The Real Reason Trump Turned on Tucker, Megyn Kelly, and Alex Jones w/ Special Guest Michael Malice

Key Takeaway

Trump's Iran strategy follows a familiar pattern: aggressive threats followed by negotiation. His deadline for opening the Strait of Hormuz passed without action, revealing the bluff. The real opportunity lies in recognizing negotiating patterns rather than taking inflammatory rhetoric literally. When someone shows you their playbook repeatedly, learn to read it - that's how you stay ahead of manufactured crises and focus on what actually matters.

Episode Overview

Tom Bilyeu and Michael Malice discuss the fragile Middle East ceasefire, Trump's negotiation tactics, and global geopolitical realignment. They analyze Iran's strategic position controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the economic implications for Europe and Asia, and how Trump's pattern of aggressive threats followed by deals mirrors his North Korea approach. The conversation explores how energy dependence will reshape alliances, why European leaders are facing domestic pressure, and whether the US withdrawal from global policing will force regional powers into new conflicts or compromises.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Real Reason Trump Turned on Tucker, Megyn Kelly, and Alex Jones w/ Special Guest Michael Malice from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

everybody, welcome to another Tom Billy show live. We have a very special guest today, boys and girls. We are joined by the troll king, Michael Malice. He is in the house. He's here because he has a very special graphic novel that he's put together. He's told me a lot about it. I've seen pages from it. I am very excited that this man has joined the ranks of people writing in that art form, which you guys know I'm obsessed with. I bring up very frequently my own uh so I couldn't be more excited to have you, man.

Thank you for joining us today. I could be more excited if it was later in the day. Yes. Yes, you've made that clear, Mr. Malice. This is early. First time I think in 20 years that I've been awake this early. I'm not kidding at all. I have to be coherent. So, people say I can do podcasts in my sleep. Let's find out if that's true. We shall see, boys and girls. All right, we're also going to drag him into all of our conversations around Iran and all the stuff that's happening in the world.

And starting with a ceasefire, which is hanging on by a thread after Israel bombed Lebanon. Trump posts an unhinged rant aimed at former supporters such as Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens. Someone hacked a Chinese database and stole 10 petabytes of largely classified information. We'll see what they do with that. It is for sale on the dark web right now. So, if we have any bidders, make sure you head over and take a look. A disgruntled employee burned a massive distribution center down because his employer wouldn't pay him more money.

And Ro Khanna, friend of the pod, has surpassed Nancy as the most effective trader in Congress. How ever did he do it? We're going to talk about all of that and more. Michael, I really am excited to have you. For long-time viewers of my show, they will know that we have done things before. before. before. Uh been on your show, you've been on mine. You've done stand-up comedy, which may be something that my audience doesn't know about you. one to see my set. I did. And to say that it was comedy as terrorism, I thought was a very active description.

That's my love language. It well said. Terror. Well well said. So, that's who we've invited on the show today. Now, by way of quick tease, give them a little bit on the book, which has a very unusual setup. Uh unwantedbook.com is the URL. We're already at the stretch goals. So, uh I'm very excited about that. This is a book I started writing in 2000 when I was friends with Harvey Pekar. Uh no, I became friends with Harvey Pekar of American Splendor fame because of this project.

It's about a band from the '80s. It's a real-life Spinal Tap. And what Harvey and like graphic novels do that other projects really can't is take fun stories that are stranger than fiction and put them into the readers' hands. And I think there's such a long history of that alternative graphic novel scene, Peter Bag, um Black Hole, and and people like that. It's just I'm really excited to be able to walk in the footsteps of these um giants. Now, it's exciting. So, for those of you, if you only know Michael as an online personality, he's been writing books for a very long time, extraordinary books I might add.

Uh and so to see you now turn that on to the graphic novel scene is extraordinary. I am a massive collector of graphic novels because as an art form, I think it's really extraordinary. really extraordinary. really extraordinary. Uh and so, yeah, very interested in this. We'll talk more about it later. Um I'm excited for you guys to take a look at it. We are going to help I no matter what. So, Michael's stretch goal is 15K. Uh he's already almost there, 14.2 or something like that as of when we went live.

Um I'll get us that far easily. Um but would love anybody that wants to support the book. We'll have the link in chat. chat. chat. Uh please do. It's a pre-sale. So, uh let's make sure that this book comes into existence. into existence. into existence. thing about the pre-sale is a lot of times with Kickstarter, they do a Kickstarter and then the book comes out in a year, it's done. So, people can have it in their hands in August. So, that's awesome. that's awesome. that's awesome.

Yeah, yeah. So, this isn't money that you're raising to make the book. The book is already finished. We're just getting it out into the world. Yeah, we'll talk more about Ripa's strategy, um which is pretty interesting as we go. All right, boys and girls. Let's jump into the news. Let's do it. From Unusual Whales, Iran was on the verge of responding to the ceasefire violation, but Pakistan intervened. Trump tweeted out that he got the ceasefire done. Hours later, there were attacks all through the Middle East.

It seems like the ceasefire is hanging on by a thread. Catch us up. By a thread, man. So, I don't think that this is long for the world. But depending on who you believe, the ceasefire was either technically violated pretty much immediately after going into effect uh as Iran was still bombing Israel and some of the other GCC countries. And then Israel is still, as of right now, bombing Lebanon. So, just hours after the ceasefire was declared, the UAE said that its air defenses were actively engaging incoming Iranian ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones.

Bahrain also reported attacks that injured two people. Qatar intercepted seven ballistic missiles and drones. This is all during the ceasefire. And Saudi Arabia had to issue nationwide civil defense warnings. Iran claimed that post the ceasefire, the GCC strikes were just retaliation for a hit on Iranian oil facilities on Lavon Island, which they attributed to an enemy attack. Essentially saying the ceasefire was already being violated by the other guys. It's always the other guys. The IRGC simultaneously put out a statement saying that their finger was on the trigger.

That's a direct quote. And they had no trust in US promises. This is This is a great setup to a ceasefire that we can all get behind. Now, the US, for its part, is making similar statements. statements. statements. And clearly, Israel still hasn't taken their finger off of the trigger at all. Oh, and by the way, the Strait of Hormuz still hasn't opened despite that being a condition of the ceasefire. Only five vessels have crossed the strait on Wednesday, seven on Thursday. And as of right now, more than 600 vessels remain stranded in the Gulf.

And Trump said that he's only going to do a ceasefire if the strait is completely open. So, that's what we're going into the negotiations with. Now, the United States has more than 50,000 troops deployed across the Middle East, roughly 10,000 above the pre-conflict baseline. And that number is climbing. CENTCOM is overseeing the largest American force posture in the region in years. And new assets keep arriving every day. Marines from San Diego are being transferred directly into the theater. The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit uh that's over 2,000 Marines and sailors departed aboard the USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group in mid-March.

We have the 82nd Airborne also on their way. And the schedule seemed to be accelerating with people arriving there day after day. So, this is not exactly what I would call ceasefire posture. Many are saying that what's really going on is that Trump is using the ceasefire to build up more troops and prepare for a continued assault. Seems pretty likely or at least that he wants his options open to that. So, I would not expect this ceasefire to last very long. Michael Malice, what do you think?

Does this last or are we going to break it before we get going? that you and I independently came to the same conclusion because I think even though we're very different people, you're a very clear-headed person. I'm not necessarily. But I remember on Monday, everyone was foaming at the mouth. Not everyone, lots of people. Trump has lost his mind. You have to 25th Amendment him. He's going to nuke Tehran. And it's just like I remember the first term, he was going to nuke North Korea. And North Korea is like, Kim Jong Un, you're going to face fire and fury like the world's never seen.

Now it's going to be you said to Iran, death fire and fury, which is obviously much worse. It's clearly a negotiating tactic he's used over and over. I don't understand at this point how people are falling for it or thinking he's crazy. And we saw it because as you said, the Strait of Hormuz was not opened. And we were told Tuesday night, I think it was 8:00 p.m. Eastern, if the Strait of Hormuz is not opened, that he's going to blow up every bridge in Iran.

He's going to blow up all their power plants. And a civilization will be wiped off the face of the earth over I'm paraphrasing his exact quote. The strait's not open and crickets. So, I think it is very plausible what you were saying, he's prepping for a ground invasion. But this threat of like we're going to bomb them back to the Stone Age where they belong. That was the quote, I remember. They're not. So, I I people often say that Trump should be taken seriously but not literally.

And his opponents take him literally but not seriously. How are you taking him literally when it's been clearly shown that this was a bluff? Yeah. I So, part of by the way. Yeah, yeah. Right. That's the thing. And hearing people the thing that drives me crazy about the taco um um um condemnations is that they they should be praising him for that. I know. I That's it. Right. This is somebody saying, "Listen, I'm intellectually flexible. And so, yes, I said I was going to do all this stuff.

But PS, by the way, you all hated when I said that I was going to do it. So, now I'm not doing it. What's your response? You're mocking me for it." It's like, "Kids, so you're literally trying to incentivize him to go full psychopath." Right. understand. You do understand because I think the internet is there to gin up people's agitation. And no matter what you do, if you don't like people don't run a true/false filter, they run an us/them filter. And if Trust Trump is a them, no matter what he does, he can't do anything right right.

And if you're a MAGA person, a full-blown MAGA person, no matter what Trump does, he can't do anything wrong. And you you see this a lot of time on social media. And it's discouraging and disheartening, but it's it's kind of par for the course at this point. point. point. Speaking of discouraging and disheartening, so I have a default algorithm running in my brain that um so, first of all, my base assumption is this is a deterministic universe. We are automata. We We do not have the ability to change.

to change. to change. And therefore, the reason that history repeats is that we just respond in pretty knowable ways on mass. Okay. And that the only thing that history has shown can turn the course on something like this once it ratchets up to a and the thing that's ratcheting up is the psychological contagion that people get into. into. into. Uh and the only thing that ends up reversing course is pain and suffering. And so that we get to this point as an automata that's like, "Yeah, I don't like this anymore." And so now I'm willing to go in another direction.

Do you hold out more hope that there is something else that will like Trump will negotiate this well and we'll get on the other side and things will calm down or how do you see a reunification of some sort of sensible, enjoyable, productive world order? Well, I think there's that quote about about about compromise is something everyone can live with but nobody likes. I think that's something that's going to happen in Ukraine and Russia as well. At a certain it's no one's going to be happy with how that ends.

Or maybe Putin will be happy, maybe Zelensky, but I don't think they really will. The thing a lot of people in in the Middle East, it's not just Israel, hate Iran. I've been to Bodrum, Turkey, which is like a resort town. They are not fans of this whole kind of like hijab kind of culture. They're very westernized and there's other pockets. Dubai's obviously been trying to become and successfully has become a city of the world. So this is a issue for them. At the same time, if I'm Iran, this it's it's There's something so frustrating and I'm sure you feel the same way that any kind of empathy, which is meaning seeing things from other people's point of view, is regarded somehow wrong in this country.

It's like if you say, "Let's look at things from the Iranian point of view." It's like, "Oh, you want Iran to win." It's like, "No, but these are people who have values and they have weapons and they will act to further values using their weapons insofar as it's necessary for them. We just If If another country just dropped a bomb on the White House, we're not going to be like, "You know what? Just kind of cut us a check for reparations and we're going to be square." At the same time, if you are Iran and you genuinely believe, as I do I think they no longer do, that there's a lunatic in the White House and he's about to nuke us, then very quickly can be like, "Okay, hey buddy.

Let's take a deep breath. deep breath. deep breath. How can we work together here?" You know, he cut his He got elected in 2016 pre- pretending to be this big deal maker and in many cases that's true, the Abraham Accords being one prime example, but you really put them into a corner because how are you going to maintain your hold on power as the Iranian government if your people see you weak and there's a huge movement in your country that regards your rule as illegitimate, the second you show that weakness, your neck is on the line.

So they really have a lot of And the Strait of Hormuz, they've got the rest of the world, if I can use a bad expression, by the short hairs. It's like I don't blame them for being like, "Yeah, we're exposing you, Trump, as a fraud." Mhm. Yeah. The The fact that this is existential on both sides is something that I don't think people are putting into their calculation nearly enough. Uh for Trump, if he if he loses the midterms, he will get impeached. They will hound him even after he's out of office if Republicans aren't in control.

I think that they will try to imprison him. And I think he's certainly running that algorithm. And then obviously, Trump is actively trying to get regime change, whether he says this is goal or not. When you kill that many people, clearly uh you're after something. So for them, it's existential also for the reason that you said that their own people will come in and turn them over. Now, one of the things I can't build an accurate mental model for is what percentage of Iranians want uh theocracy and what percentage want to go back to like sort of pre-1979 status.

Do you have a sense? Like are you able to get a read on what's what? and I and everyone else can because the ones who want that are here. Mhm. Like they're the ones who fled Iran in 1979. Every I mean, people in cities know Persian communities, they're the Persian diaspora. So the especially the the ones who are the powerful ones, the leaders, they had to flee when the Shah fell. First of all, by the way, this is just an important thing about 1979 cuz the Shah was like, "Oh, you're He's terrible, he's terrible." There's always this idea that whenever someone's a terrible leader, you got to get him out.

And it's like, "Guys, it can always get worse." So the people were like, "The Shah's the devil, we got to get rid of the Shah." After the Shah, you got rid of the Shah and look what happened afterwards. So the idea that the alternative to a terrible leader is going to be a better leader is not true. It could be the choices are bad and worse. worse. worse. I don't think even no matter what percentage of people in Iran want regime change or want this theocracy to go away, I don't think they have clout.

I don't think they really It's not a democracy in in the sense of the West with, you know, human rights being respected. So how many thousands were just literally killed by by this regime Yeah, it depends on depends on who you believe, somewhere between 3,000 and like 40,000. like 40,000. like 40,000. at least the 9/11, right? At least 3,000 people. So people. So people. So and the Kurds, you know, were encouraged to rise up with like, "No, no, no, hey, hey, hey. We saw this song before.

We know what's going to happen. You're going to encourage us to rise up, then you're going to turn your backs on us and we're all going to get slaughtered." So they were smart enough not to do anything about it. So I I think this regime has a hold on power that's pretty strong and I think it's going to be very hard to put someone in there who's going to be like, "All right, I'm going to shake hands with the US and Israel after what they just did." I don't I don't see how that happens.

But the other thing is, no matter what happens, I think Trump's going to call it a win. He's good. You know, and he can say with a straight face, "Oh, you know, we bombed their bombed their bombed their their nuclear facilities back to the Stone Age." As he did previously. This is the second time we're bombing their nuclear facilities. So I don't know. I think the midterms were going to be a wash anyway for the Republicans just simply cuz of the kind of of the economy.

Yeah. Yeah, as of right now, as I've said many times, they're on a one-way collision course with losing the midterms because people just aren't going to feel it in their pocket. The new economic data's coming out. And last month they were expecting 2% 2.2% growth. I think they got 0.5. So it's rough, man. It is rough. So though I use this analogy before, I'll be interested to see what you think about it. So there's a jellyfish that can live forever. It essentially becomes like it disintegrates down into these pluripotent cells that then rebuild.

And so barring trauma, it will just keep doing that forever. But when you're in that undifferentiated pluripotent state, you're just a blob. That's what the world order feels like to me right now. It's this insanely dangerous thing where all these alliances that used to create some sort of skeletal structure to the world and how things work, it's just all like becoming blobby. My autism's being triggered because that jellyfish is not dangerous and doesn't have a skeleton. Not dangerous. I didn't say it was dangerous. You well, the you said the world order is dangerous.

So if you're going to call it the jellyfish The The fact that it has disintegrated and that you don't have stable alliances puts you at risk. I'm just saying you're not it doesn't port to the jellyfish cuz that jellyfish is not dangerous and jellyfish doesn't have a skeleton. So that's why my autism's being triggered here. Okay. So if you're going to use the in metaphor, use this use the accurate zoological metaphor. Point being, we are in dangerous territory because I can go country by country in Europe and they all have are collapsing from a binary or you would have in you would have in different countries like let's suppose Sweden, you'd have the two main parties, center-left, center-right party and each of those would have ancillary parties, right?

But in country after country, UK's a prime example, since World War II or even before that, you'd have the Tories and and Labour and then you'd have the third party which was the Liberals and later became the Lib Dems. Now in the old British polls, Reform for Rogers' party is clearly in first and you have a second tier of five different parties. So the electorate's being split six ways as opposed to two. And how do you form coalitions like this? It's going to be something that's very, very tricky.

We saw this in Iceland, they had like I think 10 peop- 10 parties in parliament. The Czech Republic now has reconsolidated to four, they don't have any uh left-wing parties anymore except for the Pirates. So with the rise of social media, it's a lot harder in some ways for the two establishment parties of countries to corral their people because if you look at just Coca-Cola, you can go to store right now and get eight kinds of Coke or or more than eight kinds, caffeine, diet, cherry with cherry diet, cherry Coke, whatever.

So it's harder and harder to tell people you have to pick Republican or Democrat and people get disaffected with the system. And while I do see that's an opportunity when people disaffected with systems, it's also there's a trade-off, which is like if if enough people like screw this, screw this, screw this, lots of bad things often can end up happening. Yeah, no doubt about that. What do you think is going to be the outcome of the negotiations? We've got Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner replaced with I don't know what the full delegation is, but led by J.D.

Vance. How do you You're You're a negotiator, you're a businessman. How do you sit down? First of all, it's really funny cuz Trump was I I don't know how to say funny, but really disturbing that Trump was bragging about like, "Oh, we're killing all their leaders." Well, then who who who's in a position negotiate with you, right? Like isn't that kind of important to have some some guy that can sit down. So Iran, to my understanding, has several power centers. You have the military, you have the theocracy and then you have the secularish kind of government.

I don't know who they're negotiating with. Each of those three is going to have their own agenda. All three are going to do what they can to maintain their hold on power and you can't blame them. So I don't see what they're being offered when they're sitting pretty and they're humiliating their opponents on the world stage. The guy's body isn't even cold yet. So I There's an enormous incentive for Iran to keep this going. I I I It's It's I I Do you think it's going to be going on through November?

Um Um Um No, I think Trump will back out, but I think that it will I think as of right now, I don't see any indication that we won't be in a worse position than if we hadn't gone in. Yeah, that seems plausible to me as well. So I think that they'll have control of the strait. I think they'll open it back up because they have to from their own economic standpoint, but they'll start charging a toll. They will assert, "We control this space." And the US has basically abdicated their willingness to be the global police.

So sea lanes basically are no longer open and free. I don't think anybody else has the ability to stop them from doing that. And so then it becomes a bigger question, okay, then what happens to the Red Sea? Do we get the Houthis, which are a proxy of Iran, do they take that over as well and start charging tolls there? And then of course, the GCC countries will start doing things over land, but all of that is going to make this all that much more expensive, that much more high risk.

And this gets into where we start losing allies who right now can tolerate what Trump did, but when you're someone like Japan, it gets real hard to root for the US if your entire populace is like, "Hold on a second. All of our energy costs, which is now just blanket inflation as how it will read, is because that [ __ ] went in and then it he bounced when he got what he needed, theoretically. Um because so that not just Japan, but many people will have a reaction like that because here's the really brutal part that I'm not sure how many people are paying attention to.

If we {quote} {unquote} lose and Trump backs out, backs out, backs out, that will be really good for us because America makes so much energy that there will be places in the world now that'll be like, "Okay, we're just going to do energy from the US." So the US now has a much stronger much stronger much stronger energy position. Our oil companies are making a ton of money hand over fist. And so Japan is like, "Wait a second, your guys' GDP is growing because of what you did.

I'm in [ __ ] dire straits over here because of what you did." And Europe will be in a similar situation where, you know, they're either going to have to choose, do we buy from the US, do we buy from the completely embattled Middle East Right. Right. Right. or do we go to Russia? If we buy from Russia, [ __ ] we hurt ourselves because of the war in Ukraine. So now we've got to buy from America that put us in this position in the first place.

So it's like America's going to come out in a pretty good economic position anyway. Let me jump in really quick cuz there's some speculation about that cuz right now we have the Spanish PM, we have the Australian PM, and we got the United Kingdom PM all condemning this attack. Some people are even going as far as condemning Israel and his attacks with Lebanon and just saying there's a whole problem in the Middle East in general. Yep. Yep. Yep. So it's very easy for us to be to say, "We'll go to the North America.

Everybody will buy oil from us." Where Iran was giving grants to Spain to get their charters through. There was speculation that the EU and 39 other countries sat down to actually figure out how to open up the street. So is there a possibility one that Iran could just cut direct deals and cut us out? And then two, are there any lasting um ramifications to us alienating our allies, both Israel and us versus the world? Is that a world order or a a unity we can sustain?

Well, Well, Well, I know specifically Spain and UK both have center-left social democrat PMs, and they're both under huge fire because right now in Spain the the third party, I forget what it's called, they're the nationalist party, they're surging really hard in the polls. And in in UK specifically, obviously Farage's reform is way ahead, and Starmer's facing in in May local elections which look like the Labour Party might come in fourth or even fifth, which would be a complete disaster. So it looks like his time at number 10 is numbered.

So I think what they're trying to They clown on him. Yeah, I think what they're trying to do is at least rally their base, which is going to be the left-wing half of their respective countries. But to your point, I think it's very clear that there that a lot of these people are going to be like, "This wasn't on us. Trump's crazy. Let us get our oil through." And to your point, Iran's saying, "We control the Strait of Hormuz." Like they de facto do. So at a certain point it just becomes de jure.

Yeah. Yeah, it's really going to come down, Drew, to nail that point home. It's going to come down to how stably and at what cost they can get the oil out of the Middle East. Because if you're getting like a real fight between Iran and say the UAE, because part of what I think people are missing is that the GCC countries are not in love with Iran. So this is not like some oh, the Middle East is looking at America going, "What the fuck?" It's the Middle East already have their own beef.

They're in Trump's ear. Like in the beginning they were trying to be coy about it and they were saying like, "Oh, you shouldn't do this. These are Islamic countries. Leave us alone." But behind the scenes being like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go [ __ ] these kids up." And then they thought by keeping their nose clean that Iran would keep it all to Israel, to American bases, and they didn't. And they started like just going ham, like bombing everybody in the region. And so that's going to be a question of US leaves, do they just go, "We don't want to fight." And so they're doing things over land, they're coming up with deals, or is there now enough resentment or enough economic damage that they're forced to fight?

And so now that region becomes like these constant pockets of violence. That raises insurance costs, tolls go up because of Iran, and now it's like [ __ ] is just unsettled enough there that people are looking for alternatives. And your alternatives are literally uh Venezuela, which is US controlled, the US directly, or Russia. If you're Europe, you're definitely not going to Russia. So if the things in the Middle East calm down, uh US doesn't have as much leverage. much leverage. much leverage. And they're already holding our debt, so I mean maybe we get a discount.

I don't know that you're saying that we definitely they definitely go to Russia. First of all, is wasn't it I please clarify me for me. You think they might go to Russia? Hold on, but wasn't it explicit that the UAE and Saudi were telling Trump that you guys should go through with this? Like I thought they admitted it, right? This isn't just speculation. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they've said I don't know that they said you should go through with this, but they have said, "We support our ally and we're doubling down on our engagement with them." So it but it wasn't it was pretty clear that they were they were they were who's side they were on.

Yes. Once the first bombs, they could drop the pretense. So now they're like, "We're in." Uh we're talking about incentives. Like, you know, we remember Hillary Clinton was with the Russia the big reset button. So it's very it's very possible that Europe sits down Zelenskyy and says, "Okay, we're going to cut our losses with Ukraine. You're going to make a deal with Putin." And they could be like, "Oh look, Europe brought peace that Trump couldn't uh bring. Now we're all friends again. We're going to take oil from Russia." You can imagine them saying that pretty easily.

You're right. Isn't on my bingo card for right now, but it's certainly not outside of the realm of possibility. That would be very interesting. Um have you seen Zelenskyy as floating this idea? He didn't use the word new NATO, but I'll use it. So same idea that a group of countries minus the US would get together and try to basically overpower Russia. And so it was like the new entrants were Turkia, somebody up maybe just Ukraine, but uh it was an interesting coalition of Europe, Turkia, Europe, Turkia, Europe, Turkia, um Ukraine, Norway and the UK.

Norway, thank you. And yeah, I guess technically it was I I I think I don't see almost any situation where Europe is going to give forces to any significant extent to Ukraine. Really? You think they would? How are you going to sell that to to the British? The only way that would move forward is if when the US if the US were to pull out of NATO and these guys realize that they have to remilitarize and then something happens in the war that pushes it beyond stalemate.

Sure. So if something if Russia were able to start making progress cuz it'll stay a proxy war Right. as long as it can. But at some point something has to cause this to go in a direction. It could be oil and that we need oil and then something like what you're saying plays out. It could be that Russia starts actually making inroads once the US is not engaged and not giving the kind of weapons that they need. So um or God, if China, Russia, Iran, North Korea begin to solidify their allegiance and then China starts really helping Russia, uh Iran starts if Iran is able to calm everything down with the US and then they have bandwidth to start helping out Russia, that could make that a breaking point that starts pushing into Europe.

Not something I think is likely, just No, it's go here. It's go here. Uh a possibility. a possibility. a possibility. So we'll see. But I think it'll be very hard to sell war to the Europeans. Agreed aggressively, yeah. But energy has a way of making people make hard decisions. And they've made such idiotic choices with their green policies that energy in Europe is ridiculous. So since the Labour Party in in the UK is so unpopular now, it's the Green Party that is surging, and they're the ones who make Keir Starmer look like Margaret Thatcher.

So they're real they're they're real loons. They just had they won their first by-election, uh I believe in May, um or sorry, like in March, and they're the ones who are surging in the polls the polls. The Green Party. Yes. Whoa. So they have this progressive Islam alliance that's their their their that's their um kind of backers. More to be said about that. All right. Speaking of factions, especially on the right, Trump went against everybody calling out Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, Alex Jones. Each of them came and had their own tweet responses.

He called them a bunch of nut job troublemakers. Is this actually a a problem or on Truth Social people are definitely pushing back against it. So So So um I'm not going to read the half of page tweet. page tweet. page tweet. Holy crap. Yes, this is one of those how boomers tweet. It's like 500 words. This is literally uh like a deep dive script. I'm so I'm sorry to hear that or um you know, whatever. I'm not reading all that. It's one of those situations.

I'm sorry or congratulations. Yeah, yeah. I have I have for you. I'm sorry that happened. Yeah, this is wild. There's probably a few bits and pieces that I do want people to hear because it's pretty crazy. crazy. crazy. Uh he's saying that Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson all have one thing in common, low IQs. They're stupid people. They know it. Their families know it and everyone else knows it. And it just literally goes on and on like that. They lost their jobs on TV. Nobody wants to hear from them.

They're just dumb and they have no good ideas. Um yeah, it's pretty it's pretty crazy. These so-called pundits are losers and they always will be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or bankrupt Alex Jones who just was one of the dumbest things and lost his entire fortune as he should for his horrendous attack on the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims. Ridiculously came in as a hook and Alex Jones was team Trump so. What's interesting about this is there's such a civil war going on right now within the right.

And so you keep hearing polls even from CNN that like Republicans are united in the mega wing and then there's just these fringe characters that are outside of that. I don't pay enough attention to the actual different personalities within that. Do you have a read on whether this is fringe or whether the Republican Party is really starting to break apart? So I have Alex Jones tin foil hat hanging on my wall in my house. Nice. So I wrote a book about this whole space called the new right which came out in 2019 I believe.

I think this isn't crazy because I think this is how Trump speaks to his strong [clears throat] base. So Trump likes to kind of send people to the wilderness and basically say this person's out group now. I remember in his first term he did with Steve Bannon saying oh sloppy Steve was on his knees begging for his job back and blah blah blah. So he's very good at telling his loyal rabbit fans who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. I don't think what what this is fringe in the sense that you don't have to be a Megan Kelly or Alex Jones fan to be to be a Republican or right of center be like what the heck are we doing with Iran?

And I remember I was on Timcast and we we watched Trump give that speech and it was just like everything's great Iran's destroyed like or if you don't do what we want we're going to kill you more. It's like but you were just said they were destroyed. And Tim had to play Marco Rubio's clip which was far more coherent which is not surprising retrospect where he laid out the bullet points of the objectives of the US you know with this conflict. I mean I think this is par for the course with Trump but the premise of my book which has come to fruition is these disparate factions which combined to create the Trump coalition in 2016 and even stronger in 2024.

The only thing they had in common was a hatred of progressivism. And if you take away progressivism a cultural force which it is on the back wagon in terms of DC not in terms of a culture all of a sudden these people realize they don't really have that much in common. This being US interventionism abroad being a prime example. So it's not all surprising especially Alex Jones of all people to be like like this war in Iran is crazy. This is the new world order you know coming fruition.

Not one more penny of American tribute should be spent on you know war in the Middle East. So yeah I'm not surprised that Alex and these others took this position. And if you had like rough swag is this like a 50/50 split in terms of voting base or I get asked this question all the time and I this is a question I ask myself all the time. Because if you go on Twitter you're going to have a certain perspective and then you go in the supermarket it's going to be completely different.

And the issue this has been issue even for Nixon. When Nixon was running you know in for president 60 and then 60 and 72 is you have to get through the primary and you're you're talking to the base and then after you get through the base you can talk to the general to the center for the general. That's getting harder and harder to do because if I'm a candidate and I'm tweeting something in October having gotten through the primary my opponent can throw things in my face or my fans former fans can be like you're selling us out.

I had this tweet about Lucy in the football with peanuts. JD Vance being an anti-war Republicans because I think people are sick and tired of politicians claiming I'm anti-war and they go and Trump you know Woodrow Wilson 1916 with his campaign slogan was he has kept us out of war months later we're in World War I. Trump has been denouncing action Iran for a long time. At the same time he's been denouncing the Iranian regime for decades. You know in his head I think to some extent this is finishing what should have been finished a long time ago when they took American hostages so hostages so hostages so I think it's going to I do not envy JD Vance cuz he's trying to walk like two tightropes simultaneously and I don't think he's doing a good job of it but he's only one person.

Yeah. Yeah it's interesting. I the same way that I have a hard time getting a read on what percentage of the populace was willing to rise up and get shot in Iran versus who wants that theocratic regime I have a similar sense of like I or inability to gain a real sense of okay in real life what percentage of this base base base is for and against Trump. But it the amount of chaos and inability to track what the narrative is I think it's going to make it impossible for Trump to keep the coalition together.

There's just so much noise. The volume and velocity of information that social media allows for when you start fragmenting your amplifiers like if you've got I mean what's he got 10 to 20 people that he can reliably count on they have a big audience and they'll say the thing and now a substantive portion of them are not saying the thing anymore. Now the narrative begins to fracture and people don't know what words to say. I've often said that part of what always limit my growth on social media is that I've no interest in giving people the words to say.

So I'm trying to map cause and effect and so if somebody wants to hear me talk that's what they're going to hear. I'm trying to figure out okay somewhere in this because I believe and I think maybe we have a bit of a collision but I believe that we live in a deterministic universe where automata we respond in like these knowable ways that it's like oh you can map this stuff out. They're very complex systems to be sure so nobody sees clearly but you can really get a lot of useful information if you go there's cause and effect here.

Sure. And so but that doesn't give people bumper stickers. The people that have been talking up to this point were giving everybody the bumper stickers so when their left-leaning friend was talking then they could come in with their right-leaning talking points. They felt like ah cool it's like two super villain two superheroes shooting you know their red flame and the blue flame and they just sort of stop in the middle. But now that's all going away. And so I don't know if Trump given the state of the economy given like how unpredictable the war is and now you're losing the people that were saying the thing for you it's going to be pretty tough to come back from.

back from. back from. remember very vividly in 2020 when they ran the table on him all year on everything right the COVID times. Like he just kept folding folding folding folding. At the same time I think there is a a huge crack in the system in the Republican Party because I don't think the donors like JD Vance as much as the base likes JD Vance. They clearly like Rubio much more. He's much more of a reliable Republican. I think the other thing people need to appreciate when people who are Trump haters from the Republican Party think he hasn't done more I'm like guys you don't have the house right?

You're not in a position there's like a one seat majority that doesn't function as a majority. You're not going [clears throat] to get the mega agenda through the house and you have to appreciate that of those Republican senators there are plenty who would be more than happy if it suited their interests to remove him from office if there was an impeachment bill that that crossed their desk. Collins in two seconds Murkowski in two seconds and that's just Rand Paul would not be reliable that's three already.

So you're already at 53 you need what 67. I don't think they were they're worried about their re-election. They're worried about their bottom line. This guy has what what what a little over two two years left in office. You know they're at a certain point you're going to cut you're going to fish or cut bait. Do you think that JD Vance is the future of the Republican Party? I'm thinking 2028. Is it him? Is it Rubio? Is it some you know mass here Rand Paul or somebody like that?

Who do you think has that cultural energy now that all these podcasters are kind of abandoning Trump? I don't I think JD Vance Vance Vance is thinks he's smarter than Trump in all the ways that don't matter. I think he Elon did the same bet with Trump. They thought I'm going to use this adult from their perspective and I'm going to use him to further my agenda but Trump is really smart in ways that JD isn't which is he understands politics until 5 minutes ago and he understands how to work a crowd and he's got that kind of once in a generation political talent.

I think JD the swing voter in America is Karen and I think Karen hates JD Vance because he comes off as smarmy and that internet's uh snark which I'm certainly a fan of and a proponent of doesn't really work when you're young and when you don't have you know a resume behind you. Everyone likes a winner. When you're a loser all of a sudden everyone's more than happy to throw you overboard. And how is JD going to run cuz this Trump is hyper sensitive to people who are he perceives as disloyal.

So the second JD starts backpedaling on some things that Trump's done it's going to be really ugly for him. Yeah. So far JD has shown that if the leaks can be believed that behind the scenes he'll tell Trump I think this is a bad idea but that he'll signal I'm going to back you on this and then he does a pretty loyal job. Right. Um in terms of directly answering who's the future of the party right now Rubio's the only other real contender. Now we're a long way away so you never know what's actually going to happen but um Rubio's the only other real contender for someone with my personality anyway I'm far more interested in Rubio.

I haven't seen anybody on the Democrat side that I would even consider. But um the problem is that Rubio himself clearly sees some path where if I back JD Vance that I'm going to get my shot. And so he keeps saying that JD is the next one that's going to be running. I'm going to support him with everything I have. Those two talk about being best friends in the administration. And so listen this is me with a writer's hat on but me click-clacking on a keyboard I would say it looks something like this.

You've got Peter Thiel as a stand-in for whatever cabal of people who've realized it's time to go behind the scenes that includes Elon Musk and it's like okay who are we going to get into the White House House House JD's going to be our guy. We love us some Rubio but Rubio you need to wait your turn. We've got a plan. JD's way more in their pocket than I would expect Rubio to be. Rubio's a little more true blue politician, knows how to play the game, but really has like an agenda.

And so he's going to be a bit more wild cardy. cardy. cardy. Which is what I love about him. It really feels like he's trying to tell you what he thinks is actually real. Um so if Rubio has bought into that, it seems like he has like I'm not going to try to beat these guys. He's too shrewd for that. But he gets like okay, we could have a real legendary run if Trump doesn't [ __ ] all this up. So Right now it seems impossible.

But that's the bet that they made. Here's the other thing. If it's April 2014, right? And I sat down here and I said Tom, will you the future of the Republican Party is Donald Trump, you would try not to laugh in my face and I say will you bet me half a million dollars. And you'd be like easy money. And that's what ended up happening. So we don't even know if JD's going to run. I think this stuff with with his wife is which sure is not things that she's particularly a fan of.

We don't even know if Newsom's going to run. Uh my theory and I talked to Mark Halperin about this and he said it's his theory as well is if JD starts to falter, some other Republican comes in the race not even intending to win, but it's a great way to build your brand identity, book deals, speaking gigs. You the donors are funding your run. You don't have to do anything. And if if there's a crack in the fissure then a Rubio or somebody else can can step in and be like all right, you know, I'm I'm trying to save the party.

So I think the Rubio is trying to Rubio sorry Vance is giving Hillary 2008 energy where it's like look, I'm the guy. It's already let's look we're the general it's resolved. And at a certain point someone's going to say like you know what, maybe you're not the guy. So he's not been nationally tested. Um obviously he's been Trump's VP, but he hasn't run on his own before like Rubio has. So I think there's a lot of donors who'd be more than happy to open their wallets and fund somebody they don't like um military people.

If I'm someone part of the war machine and I'm not confident in JD Vance being a war president I'm going to pour that money to Rubio. Or or Rubio's surrogate. Why wouldn't I? Cuz I'm going to lose a billions if we have a peace president. That's interesting. That's dark, but yeah. yeah. yeah. that's how it works. Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. sure. sure. I think it's a continuation of the war machine though because it right now JD Vance is in Iran negotiating. Is this just him trying to clean up after Trump or is this to your point kind of ushering his Cinderella moment of look, I can handle the big thing.

This is me getting out there. This is me doing something and getting under out of Trump's shadow. If I'm Raytheon, I'm not confident in your president JD Vance in furthering my agenda. Hm. Are you confident in a president Marco Rubio? Yes. Yes. Yes. Hm. Interesting. That's almost bad news for me, but uh the thing about JD at least if the news can be believed is that Iran asked for him. So I don't know what that tells us about Witkoff and Kirschner. I don't know if you know, there's something to read there where those guys have too much of a sort of privateer agenda.

I don't know. Um but I thought it was interesting that they were asking for him. So you either ask for him because you think he's more reasonable, because you think he's weaker, or you just don't know who else to reach for and the other two guys are just like absolutely not. Like we're not going to go back with I think I think they're asking for him cuz they can clearly tell he thought this was a mistake. And he's the one who's going to try to get them to an exit ramp that everyone can kind of deal with.

Yeah, that seems very reasonable. From the back channel stuff that leaks out about theoretically again, I don't have any insider information, but that that's certainly the word on the street. That he told Trump, I think this is a mistake. We should not do it, but if you do it, I'll back you. And you saw that there were people So there are two ways of looking at this. There were those photos that came out when the attack happened and it's Vance, Tulsi and a couple of the people basically at the kids table, right?

And the question is okay, there were a few articles about how this is humiliating JD Vance. Some people were saying this is 4D chess. This is Vance saying look, I had clean hands. I wasn't involved with this. Some people also said oh, you're not going to have the president and vice president in the same room when stuff like this is popping off and I'm like we saw that photo when Bin Laden was getting killed and Hillary's Secretary of State Hillary's there. Vice President Biden and Obama they're all in the same room together.

So I wasn't buying it. Right. And I think it was it's there's clearly some faction in the White House that is doing what they can to undermine JD Vance. JD Vance. JD Vance. That's interesting. That's interesting. That's interesting. And and to marginalize him. I don't think and Tulsi especially. Do you think that's a pushback on um Peter Thiel and he's a stand-in for me for all those guys? Or is it really just about JD? about JD? about JD? I think it's the the the war people don't think JD's one of them and they're correct.

So they're doing what they can to kind of pull the rug out from under him. Yeah, be careful of the uh What was it? The Military industrial complex. Yeah, so wild. Like that kind of stuff is always deeply distressing. This idea that there are these forces behind the scenes that remain as invisible as possible that are able to pull people through. Uh it's very very fascinating. But it I don't know if that's So you could steal that and say it's not distressing because it's good thing to have continuity and stability.

So this is one of the reasons we have the Supreme Court which is lifetime appoint- appointments. You're not going to have the law rewritten every few years, right? So the argument which is not something I necessarily hold to myself is you want that kind of shadow government because no matter who happens to win a voter every four years the country's still going to remain on some level stable. That's the argument for it. It and it's a very good argument. My problem is and this is exactly how I feel about the economy debt is phenomenal.

It it is truly a miracle. However, it grows toxic always and forever every time without exception. And so you have this thing that gives you the world of abundance that we see, but then it also gives you the K-shaped economy that ensures that ultimately there's a revolution and people are burning distribution centers down. Um so yes, you get the stability, but you also get people that have their own agenda and are saying to themselves some variant of you're going to be gone in four years and I'm still going to be here.

So I'm going to drag my feet, ignore you, not do what you want. Uh and pull against you and the more that things like Project Veritas reveal like how much these people have political agendas that I did not vote for and they're able to pull so incredibly well in a direction uh it's pretty traumatizing. And I don't know why, but my audience absolutely does not respond positively when I talk about Israel and the Jews and which makes me want to talk about it more. It is a contrarian me.

So here we go, boys. Uh this is exactly I think part of the issue with the Israel lobby is the more I started researching like so I don't buy for a second that um certainly Trump and America in general. I don't believe that we're puppets to Israel and I don't believe that cuz the data is so obvious that we're not. Um we can walk through what that is, but like anyway, that's my belief. But when I look at I have So funny, people will say say say they just watch the chat.

They they are convinced I get checks. Someone got the $7,000. So You were broke before. Yeah, it's it's hilarious to me that people think that, but that, but that, but what I do find very troubling is how Tom, can I say something? Sure. That's how bad you are. You didn't even have to get the call. You're doing it for free. Yes. You're even worse. That that is where people should go. Yeah. Uh nice with the room shot. Yeah. So uh the point there is that the way that they put an evolutionary pressure on who gets elected is brilliant brilliant brilliant sinister and has a huge impact on the kind of person that's able to get to power.

power. power. That's right. And so but nobody talks about that. Nobody puts their finger on the thing that's actually the real problem. So they're always talking about, you know, it's the money, they're buying people off, yada yada, blackmail. No, they have a way more sophisticated and sort of interesting from a sociological perspective, but it it's that same deep state thing. It's like well, we're going to be here long after you leave. You guys are all transient. We've created this organization that's going to vet these people at the city council level long before they're thinking about state or or national level politics.

And so we're going to make sure that we kill in the cradle anybody that's not pro-Israel. And it's when you take that, if you're mortified by that as you should be then you should also be mortified in my opinion by the deep state cuz it's doing that same thing. Where it's like they're just like oh cool, that's what you want us to do? Yeah, but we're not. Weren't both Obama's parents CIA operatives? Were they? Yeah, look this up. Double check it. check it. check it. Please double check it.

Whenever I say here claim, I always for me or anybody always double check what someone on your screen is saying. And then you can see for yourself. Very good advice. That's wild. That's wild. That's wild. True. True. True. that both of Barack Obama's parents were CIA operatives is a conspiracy theory that lacks credible evidence according to investigations biographical researchers Gemini AI. Look up what the mom Well, let me tell you, Gemini is the one that I trust the least. Gemini dude, have you had any run-ins with Gemini?

I've never used I don't I it forces me to Can you look up the mom and CIA? Whatever her name is Nancy something. Um it pops up at the top, but I don't I've had it say crazy things about me. Dude, Gemini is unhinged. It is so it has such an agenda. So Gemini is what runs. So YouTube has um what they call Ask Studio. Okay. Studio. Okay. Studio. Okay. So you can work with it to come up with video ideas and stuff. It's really like if you're doing your sort of non-political video, it's phenomenal.

The second you start talking about sensitive topics it just it will stonewall you. It will chide you. Dude, it was wild. I was so enraged because it was like uh Tom, you shouldn't be focusing on this. No. Yes. No. And I quote uh you were doing so well before. Why don't you just get back to I am not joking. I want it explicitly. Yes, that is a quote, my man. I could not [ __ ] believe it. I was like, [ __ ] you must be joking.

I was like, there is no way this [ __ ] AI is telling me that I have no Yes. That is a quote. I could not believe it. I really was. It was like going really well, and then I triggered them. It It was wild. The first one I got it on was Epstein. And it wouldn't even tell me why why it suddenly switched. So, imagine, I'm doing so good, we're getting this outline, it's incredible, super excited about the video, and then I'm like, okay, okay, okay, and now I expressly in this section I want to address and I listed like three things, and one of them was Epstein.

And all of a sudden it's like, I can't help you with that. That was the the sum total of the response. I cannot help you with that. And I was like, you can't help me with what? I thought like it was glitching. glitching. glitching. And it was like, I'm not able to help you with these sensitive topics. And I'm like, which one of those topics is it that triggered you? I'm I can't help you with that. And I'm like, what the [ __ ] is going on?

I'm like, was it Epstein? I can't help you with that. I'm like, okay, so by process of elimination, since I asked about the other ones, and you'll talk about it, this is an Epstein problem. It refused to ever acknowledge that its problem was Epstein. Epstein. Epstein. So, I was just like, what the [ __ ] is going on right now? So, yeah, anyway, this is one of those where you can get me to really derail for an extended period of time on AI manipulating people. Oh, I use it to manipulate people.

So, my Why am I surprised? No, this is a great way to save people on social media. Social media is there to make you crazy. This is how to offload it. If I One of the big things people like doing on social media is pretend I mean genuinely here pretend they don't understand what you're saying or misconstrue what you're saying in a Cathyneman way. So, all I'll say is, hey Grok, explain to such and such a person, and they explain my point of view or the joke, and leave the cretins to argue with Grok and just offload them from your your plate, and then you don't have to get into a back and forth.

People lack empathy. We are trained since kindergarten to think everyone around us is fundamentally the same under the skin. That is a complete lie. Many people are not interested in looking for a truth or looking for understanding. They're looking for an argument or they get off on being obstinate, and they will drag you in and you will lose at their game because you cannot win. So, rather than engage and argue with them, get Grok to do the work for you. You have to be a paying member, and they'll argue with Grok or they'll just go away.

But you're not going to be pulling your hair out. Mhm. And I had Grok yell at someone yesterday. It will yell on your behalf? behalf? behalf? Yes. Yes. Yes. It cuz I I I had something about anarchism, the person wrote back, and then Grok said, no, you missed the point. point. point. Or something I'm going to pull it up. It's on my Twitter. I want to get the exact quote. Taking sides? Yeah. And someone yelled at Grok for not taking sides also. I had Yeah, you were saying that before we started rolling.

That that is insane to me. me. me. While you're pulling it up, we could address some super chats. Yes. First super chat from Marushia Dark says, love Michael Malice whenever he speaks, I always take notes. That said, what You were doing so good. Let's go back. Hey, Gemini, where are you? You were doing so good. It said, that said, what gives private courts jurisdiction to compel people instead of folks saying, I don't recognize your authority, unlike common law? Sure, same thing with any court. Right now, if you have a We're talking about anarchist private law.

Right now, if you have a ruling, it's the person doesn't have to recognize it. Like if you if I sue you, you owe me 15 grand, there's still a process. So, what you would have is the bank would be or involved. So, if I'm suing you, and I don't trust you, Tom, or if I'm doing business with you, I you're not going to have money in escrow or money that I can access through a third party who will subscribe to this whole system, that's a risk I'm going to have to take.

Same with eBay. Right now, if I am buying a TV from you and you're in Estonia, and you're going to mail it to me, and I'm like, well, like, well, like, well, Tom, you screwed [snorts] me over, either eBay is going to make me whole or that's a risk I'm taking, I might be out that money. Right. And then you negotiate in the public eye by saying YouTube was dishonorable, and that either damages their reputation or it doesn't. doesn't. doesn't. marketplace will kick you off. Right.

it's just like with bad Uber drivers at a certain point. It's like you you're not going to be a party to this enterprise. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I can never reconcile myself to the whole notion of anarchism. I certainly understand better after having talked with you what you mean by it, cuz I think certainly if anybody is like me growing up in the '80s, anarchy was about the symbol and throwing bombs and and and like a sense of chaos. Um, but at least from talking to you, that's that's that's voluntarily entering into something is seems more apt of That's correct.

That's correct. But it's also at a certain point you do need to throw the bombs. Marushia Dark for both Tom and Michael. In my opinion, people like Razor Fist, Bill Whittle, and Asmongold have made fairly compelling and rational cases as to why the US involvement in Iran is just is just and moral. Worth looking into their arguments. So, anytime somebody's talking about an argument being just and moral, it's I just need them to weigh or lay out what their value system is. I've watched Asmongold enough that I have a general sense of his value system.

It's definitely too um, dis- compassionate for me from that perspective. I think a lot of what he says makes sense, but he does spill into this realm of like as if it isn't human beings that you're talking about on the other end of the policy. policy. policy. So, that one goes a little too far. I know of Razor Fist, but couldn't tell you a single policy that he has, and the other person I've never even heard of him, so. So, I think you can we can steel man it pretty easily, which is it's very clear in my opinion that the Iran-Iraq war was a mistake, that far more innocent Iraqi people died as a consequence of this.

I don't know that Iraq is a stable country even now, and it's a good thing that Saddam was hanged. Right? So, the it's really hard to say it's a bad thing that this guy died, the Ayatollah, unless you're going to say, which is probably true, that taking him out both solidify the regime and fomented chaos for the Iranian people. But in terms of him being someone who his death is, you know, unwarranted or immoral, I I don't agree with that. I found the quote, which is I I had said that North Korea spent decades acting quote unquote crazy to get other nations to capitulate.

During the Brexit negotiations, Boris Johnson, who was Prime Minister of the UK at the time, pretended he was just going to walk into a no-deal Brexit, and later he admitted in his autobiography he was just a bluff, he was never going to do that. And I said Trump's doing the same thing with Iran, and some [ __ ] wrote back to me going, this is weird, but I don't think Donald Trump is Boris Johnson or Kim Jong-un. And I said, hey Grok, explain to to this guy what a behavior type is.

And Grok explains at length and goes, your reply misses that shared tactic. So, it was just kind of like a mic drop. That's pretty good. Yeah. That's pretty good. I will give it that. Um, yeah. Next up from I don't know how to pronounce this, so apologies. Suhaib apologies. Suhaib apologies. Suhaib Chisti 6975. Chisti 6975. Chisti 6975. that's exactly it, by the way. Perfect pronunciation. Tom says Muslims are taking over Europe, but they're less than 6% in the UK and not a monolith. Who runs the unified Muslim strategy?

Many Gulf states even oppose each other or ally with UK. Could be normal migration and community building after migration from American wars. So, when it comes to something like that, I will say that people put like these nefarious these nefarious these nefarious things on it. So, let's say that we all just for now I don't necessarily agree with this, but let's just say, cuz it will show that the that argument is irrelevant to my point, that there is nobody running a coordinated effort. That's not what this is about.

This is just about incentives. And so, people think that they're going to have a better life, there's better care, maybe it's a better climate, whatever. So, they decide that they're going to go to this new place. What ends up happening is exactly what happened in Israel is you get people they go into a place, they are going to naturally try to get other people to come and join them, they're going to become politically and economically powerful, and then they're going to at some point, if they can, just completely start running the show.

And you can't blame them. Yeah. So, if you're like, I was fine with it when the Jews did it, and I'm fine with it happening with the Muslims, great, you're being consistent. Totally heard. Now, I have a different stance, but if you have beef with the fact that Israel did it, then I would expect you to have beef with the fact that the Muslims are doing it. So, all I'm saying is be consistent in your position. Either the very useful and incredibly well-documented phenomenon of going into an area and overwhelming it with population, population, population, and first you seek political power cuz you're weak, and so that allows you with a small number of people to become powerful, and then you overwhelm the system with economic power, so now it's like everybody has to cater to you, otherwise the economy begins to collapse.

And so, that's how you take it over. Or obviously you can use force, but I'm not saying that's the thing that they're running. So, I'm not even sure what people are arguing about. Um, so if you look at that's how this game plays, yeah, that's how this game plays. But also, I think to the point with the UK, I just looked it up, the Muslim population has increased by 44% in the last 10 years. So, it's going to have the native population is either flat or decreasing.

When you follow those trend lines, I don't want to be too Greta Thunberg hockey stick, it's going to look a certain way. Yeah, for sure. And what the thing that I don't understand is quite literally what argument they're making. So, I'll make my argument as plainly as possible. Um, everybody has a value set. And the thing that people are willing to kill for is values. So, you're inviting a collision along the lines of the very thing that people are willing to kill for. So, I'm just saying, hey, that's going to get weird because when you have colliding values just like in a marriage, it is going to tear your marriage apart if you have differing values on things that matter enough.

The same thing will happen to a society. Full stop. Well, also what percentage of American population has gender dysphoria? It's less than 1% and yet our entire culture has been reoriented in many ways including up to kindergarten to accommodate or whatever you want to word you want to put that population. So, a population's percent of the of the whole country is not necessarily correlated to you know what a big deal it is. Agreed and that really comes down to my big thesis about America, the thing that we struggle with right now is we don't know what our values are.

That's right. They're not shared, they're not articulated, they're not reinforced and so it is fun [snorts] fun [snorts] fun [snorts] that we can watch all this play out in Europe, America and Japan. And how different each of those cultures are responding to this is really wild. And Japan is the I think Japan somehow gets a pass and it puts everything in stark relief for me that when you go to Japan, it is just a sea of Japanese people. It is just one race as far as the eye can see to the point where when you see a white person, it's like, "Oh!" Or if you see a black person, it's like, "Whoa!" Like it's so it's so it's so unexpected.

You come around the corner and there's and there's and there's reaction. Let's take that clip out of context. Tom's reaction when he sees black people. black people. black people. Yeah. Well, Yeah. Well, Yeah. Well, as long as long as we play the white people, I have the same reaction to them. Clip it. Clip it. Too late. The Here's the thing. You said it. We all heard you say it. That is the least of the things that I'm worried about being clipped out of context. I have said the most insane [ __ ] Uh as I will routinely remind myself, I'm easy to make look crazy.

Okay. So, that is true. Oh, yes. Okay. Oh, yes. I once had somebody write an article about me and my reading habits that made me sound like a lunatic. Okay. Okay. Okay. That was when I was like, "Oh, wow." Like out of context What were the reading habits that were so I never let a transitional moment go to waste. So, I will put headphones in immediately if I'm walking from one space to the next to make sure that I can always learn something. Okay. Which exactly.

But the way they wrote it, it sounds like the lunatic behavior of a madman. But how? Can you steal man their case? This is a while ago. But it's like somebody that can't ever have downtime. Like what are they running from? Like this is somebody that can't even have like 10 steps of peace. It was something like that. like that. like that. to live when I first moved back to New York after college, I lived in Bensonhurst which is where I grew up. So, to get to work it would be an hour commute and I would have a book bag with me with two books and I would read 80 books a day.

So, 40 pages of a book that's light, 40 pages of a book that's serious. That's a habit I continue to this day. As a result of this, I've read more books than anyone else I pretty much know and it's a great habit cuz it keeps my mind sharp. Yeah. That's really interesting and um the reading something that isn't serious is is is interesting. interesting. interesting. Uh I absolutely love fiction. This year I'm doing something different where I'm watching um Have you ever heard of One Piece?

No. So, for people that don't know, Michael actually is very legitimate in the comic space as a collector, as a reader. You've read so much. I thought you were trolling the first time that you said it, then I went to your house and realized very unironically unironically unironically Oh. um that you actually love it. It's an art form I'm so obsessed with but this year anyway, I uh have really for a whole host of reasons fallen in love intentionally with Japanese storytelling. storytelling. storytelling. Oh god.

And so, I'm watching all of One Piece. Weeaboo. Piece. Weeaboo. Piece. Weeaboo. So, dude, I'm telling you there's something very special about Japanese storytelling when you look at kids. The Western comic market gave up on kids. That's true. That's true. That's true. It's all for adults and since I want to impact kids impact kids impact kids So, what DC has started doing is they have manga size trade paperbacks for 10 bucks and they're flying off the shelves because that's something kids can afford. Kids can't afford how much is a floppy now?

300 350 or something crazy? Kids can't afford that. No. Also, there was an actual decision that was made in the '90s you I will trust you'll get us back on track I I It's a perfect transition to Michael's book so let's keep talking about books and fiction. Fantastic. We will use this as an entry. So, in the '90s because of what happened with Image Comics where you had the best artists in the world uh decide they were going to leave Marvel and DC, they were going to start their own thing.

That ended up causing just an absolute problem in the industry cuz everybody bought their first books as if these were all going to be collector's editions, poured millions and millions and millions of dollars in only to have it all crater because they bought so much, printed so much that they were all worthless. And so, that caused a whole bunch of shops to go under and then ultimately consolidated distribution down to only one distributor. Yep. So, I don't know what that was but yeah, the trailer. So, it was um really ended up having a massive impact on the industry.

So, it's like teetering and they go, "Are we going to keep making books for kids which is now exploratory? You have to regain the audience every time. Or do we just make books for the audience that we know we have?" have?" have?" And also IP. Yeah. But you can make IP relevant especially superhero stuff to kids all day every day. That's true. Yeah, but a lot of these comics just being cuz they want to keep the trademark of a character. Yeah? And so, they started making it just for adults literally by decree and then that has the impact that it has.

Japan, they had the same meeting for different reasons but they had the same meeting and Shonen Jump expressly said, "We're going to continue targeting kids." I think that's also one of the reasons they left the Comic Code Authority. So, the Comic Code Authority was founded in the '50s because there was a book by somebody named uh Fredric Wertham called Seduction of the Innocent. And the premise of his book is that these comics that were published uh you know in the early '50s were not appropriate for children.

He's regarded now as one of these great villains of history. Wertham was right because if you look at the comics of the time like Tales from the Crypt, I have a framed one in my living room. You'd have things like like like he had a chapter on the injury to the eye motif where people's eyes are being held open, there's like a dagger right near it. And if these are being read by five, six or seven-year-olds, there's one famous Tales from the Crypt cover or one EC Comics from Now Vain where it's a bunch of kids holding a coffin and it's their little friend in that coffin.

You know, when I was a kid, I'd pretend I was Superman, put like a towel around my back and jump around the couch. You see these kind of things with opium and needles. Like a certain point some kid's going to get a knife and and start joking around with their sister. So, you're going to lose an you're going to lose an eye like that. And they had something called the Comic Code Authority which is kind of self cuz and you know there were congressional hearings as a result of this.

this. this. Uh and the Gaines who was the publisher of EC Comics, there was a cover of a guy with an axe in one hand, a woman's head held by the hair in the other, her body on the floor and they're like, "You know, Mr. Gaines, do you think this is in bad taste?" And he goes, "It's fine cuz I'm not showing her neck." You you can even find this cover like EC Comics decapitated. Um so, this governed comic books for quite a long time especially because comic books were on the newsstand.

But as the newsstands fell away and comic book stores came about, you had fewer and fewer being like, "Why do we have this code if we are preaching to a uh adult audience?" Yeah. Yeah. It's wild, man. So, all right. Michael, tell us give us like a quick uh so, I did so the trailer doesn't have any words. Do you want to play the trailer knowing that most people aren't looking at their phones? Um but how did this start cuz the backstory for this, it's based on real people.

people. people. It's based on real people. I started writing this book like I said in 2000. There was this band from the '80s who combined punk and country and they would go to punk shows and have heehaw type jokes where it's just like, "Hey Tom, you know, I can't sleep. The couple of the hotel room next door to me were up all night eating candy bars." "Candy bars, Michael?" "Yeah, she kept yelling O Henry, O Henry." Now, that kind of Andy Kaufman stuff is stuff I like.

Uh and I there was a photo I saw them and I'm like, "Are these people joking? Like are they in on it?" They were in it. They're art school kids from Rhode Island School of Design. And they rode this ship pretty far. I don't want to spoil too much but they got signed the same day by the same guy as uh signed Bon Jovi and he said, "I signed a rock band and art band. I'm taking you both to number one." They're on MTV, they get nominated for certain awards.

And the story's about when you're young and you're trying to do something special and you're shooting for the stars and stars and stars and it going for that gold but not quite getting it. So, a lot of thing about new wave music is if you look at the surface, it's funny and chirpy and a beat but underneath, there's really this very dark and sinister message. So, what I love about graphic novels is it really allows storytelling in a vein that a novel or a movie doesn't allow.

Um and through this book uh the keyboard player did the animation for the film American Splendor. And Ted Hope who was the producer of American Splendor the movie sent out an email that says, "Harvey Pekar's in town with nothing to do. If you want to hang out with him, this is your chance." And I'm the only person who followed up on that email and as a result of this, Harvey wrote a book about me, Ego & Hubris which came out in 2006 which is quite a pretty penny now on eBay.

Point being just broadly speaking, take the meeting. Always have If you're going to have an opportunity to talk with someone who's accomplished, sit down and blow smoke up their ass, pick their brain, let them import download that knowledge to you and then work that extra hour for that lunch you missed. And people don't think in those terms. And the advice I always the advice I always give and I'll I'll say it till I'm blue in the face and people take it my advice. If you Let's say someone Suppose you want to be an author.

Go to a bookstore, look around at all those shitty, shitty books where you're like, "How did this guy get a book deal?" That could be you. You could be that terrible author where your friend's like, "How the F did this guy get a book deal?" And when you put in those terms, accomplishment means is much more in your grasp and that's what this story's about. Trying to accomplish something and maybe falling a little bit short. Now, I don't know if you're going to remember what your answer was but when we went out to dinner and we were talking about the book, I said, "What do you want people to feel when they read this?" Do you remember what your answer was?

was? was? Oh, man, I do. Oh. I want them to feel like they got punched in the gut. Yeah. It's It's because when you root so much of movies, the ugly chick does wants a prom date. You know how it's going to end. She's going to get the guy, right? But this is real life. And real life, you're you know the story, bunch of plucky kids, they're doing something special, that you know, they're going for the gold. You know how that story plays out in the movies.

That's not how the story plays out in real life. So, that sense of like, "Oh, crap, like let's turn this bus around." In a literal sense, there's the the bus gets wrecked in the in the book. That's something I think it's an important story for people also. And what I realized when I was writing this book, you know, 20 years ago, this story was my fear. Because when I was starting out wanting to be an author, I'm like, "What if I do everything right and I do something special, do something unique, and I have very little to show for it?" 20 years later, the experiment's been run and been disproven, but this is really kind of that's those anxieties of, you know, people wanting to do something special.

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. All right, so the book is called Unwanted. Um I'm going to be supporting this. So, you are on your way to your your 15K is your stretch goal. It's like 14,329. Is that what it says? Mhm. And we're almost there. So, you're almost there. Um so, I'm going to get you to 15K myself. So, no matter stickers. Nice. Okay, let's go. Guys, you can thank me later. Uh but if anybody uh is interested in uh graphic novels, now's your chance. It's a graphic novel written by uh living author that has written incredible books on the world, real life, like seeing things that a lot of people miss.

Accurate predictions that came true, calling shots. So, yeah. Uh so, yeah, the fact that you wrote something true story in a graphic novel format, man, is really exciting. I can't wait to read this. So, uh and I also want to see you do more of this kind of thing. thing. thing. I also think people are looking for ways to laugh and have a good time. I think the internet is so much oriented right now to have everyone a sense of perpetual despair and anguish that it's good to have something about hope and humor.

Now, you said at the end of this you want them to feel like they're punched in the gut. Yeah. How is that hope and humor? Because that Well, that's only the end. That's only the end. There's lots of Don't worry. It's fun along the Right up until I sock you. Yeah. It's going to be fun. fun. fun. That's kind of how I'm I don't want to spoil it, but like the real life you This must have happened with you in your career. Rugs get pulled. get pulled.

get pulled. And you you think you're there and then it's just like, "Holy crap." It's like it takes I mean, especially with with the you know, band, like things go dark very fast and very quickly. It's such a mercurial industry. Yeah. Yeah, I know. From what you've told me, it's a very fascinating story. Likewise, I don't want to ruin it. Um also, uh weird thing about this. So, long before I met Michael, um I became aware of the guy behind Rippa Studios. Eric July. Uh so, Eric B.

July, I think is what he goes by on social media. So, he was one of the first people that wokeness, as we would call it now, was infiltrating comics, which at the time I was trying to write comics. And I had a writer's room that I put together that was woke, but I didn't realize cuz I didn't know what that was. Oh, wow. And so, yeah. you. you. you. Uh I wouldn't say he red-pilled me. The experience red-pilled me and then, for whatever reason, he became one of the people that I was seeing a lot of content from.

And I was like, "Oh, this is really interesting. This guy's just a commentator and then one day decides he's actually going to stop being a commentator and start producing." Right. Which is really pretty incredible. Um how did you guys connect? So, Eric's an anarchist, also. Oh, sure. known him Yeah, I've known him for years. And what's really exciting about Rippaverse and is usually with these crowd-sourced books, you're going to have the Kickstarter and it resolves and then in a year you may get book or might not.

You know, these things never deliver. deliver. deliver. Eric's model is very different, which is have the book almost done. So, when people are paying and, you know, getting the goal, it's going to be in their hand guaranteed in a few short months. I think we're still shooting for for August. So, it's a very different model. model. model. Um and it's also kind of the internet at its best, which is creating opportunities for people to produce and let the chips fall where they may, as opposed to, you know, back in the day if DC, Marvel, Image, or Valiant, or whatever, and if those four doors are closed to you, you're SOL.

And the answer to woke comics isn't, in my opinion, or or or any woke art, isn't anti-woke art, it's good art. Yeah. It's It's where the Just devoid of any specific political leaning. Yeah, I know. I think that's basically sure. basically sure. basically sure. check out the QR code that's at the bottom. Ryan dropped the link into the chat. Um let's get back to the score. Yeah, UnwantedBook.com. Yeah, UnwantedBook.com. Yeah, UnwantedBook.com. UnwantedBook.com. Check it out, everybody. We have to talk about what Melania Trump Oh, boy.

her impromptu speech that nobody asked for. Fox News said they didn't even get any heads-up. Nobody knew what she was talking about. She said her piece and walked away. Some of the memorable quotes, "Now is time for Congress to act. Epstein was not alone. Several prominent male executives resigned from their powerful positions after this matter because it became widely politicized. Of course, this isn't about the guilt, but we still must work openly and transparently to uncover the truth. I call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimized by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centered around the survivors." A lot of people are calling this the Streisand effect because it gave heat to the It gave the uh What's that word?

It gave attention to Daily Beast and their reporting that had Jeffrey Epstein bragging about his close relationship with Trump and the First Lady. Um apparently we're doing bad in Iraq cuz we're bringing the Epstein files back. So, we need to cover up from something else. Man, you know that things are not going the way that you expected when uh the thing that you did to quiet people on the Epstein files, you need to bring the Epstein files back to quiet people on that. Uh pretty hilarious.

Yeah, this is weird. This came out of nowhere for me. So, um the way that she talked, did you see the video? No. The way that she talked was as if this big thing had just broke. It came out, okay, enough is enough. Uh people keep trying to malign me and say that uh my husband was introduced to me by uh Epstein, that I'm one of Epstein's victims. I'm not a victim of Epstein. He did not introduce me to my husband. This has to stop right now.

And so, it was weird. And the thing that I wondered was like, like, like, "Does your husband know you're doing this?" Like, he's been trying to like get people off this thing forever and now all of a sudden you're coming out and doing it. So, um I've said many times that the one person who can get me to do something against my own interests is my wife. And so, did that happen here? Like, is she just behind the scenes so unrelenting, "I cannot tolerate the way that people are talking about me online.

This is going to be my legacy. I don't want this." Like, "You got to let me talk about it." And he's finally like, "Jesus Christ, okay, fine. Like, go do it. I'm not going to mention it. I'm not even going to talk about it." Like, "But if you need to do this, go do this." Or is this strategy where it's like something's about to break and so you need to get ahead of this and like just try to basically plant like this is all [ __ ] so when this thing comes out that the air is already deflated out of the tire?" I don't know.

Yeah, Michael, what's your whole response to this Epstein thing? Is Is anything going to drop imminently though? That's People are saying, but it's all rumor. Nobody knows of anything new. Yeah, I don't see So, Melania, people might not realize this. During 2016, when the Access Hollywood tape broke and Trump went on camera and I think one of the only times apologized, she was the one who came up with the line that this was locker room talk. So, she's a lot more canny than people appreciate. Double-check me on that, but I I'm I I'm almost certain that's the case.

Um and she wore to the debate something that was called a [ __ ] bow, which is kind of ironic that the knot that was that was tied. I'm going to need to see that. The the [ __ ] bow? Yeah, I've never heard of this. Uh [ __ ] bow Melania debate. Pull this up. I spend way too much time on tinfoil hat. Uh let me search on Twitter so I don't know if you maybe on Google. Anyway, um Anyway, um Anyway, um it's Melania, I think, is very composed and poised.

So, it seems unlikely to me that she would just snap and be like, "Enough is enough." Especially because it has slowed down. Like, I don't think people are going after her in recent times after this. [ __ ] bow. Yeah. Really? That's what you That's what you're going to call that? I don't know. Well, she didn't name it. There's different types of knots. You let down the You let down the It's like, "Listen, I like to see vagina everywhere I can." That's think it's named after like a cat's hands.

hands. hands. That more so. etymology? I think that's where it comes from. It's not about a vagina. Oh, my god. god. god. Get your mind What? I'm serious. What do you mean? We We started this conversation based on a certain statement that Trump made about grabbing them in the Right, but that term wasn't originated by her. Yeah, I get that. And I'm sure the term wasn't a reference to that. to that. to that. she's so she is so shrewd that she's like, "I'm going to wear this thing commonly referred to as a [ __ ] bow when I could have done a thousand other knots as a comment on this whole situation?" Yes.

Damn. All right, you've got her mapped differently than me. And it And it resembles the bows tied around the cats' necks. Got it. That makes a lot more sense. Okay? Okay. Hey, It could be a coincidence. It could be a coincidence. Maybe she said that on purpose. But the point is the thing the locker room talk, please look that up because that Um it's it's it's It is odd that she would say this. Either with or without his permission, it it it's it doesn't feel It feels out of character for her.

Um it It's the same thing with with just wedding ring. So, there was one time she wasn't wearing her wedding ring and she's like, "Oops, I forgot it. I was washing dishes." Then she didn't wear it again after it became a huge thing. And I know other people like, "Something's up with this broad." And it turned out she was pregnant. When you're pregnant, you can't wear that wedding ring. Your hands are swollen. So, when something this happens, it always seems to me there's a piece of the puzzle that we're not seeing.

not seeing. not seeing. Yeah. Yeah, I know that makes sense. out of character for completely. Yeah, it's certainly out of character for the administration. According to Michael Cohen's testimony, locker room talk defense was Melania's idea. Wow. Yeah. Mhm. I'm just [clears throat] worse Yeah, sworn under oath. Let's go. They How do you rate the handling of Trump administration with Epstein files and everything? and everything? and everything? I It is so So, here's the thing. I I would talked about this on I was talking Let's go.

I talked about it on Rogan. I It What's the the thing that I can't wrap my head around is a lot of people who are like Epstein files smoking gun also think that every Democrat in the house spontaneously started caring about hurting children. Like they have these two contradictory ideas in their head simultaneously. Um I think that think that think that if there was anything really incriminating there, it would have been scrubbed a long time ago. I think a lot of things that people are reading to it aren't things that are necessarily there.

Um there. Um there. Um and I I'm hesitant that what is going to be released to the public is going to be enough to do this kind of cataclysmic damage that people seem to be hoping for. I think that the way that people are running with it in their minds is way more cataclysmic than anything that's going to come out. Right. So, the thing that's interesting though is that you have seen a much bigger response from other countries where it's like merely being in it, you're toast.

Like that's the end of your tenure and we haven't had that same response in the US. And I think the one that probably stands out for a lot of people is Mr. Counter Fitzgerald. Um why am I blanking on his name? E-commerce secretary or something. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Howard Lutnick. Yeah. So, that one is like like like like you obviously lied and got caught in that lie and yet there you are. Now, they've clearly like sidelined him and we don't hear from him very much anymore.

anymore. anymore. didn't before, either. Commerce secretary is not a big deal. He was pretty hot for a minute. Like yeah, at the beginning. He was given some banger interviews. Oh, that's fair. See, yeah. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So, um but since then and you want to talk about a time where the economy is like on the ropes right now, we'd I would have expected to hear from him, but Besson eats up all of the time um that I think would have been and was at the beginning of the administration shared between the two of them.

So, I think anyway, conspiracy theory that they're hiding him a bit. Um so, there is something that does feel more insular here in the US that people are getting away with something here that they didn't get away with elsewhere. I think the thing that's indisputable about the Epstein files is that powerful elites powerful elites powerful elites work together and don't care about how it looks to the layman. And the reason for that is a lot of these people aren't even accused of doing anything with Epstein, but what was clearly the case is that they were trying to become friends with him or were friends with him even after his arrest and all these things came out.

So, I think that shows the level of amorality that were to the I I I There's somebody Michael Alig who was one of the club kids and he ended up killing someone and he went to jail. Oh, wait. I know this story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. of his paintings cuz I saw it in a store and it looked like it said malice, but it was M. Alig and whatever. My mom got it for my birthday. I visited him in jail. Point being, he was a murderer. He had jobs lined up for him when he was leaving jail.

Mhm. So, it's the kind of thing where like, you know, if you're an you're someone I like you're just You get a blank check to do whatever you want. It's really kind of I've always said and when I say this, no one disagrees, Hillary Clinton will always have more in common with Donald Trump than with some janitor who always voted Democrat his entire life. entire life. entire life. Yeah, for sure. And when you put it like that, no one's like Everyone's like, "Of course. It's a no-brainer." Like George Carlin says it's a big club and you ain't in it.

Mhm. That's Yeah, it's really interesting. Because I've gotten wealthy, I have found myself in rooms that feel just extraordinarily foreign to me where it's like, "Oh, there's a way of interfacing with the world that I just just just do not I'm I haven't been I think the brain forms in certain ways when you're young that it's just never going to in adulthood. And so, the way that I grew up was sort of middle class to lower middle class. And so, forever and a day the way that my brain interprets the world is from a world where my neighbors had cows.

I didn't, but my neighbors did. So, it's like to then find myself in these sort of high-powered like New Yorky lawyer plugged in like I do You're also new money. Yes. Yes. Yes. trash to them. Yes, to certainly to an East Coast mentality, for sure. So, but that whole space just feels weird. You can just feel that there's a different way of going about the world Because they've been They've been groomed and bred to this world. You're like a protein bar guy. Like, "Oh, that's cute." You know what I mean?

Like in their mindset. Yeah, of course. Yeah, there's also I just from the um networking side of things. Even from a new money like West Coast guy, I'm still bad at it. So, what do you mean? Really? Yeah. Yeah. Epically. I'm surprised that you find that surprising. I I Please continue. Go on. I'll I'll I'll do the calm noise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That uh That uh That uh You want to say that? Say more. My audience is probably going to be bored to tears cuz they've heard this so many times, but I do not have whatever that genetic impulse is to seek outward.

I do not do. So, as soon as the camera stop rolling, I'm going to turn inward and um like if I'm having trouble falling asleep I have a cue phrase that I use. Okay. Okay. Okay. And it will just set my imagination running and then I'll be able to fall asleep. asleep. asleep. going to pass out right now if I say it? doesn't work like that. But if I um am If I have free time, I don't take out my phone. I say the same phrase and that's like whatever problem I'm trying to solve in Kaizen, I just set myself to that and then I'll collapse inside of that.

that. that. Okay. Uh and so, the right way to mentally map me is as a writer, not as an entrepreneur. Okay. So, So, So, that's just I will go inside my own imagination, explore ideas, or solve problems. problems. problems. are someone who is interested in people. You're interested in ideas. So, I would think at an event, you would find that one person and glom onto them. That's my technique. technique. technique. what happens. what happens. what happens. Yeah, that's my technique. That's a terrible terrible terrible networking strategy.

But then, the real question is how often do I find myself in those rooms? And the answer would be virtually never. I only go to those rooms if I have an escape hatch. I don't even think about that. I just never go to those rooms. It is literally my producer's biggest pain point. If the camera were on him, they will see him nodding. Is that getting guests on the show becomes increasingly difficult cuz I just don't ever make time for people. Oh, wow. Well, also, you know, they they confide in me how difficult you are off camera.

camera. camera. There's that. Yeah. I'm I am a raging tyrant. You guys, it'll come out one day. Don't worry. You're a modern-day Amy Klobuchar. Exactly. Nice. Thank you. All right. Moving on to this China hack. A hacker group called by named by the name of Flaming China reached the China National Supercomputing Center and ex- exfiltrated uh exfiltrated uh exfiltrated uh exfiltrated up to 10 beta uh beta bytes beta bytes beta bi- Yes, I never even heard of like that many bytes before. word today. Yeah. Yeah.

It It is massive. To give you an idea, uh the entire Library of Congress is less than 1 petabyte. So, this is like some egregious number more than what you would find if you downloaded all of that. It's absolutely massive. This really is China's worst nightmare and it's now on sale on Telegram. A single hacker may have just pulled off what is the largest data theft in Chinese history. So, the 10 petabytes that we're talking about of data that they snatched is now for sale to the highest bidder on the dark web.

So, the alleged target was Chinese National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin and it's a centralized hub that provides computing infrastructure to more than 6,000 clients across China, including advanced science and defense agencies. The hacker operating under the alias Flaming China posted a sample of the database on Telegram in early February claiming it contained over 10 petabytes of sensitive information. All kinds of crazy stuff. You guys have seen the photos. It's like secret aircraft and airflow dynamics and all this stuff. The data allegedly includes classified defense documents, missile schematics, technical files, animated simulations of defense technology, and research spanning aerospace engineering, bioinformatics, and fusion simulation.

Because some of the data center's 6,000 clients rely entirely on China's National Supercomputing Center rather than maintaining their own supercomputing infrastructure, a single network breach like this effectively compromised thousands of downstream organizations in China simultaneously. And the crazy part is that the hacker used a method that wasn't even like sophisticated. This wasn't bleeding edge super super super exploit, you know, that you would expect him to have worked really hard on. The hacker just claimed to gain entry simply through a compromised VPN domain and then he deployed a botnet that extracted the data slowly over 6 months completely undetected.

And the hacker is now offering a limited preview for a few thousand dollars if you want to see it. And if you want to buy the whole thing, you can do so for hundreds of thousands payable in cryptocurrency. Just to keep giving crypto a bad name. A good name. I suppose. Uh cybersecurity researchers say uh that only nation-state intelligence agencies would realistically have the capacity to deal with a data set of this size. Uh but obviously, it's pretty bad. Now, this could still be a hoax.

I've tried to find anywhere that's saying that this isn't real. isn't real. isn't real. Um but so far, everybody's saying that it the data looks real. So, we'll see over time. You just pay for it and you get like 50 billion copies of goatse. Dude. Oh god. Talk about a reference I have thankfully not thought of in a very long time. long time. long time. How are you going to Like if if someone bought this, how are they going to deliver it? Like how many memory sticks is that?

Like I like literally, what is the mechanism? What are they going to email it to me? Like this is going to be Google Drive link? it. it. it. Google Drive link? Like literally, how do you deliver it? This attachment is too large. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you would you would have to curry over hard drives or something. Yeah, but how many? For 10 petabytes, um you can store a lot. Like we have hundreds of terabytes here as a company and it it would fit on this desk.

So, it's not it's a lot. But that that courier is also leaving a trail. Yes. So, I'm saying delivery is also going to be relevant. Yeah, some of the logistics I don't know. You could also probably you wouldn't use email, but you might be able to digitally uh I mean he digitally downloaded it. So, it takes time. If if if his system is as simple as he claims, let's let's go with that for the time being, there's no way that the US and other governments haven't done this.

Well, so if you had said that a week ago, I would say it's probably not true just because the volume of things you have to try to attack can often be mind-numbing. So, um things like this is zero-day exploits, it's entirely possible this has been out there for a long time and just the sheer volume of these things that you check you couldn't find. But the AI, the Claude Mythos, has found over a thousand I think exploits in like the most common software out there. So, it's just finding them left, right, and center.

I saw an article where where people were sending AI to hack systems and they were finding them all over the place and it's like, "Okay, what do we do now?" Because this is this is a genie out the bottle. Yeah, so they launched in they're holding Mythos back and instead they've launched Glass Wing. Okay. So, they're basically going to use the the abilities to use it as like a a pen tester to go in against all these software and then help them plug all the holes.

So, at least they'll get to the point where it's like, "Okay, all this super common software, once it's battle-tested by Mythos, then we'll launch it." Because those guys will have repaired it and then we're at least one level higher. But it shows that one, Claude leaked their own code. Now, how much of it got out? Would they be able to sort of reverse engineer this? But if you think about like Deep Seek has traditionally only been 3 to 6 months behind whatever the bleeding edge model is.

So, it's very possible that you're 18 months from an open-source version of Mythos that's that powerful at hacking. That's going to get wild fast. Yeah. Yesterday Scott Bessent and the Federal Pow the Federal Chair Jerome Powell summoned Wall Street leaders to actually have an urgent meeting to talk about this very thing. We need to figure out our cybersecurity vulnerability. That's what my zoology hat on again. Is it Glass Wing or is it Glass Wing? Because a Glass Wing is a type of insect, which is really cool.

And I are they naming it after the insect or are they blowing that opportunity? opportunity? opportunity? It's a great question. So, it It's not a great It's a terrible question. No, no, no, it's actually very interesting cuz I was like, "Man, they're really highlighting the fragility of all this." And so I couldn't understand why they were doing Glass Wing one word and they have what looks like an insect wing. Oh, okay. Pull it up. that's that's that's that's exactly what this is. Glass Wing beetle? I don't know.

It's a butterfly or this is a butterfly relative. Or they they're predators if my if I'm remembering correctly. remembering correctly. remembering correctly. Yeah, those are types of butterflies. Now, that's not what their logo looks like at all. Pull pull up a lacewing. Now, again, a little bit of trivia here for the Michael Malice fans in the house. house. house. So, Michael Malice at his house, I know because I've seen it. As As As uh it looks more like one of those wings. Yes, absolutely. Uh he has a lot of plants.

That's true. And when you ask him the um organizing principle of the plants, it is things that look like they are in pain. That's my favorite type of plant. I I send you some photos of plants that look like No, man, I find your interest in succulents and uh the other sort of deserty pain-induced plants very interesting. It's it's it's very fun to look like plants who are cenobites who are being tortured in some kind Yeah, that is literally what your garden looks like. Look up um Phil McCracken cactus.

It's a mutation of a cactus. That's the one I sent you and it looks like it's suffering. suffering. suffering. Let's see this. You're you're going to want to pull Yep, there we go. It looks like it's suffering. I hate cactuses. Hate. Why? Why? Why? Because they are obviously designed to repel repel repel Does that look like it's in pain? Yes. And it looks like it would put me in pain. It would. Yeah. Why So, you hate them why? them why? them why? No, I like soft, fluffy.

Like if I'm going to have plants, like a a bougainvillea, bougainvillea, bougainvillea, that's my kind of plant. [sighs] [sighs] [sighs] All right. Okay. Yes. Um our next topic is something that I think you would enjoy uh Mr. Malice. It is a California worker burned down an entire warehouse cuz they weren't paying him enough. Is this the definition of anarchy? Oh, man. No. I'll be so curious to know if you and I end up on the same page or if we argue about this one. This one riles me up big time.

Why why is it I I think it's just one data point. That's why I'm not getting riled up about it. about it. about it. Yeah, so we we are very very far apart from each other on this. So, let me give you guys all a breakdown if you don't know about it. Um so, we just got a preview of our own modern French Revolution. From where I'm sitting, this is the part I expect us to argue about, but this guy filmed himself burning down a 1.2 million square foot distribution center in California while saying on camera, "All you had to do was pay us enough to live." So, he's just going around lighting lighting lighting it all on fire.

on fire. on fire. This building, a massive Kimberly-Clark distribution center, was burned to the ground. The blaze escalated to a six-alarm fire within minutes. Around 175 firefighters from over a dozen agencies battled it through the night, but it was lost. Just completely to the ground. 29-year-old Khamel uh Abdul Kareem filmed himself setting the fire and posted it to Instagram, which I still can't believe is true, but he did. Um you can call this a self-purchased one-way ticket to prison. This kid is going away. He walked through the warehouse lighting a whole bunch of stuff on fire with a lighter.

You guys got to see it for yourselves and hear him for yourself. Let's play the clip. This is wild. Remember, he posted this himself. So, this is him showing the warehouse as he's lighting the first bit. paid us enough to [ __ ] live. You know, we may not get paid enough to [ __ ] live. But these [ __ ] dirt cheap. So, he just showed a lighter. All you had to do was pay us enough to live. All you had to do was pay us enough to [ __ ] live.

Looking at all the different things that he's already lit on fire. All you had to do was pay us enough to live. All right. So, he worked for NFI Industries, which is the third-party logistics contractor running uh the warehouse. And from what I can find, NFI pays warehouse workers about $18 an hour, which is about $37,000 a year. The bad news is that the average one-bedroom apartment in Ontario runs $2,000 a month. No, no, no. Okay. Ontario, California. Oh, sorry. Okay. Now, the problem is that when you have a catastrophically K-shaped economy, you're going to run into problems.

And every elite class in history has had to learn the hard way that people will only put up with so much. That's true. So, take the infamous French Revolution that saw a whole lot of people get separated from their heads. heads. heads. In 1789, French peasants were spending up to 90% of their income on bread. Harvests had failed, prices had spiked, the gap between what labor could produce and what labor could afford for themselves became absolutely obscene, which is exactly what we're starting to see now [clears throat] and here in the US.

And the problem is that revolutions are a nightmare for all involved. People getting real romantic. This guy's real romantic about the idea of starting a revolution. And the guillotine never stops with the first enemy. The first to be guillotined were the the aristocracy, for sure, but ultimately the French Revolution consumed lawyers, journalists, priests, merchants. Uh my favorite Yeah, not to mention. Uh Pol Pot once killed people just for having glasses. That's always a a fun reminder of these types of revolutions. Robespierre, the man who built the Reign of Terror, was executed by the same machine that he had been feeding for months.

The movement that started with a genuine, justified cry for economic suffering ended up collapsing into a bloodbath that killed tens of thousands of French nobility. And then into that chaos is exactly where Napoleon steps, how he comes to power. He doesn't try to calm everybody down, by the way. He tries to weaponize them. He understood that once people get a taste for blood, you're not going to be able to soothe them. So, your job is to point them at something else, which is my exact fear here in the US.

So, he took Napoleon all that raw, blood-drunk revolutionary energy, all that rage with nowhere left to go, and he pointed it at Europe. And France spent the next two decades invading its neighbors and some people quite far away, looting their treasuries, burning their cities, conscripting uh the young men. And somewhere between three and six million people ended up dying. The working class men who stormed the Bastille dreaming of bread and dignity ended up dying in Russian snowfields so that one man could be the emperor. Now, if Americans let their rage turn into something useless, it will all be for naught.

Now, we have a a a very realistic picture of what's happening with the economy right now and how to fix it. But emotions are not going to be the thing that get the job done. And this is like my endless cry to people is to understand, yes, there is a very toxic K-shaped economy. Yes, this is a real thing. And yes, if you keep pushing people in that direction, you will find they will push back. Because if people can't make ends meet and things keep getting more expensive and billionaires keep getting wealthier, people will revolt.

It this is a tale as old as time. There is a reason that countries do not stay at a debt-to-GDP ratio more than 1. uh 130% for more than roughly 18 months. Japan being the only exception. And the reason they don't is things just become intolerable. We have uh just an algorithm running in our minds that just do not allow us to tolerate that kind of toxic inequality. And the problem with something like this is by burning this warehouse down, he doesn't end up hurting the company that almost certainly has insurance.

What he ends up hurting is all the people that were requiring the job there to make the money to live. And so now he ends up [ __ ] over the very people he thinks he's helping because he does not understand the economy. And so this is where I always derail and I feel like I'm screaming into a void and it really does make me think I don't know that there's a way to snap people out of it. Who wrote that stuff on the teleprompter? Was that you?

Me. For naught n a u g h t. Okay. I'm just sorry that's triggered my You you really are What was it? Oh God, you gave me the way. I'm going to uh uh uh Grock, please explain to him what people heard read perfectly in their minds. That's why I was confused. So I'll let you argue with Grock. I also don't think I think I I I history does Mark Twain said history doesn't repeat it rhymes. Yeah. Um I really hate the idea that like Trump for example people hate Trump Trump's Hitler cuz he's a historian dictator.

I'm like can't he be Mussolini? Can he be Franco? No, everything and right now every international conflict is both simultaneously the Iraq war and the Vietnam war and World War right? Not everything is the French Revolution. Uh this isn't even the Arab Spring. So I think this kind of thing happens you and I discussed earlier all the time. No one's popping off as a result of this and I think America historically other than the very first revolution we haven't the Civil War would be I guess another example.

We we're not a revolution friendly revolution friendly revolution friendly country. What do you think stops it? I don't know. That's a great question but I don't think America is the kind of country where I think there's enough flexibility maybe in our politics that if things we talked about this before we were recording the benefits army which is under Herbert Hoover there are the all these veterans who were like we can't put food on the table give us our pensions or whatever benefits now they send in the tanks and they kind of take care of them in a very nefarious way.

Point being I I think what would happen is if you did have this remember occupy? You know there was this huge movement Obama used it very effectively and it kind of those people all vanished. So when you have this kind of fomenting underground and calls to violence someone in our system or the media will exploit it or redirect it historically speaking. Okay. So let me I'm going to make my best pitch to you. Uh and we'll see how far I get and maybe you'll uh enlighten me and I will finally see the path forward but And also I I also want to say I am far more comfortable with revolution than you are.

So I'm not even saying that it's as bad as you would say it is. Right for sure. So here's my take. All of that made sense before and if you don't understand the the cause and effect mechanism in the economy that is breaking right now that is never broken historically not during the Civil War not any other time uh but it is breaking now and that's why we have a problem and the reason that the Occupy movement for instance went away was because the in fact making it go away is the reason that we have a problem now that we're not going to be able to solve and that thing is money printing.

Okay. So what we did was we said oh yeah people are pissed because the banks got bailed out but bailing out the banks actually does work but it only works for so long and when the economy is fine then people are fine. Sure. What I'm saying is the economy is reaching a breaking point. It is in the next 10 years it will get to the point where America will functionally default. It doesn't matter if they're going to claim default or not. that mean? So they will have to inflate the currency or actually just say we're not paying you back.

Okay, sure. And the second you say we're not paying you back you either the one thing that they could try is if we isolate ourselves enough we could say we're just not paying back all the foreign people. [ __ ] you guys. Right. Right. Right. And we could try that uh but most likely there will be some level of the Americans that are investing in the American economy are going to get hurt because they're going to say either we're only paying back 60 cents on the dollar or whatever.

And that will be devastating. That will end the dollar as reserve currency status. That will force people to go into a level of austerity that we we have not no one living now in America has seen this kind of austerity. And so all of that at a time where the country is so politically divided so tribalistic you really are fighting over a smaller pie. And when you're fighting over a smaller pie and one half is like you're going to give all my money to the trans and the other half is like you're going to give all my money to the billionaires they are going to fight.

But you're a you're taking it as a given that the American tribalism will continue. And there have been several times in history where things got bad and they became this huge national consensus 1980 1984 1932 1972. So even though it seems impossible now that everyone's going to come together have this kind of 6040 election or 6040 perspective it would have looked impossible for Trump to be elected president. So it's not at all a given that if [ __ ] hits the or Bush George W Bush who lost the popular vote to Al Gore and got 90% approval ratings in the wake of 9/11 which he obviously squandered.

Point being it's not at all a given that if [ __ ] hits the fan that this division is going to be maintained cuz what you here's one example you could have the Democrats being like we're not talking about the trans stuff as they have done in recent times and become this kind of economic we're going to be the party of of jobs and putting food on the table the Republicans ruined this and we're not talking the culture war. We could talk about that in four years.

So if what you're saying is that they will actually solve the underlying mechanism then I would say okay maybe but the only path forward because we're what I don't think people realize and the part that's really hard to get people on board with is what I'm saying is is is money has physics economy has physics. Correct. We're now at the end of the the physics. So the next thing is it does break. It's not like a oh maybe it breaks. It does break and so now it becomes a question of given that barring a a a um a historic growth rate coming from AI which is possible but barring that a historic thing you're in a position where in the next 10 years the self-reinforcing thing that will happen with the debt because of the interest will get to the point where America won't be like should we default?

It will default. So it will either soft default by hyper-inflating the currency or it will hard default by just saying we're not paying back the debt. So when I am And either is a catastrophe. catastrophe. catastrophe. When I'm in a field where I don't know the lay of the land I can only go by what historically I've seen. In the 1970s Barry Goldwater who was the Republican candidate for president in 1964 and lost in a huge landslide wrote a book called The Coming Breakpoint. And the point is we cannot afford our debt any longer any longer any longer and America is going to collapse blah blah blah blah.

In 1980 Reagan comes in and the debt explodes right? So his prophecy didn't come true. There's a book called The Idea of Decline of Western History by Arthur Herman which is one of the top 10 books I've ever read and he goes every generation it's it's a classic catastrophe. I so when I hear things like this that like in 10 years it's going to all going to end this is the kind of thing where we're told every in my what I'm hearing possibly incorrectly cuz I don't have the information every 10 years we're told there's 10 years left of oil and then things then things then things end up not happening that way.

So this is such a bold prediction that it is hard for me although I could be driving off a cliff to to kind of take it at face value cuz here's the other thing in when I was in college in the 90s I was an intern at the Cato Institute Institute and they had a whole project saying social security is going to go bankrupt by 2010 and then old people won't have money. I don't even know what they did but that did not end up happening.

Yeah. So the And Obamacare's going to collapse the health care system and we're going to have socialized health care and this is going to be by design. We heard this in 2010 that didn't end up happening too. It is not a good thing Obamacare but we do not have socialized health care yet. Yeah. So I think you're approaching the problem in the exact right way which is if I don't know the field in general let me look at historical examples it rhymes it doesn't repeat but I think that's the right way to do it.

And so the good news is from the this is a knowable thing not that your outcome will come true but um when you look at those moments and you just think about the money supply you look at the debt load those guys were um I don't know if they were lying or if they didn't understand the economy but uh uh uh the reality is that what I'm doing is not saying oh the levees are going to break I'm saying the water level is now like dripping over the edge because it's gotten that high.

And all I'm saying is at the rate that we're going now the water level is going to keep rising and so physics tell you the water will spill over. over. over. Sure. And because we're at the physics level now I'm just like well there are things you can do to drain the water. And so if you start draining the water reducing the debt this won't happen. Right. I'm just saying I don't see the political will to stop that. Okay. I got you. when you've got the um you've got the Democrats the Democrats the Democrats uh are spending money left right and center.

You've got the Republicans spending money left right and center. Sure. And so if either party goes hey we're going to Margaret Thatcher this we're going to go into austerity. It is what it is. You guys can complain as much you want but we are going to do it because honestly if they just balance the budget we don't have any more problems. Or or even just decrease significantly the the deficit. Yeah. The deficit probably um that might even be harder because we can get by with the deficit where it is right now but you've got to stop making the deficit worse.

So if like a little bit of water is dribbling over into the danger zone and you say we're we're going to make sure that the water level doesn't go up anymore then I'm like okay great. So this is something that I think everyone in the audience is going to think I'm completely insane and I think you will not think I'm insane. Historically speaking other countries, it is leftist parties that are in a position to put these austerity measures in, right? Because in the same way as Nixon in China, Nixon, you know, got elected to the Senate by calling his political opponent the pink lady, Helen Gahagan Douglas, calling her basically a communist.

Uh he had his bonafides. Uh he took down Alger Hiss. Uh found that he was a communist spy within the State Department, I believe. So for him to go to China and and toast Mao, if it was anyone to the left, they would be destroyed cuz you're soft on communism. No one's going to call accuse Nixon of being soft on communism. Reagan and Thatcher did the same thing with Gorbachev where it's like they're on the right wing of the right wing party. There was no one to outflank them and say you're not hard enough against communism.

So when leftists get into office and this austerity thing happen This happened in Canada, I think, with Trudeau's dad. He did it uh back in the day. They are often in a position to implement these austerity measures and sell it to their people. Uh we saw this happen in the '90s where Bill Clinton didn't want to balance the budget, but he did balance the budget. He was forced to do it. So there is a And I know looking at the Democratic Party now, this sounds like I've completely lost my mind.

It just sounds unlikely. It is Right. Right. Right. Your argumentation is very logical. It I completely agree it sounds unlikely, but at the same time when things are there's self-preservation and there's what you want to do to further your party's control on power. So I the people have these two People on the right have these two completely contradictory views of the Democratic Party and people on the left about the Republican Party, which is one is they're completely ideologues and they will destroy the country. They don't care.

And also they're completely soulless and corrupt and will do or say anything to maintain their hold on power. These are not You can't be both. And I think it is there's wings of one and wings of the other. But I think this wing, the corporate hack wing, is a lot stronger than the Democratic Party than people realize. Uh the Republicans didn't shut the squad up. That was Pelosi. It wasn't the Republicans to stop Bernie Sanders. That was the Biden machine and the Hillary machine. So that wing of the Democratic Party is quite strong and they're a lot more uh attuned to business interests than one would think given the rhetoric.

Yeah, I mean I still don't see I don't argue a single fact of that. I still don't see anybody that's actually going to implement austerity measures and history tells us that every empire that has found themselves in the position that we're in right now uh they don't make it and they do implode and they lose their status either by war. So this is what is what happened to the UK and they ended up having to hand the baton to us. Sure. Uh so that would look like us handing the baton to China.

Um and given that we're flirting with World War right now, like there's a very logical conclusion to be drawn. America's overextended. overextended. overextended. That's true. That's true. That's true. try to fight this crazy war on like a Brazilian fronts and then we just find ourselves we've got so much debt that we don't like have some spectacular supernova implosion. It's just like the UK. We just have to retreat back to our sphere of influence. We do what we can. Right. We get out of the rest of the world and world and world and in my opinion.

from there I I don't think there's any other option. And then from there we lose power because the rest of the world, somebody else, probably gold for now, is going to take over the being the reserve currency, which means that we can't deficit spend anymore. Uh there will be very little to no appetite for our debt. And so at that point you're forced into those fiscal measures. So I am not predicting uh a crazy like everybody's dying thing. I'm saying that either we'll have a revolution, civil war, or the war that we're already in just continues to escalate to the point where at the end of it we're so fatigued and so broke the world just looks completely different.

couldn't you have an FDR kind of thing? Uh well, from what I know about FDR, FDR needed the ability to print print print and we don't have that ability anymore. ability anymore. ability anymore. Okay, I that's your also cuz the people don't want the money cuz we're not going to be able to sell our dollars cuz no one's going to want to invest No one will buy the debt. I I think at a cer- I I don't think we're anywhere close to the point where the American dollar is something that is regarded as a bad investment.

investment. investment. Um Um Um Yeah, that that's what I'm saying mathematically just isn't true. So you are right now, if you don't grow, in 10 years it would be economic suicide. Again, this assumes static. Right. But 10 years from now, static, it would be suicide to invest in the US dollar. Okay. We'll see where we are in 10 years because this assumes nobody adjusts. Uh but right now nobody is adjusting. In fact, they're going in the wrong direction. We're stacking debt again now faster. I I'm opposed to government completely.

I also just think that America is a lot smarter and stronger than that. And I think 10 years to say we're going to the dollar's the dollar's the dollar's not be a stable source of investment. It's hard for me to see that even if it's true. Yeah, I mean I I search and search and search for the mechanism and right now given current politicians' behaviors, there is only one and that's growth. Correct. growth. Correct. growth. Correct. And right now staring at a 0.5% growth in GDP when we were expecting a 2.2, which was already a catastrophic decline and we're at war, sort of cease-fire-y, but we'll see.

Um that's where I'm like and none of these are good signs. And at the moment there's no restraint there's no appetite for restraint of any kind in Washington on the budget. I agree with that completely. that completely. that completely. So you have a base assumption that says we will course correct. We have course corrected every time before. You, Michael Malice, are not denying that a course correction will be required. You're just You're just You're just there will be some kind of There will be I'm not supremely confident.

I'm saying there will be some kind of course correction. Uh and I'm I'm just saying things can go bad without going revolution catastrophe. revolution catastrophe. revolution catastrophe. Um sure. It It is It does not violate the laws of physics for that to happen. If you consider World War II the like okay we made it out. I don't consider World War II. I know I that's that's catastrophe. One more time, other than Japan every time a country has spent more than 18 months at over 130 debt to GDP and Japan that whole setup is so unique and we do not match it.

Uh it's ended in bloodshed every time. All right. We got to move on. We got to get One more topic before we go. Super chat and one more time. Uh Canada just dropped a new acronym. This is I love that you think we have to cover this. We have to. I know I know. Yeah, we have to. Deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. This is a port. Deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. guess what that stands for? Can I look it up? I tried.

I actually Let me see if I can do it. Okay, let's see if I can do it. Um Okay. MM Hold on. Let's start from the beginning. We know what the end is. Queer, questioning, intersex, asexual. knew one of the Qs. I didn't know what the second one was. It's It's queer and questioning. Yeah, I knew queer. I didn't know questioning. questioning. questioning. Um LGBT we all know. 2S is two-spirit, which is the native So MM Is that an I in there? Yeah. MMIWG Yeah. MMIWG Yeah.

MMIWG Yes. Yes. Yes. Is it men who have sex with men? Is that the MM? the MM? the MM? That No, no. Cuz you would need a W. But you already know it though. Cuz I know what it is now. Don't tell us. Is each of the Ms a different thing? of Is each of the Ms a different thing? No, no, no. No, it's kind of the same thing. What do you mean? So in most of these these these Wait, don't give it away yet. Well, I was just going to say a couple of these letters are all in the same word.

They just just just I'm asking. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But just to be clear though, they are all different words. Yeah. They are part of a phrase. Trust me, I know what they are. I feel like we should clarify that it's not just sexual identity though. Oh. Give this [ __ ] away. You're very bad at this game, Ryan. Ryan is terrible at this game because part of the punchline is going to be that those first letters are it's heartbreaking. Oh my god, I can't believe it exists.

But like that it's getting mixed together with like sexual identification. identification. identification. G? Give me the G. Girls. y'all guess cuz I threw it up. The G is girls. Women, men You know men men isn't in there at all. Okay, so women women and girls Yes. In In In In In In You already got that one. You got that one down. Women girls um Think of an identity. identity. identity. If you get there, I will have a level of shock. Chat, is anybody in chat Do you guys get this?

No, but now you're getting close. getting close. getting close. MMI MMI MMI If it's not Inuit, but you're on the right track. right track. right track. person is a What would the I be? Yes, but there's another word for it. Indian? Oh, you're so close. Indigenous. There you go. Oh, and what's the what's the Missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual people. Can you please play that clip that I sent you? Uh it's right under this.

This this video was too amazing. Uh so wherever you got that one from, it's right below that. because a lot of people are being murdered doesn't make it a genocide. Also true. Also true. Also true. have been mocking the MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ acronym, making out that it's some kind of joke. MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ was simply an upgrade from LGBTQQIA+ LGBTQQIA+ LGBTQQIA+ in order to be more inclusive to missing people in indigenous communities. Comparing MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ to a strong password or the next sequel in the Call of Duty franchise is not only grossly offensive, but deeply disrespectful to those communities who are simply asking for us to adjust our language and bullying the LGBTQQIA+ community.

LGBTQQIA+ community. LGBTQQIA+ community. I love how many times he does it. It also doesn't include pansexual. That's that's an outrage. That is an outrage. They don't include supposed to be rounded up in the plus. No, they're not. The plus is something else. I think they're encompassed by the the B because I think bisexual no, no, no, no, no, do not step on this landmine. landmine. landmine. He was just going to take it from me. That's a landmine because the whole point is I think bisexual in this ethos bisexual people don't uh sleep with trans people at least for the time being.

They're allowed to. And pansexual means bisexual including trans. I think that's I don't think I knew that definition. I think that's a state theory. I mean, I've always just heard the difference is pansexual is just I don't even think about gender. about gender. about gender. But, there is a difference. But, I to me that doesn't mean like a bisexual wouldn't sleep with a trans person. person. person. might not sleep with a gender fluid person or a or a non-binary person. non-binary person. non-binary person. Man, this stuff gets hard to track.

even there? Non-binary is not up in there. there. there. I'm telling you I identify as non-binary. That's either the Q or the plus. No, the Q is queer and the Q is questioning. But, queer, doesn't it include like include like include like be queer and not be non-binary. Well, non-binary is gender. Right, and queer right. Yeah, yeah. Wow, this is getting specific. specific. specific. I'm I'm going to need to like consult a flowchart at this point. where the where the where the hypocrisy of this comes to is cuz like you're adding in murdered and missing indigenous women, but you're leaving out people with other sexual identities in the sexual identity Or how about murdered missing boys?

They don't count. They don't count. count. count. How dare you? Do you know Dave Landau? I know the name. He's a comedian. He he's got this great joke about when he was a kid, you know, some old man came up to him and this is true story and offered him candy to go in his van and he's like the I'm lucky it was just like Butterfingers cuz if he had Twix, I'd be facedown in a river. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. That's amazing. That's good. That's good. Um but, yeah, what's the commentary on this?

Is this just another episode of suicidal empathy? Are we missing the plot at this point? This to me yeah, this is people that have lost the plot. So, this is going back to the some people just need to be chased by lions. Like we we are going to have a thing that we care about. about. about. in that community at large. Okay. I think we all have like this innate need to protect, to push back, to create boundaries. And so, when people don't have anything that's like for real for real, like this is some life and death [ __ ] you start really getting out there on the abstraction layer.

Tumble you, my hero. I had this exact same question to Bret Weinstein who was an evolutionary biologist or psychologist. I have like, here's my theory or hypothesis. One's the wrong term, one's the right one. He yelled at me. I said, my hypothesis/theory is that capitalism and I I did a book I edited a book called the paleo manifesto. And the paleo the paleo worldview is that our technology advanced faster than biology, so there's a mismatch, right? So, I thought, okay, our brains are wired as cavemen or whatever for resource scarcity.

What happens when you have shelter and food, everything available? The brain doesn't shut off. It starts looking for problems where there are not none because that is hardwired. And and Bret said, you're exactly correct. And I'm This is what you're saying. Yeah, 100%. This is one of the first things I noticed in entrepreneurship was that some people just they had no real threat to deal with and they started acting very strange. And I was just like, what is going on? Uh so, yeah, I think this is that at scale.

Like at some point also, it is a self-obsession. Like being able to get outside of your own head is uh a very wise thing to do and to see yourself as, you know, being in like these people have to suffer me, if you see what I mean. And so, not wanting to be as um torturous on somebody in terms of how they think about you. that now this lady has a bigger bureaucracy and a bigger budget. [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] And it's like, look, hey, I'm the I'm the woman who started talking about this.

Give me money. Give me staff. I'm going to run for higher office. Yeah, and Yeah, and Yeah, and I'm in the the oppression Olympics and all that stuff. It's super wild that people look for that kind of stuff. We want the credibility, we want status. And if we're going to get status by being a victim, then so be it. I think it's that is terrible. As a PSA, boys and girls, please, everybody's going to be victim to something at some point. Uh don't make that your identity.

Find some way out of that. Think about I can do something, change something and get a different result. different result. different result. And if they wanted to talk about murder, I think the third leading Can you look this up? Leading cause of death in Canada is medically assisted suicide murder right now. So, she's worried about people being murdered, maybe the ones in the hospital by the doctors. Yeah. And it you're going to have for their worldview, it's going to be disproportionately people who are LGBTQ blah blah blah because blah blah blah because the point is allegedly they're so oppressed, they're going to have high rates of suicide and depression.

So, maybe you should worry about all of those people who are being driven in a suicidal direction. suicidal direction. suicidal direction. Yeah, I I haven't fact-checked this enough to see if this is backed up, but there was a recent study that came out of Finland, I think, where they followed um trans people and they had a control groups, so they didn't receive any treatment and then ones that did. And their rates of suicidal ideation skyrocketed skyrocketed skyrocketed post um surgery. Because cultures don't talk about tradeoffs.

Mhm. So, the idea like even if if you're a female who's taking after menopause estrogen, there's going to be some cost to it. If you're a male taking look you have low testosterone take testosterone, there's going to be some tradeoff. But, the argument for trans people is if you do this, there's no cost to it. And it's just like it makes no sense on a biological level. You're not going to have side effects from taking hormones. Hormones Yeah. Especially if you have surgery, like bro, bro, bro, that's rough.

Right. And also, you're not going to literally be a female. Yeah. Yeah, that part caught me off guard. I didn't realize that was the argumentation argumentation argumentation was that no, no, no, if you are trans, you are literally the other gender. Right. And I was like, wait, what? Or I'd be perceived that way. Yeah. Even the perceived thing, some people really can. Like there are some people that can pass like good and proper. Sure, but plenty of them can't. Yes, probably the majority. majority. majority. Right.

So, then what happens? You're not You're being told even if you pass, if your internal identity goes all the way to I am that, that's where I get lost. Sure, but the point is in terms of the depression, if you're told if you get these surgeries, you'll be able to live the life as a female and that is not true, you're you're run out of options. If you're not going under the knife, that's your last resort. resort. resort. just worried about complications, man. I mean, that's the I'm trying to steelman this as much as possible.

Yeah. But, like I've heard horror stories about people like the women who take the um trans women, so they invert the penis, yeah, male to female. But, they'll get like hairs that are still growing or getting getting getting Yeah, oh god. And they have to sit on a uh uh uh I know we have kids watching, but they have to dilate for the rest of their lives or it seals up cuz of a wound. So wild. Yeah, that's rough. Uh one of the leading causes, I haven't got an actual ranking.

I only was able to pull up an old one from like 2022, but it One of the leading causes of what? Uh death in Canada, assisted suicide. They just reached the milestone of 100,000 um of dead by the practice. WHOA. TOLD YOU. WOW, THAT escalated quickly. You have to talk to Kelsea Sherron about this. She's been talking about this all the time. That's wild, man. All right. He's coming here. We got one more super chat and Let's hear it, Ryan. Awesome. From Patrick Rytsen. Favorite guest of the show, hands down.

Glad you're here this morning, Mr. Malice. Good morning, guys, and happy Friday. Love you all. Well, thank you. We love you right back and it has been wonderful having you on the show. It's also been fun to get to know you, to do some meals. You are one of the only people that I actually make non-professional time for. You are one of three people I've met who I completely misjudged when I met you and have only continued to impress me. Wow, that's very kind. I appreciate that.

It's the truth. Awesome. Boys and girls, his graphic novel is coming out very soon, Unwanted. Go and pre-order right now, unwantedbook.com. now, unwantedbook.com. now, unwantedbook.com. I am telling you if you at all are interested in somebody that can handle incredible ideas, but done in a narrative way that will be I'm sure very surprising and very impactful, impactful, impactful, this is the book for you. And I really want to see him continue down this vein as I'm such a believer in the art form. And also, by the way, the Rippaverse, check it out.

This is a guy that started this himself. He was a commentator, got sick of just being a commentator, and so he started this whole comic book publishing house in a really modern and interesting way. Uh and the fact that he has teamed up with Michael says a lot about where these guys are headed. So, if you're at all inclined, please do that. I'm going to be supporting this. I will guarantee I'm taking it as soon as we get off air here to the stretch goal of 15,000.

So, enjoy your stickers your stickers your stickers on my behalf, everybody. Uh once again, guys, thank you so much for joining us. Very much a pleasure. We will see you again on Monday. All right, everybody, have a great weekend. Take care, everyone. Thank you so much. Later.