going to come out. We'll see. I I want to pivot to Nick. We're going to bring this up in in two seconds, but one last question to kind of put a button on this. this. this. Is there a scenario? I'm throwing this out there. I seen House of Cards vibes. My writer brain is going off. I got this pitch for you. Bill Clinton goes up there. He's a old man. He's going to get grandfathered in. He believes in Satan.

and he's going to go see his maker. He's happy. He's going to he's going to ride off into the sunset. Is there a situation in which he goes in there, he says, "Hillary knew nothing about it. Just like I cheated her in office. Hillary's exonerated. She's just been a strong wife. She's Christian values. She supports me. She's good. Me, I'm a posos. You guys caught me in office. You caught me out of office. It was me and Trump and Epstein. We were the three amigos and we was out here with 12 year olds." olds." olds." 0% chance.

0% chance. It's going to go. No way. He like nukes himself and tries to take Trump down with him. Nope. Cuz as far as I know, nothing's come out in the files. The the most damning stuff has been on Bill Gates where it's just like actively um I had sex with these Russians. I got an STD and I want to slip my wife some antibiotics because either she did get it or I'm worried she'll get it. Uh, there was some stuff with Trump and the 12-year-olds and the the purity check and the finger thing like and the buried bodies in the golf courses like there there were some things that the finger thing I hadn't heard.

So that thank you for making my day way worse. Uh the buried in the golf cart. I think all that's going to come out like we're going to find out like that. That is you've got way too much like radar detection [ __ ] that you can do and just walk around. You don't have to dig anything like around. If you find them, holy [ __ ] Rome is going to burn. People will lose their [ __ ] minds. So, but I think that's going to come out. Now, how much of that is real, I don't know.

Here's the thing. I don't there there there's like a invisible line with the Epstein stuff where it goes from horrifying sexual abuse, which unfortunately we see every day. So, we know that the odds of that being real are just through the roof. Uh, then there's like pizza gate and it starts being like, could that really be real? Like, do humans really do that? So, that one like gets a we pushing it too far? Are we making too many leaps? Time will tell because there's enough weird [ __ ] there.

Something's going on. And then there's the um I think I can say this because it was actively in the files and I saw it with my own eyes. I'm simply repeating what I saw in the Epstein files with no claims of legitimacy. I don't know if this is true, but Robin Leech choking uh a woman to death at a party and then they somehow dispose of the body body body and [snorts] people saying they've got a door that sticks out of a cliffside and literally just drops to the ocean.

Like why would you ever do that? Nobody said it, but intimating that they basically basically basically that's worse than the locked door that Murdoch had in his office when women would walk in. He just press a button and the door lock like I need to stop talking to you. you know, details that distress me. That was the first That was the Me Too movement. Like when you have a button in your in your under your desk, like you're you're a predator. Like you that should be like premeditated.

Like you know how like if you buy a gun and then you kill somebody, it's a different murder charge. That should be like a different rape charge if you have a button that locks your door automatically. automatically. automatically. Oh, that is wild. Okay, we neither here nor there. Let's jump [snorts] to Nick. Oh, my bad. Well, I just to wrap that up. So, it's like you get to the like Satan worshiping the pizza slicing. I'm not even going to say more than that. If you know, you know.

Like that's where I feel like, okay, we sort of start getting farther and farther out where admittedly I don't want to believe it. So, I have motivated thinking. motivated thinking. motivated thinking. Um, Um, Um, yeah, we'll see if all that stuff comes out. But dude, if this Okay, the sexual abuse stuff is enough to bring down every person related to it forever. But if they're also like murdering and bearing people, that that is so wild. So anyway, yeah, I really hope this does not go all the way to the pizza slicing.

That would be a level of horror that um I mean, you don't recover from that psychologically psychologically psychologically as a country for a while. That that's rough. You'll need a B Kelly, somebody who's like, "Hey everybody, we're having a meeting. All of you guys are getting investigated there. There there's it's just like Tom Hman in Minnesota. There's going to have to be an adult that comes into the room. I don't know who that adult is, but it's going to have to be somebody that has a moral like compass and somebody that's okay with saying, "Hey, as an American, pedophiles are bad.

Sorry, Ted Cruz. You want to stop attacking them? I want to continue to attack them." Like, we need to draw this line and it needs to be big and bolded in Sharpie permanent marker painted with a the same paint thing that they used to paint on the side of the road. like it needs to be as thick as possible so that way we know cuz if we don't have that line then then we have no moral compass then anarchy is real and we need to call Michael Malice up and see where the bunker is.

bunker is. bunker is. Yes, poor Michael Malice will hate being drawn to that depiction of anarchy anarchy anarchy or we love him but um so yeah, look man, that that is uh I just don't want to exist in a world where people really do that. That would be horrifying. Um somebody said but Drew Trump said it's time to let it all go. You're right. My bad. We give it that. So, I mean, this is where we're at the Nick Fuentes saying, "I don't know what the [ __ ] Trump is saying." Super chat on the Clintons.

Oh, yeah. Let's hear that one, then. Um, they most likely want it public. This from Blake Bullion. Uh, they most likely want to be public because they believe people might back off on them because enough people might not want it public. That or they want to direct the public's attention. Truthful or not, people will eat it up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just interesting to me that they flip-flopped. It flip-flopped. It flip-flopped. It It's one of those things where it's like a magician, right? You tell everybody, "Okay, look right here." And then as soon as you look right there, that's when the magic starts happening.

So, yeah. And I mean, look, God, like Trump, not Trump, uh, Clinton, because we all, well, truly, because you can't trust Trump either, but, uh, Clinton just Clinton just Clinton just we know he will lie right into a camera lens and just not have any problem with it. What's under oath. So, it's like, good luck saying a word that I'll be like, "Oh, unless he does the like, no, no, no, it really was me." America needs to heal and move on. So it was me and Trump.

We me and Trump, we are responsible. Sorry Hillary for letting you down. Sorry the American people for letting you down. Take me into custody, into custody, into custody, right? right? right? And then he gets the Epstein death. [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] Then okay, I might I might believe something. Even then though, I'd be like, "Ah, no, no, no. Would that stop Hillary up for like a nomination?" nomination?" nomination?" No, that makes her grandma and then now she blesses the next candidate. Democrats get out of here. Hey, our our candidate sit on the line.

Your candidate was dragging and screaming and they kill Trump. If you chop off Trump, you kill the Republican party. It's it the ants will scatter like it's going to be roaches on at when you turn the light on. So I think sacrificing Bill is worth taking down Trump if you're the Democratic party and you're looking at it. But it. But it. But if that's all real just allegedly allegedly all that good stuff allegedly. Uh yes. Yeah. I mean Jesus if if you did the thing you got to go like it just doesn't matter.

doesn't matter. doesn't matter. Period. Period. Period. Um Nick Fuentes regardless is saying either way MAGA's going to feel it on the midterms. He's staying home. Him and all his goipers. Uh, let's hear from him. him. him. I cannot I cannot I cannot wait wait wait for the Democrats to take the House. They subpoena and investigate Christine Nomen, Lauren and Cory Luwendowski, and they find so much corruption, it's going to make the impeachments during Trump one look like a joke. Yeah. Pause. This is um you need truth.

You got to have the truth. The I want to watch it all burn attitude always makes me nervous. I think people always assume something better comes along behind it and that is not necessarily true. So I would I would I would if I were giving a speech right now, it would be all on, okay, dear public, first of all, vote for who you think is going to make your life better. Second, don't relent. Don't relent on the pressure, but the I want to get political operatives in there to um go and start arresting people, like that whole thing.

I just people are not thinking about the second and third order consequences. You make politics existential. existential. existential. What you should want is your own team to have so much pressure on them that that they have to that a Thomas Massie or somebody like that is like I mean he's already doing it but propping up Thomas Massie empowering him so that he knows America's behind him. Don't relent. Get this guy reelected. Like he's our man. He's actually there fighting for it. Anybody that's rocking with Thomas, anybody that's trying to get the visibility and the truth that we need out of this.

Yeah. Like get those people going. That energy is so different than, oh, I can't wait. I know there's so much political hatred between these sides. Get the Democrats in there. They're just going to go [ __ ] them up. That's a very different energy than like we want to get the truth. This is like I want to see these guys hurt. I mean, let him play. Let him let him keep going because he the animosity that he feels comes out pretty clearly. pretty clearly. pretty clearly. All that stuff about Paul Maniffort and the business documents and the Ukrainian phone call, phone call, phone call, the corruption that they will discover when the Democrats are in the House.

It's going to make all that stuff look like a joke and they're just going to keep stacking it up on top of Vance. We're going to be in our war with Iran. The Middle East is going to be a mess. What's their beef? The economy is going to be a mess. Falling out of the favor. The Trump administration is corrupt. He might even be impeached. You are [ __ ] And we are not going to bail you out. Sorry. 2026, I'm telling people to stay home. You know what my message is in 2026?

2026? 2026? Stay home. Stay home. Stay home. That's the part that I don't like. like vote vote for what you think is going to make the country better. Now, if you think that the Democrats are going to make the country better, then vote for the Democrats, but don't be some sort of team-based voting block. And it's like, well, we know we can never vote for the other side, so just stay home. It's like, no, no, no. Like, who do you believe is the right person? Stay active.

Stay vocal. Go vote for who you think is going to make America a better place. But the weaponizing of the vote like is just always seems so nonsensical to me. on track. [ __ ] you. And I the guy that posted it, I like the guy. It's not directed at him, but that sentiment we got to get everybody back on track. Go [ __ ] yourself. You told us when we fast. So, here's something. Do dear voting public, do with us what you will. But when you look at minorities that are able to get like their candidate elected, whether it's in the UK with uh Muslim mayors everywhere, whether it's in the Somali community getting the um politicians elected that are friendly to their causes, it's a very small number of people, but when you vote as a block, like you can really get something done.

So if you are withholding your vote, you are making yourself vulnerable to somebody else's voting block. you are removing the one thing that you have that is call it a moral weapon which is to make your voice heard to say this is the person that I want to see in office. So yeah, this does not strike me as good strategy. strategy. strategy. The Epstein files, we don't need your votes anymore. Hey, wish granted. Remember that? Remember that? Remember that? Yeah, this is all petty. Remember in July of 2025 when Trump said, "If you want the Epstein files, you're not a real supporter.

I DON'T WANT YOUR VOTE. HEY, wish granted, pal. Wish granted. You wanted it, you stupid. [ __ ] you. You want to get it on? Good luck. Call Netanyahu. That's the part that I love. They sell us out. H1B visas galore, student visas galore, no mass deportations, burying the Epstein files. I think Bill Clinton's a great guy. And then in 26 they're going to be begging us for the vote. Hey guys, we need your help. You know, President Trump needs more seats to This is a a very good reminder to politicians, man.

Like you you really have got to be thoughtful about what you say. It It is wild. It is reason 462 why I would not make a good politician. Like the things you say, man, they echo. This is why I'm talking about second and third order consequences. Like he might Trump when he was saying those things like there might be people near him that that was like a positive thing to say or he might have thought that it was going to uh get his diehard supporters to back off.

Yeah. This is not ended up playing well in uh that those second and third order ways. So yeah, stupid. You know what I have to say about that? You're worried about your majority in 2026. You're worried about losing the house. Why don't you ask Bill Clinton for his vote then? Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah, he's uh Ask Bill Clinton thrilled that Ask those 600,000 Chinese students. Ask the H-1B workers. Ask the Israelis. Ask Netanyahu for a vote. He gave Netanyahu $20 billion. Ask him to vote for him.

And another 3.3 billion. you gave Wall Street the corporate tax cut extension. Why don't you ask them for the idea? But yeah, this is um it is it is understandable outrage, but I think that he's channeling it in a way that is not going to help the things that he cares about in the long term. Uh yeah, my appeal to people would be Thomas Massie is playing this right. He's insisting on getting this actually out, that this is never going to relent. um the victims that are willing to step forward, make sure that we're banging the drum for them, make sure that people are hearing their voices.

Uh that kind of thing goes a lot longer way than the haha, like [ __ ] you. Um you pissed me off and now I just want to watch it all burn. Someone in the comments said that that emotion can be a catalyst. It can, there's no doubt about that, but it emotion tends to be a costic weapon. So it it costs people as much as it gets them. them. them. Yeah. Uh, so speaking of upcoming elections, uh, Kamla is back and she's changing Kamla HQ into Headquarters, the new Gen Z progressive content hub.

Madame Vice President, what's going on with Kamla HQ? Well, I'm so glad you asked. I have good news. So, Kamla HQ is turning into headquarters, and it's where you can go online to get basically the latest. This is crazy. This was not on my bingo card for um her to be the front runner. I think Poly Market has her as the front runner to be the Democratic nominee for 2028. 2028. 2028. And they're going so hard in the paint for leaning into Gen Z. The problem is, and uh for anybody looking at the screen, um uh let's see, I'm not sure if you guys were able to see it, but as Drew was scrolling around on his feed, because it's in the comments of the video that we were showing you, [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] um in the feed, it's like everybody doing the hello fellow kids meme.

And so it just feels ridiculous that she's trying to do like this 67 thing, which by the way ended up being they got clowned on so hard. If you look at it now, headquarters is now headquarters 68. 68. 68. They put it back. They put it back to 67. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, that is hysterical. So, I checked that like right before we went live and it was 68. was 68. was 68. That is That is hilarious. Uh, so Uh, so Uh, so it'll be interesting to see if they're able to ride the meme wave or if they just get beaten to death with it.

Oh, I lied. That was a parody Oh, I lied. That was a parody one. It is 68. That's hilarious. Okay, that makes more sense. There is Elon wouldn't give us headquarters. headquarters. headquarters. You could change your username. Yeah, but no, I don't think you can change it that often. It's like either once every 24 hours or once every month or something like that. Anyway, uh yeah, this is going to be very interesting. Um Um Um state of politics. The presidential nominee list is out and Poly Market's giving Gavin the edge.

He's He's He's still the one. Yeah, Gavin is getting the edge at 30%. AOC is at 8. Kamala is at six um Josh Shapiro Pete Buddha but there was an interesting um report from even Roth Smith and he was talking about that they tested various Democratic party visions from a range of the elected independents and fight language stood out the most for them. for them. for them. So So So uh Betto the Texas he was like a one hit wonder. I don't even know why he's still politically relevant because he actually hasn't held office in years but he was like imagine a Democratic party that fights really fights for all of us.

No rolling over, no bending over, no big money in corporate politics. A message defined by people in every state, not consultants and pollsters. No matter who you are, we're here to listen, learn, and work with you. That was a point4 plus 14 effect. That is populism. Okay. Put into sentence form. And then a negative, the worst receiving message was Gay uh GGO. He's a um senator out of Arizona. I talk to men about pride, family, and security. And I say, I'm going to make sure you get out of your mom's house.

Make sure you can get a job so you can get rich. Democrats should talk about those things. People don't want to hear words like economic stability. They want the American dream. And that was the least. Um Oh, I hate that. That's the least. It's like the one that's most grounded. The one that is like uh somebody really trying to get at the core of what's causing the malaise is like people like, "Nah, [ __ ] that." Like, "I want to know that you're mad as hell. I want to know you're going to go slap somebody.

I want to know that you're going to fight. You're like literally fight." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what gets people turned on. And here's the bad news. That is what gets people turned on. Like if you want to get people's blood pumping. So I used to do a YouTube series called um impact quotes. quotes. quotes. And it's funny, there are still people that'll come up and be like, "Oh my god, I was just listening to one of those this week." And I filmed those like seven years ago.

And to make them good, I finally had to like let go and just say, "Okay, I'm going to perform these. These are not I'm not trying to be like even keel. I'm trying to get you [ __ ] amped up and people would cut them together into super cuts and like music under them and ah and when you're doing it, yes, you use aggressive language. You get, you know, talk about going hard, leaning in, fighting, not stopping, ripping, tearing. It's like it really does it it would get me amped up saying it.

It got people amped. People used to talk about listening to it in the gym. And so it was like, yep, that's where we're at. People have anxiety. They want it transmuted into anger. They want to feel aggressive. Aggression is drug-like. Aggression is a positive emotion. Remember, if you stimulate somebody's brain, go all through all the emotions. You say, "Okay, cool. You felt them all. Anger, happiness, sadness. Which one do you want me to restimulate?" It is not happiness. It's anger. People want anger restimulated because anger comes with so much clarity.

It feels powerful. I'm ready to [ __ ] fight. That's why you see coaches rile their team up, get them going. You actually become more energetic. You become more aggressive. Your pain tolerance goes up there. There is two types of energy, boys and girls. You have physical cellular energy and then you have psychological energy. And getting people over into that aggressive, angry, militant, righteous indignation, if you can get them there, they are way more likely to take action. They're way more likely to push into the danger zone.

You don't want somebody feeling anxious or unsure. Like, you don't want to be talking about pride. [ __ ] that. You want to get people mad. You want to point to a singular enemy and get people after them. And if you want to know how [ __ ] dangerous that is, read Minecom. That's a book where he goes, "You know what we need? We need an enemy. We need a singular enemy. I can get all these young men mad as hell. We can point at them and say, "They're the problem.

Let's go [ __ ] get them. And that's what you're living through. So, you were living through a time where people understand this is exactly how you get people riled up. This is exactly how you get them to take action. This is exactly how you turn them into a weapon that you can point in a direction. Oh, and did I mention that sitting on top of all this are people that know how to manipulate? Be careful because there are people that want you mad. There are people that want you to not understand economics.

There are people that want you to not understand yourself so that they can whip you into a frenzy and point you at the thing they want you pointed at. That's what scares me. It works works works way too well. Do you think the American dream is dead? Yes. As disco. Oh wow. Okay. I was not expecting that. Yeah. I thought it was like, well, you know, you have to fight it. It's up to you. And you know, I was definitely not. Well, the American dream is dead.

If you're asking me, can an individual still succeed? Of course you can that like the like the like the give me the differentiation between those two. those two. those two. Okay. So I won't rat this person out but somebody uh somebody uh somebody uh somebody very meaningful to me uh came and said and said and said your phase one stuff made me feel like it was something important meaningful. Mh. Mh. Mh. Okay, that was all the mindset stuff, the impact quotes that fed their soul and they're like now just doesn't feel as important, doesn't feel as meaningful, I don't feel like it's helping.

And I was like, wow. One of them, the reason I stopped doing mindset content, mindset content, mindset content, it's not that it's not useful, it helps a very small number of people. It's that the way that it helps is the way that Advil helps. It's temporary relief to a pain. It's not a solution. Doesn't address the underlying thing that put you in that position. What I'm doing now is me saying, "What are the most consequential problems that we face as a society?" And those are going to be the things that I talk about.

And it pisses people off. It's wild. And the the people that enjoyed me in phase one almost universally hate the direction that I'm going in now. And for them, I have changed. And I'm just like, what? Like this is literally phase one was my first attempt of like I'm going to do direct emotional appeals. They feel awesome. But this isn't how I live my [ __ ] life. I'm building companies. Like if you think I'm running around like giving raw speeches, I do it. But it's not. I don't live there.

I live in the tactics of building a business. I live in a spreadsheet. I live in like cause and effect first principles. Like that's where I live. So then cool slowly co they've all heard the story. I end up over here where it's like okay these are the most consequential things in my own life. They're also the most consequential things to other people. You're going to end up in economics if you're dealing with consequential things. So uh over here dealing with that and people really feel like oh but these things they don't matter and it's like that's where you're interfacing with the real world.

I don't understand like how people view that as something that doesn't matter. Okay. How is does all of that relate to the American dream? The American dream is an economic framework. framework. framework. The American dream is there is a path that we're going to help you. We the government are going to help you walk so that you can be on a default path that has a really good outcome. That is debt. We made decisions starting in 1913 that gave elite bankers the ability to manipulate your wealth.

And wouldn't you know it, they manipulated it in a way where people who understand the financialized gambling, they do very well. And the people that don't have all their money stolen from them. Okay? Is what it is. But that killed the American dream because houses became unaffordable as a function of the physics of modern monetary theory. There was no other way that that could play out. It's physics. It's just math. It's just how money like money has uh money has physics. And so no one's ever going to be able to violate the laws of physics.

physics. physics. Um so that's where we've ended up. Now, the fact that skills have utility, which is the part that I just cannot get people like I always want I feel like whoever the guy was that said the true thing that nobody wants to hear. The only real thing people need to hear from me, skills have utility. Once you understand that, you can go get so good at something people can't stop you from doing it. So my private message to everybody is I don't know that we can save society.

society may actually just be a function of cultural energy. Cultural energy runs in cycles based on debt. debt. debt. And so that's just going to play out. No one's escaped it so far. So yeah, listen, just like I hold out hope that they'll radically extend life, even though so far nobody's escaped death. I hope that maybe we sort of can. I hope that somehow we can figure this debt game out such that we don't follow the same loop of history. But history tells me that I'm going to die and history tells me that this cycle is going to play out in a very similar fashion to all the cycles before it.

So then I'm just like, well, okay, uh those are societal level trends. What about the individual? The individual can always win because skills have utility. And if you focus on that, you can get so good at investing money, you make money no matter what happens. Uh you can get so good at starting a business, you can add value to people's lives, make a ton of money. So there are ways that the individual can succeed in any moment in time, literally any moment in time. But I it is a question mark as to whether we can stop society's momentum and redirect it.

I don't know. Um all right. Um in other news, um it's time for uh my favorite segment here for the jokes. Friday funny. Um, it was a little bit of a lighter week today because a lot of things weren't funny this week. So, I was like, "This is the most dead pan delivery for Friday funny ever." Hey everybody. Uh, my favorite little bit of a lighter week. So, don't judge me. Uh, if you have anything you find, drop it in the Discord. I'll make sure to shout you guys out.

Um, feel free to drop. We need to add like some more UGC uh, avenues cuz you guys find some great stuff, but I laugh at it on like a Sunday afternoon like, "Oh, okay. I'm going to do drop that next week." And then I end up forgetting. So tag me, drop some stuff, and we'll we'll cover it. Um, but I feel like this was me all week realizing we ran out of conspiracy theories because they all came true. Every single one. Every single one came true.

Whether it was a pizza gate, whether it was a welfare uh furniture thing, it was um welfare furniture thing. Oh man, that's how that's one of the ways they were uh sex trafficking. So, it would be like a couch that's $20,000 and you're like, "Why is there a $20,000 couch on Wayfair?" And then in like the description is like a person's name and then they were just like, "Oh, supply chains. We're open like seller. Like, this is what people want. It's expensive couch. This is executive couch." And that's how Wayfair was just kind of explaining it away.

But you could go to Wayfair and like scroll down and they'll be like, I seen one for like hundreds of thousand. It was like 125,000 or something crazy. I was just like, "Yo, there's no reason. Wait, this white couch is 125,000." Um, but it was a conspiracy theory because it was COVID. Supply chain, everything was going up. Toilet paper was $45. So maybe couches are 125 now. But nope, they were selling people. people. people. Every now and then I'm just like, okay, people that do evil [ __ ] they always come up with the most clever stuff.

Like, can you not just apply your brain to something that's like positive? Like when you hear how mobs run a city, you're just like, "Yo, those are brilliant schemes." Apply that same energy to something legitimate. Like, god damn. like these are smart people. So, I used to have an employee who's former drug dealer. Uh long story, many of you have heard me tell those stories before. Anyway, former drug dealer. And one day I was asking him like, you know, how does that all work? Like, how do you run it?

And he's [snorts] like going through it and he's like, "Okay, the way that you know the undercover cops, who's on duty, who's not, is based on their car. So, we track their car. These guys are dumb and so they don't change their cars very often. So, once you identify the car, cool. You know when they're trading shifts, you know who's easy. you know who's hard. Um, you pay attention where the cameras are, so you know like the field of view of the cameras, you know what they can see, you know what they can't see.

And so you're going into the areas where uh the cameras can't record you. And I mean just like on and on and on about like uh he wouldn't use the word employee, but like all the people that um pick up the drugs and all that and like okay, where are the drugs actually stored? Who knows that? Who touches the drugs? Like you don't have the guy who's selling the drugs actually hold the drugs. It's like he gets your money, then he points you to, you go to another house, you go pick it up.

That way, if the cops come, it's like they're coming to you because you're the visible person, but there's nothing on you. I was like, "Fuck." I'm like, "This is so smart." I'm like, "Dude, you you're an entrepreneur, but what you're selling is risk. Get out of the risk game. Sell a real [ __ ] product." So, I just every time I encounter this, I'm just like, "God damn, this takes so much brain power." But you're selling risk and you're putting yourself at risk and you're selling danger. Like I remember one time he's telling me this story.

He's like he's sitting there playing PlayStation and uh these guys come try and kick his door in. They've surrounded his house and he just hands a shotgun to his friend who he's playing with who's not in the lifestyle. He's like, "Sorry, bro. This it's happening now." And they like banging in the doors and they get in this gunfight and all this [ __ ] And I was like, because they were trying to steal his drugs and I was like, uh, as much pressure as I feel from my competitors, no one's ever shown up with shotguns and tried to steal my protein powder.

And so I was just like, dude, like there are way easier ways to do this. do this. do this. But people get trapped in like a Yeah, it's just crazy. Um, next one on the list. Um, for those that were here, um, oh no, there's a different one. Uh, I thought this was hilarious. Um, America is filled with degenerates. So, does a gambling hotline call you back if you hang up like 911? So, the meme is betting $100 that the gambling addiction hotline operator is a girl.

girl. girl. Oh my god. [snorts] [snorts] Thank you for calling. Come on. Come on. [sighs] [sighs] [sighs] Uh, sorry, wrong number. Come on. Bring me my money. Bring that. [clears throat] That is funny and terrifying all at the same time. time. time. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Degenerates. Degenerates. Degenerates. And to make it even better, it's all for the content. All for the content, man. It's wild. It's wild. It's wild. Um, and for those that were here on Wednesday, me and Tom had a heated discussion about immigration reform, voting act.

I found our solution. Tom, I saw this in the uh let's have illegal immigrants hunt down sex offenders for a chance at citizenship. We can call it alien versus predator. predator. predator. That's wild. Here all day, guys. Here all day. all day. all day. That is pretty funny, though. I got to give it that one. That one's good. That one's good. one's good. one's good. Ah, that made me laugh. Uh, okay. Those are the memes that made me laugh today. Uh, this week. Whatever. Uh, I think we have one more super chat.

We got it back from Stoic Anarchy. So, they clarified it is 10,000 to 100,000 Bitcoin, which is 693 million. Yeah, I was going to say massive number. So, that that is significant. Uh, but we still don't know why they brought it up other than I guess there three new whales. whales. whales. Yeah. So, I mean, look, if somebody is watching Bitcoin drop and they know that a lot of people are getting shaky about the thesis, it's like, hey, don't worry. There were three people that bought the dip so hard that we now have three new wallets that fall into that category.

I mean, unfortunately, that also triggers the next narrative, which is, well, hold on, you're getting too few of people that hold too much of the asset, and doesn't that reduce the um the decentralized nature of it? then anybody paying attention will give you the I think rightful response of gold has the same problem. You'll get people that try to buy it up and buy it up and buy it up. Uh look at what America did after I think it actually started after World War I but certainly accelerated after World War II where we basically held the world's gold supply or Europe's anyway.

Um so that didn't devalue gold. So I don't in the same way I don't think that's going to devalue Bitcoin. People need to remember Bitcoin right now trades like a high volatility tech stock. So for now, the way that people interact with it, they want the volatility, which means it is not going to be an only up phenomenon. It's going to go up, it's going to go down. You're going to have just like people manipulate the stock market, the bonds market. People will try to break a company by shorting it.

Like just be aware of how much manipulation exists in the markets. So people will put shorts like they did this to Tesla like crazy. This caused the big beef between Elon and Bill Gates because when you short something, especially if you're a famous person, if you short a company, you're saying, "Guys, that company isn't what you think." You're trying to break the narrative. And because so much of this stuff is just a psychological game by putting shorts on it, you can make it come true. So, the act of putting a short on it and then the word gets out that you've got the short on it, which it will if it's substantive enough.

Then all of a sudden, it's like, "Oh, I get it." like, you know, this company might be in trouble. Somebody knows something I don't. More people short it or they sell and now the short comes true and now that person makes a ton of money and they literally are laughing their way to the bank. Uh, if you want to understand more about this, there is an an exceptional book and Drew is going to get me, the author on the show, book's called 1929 called 1929 called 1929 and it talks about what led up to the stock market crash.

And that is fascinating like when you hear how unhinged it became, how many people there were that were doing things like this where they had access to a large enough pool of capital that they could manipulate markets. And when you can manipulate a market, you just tell somebody, "We're about to do this thing and you can profit from it." Like remember our very own Scott Bessant with George Soros broke the British pound. Now they knew they were going to do it. I have no evidence that they told anyone, but that was a knowable thing.

And if they were right, there was going to be a very known consequence, which is exactly how they made so much money. They made a billion dollars in a single day back when that was like crazy. And then on top of that, they had planned their next move because they knew we're going to have a billion dollars. Where do we put it? It's going to matter. It's going to affect the markets. And so they made I I can't remember how much, but they made another huge amount of money off that second trade.

Now, without making a single allegation, you can understand how a Nancy Pelosi trades at over 17,000x over the S&P 500 since the 80s. 17,000. I don't that might not be the literal number, but it's very very close. Uh, so Uh, so Uh, so you do have to ask yourself given that people can sway markets, how much of what I see is going to be a manipulated market? That's why I say macro thesis. Uh, have an idea of where this goes longterm. Day trading, unless you're going to be doing it full-time, unless you think you're one of the people that have information that other people don't, uh, legal information that other people don't, it strikes [snorts] me as a very bad idea.

There's some illegal information if you got there, too. You'll be fine. How dare you, Drew. Um, how dare you? That was Drew. Everybody that said that, you will notice when the lawsuit comes. lawsuit comes. lawsuit comes. Allegedly, not me. Um, Bitcoin's up 12% today though, so bounced that bounced off the off the low. Um, somebody does anybody need anything else to recognize? This is all narratives. All narratives. narratives. narratives. Um, somebody asked earlier what dollar cost averaging is a practical example is for example, if you bought at 90,000 and then you bought at 60,000 now your average that you were into is a little bit lower.

Um, that is a true story. I dollar cost average 31% down yesterday. So I am doing fantastic now. And the sort of basic way You were getting in a dicey spot. It was a little dicey. I I bought I I ain't go front. I bought high. I shouldn't have bought high. I have two Bitcoin accounts. It's my play Bitcoin account and then like my investment Bitcoin account. And on my play account, I was like, "Oh, I was feeling the burn." I was like, "Oh, 125, 130, 150." We had uh Sailoron, we had Arthur Hayes on.

I'm like, "Oh, it's going to a million. Let's do it. Let's do it." There a bunch of money in there and it went from 90 to 70 and I was hurting. Um but now it went to 60 and I was like, "Hey, I could do that." Um, so my overall average has went from 98 to 73. Uh, which is a significant move. Um, but you have to go all in. So we'll see. A $1 super chat saying it's going straight down to 8,000. And so that would obliterate everybody.

8,000. 8,000. 8,000. Yeah, I think at 8,000 Sailor would be in trouble at that point. Yeah, he's suicidal. His company is built on top of the company that's built on top of Bitcoin. Um, so many treasury companies popped up. There's treasury IAS now. Like it's that is market collapsible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In my opinion, I I mean look, is it going to collapse the market? Probably not. But you can have these short-term wild swings of volatility, but few people I think it was Sailor in fact that made me realize that volatility was the point.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he is not a stranger to the volatility. He had in fact what he's doing with Bitcoin uh because it's not really just a huddle strategy where he makes his real money as people essentially gambling with Bitcoin. If Bitcoin doesn't move in price then people aren't going to gamble. So you need the volatility. So uh yeah be cleareyed about that. And then one last thing I'll say about dollar cost averaging is typically uh a part of that is that you buy with total disregard for what the price is doing.

So, some people will do it daily, some people monthly, but whatever. You just you buy a little bit more as you've got the money, a little bit more as you've got the money, a little bit more. So, um, that way, to Drew's point, you can hopefully change your cost basis so that if you become profitable at, uh, you know, if you're profitable at $75, but you drive that down to 65,000, 75 to 65, then now as the price swings, he's just pulled down the place at which he becomes profitable.

So, um, and that's that part is known as buying the dip. All right, there it is. Okay, we are at time. Thank you guys very much. I hope you all have an absolutely wonderful weekend. And by the way, if you're having any of that AI anxiety, I do teach a course, Impact Theory University, about how to leverage AI and a myriad of business principles to launch your own company. So, if you're in the 35% today, that said you're worried about losing your job. Sign up immediately for Impact Theory University.

At a minimum, I will teach you how to be the last man standing at your company, but I will also walk you through the business principles that will help you launch your own company. It's all about taking action. It is not passive watching videos. This is actively about building a business. All right, guys. Have a wonderful weekend and we will see you on Monday. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.