Rogan Experience.
Join my day. Joe Rogan podcast.
Hello, good to see you. Thanks for having me back my pleasure. Good to see you where the world's still functional? The amazing. Yeah amazing we wanted to talk. You wanted to talk about the post-election sort of a wrap-up gal sort of where we stand. I happy very happy. It was weird. One morning in America that was one of the first times ever. I felt hopeful after an election like you should have seen the Green Room at the comedy club. Everybody was like yes! Yes whoo.
So my theory is the timeline.
Like in a science fiction movie, the timeline has put twice in the last in the last like nine
months. What was the first split there was when Trump got
shot and there was that moment where the world was going to head into totally different directions
right? If he got hit.
Yeah. Yeah. And we saw the most conspicuous display of physical bravery I've ever seen
right at that moment.
Exactly. And it could have gone, you know, horrific lie, badly for the entire world after that. So that was timeline split number one so that other time I was out there somewhere.
Yeah. And I don't want to visit boy.
Imagine being stuck there. What kind of horrible Karma? No, I mean, that's a totalitarian dystopian nightmare. That's the bad place. Yeah.
And then timeline split again, an election day.
I know you're a you fancy a good conspiracy theory. Yes. And that that gentleman being able to pull off what he did and you know, the way it happened, the way it all went down is it's a Lee Harvey Oswald 2.0. Oh
yeah. Clearly the shooter and yeah, that we stole.
Don't know
anything. There's no call for disclosure. There's no call for a press conference. There's no toxicology report. The toxicology report had to have been done. Wouldn't you want to know like what kind of stuff this kid is on that? Made him want to do that or if anything? Yeah.
So my theory is it's almost as if the people want us to think it's a conspiracy like it's almost like the whole thing is almost orchestrated, like it's just, it's so straight. Nose is like the rapid cremation.
The whole thing was just completely bizarre and then you're exactly right. Like, no hearings, no nothing. Now having said that I expect that this will change, right?
So you think they're going to do a dive into what
happened? I mean, I would, I don't know if they will but I, you know, I certainly would if I was in a position to do
that. I wonder what they can actually find. I mean, I don't know if they wanted it to be a conspiracy that people talked about, or if that's simply the best way to pull it off.
Yeah. Or it's just, yeah. Or it's just, you know, as we saw, I think in the hearing afterwards, maybe just a systemic collapse of confidence.
There's also
So a confidence in the fact that the the news timeline today is so rapid the when things are relevant and people are paying attention to them, is you have a couple of days even with an assassination attempt on a former president. Yeah, we're people were murdered and there's
it's in and out. Yeah, that's right. I think it's exactly. I think the new cycle now is like a two to three-day social media Firestorm and we just cycle from one to the next. Yeah. And we have the memory of goldfish and write that you know, things, right? Things that
Ben are to finding just come and go with the starting speed and shocked. By the way, I should say, I don't think there was an inside out. There was a conspiracy. I think anything's possible. I think we just if we have a competence collapse and I think we saw that on display when the, when the director at the time, you know?
Testified, well there's all the elements that it could have been a conspiracy it
could have. But this is kind of a thing, which is this, like it also could have been right? Systemic competence collapse and then it's like, okay, would it be better off for the Institute, you know, if it looks like a conspiracy, right? Yeah, you know which were okay to X, which worldview? Would you rather live in the one with the
Conspiracies or the one was just like incompetence
everywhere. Well, I think you have both simultaneously. I don't think it's binary, right. I think there's incompetence everywhere and conspiracies are legitimate. They're real. Yeah. And that one seems like conspiracy. The fact that is his house was professionally scrubbed. There's no social media record of this kid online. There's no nothing.
He's the only kid of his generation. Who's that fired up about politics? To have no online footprint, right? Like it just doesn't make any
sense and he's a registered Republican. Like the whole thing is like. Yeah.
So weird and there was like a bad shooter and then he became a great shooter
and well, he definitely trained. Yeah. Right. Like you could train someone to become a good shoot. Like this is all you have to do, but that's all move and do that, get all your mechanics in place, understand technique. And positioning breathing is not like the most complicated thing from a prone position. But the fact that he chose to use iron sights, I thought was weird too. There's a lot of weirdness to it, you know, from 140 yards with a scope, that is an easy shot. Well, then,
He could just like wander up. That's the different timeline. The different timeline is. He has a scope? That's okay. All right. Right. That would have in Trump's dead and then boy. Yeah boy, do we live in a crazy world? Then? Yeah. Completely bizarre.
I mean, what is the streets look like right now? Yeah. What
kind of like protests and riots? And he's like January 6 was not. Yeah it killed Trump. That would be January 6 on steroids
everywhere. Yeah. That's right now we would agree would experience it. I mean you know I do when I was a kid my high school high school
You forgot us a bootleg copy. This is the Zapruder film really rich. Anybody knows what a gangster High School is it was actually pretty focused on the. He's really love a Kennedy assassination. So we spend a lot of time on that and, you know, you know, you kind of watch it frame by frame and you can kind of see what's happening with this, lots of questions. But like when things like that happen you know, today it's going to be in high-definition 4K Ultra surrounds on forever. Yeah. Right playing out in real time forever. And so like I yeah I very much don't want to live in the world where those things
happen. Well we are very fortunate. I mean I like I said after
The election I was like, Wow voting works, that's voting works, that's nice like they don't have the system completely rigged and then but they kind of tried to rig it at least with the media, the where the real rigging in the 2020 elections me, you couldn't cast all your conspiracies. Upon it was in terms of like mail-in ballots and all this Jazz. But the real rigging was the collusion between
Social media companies in the government to suppress information that would have altered the effect of the election. That's legitimate.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That was like direct interference and it was in aided and abetted by a lot of former intelligence officials. And yeah. But and by the current Administration have tons of pressure on censorship coming from this, you know the current Administration and all their kind of arms of the century censorship apparatus.
You have your hands in the tech community of your fingers and all that jazz like what was the General attitude about all that stuff when it was revealed? How did
How did people, you know, you how did your peers respond to
that? I think anybody in social media the internet companies knew it. So I thought it was pretty widely understood. I mean look, there's nothing that happened to Twitter and the Twitter files. It wasn't happening, all these all the other companies, right? So it's a consistent pattern, if you got you the YouTube files. They would look exactly the same and of course we should get the YouTube file short. And now we've got we probably will now with you know this new Administration is probably gonna carve all this stuff open but yeah no look it was a pattern and then look, you know, the companies bear a lot of responsibility and the people in the companies you know made a lot of I think bad judgment calls but the
I meant that like the Biden. White House was directly, exerting censorship pressure on American companies to censor American citizens. We check, which I think, by the way, is just flatly illegal, like, I think is actually subject to criminal charges. Like, I think they're people with criminal liability who were involved in this. So, there was that there were also members of Congress during the same thing, which is also illegal and then there was a lot of funding of outside. Third party groups that were, that were bringing a lot of pressure down and censorship. Yeah. And it just an example that is there's a unit at Stanford, you know, right next door. You know, to us that, you know, because the internet's
ship unit that was funded by the US government and exerted, tremendous pressure on the company. So sensor and it was anyways, very effective at doing
so does it smell like sulfur when you walk those
Halls it is very dark and Grim. This whole thing is very bad and so effort. Oh yeah, it's yeah, it's Stanford Stanford, by the way, another unit like that, harbored a bunch of universities got pulled into this. A lot of ngos and nonprofits got pulled into this and so the Twitter files showed us kind of the basic roadmap and then there's this thing called the weaponization committee that Congressman, George
Running. That is also revealed a lot of this but I would imagine the new Trump Administration is going to come in and carpel that wide open. And I know that there are people in being appointed to senior positions who are very determined to do that.
One of the things that I found really kind of shocking was when they revealed how much money the Democrats had spent on the election and how much money was spent on activist groups, right? It's like more than a hundred million dollars, right?
Yeah, moves. There's just there's extensive Government funding of political of of politically oriented ngos. Yeah, edgy
Is one of those great terms like non-governmental organization. All right, like, what, what the hell is
that? What is that? Tell me, I don't know. Well, it's
sort of a charity and, but it Roar do this sort of, but most of the time, it's a political and identity, it's an entity with the political agenda, but then it's funded by the government. In a very large percentage of cases, including the NGO, the ngos in the censorship, complex, like the government grants, National Science Foundation grants like directed, the state department grants. Yeah. Right, direct money and then it okay. Now you got an NGO funded by the government
It's not an NGO like, right? That's a Geo, right? And then you've got a conspiracy, you know, like when censorship then you have a conspiracy because you've got government officials, using government money to fund, what are what look like private organizations that aren't. And then what happens is the government outsourcers to these ngos, the things that it's not legally allowed to
do. Like, what, like, like censorship, okay, but violation of First Amendment, right?
The government saw the first it was. So if they always say, it's the first amendment only applies to the government, the First Amendment says,
A government cannot cannot see, American citizens. And so what they do is, if you want a sense for American citizens here in the government, you if you're smart, you don't do that. What you do is you funded outside an organization, then you have them do it boy, right? And that's what's been happening, right?
And, and that's like hiring a hit man, like it's not okay to murder someone. But you can hire someone to murder someone in your clean. Yeah, and if you want to solve a murder,
it's not enough to find out who the hit man. Was, you have to find out who paid the Hitman, right? Right. And even record of the chain. And so, a lot of this traces into the White House, the best defense, the companies have is that a lot of this happened under
Coercion, right? Because when the government, when the government puts pressure on you like it might be a phone call, it might be a letter, it might be the threat of an investigation. It might be a subpoena. It could take many forms, but when the government does that, it carries, you know, that's a very powerful method, right? Like a message for a mob boss, right, right. Don't you want to do me a
favor right now? Yes, mr. Campion. Oh, I do, right? Like
I like my corner store, I'd like, it's not catching
fire tonight and so there's there's this overwhelming
hammer-blow pressure, that comes in.
And by the way, even when the government doesn't talk to you directly, if they're funded the organization that is talking to you, then it's very clear, what's happening. It's so you come under incredible pressure and so the whole kind of chain, this whole chain of governments active as universities, and companies was corrupted. And then, on top of that people in the company's, in a lot of cases, made a lot of decisions that I think are probably increasingly starting to
regret what was confusing to me, was that the government spent so much money on these activist groups during the election, and I didn't understand like what purpose that would serve. Like, what?
What function would it serve to spend all this money on these activist groups that already support? You supposedly like are you bribing them to support you or are they what are they? Are, they are you paying them to go on? Talk shows and consistently. Repeat the government's message. The current administration's message, like, what will be the function of that. So I think is some plate and some cases just is just pay to
play, right? So for example, we know that cam was campaign paid certain on her personality.
He's you know file in and then there were there were you know we're it's your point people are very supportive of Kamala who then gave her, you know, interviews that went really well. And so I think in some cases you just have straight pay-to-play, that's just how that system works. It's just expected. And then I think you have other organizations like, like these ngos and others activist groups where they're actually, you know, they actually do field activities, right? And so there's, you know, maybe there's a get out the vote component or there's, you know, social media influence, Downstream component or some other, you know, kind of feel like tivity that's happening in support of the
election. I just didn't think that they pay like when it's still unclear.
Whether or not celebrities got paid to endorse her. Right right. A
View there. They've mixed it up because there's four, there's like Oprah soil procession. It's the her production company was paid to put on the production but she was not paid for the interview. Yeah, what happened? It was, you know, to whatever to meet you and a half
million dollars initially listed as one. And it turned out, it was two point five, right? And so, they shouldn't you answer production company, and my production company gets paid 2.5 million dollars to endorse Trump, right? And then I go, I didn't get any of that money, right? People like shut the fuck up, what you got, it's your company.
P'nay. We talking about. Yeah. And also how much does it cost to do an event? Yes, how does it cost? Two point five million dollars to put on an event. Like, are you feeding people gold sandwiches? Like what are you doing? Like how is that
possible? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, and then you're considered the fact that is deliberately obfuscated. Of course, is a clue
system. I just thought the really bizarre one was the allegations and I would say unsubstantiated allegations, it's been alleged that Beyonce got ten million dollars and Liz, oh God.
Three million dollars, Eminem got 1.8 million to
like really I think if you just like published all these numbers these Liberties will get so mad at each other that you do you should, whether
then you would learn everything. But slam go short, right? That's right. Delicious lizard, Spirits right now, right?
Yeah, this is probably listen to this right now. Being like
what? Well, I wonder if Liz, I was like, I didn't get shit. I would say it. But why I'm, they said it like Beyoncé has been mum about the whole thing. I think I would probably say like, I didn't get any money to do that, but that was a weird one, too. Because
A lot of people thought Beyonce was going to do a concert, right? And she just went out there and talked and I was like, what the fuck? Because they all came to see a free Beyonce concert. And then she just said, I want to support Kamala
Harris and everybody's like good. Good
now. If you like it then you should have put a ring on it. Come on. We love your songs. Yes, that's what we're here for. Yes, I just didn't think that. It was even possible that a I didn't think a candidate would ever pay for an endorsement.
But yeah, I mean, the fact that it was even allege show,
ya waiting on their Z. Course. There's there's the, the even stinkier version arguably, which is all the do all the social-media influencer campaigns now. There's, you know, tremendous amount of Paola,
that's for sure. Right. Because I know people personally who are approached multiple times and offered a substantial amount of money to post things in support of
Paris. Yeah. And like, I'm Pro capitalism. And I'm happy for them, that they get paid but like, maybe we should know.
Yeah, that seems like something. You should absolutely have to disclose. It should be like,
Like, say, if I was going to do an ad for, you know, whatever a certain Coffee Company, Black Rifle coffee and I did it on my Instagram, I'd have to say add, I have to say this is an ad, it's a paid ad and that's part of the thing, you know, unless it's your company, like, you're supposed to say, they're paying me to do this? Yeah,
yeah. Well, you don't look either the good news with these as we learn each cycle. We learn a lot about how politics works. We learned about a lot about how fake it is. We learn a lot about the things we put up with, for very long time. I mean, everybody's always like freaked out by like, whatever the new.
It does, but like this real scandal in most cases, I think is just the way the system already works.
It's a sneaky system. Well, another fascinating aspect of this system that we learned out this time around is the uncontrolled aspect of it like what Trump called earned media was much more powerful than anything else. Yeah, the uncontrolled version of it. Like one of the things that unfortunately for them mass media or corporate media has done is they've diminished
their credibility so much so much so that like Joy read was on TV today talking about saying that Trump was going to shoot protesters and all just wild unsubstantiated, crazy shit and the more they do stuff like that the more that they say things like that. The more it diminishes their impact and the more it drives people to Independent Media sources. Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the ratings collapse that they that they they've been ignored their down to like they're down there.
Msnbc's don't like 50,000 people in the 18 to 20, 18 to 49 demo.
That is so wild just tiny, right? So
crazy, it's really tiny. So I think that's happening. The Gallup organization has done polls on trust in institutions, including media for the last 60 years. It's been a steady slide down and in the last you know, four years is falling off a cliff, I think it's real, I do there's another study that came out. The kids are not watching a lot less TV, kids are just giving up on TV. Yeah, they're just you know, they're on YouTube and tick-tocking Instagram and other things.
And so like I think it's tipping question. I've been asking myself as when will the actual, you know, famously 1960 was the first television election, right? Lou you know sort of Legend has it become sure. The one where the televised debate really mattered and if you saw the televised debate, you saw confident Kennedy and nervous Nixon. And if you heard right, we experience something
different and handsomeness and how can it affect and vitality? Yeah, laughs. Yeah. Right and all
these things? Sort of positive, positive spirit, positive energy. I'm actually not. This might be of have been the first internet.
Or maybe we actually haven't had it yet. Like, I feel like we're really close to the first internet election, but maybe it's not all the way there. This is it. I think
this, there's an argument that
this is it, right? And that, you know, all the, you know, all the stuff, especially in the last six months, all about your podcast, obviously in your show played a big role, but like, I think there's a real, if you're going to run in 28, like I think there's like a fully internet. Native way to run these campaigns. That might literally involve like, zero television advertising, and maybe you don't even need to raise that money and maybe it to your point if you have the right message, maybe you just go straight direct.
Yeah, I might
Being completely different way to do this. I think that's the only way now and I think if you do pay people, it's not going to have the same impact, you know, I think these call her daddy shows and all these different shows that she went on. I mean, I'm sure they had an impact but I think that in the future I'm sure they're scrambling to try to create their own version of this show. This is one thing that keeps coming up like we need our own Joe Rogan, right? But they had me number one, they had, you never want to have you.
They had you in the drove. You away is that number one, number two, but they also have em, you know, maybe see NBC CBS CNN.
Right. But that doesn't work anymore. That's like you know like you're using smoke signals and everybody else has a cell phone that's right doesn't work. That's right that's right. It's just it's a bizarre time. It's really interesting though. Like as you said like we're in a great time line and I think it's a fascinating time line to because there's so much uncertainty and there's so much right we are at the verge of a i
You know, open a I you know, Altman has said now that he thinks 2025 will be the year that AI becomes sentient. Whatever that means you know artificial general intelligence will be will emerge and who knows how that affects I've said publicly and I'm kind of half joking that we need a i government. Yeah you know I know it sounds crazy to say but instead of having this like Alpha chimpanzee, that runs the tribe of humans. How about we have? Some like really logical fact-based
You know, program, that makes it like really reasonable and Equitable in a way that we can all agree to Let's govern things in that manner, right?
So you can actually simulate this today because you can go on these systems in gp2 York. Lot of these others. And you can, you can ask, you know, how should we handle issue acts? How should this be real? We've done that right. How should the yeah Department of energy? Do whatever nuclear policy or whatever? And what I find when I do that is I discovered two things. Number one, of course, these things are these things have the same problem. Social media has had witches are tremendously politically biased, and right? That's on purpose.
They need to fix that. And that's going to be a big Topic in the next several years. But the other thing you learn is, if you can get through the political basically bias and censorship, if you can actually get to a discussion of the actual issue. It's you get very sophisticated answers. Yes, right? Very logical. Very straightforward. And it will explain every aspect of the issue to you and it'll take you through all the pros and cons. Yeah. And you know,
I mean it might be the way to go. Yeah, which is so horrifying for people to think cuz everyone's worried about the Terminators taking over the world and like if that's the first step as we let them govern
us well, like this.
Nothing stopping a politician from using this. There's nothing stopping a policy maker from, you know as a tool rise you start out at we've barely started using it as a tool. There's nothing to prevent you. Like for example I think military commanders in the field are going to have basically a I battle field assistants that are going to buy some uh strategy tactics. Yeah. Right. How to win conflicts and then it'll start to work its way up and then they'll be doing, you know, we're planning. And then if you're a general if you're you know, Sergeant or a colonel or generally it's going to just mean you perform better? Yes. And so maybe there's like a you know the human them sort of man machine and I said be attic relationship and you could imagine that happening more
In the, in the policy process and in the political
process. And there's also AI controlled Jets, which are far superior, they did Mike Baker was telling us about that. They did these simulated dogfights and the AI. Controlled Jets won one hundred percent of the time over humans, and there's a
bunch of reasons for that. And part of it is just simply the speed of processing and so forth. But another big thing is, if you don't have a human in the plane, you don't have the they say, the spam on the can you don't have a, you know, even have the human body. Yeah. In the play and you don't have to keep human being alive, which means you can be a lot faster.
And you can move a lot more quickly, and
g-forces much, much higher g-forces. Yeah. And then there's no option for someone to go crazy. All right. Yes, exactly. It's no, there's no human element, you know, which is a real
element know what I think we're going to. It's going to be common to have like mach-5 Drew no jet drones within within a few years. And, you know, they'll be a fraction of the size of the current, you know, man planes, which means you can have like a lot more of them. And so, you kind of want to imagine, you know, a thousand of these things like coming over the horizon.
I'm right at you and it really changes is, it's actually I think I'd be very interesting. It really changes the fundamental equation of war in the following sense, fundamentally in the past, the people who want words of the one of the people who had the most men in the most material, right? So you just needed the most soldiers and you needed the most equipment. And in this drone world that we're talking about is going to be the people with the most money in the best technology. Yeah, right. So for example, small states you're a small Advance States like Singapore will be able to punch way above their weight and then kind of large sort of economically or tunnel.
Backward states that normally would have one will know lose. And so it's going to it's going to be a recalibration and then it has the the good news is you're not putting soldiers at risk, right? So you're a hell of a lot less. A lot less death of the bad news, arguably as it'll be easier to get into conflicts because you're not putting soldiers at risk. So there's going to have to be a recalibration of like when you actually like lean into an attack
I'm sure you're aware of all this U 0 U. AP disclosure Jazz that you see on television. The more I look into it the more I think it
At least a percentage of it a healthy percentage of it is bullshit and there's probably some government projects where they've developed some very sophisticated propulsion systems that they've applied to drones and that that's what these people are seeing and this is one of the reasons why they continually have sightings over secured, military spaces like out in the Eastern Seaboard, like there's areas over Virginia where they continually see them in San Diego. They see them off the coast of San Diego.
Where there's a place where you would test stuff like
that. Well so of course, we know that that was the case for a very long time for sure, from the 50s through the 80s because with the development of stealth right, was was highly classified. And the SR-71 was brand new at one point. And so, you had the yeah,
like, you know, alien, you know, you hate tensioning. That's of course, of
course. Not a percent. Yeah. And then and then and then, by the way, we're not the only ones. And so I, you know, my speculation would be that some of the military base stuff is, you know, the Chinese doing something similar. Yeah. And you know, we got a glimpse into that with the balloon.
Without language goofy though,
they got shut down, but still the fact that the Chinese are flying surveillance, balloons over American territory and they were able to slip through our early warning systems and just like, you know, later above military bases. And like, you know, take lots of, you know, imagery and do whatever scans they do. Yeah. And like not literally nothing was happening and we didn't even know they were there most of the time and so like you know, there's a that's like a tip of the ice. It feels like a tip of the iceberg kind of thing where if they were doing that, they're probably other things going
on. Well, I've read that someone had commented that similar things that happened during the Trump Administration, but they didn't tell
Because they did wanted to make him to shoot them down. Hmm, interesting. Interesting guy for the record. I'm crocheting them down. Yeah, I think you should probably shoot them down and taking pictures of shit, their knots. But this not even people up there. Fucking shoot him down. Yeah, what's the problem? Yes, yes, no. Yes. Do you think there are any of those that are not of this
world? If I don't think there's any way to know
from the outside. Have you ever like pondered it late at night sitting on your porch? First airing up with this
guy first of course, will it right? You know, raises do you know, racism number one is
Is there not a minute? If it is, you know, you did it recently, get here. They've been here for a long time, you know, to they arrived five thousand years ago. Thanks their demons and angels. You know, I mean demons and angels or demons and angels real. It's like, you know, literally, you know, probably not. But like certainly there metaphorically real and are there China Shades of Grey between literal and metaphorical?
Well, the actions are certainly demonic and Angelic, right? Actions of human beings Mass things that happen in the world are uplifting or
horrific.
Evil people, doing evil things are possessed. I mean, they're, they're possessed by something like, something is going on, right? And like, you know, what's right, what's the dividing line between, you know, a Nashville Supernatural Force and, and some sort of psychological sociological thing that's overwhelming, but it just takes control of people and drives them crazy, like, you might as well call that a
demon. Yeah, it's fascinating. Because, like, when you think about from theological term like you think of it from a religious perspective, you know, people would apply what would a demon do, what would Angels do
What is what is a what is the will of God? And what is like the evils of the worst aspects of humanity? You would, you know, you can apply them to so many things in the world but we're very reluctant to say that something is demonic like even though it's clearly demonic like clearly in action, like this is what a demon would do a demon. Would possess people to Gun Down children. Exactly. You know and you know, use drones
Shoot down a wedding party. A demon would do
that. Exactly. So a friend of mine is a religious scholar. He's a teacher as a Catholic Catholic University and he's religious history scholar and he says that medieval people would have had a medieval. People were psychologically better prepared for the are ahead of us with AI and robots and drones everywhere than we are. Because medieval people took it for granted that they lived in a world with higher Powers, higher Spirits, Angels, demons, all kinds of Supernatural entities and they just it was just assumed to be true and in the
World we're heading into it really, or the were arguably already in. You know, there are going to be these new forces these new entities running around doing things. And you know, we're going to just it we're going to struggle and we're going to do, we're going to catastrophize, we're going to conclude, you know, like a eyes. The end of the world. Yeah. The medieval would have said oh it's just another Spirit like you know it's just another kind of entity. Yeah it's better. It's better than humans and some things what's or angels? And so we're going to have to like change our mentality where almost gonna have to become a little bit more medieval. We're going to open up our minds to the kinds of entities that we're dealing with. Wow. Yeah, which type. Which also
Help us actually deal with people like it. Maybe maybe maybe maybe there's an explanatory way to think about human behavior here. That seems less rational, but might actually be more rational
well you express yourself a very brilliantly and describing the current state of woke ideology as a religion. That's right. And that though the way you described it was brilliant because you were saying that it has all the elements of excommunication adherence to a very strict Doctrine. All these different aspects of it saying things that you everyone
Nose to be a logical and nonsensical, but you must repeat it, you know, the these things are indicative of people that are in Cults or people that are a part of like a very, like a serious fundamental religion.
Yeah, I mean, of course, the big difference between welcome those traditional religions as well. Has no concept of redemption, right? No concept of forgiveness,
right? Which isn't a very evil religion, you do not want that tip. Yeah. It's Tony. Well, it's ill-conceived right? Because it's like immature. It's an immature religious.
Absolutist. It's inherently totalitarian. It has to because it can be permanently. Destroy people. Yeah. Woke also understand something that the Greeks understood which is the being ostracized being put to death with the same thing. And so, when the Greeks sentence, somebody like, Socrates to death, they gave them the option of just leaving. But the problem was, yes, Socrates go to just walked out and left. They'll kidding. With the reason that was considered equivalent sentences is because at that time, if you were not a citizen of a particular City, you would get killed in the next city. You'd be identified as the enemy presumptively.
We and killed it. So there was no way to survive without being part of your community. And I, that's what the folks figured out is. You can do the same thing if you're able to like, you know, nail somebody on, you know, on charges of having done something, you know, unacceptably horrible. Then you make them toxic and all of a sudden they can, you know, they can't have him for, you know, people you know, they lose friends, they lose family, the yeah, it was they can't get work, you know before you know it like they're, you know, living you know, severely diminished damaged lives, some people, then go on to kill themselves.
I don't know if you've been paying attention at all to Blue Sky I have but I have multiple friends.
That have accounts on Blue Sky. That are very sophisticated trolls and are pushing like the woke agenda to a satirical Point. We'd like to like parity, but like on the edge where you're not quite sure they'll say enough real things that make sense and talk about their own anxieties and personal issues with stuff and then say, fucking ridiculous shit and it's fascinating. I bet it works. It does work done.
That's what's so terrifying. It's like all the outcasts of Twitter, all the people that were like I can't take this a few of them come back, which is wonderful. I love when they come back, I'm gone. I'm going to go to Blue Sky. Fuck you. People like a bunch of them went to threads for a while. Like Stephen King. He went to threads came right back. They all come right back. They can't the marketplace of ideas. Like, okay. You could go to like a Fruit Stand in the middle of the fucking desert and that's a Marketplace or you can go to the farmers market where everybody's, they're like, where you going to go. That's right. You're gonna go to the Farmers Market.
Tons of people. It's a lot of fun. A lot of activity. Yes, that fruit stands fucking bear in a deserted. There's no one there. That's very few choices. Yeah, that's not fun
and it's win-win have else would arise when window the back on Twitter because it's good for them because they want to proselytize and so they need to know they need an audience. So they yeah they wind and then we went because it's really really fun to talk on them
but it's also weird for them to not want any pushback at all. Like don't isn't the whole thing supposed to be about an exchange of ideas like
If you have a controversial idea and someone disagrees with it, what don't you want to hear that position? I know, I do. I want to hear it even if I vehemently disagree with it. I want to hear it. I want to know where, how do you how does your brain work? How are you coming to these conclusions? What makes you think this way? Who are you? What do you like? I want to go on Instagram? I want to look at your pictures. I wanna see what you're up to. What are you doing? You know. Yeah, we do in your free time. You know, when you complain about. Yeah, yeah. I want it. It's like, it's a fascinating education on human psychology.
Ecology and to watch people Express themselves publicly and then also be attacked publicly by strangers, which never happens in the real world like at scale. Yes, the way it happens on social media and I think it's a amazing time for people to examine ideas if you can handle
it. Yeah, my favorite term is Marketplace of idea. Yeah, you could have a Marketplace of ideas, it's just gonna be one idea, right? So blue, skies, a Marketplace of ideas, sure. Yeah. Access the marketplace of ideas.
That final s makes a lot of
difference. Yeah. Right. But the thing about exes it really is diverse. There's I follow tons of like kooky leftist Progressive nut bags that like have bizarre takes on everything and that were 100% convinced that Kamala Harris going to sweep all the swing States including Iowa. They were all and I was like, this is wild. Yeah. Like is that going to happen? And I write like this is crazy but it's they were 100% convinced.
And it's fascinating to see all these different kinds of people to see the Charlie Kirk's and you know, the full on left-wing coox and see them all together, right? So what you need
that? Yeah look so one of the ways I think to think about this is all new information is heretical by definition, right? So so any time anybody has a new idea that it's a threat to the existing power structure. So all new ideas, start of heresies. And so, if you don't have an environment that can tolerate heresies, you're not going to have new ideas and you're going to end up with you.
Complete stagnation. Right? If you have stagnation are going to go straight into the into decline. Yeah right. And and I think this is that that aberrant nature. This is the timeline split. I think that I think the last decade has just been like a really weird aberrant time where things have not been working like they should and, you know, in 2015, Twitter called itself, the Free Speech wing of the Free Speech party, right? And Elon Elon has not like genuine has restored it right, ready? Brought it back. He brought it back to something that everybody thought was completely normal 10 years ago. Yeah, and I think, I hope this last 10 years increasingly is just going to feel.
Bad dream. Like I can't believe we tolerated the level of repression, right? And anger and you know, emotional incontinence and, you know, cancellation
campaign. Emotional incontinence is a great term. Yes. There has been a lot that's really what it's like emotional and Congress diarrhea and your emotions just
spraying rage in all directions. And so I you know, I'm very at the moment at least very optimistic that there's a cultural change happening here, that's even more profound than the than the
political I have a lot of respect and also sympathy for Jack Dorsey.
I like him a lot as a human being. I think he's a brilliant guy, and I think he had very good intentions, but he was a part of a very large corporation and he had an idea for a wild west Twitter. He wanted to have two versions of Twitter, he wanted to have the Twitter that was pre Elon where there's moderation and you know you can't dead name someone and all that jazz. And then he wanted to have an additional Twitter that was essentially what x is now. And he just didn't have the ability to push that through with the boy.
Jordan Executives and all the people that you know, we're fully on board with woke
ideology. Yeah. So the experience that people like Jack of had running these companies in the last decade has been and I don't mean to like let them off the hook for their decisions but just the lived experience, as they say of what these people's lives have been like is just daily pounding, just every single day. It's like, meteor strikes coming down from the sky exploding around. You be getting attacked from every conceivable Direction being called just incredibly horrible. Things being attacked from many different
directions. He's already left Blue Sky.
Well, yeah, so it's
So that's its entirety of Jack is the jack then created bluest Blue Sky,
which is kind of exactly the opposite
of anyway where he thought of you know, by the way you know, the new name for it, of course, has a blue cry.
Yes, exactly. Yeah. But he's also got, you know, look to his
credit, he still trying and so he's got Noster, you know, which is another another, what is it? It's called master and OST are. Okay. This is kind of new to. This is it's actually his third. He's going to keep
swinging. That's gonna look at for
credit for credit. He's gonna he's gonna be swinging, by the way, full credit, he supported Ilan, you know, they've got mixed up a little bit, but by and large,
He's been very supportive and was very supportive at a key time.
Well, I also found it fascinating that when there was any sort of a right-wing branch of that stuff like gab or any of these, they would immediately be infiltrated by Bots as well. Like, my friends that troll on Blue Sky. But these are Nazis like these are not see bots. These are people that would just spew horrible hate, and then Gap would be labeled. Oh, this is where the Nazis go. This is a right-wing psychopath social media apps.
Yeah. And I think frankly, I think you get the same thing. If you start out if I think if you start out overtly political on either side, I think that's what you end up with yes. And so I just there like that, that doesn't seem to be an effective route to Market. It seems like you have you have to start from beginning as a general-purpose service, but you need to have some sense of the actual guardrails you're going to have around. And by the way, every social media service internet service that ever works, there's always some content. Yeah. There's no restrictions because you can't have child porn. You can't happen. Right violence. You can't have terrorist recruitment, right? And even the First Amendment, there's like a dozen carve-outs. That's a
Supreme Court has ruled on overtime that are things like that that you can't just like, say right? I can't say. Let's go join Isis and let you know, right. Let's go attack Washington. Like it's just, it's literally not not a lot, so there's always some controls, but you need to have like a spine of Steel. If you're going to hold back, the, the censorship pressure and, and, you know, there's basically sub stack company. I'm involved, you know, doing very well, you
know, small love sub smaller than
Twitter but doing extremely, well, fantastic. And they've done a great job. I think of holding the line on this. Yes. And then obviously
and it's an amazing resource.
There's so many brilliant people on sub stack. That's where I love sub stack. I get a large percentage of my news from substrate. That's right, it's really good and it's so valuable and it's such a great place for people who are independent journalists and Physicians and scientists to publish their ideas and actually get paid for it by the people who subscribe for to it. I think it's fantastic and there's lots of people on the far left and the far right. Yes. So you actually have
the full spray of like when a far-left person gets upset at work, you know, somebody working the New York Times that mad that because they're not
Left enough. They quit and they started right back and such that welcomes the men. Yes. Which is, which is why they don't evolve into a gabber or something like that because it really is a plat. It really is a platform. You really does. Welcome.
Welcome. Well, it's also very difficult to subvert in that same way because sub stack is essays, right? You're reading people's essays and papers on things and like these are long form, things that are very well in a lot of cases, very well researched and it's not the kind of thing. You just shit post on, right? You know, there
Our comments but it's just like if they don't hold the weight that the actual article
holds, right? So my partner's, my partner is at work, they've observed that I tend to be able to inflame situations from time to time but I can tend to be provocative, it get people really upset. And so the the rule they've asked me to comply with is I'm allowed to write essays for examples of second. I'm allowed to go on long form podcasts, but I'm not allowed to post, really, right? Exactly. What
is the rule, is the rule. Now, by the way, I struggle a struggle against the rules because I can't, I can't help myself. Why time? What you two have?
Rules
because otherwise, I inflamed people too much. I drank, I drive people to Crazy do it on purpose of
sometimes. I mean, sometimes you have to, sometimes it's unintentional.
Did you ever hear about when the entire continent, movie? When the entire country of India was mad at me? No, no. I spent one night with the entire country of India, basically wanted to kill me, it was like, it wasn't, it was incredible. I oh my goodness, I happened. I mean, I was in a Twitter debate with somebody back when I was just posting freely on Twitter and it was a debate about economics and the topic of colonialism came up and I made it
A comment in a long Thread about, you know, click colonialism, and it turns out the Indians are still extremely sensitive about the topic of colonialism. And I did not understand the mindset and the historical orientation, and I tripped a line, and I stayed up all night, and I went hyper viral, and every time zone in India. Every hour, there would be like an entirely new activation well and I was like, I was like front-page headline news, top of the hour TV news like all the way across India. Wow. Yes it
Okay, I do not recommend this as an experience. I, by the way, I learned how many incredible Indian American friends, I have, because they all rallied to my, you know, my side, you know, said he's not March, not literally calling for the re colonization
of India like that. It's not actually probably the language barrier as well, right? Language. And then just what it might be closed.
Just historical context. Americans, have a different, we Americans experience. History differently than almost everybody else. History for us is just like stuff that happened the past that doesn't matter anymore, but a lot of other people around the world experience. History is something that
Really still matters like really matters to their lives today.
Yes, they just they
live in history. More than we have a deeper understanding of kind of how they got to where they were in the things that happen to their parents or grandparents and write and ancestors. And so there's just it's just it's just, you know, I know if it's better or worse. It's just a different way of experiencing reality. Yeah. Anyway, I recommend learning that lesson, not by enraging a billion people.
I experienced a small version of that recently because I said we shouldn't be using long-range missiles on Russia. Okay. And the ukrainians, like and Ukrainian
W a bunch of people came after me because I was saying, like, the bond Administration, I was like, fuck these people. And then, I think some people misconstrued that as fuck. The Ukrainian people, which I absolutely was not saying, I see, I was saying, fuck, whoever in the last days of the presidencies decide to escalate this war, because it appears that that's what they've done. The peers of they're leaving. Trump of giant mess right? At the very least,
right? So good news is I am allowed to come podcast in the theater. It's your suffering.
It up there because it's your subject thing. It's because it's basically Mark. You need to explain yourself in long
form. Yeah, you can't
just say a thing. Exactly. To your example, you can't just say anything and have people extrapolate from Russell extrapolate, it's not their fault because you have an excuse, it's your fault because you have explained it right, right. And so if you write something along for more, if you go talk for three hours at least you'll the context will be there and then if they want to get mad at you, that's fine. But you can point everybody to the transcript and it's clear that that's not what you
meant. Do you also think while you're writing, how things could be misconstrued? So
Me like do a really good job of being very clear about this and a percent. Yeah. You kind of have to yeah. Is that like I Jimmy corsetti on the other day and he is an expert in ancient history and ancient civilizations. And we had this fascinating subjects and one of them that came up was the Nazis and their fascination with the occult. And so you had to like Clearly say, listen fuck Hitler. Okay, can I get really clear? Fuck Hitler. Fuck the Nazis okay I have not in any way. Okay, now that
We're clear. Let's talk about where the swastika came from, fuck Hitler. Then I say fuck Hitler. Let me say it again. Fuck Hitler but the swastika is is ancient symbol and he's like talking about like why did the Nazis have this fascination with the occult and with ancient civilizations? And so we got into it but it was like one of those things where it's like, all right, we're hitting the third rail. Everybody, get your rubber boots on, you know, let's let's save everybody here.
I've got a friend in the entertainment business who is quite left-wing, but really likes World War, Two documentaries. And so he'll be like, yeah.
This great documentary last night about Hitler and I'm like, I bet you
did.
You can't even have a copy of mine camp in your
house. Oh, a student at this, is actually one of the Stanford, crazy stories, a student at Stanford was reported to the disciplinary board. The DEA, the the Civil, whatever discipline disciplinary board for reading a copy of Mein Kampf. Oh my God. And the quad. Oh my God. That's so crazy. Which is a book that's been, you know, a sign
for by right now on Amazon, 80 years.
Yeah, two college kids to like understand who these people were and like, how to not do that again. Yeah, that kid was, like, nearly brought up on charges nearly expelled. So,
wow, that's that's yes.
Yes, this
is the world that I hope that we're leaving.
Well, it's just an awful way to look at things. It's so awful to think that if you read about someone horrible, you support them. That's right. It's just so crazy. Like what, how are we going to study
history, Yammer? And how we're going to do and how we're going to prevent? That's why happening again, right? If we can't, if we can't wrap our heads around, why they happen
the first time especially something like the Nazis. Like, how, how are we going to learn like what happened? They clearly 1920s.
Many was very different than 1945 Germany. What the fuck happened in 25 years? So what were essentially talking about is the year. 1999 America versus 2024 America, right? Imagine a shift of that magnitude, so crazy. There's a Holocaust in 2024 and in 1999, everybody's just hanging out. That's right. Well, you should probably study that. Definitely not reprimand someone for reading a book on this. Yeah, that's
right. Exactly. Look, the German people went along with it. Right? And so yeah, you know how
That
have how did that
happen? And how many you know did? They enter active agreement was arrived. Agreement was there, you know what what?
What are the steps? Yeah, exactly things. Go horribly wrong. That's right. How can we recognize those? Because those steps have taken place multiple times in history, in recorded history, right? We know about them. So, like, if we see them happening today, maybe we should stop at nip. It at the bud. What better way than to read about when it already
happened? Yeah, what am I observations about people? Talking about current events as we know conclusively, the prayer is all. Had horrible morale.
Problems, disasters. You know, catastrophes Warriors and all kinds. They made all kinds of horrible mistakes but we are completely certain that. In our time we figured it all out, right? Right. We're 100% convinced that we have it all dialed in and the one thing I know for sure is people 50 years from now we're going to look back on this and they're going to say, oh my God those people were awful 100%, right? It just, it's but like in what way,
right? And what way are we horrible? I mean, certainly a lot of the way we treat each other's horrible, especially with the amount of information that we have available, but it is fascinating. Also that if you, you know I visited
Staff and last year's last year and I got to tour the ruins. And I was like, oh well wonder when it all went South. Like when did they, when did they know this had fallen apart? Like, when, when was it in the peak of everything? They probably thought, hey, we have the most amazing sophisticated civilization that's available on Earth, and we will maintain this. Yeah, this is how we will be the center of intellectual discourse and the home of democracy. This Is Us. Yeah, and then know, now, there's like shitty apartment.
The next to the Parthenon. You like what happened? Something horribly happened and we don't want to think that could ever happen to us today, right? We want to thank where American motherfucker. We're going to keep this bitch. Rolling forever, Lynyrd Skynyrd's, Freebird. Let's go 2nd Amendment. Come on and we're going to, we think that it's just this is this is the future. We are America's The Shining Star of the world and we're going to carry this on but probably not, like, historically, I mean, what is the longest
Running dominant civilization ever the Romans existed for what a couple thousand years. Like how long did the Greeks run? How long did the Egyptian? The Egyptians might be the longest running especially if you like take into account the possibility of alternative history timelines where they'll, you know, like Egyptian hieroglyphs they have kings that go back, 30 thousand years right here it is Egypt and Mesopotamia. There it is one estimate measuring the time of the first pharaohs. The use of hieroglyphic writing.
To the native, religion was replaced by Christianity, ancient Egyptian civilization. Endured for about 3500 years? No, I bet it was more than
that. Well, there it is. I mean, they are, the argument is just things. Just really didn't really change, right? Like changes. We understand historical change of the kind that, we understand where things actually change the right. Live changes really kicked off with a Greeks and so that was sort of the default status, right civilization for a long time. The Greeks kicked off change. As we understand it, and then and then and then, and then the Romans, do you know what? The fish ponds? It should be good.
Schwantz, the fish for Cicero's fish? Ponds, no. So Roman Empire, you know, ran for, you know, in a sort of Roman Republic and Empire and it sort of helped what you consider as Dynamic. Phase is sort of vital phase ran for a few, you know, a few hundred years but maybe 400 years total, something like that. And towards the end as it was sort of falling, a stagnating and increasingly starting to fall apart friend of mine says, when the roads got dangerous and nobody could quite explain why, right? Which sounds familiar by the
way. Um,
Cicero was, you know, one of the great one of the Great
Statesman. And he wrote these letters that we have. And in the letters, he sends his letters to all of his aristocratic friends and it did. The theme in the letters is basically all of the actual competent capable citizens of Rome are at out in the countryside at their Villas, perfecting their fish ponds, right? They pulling into themselves, they built their themselves. Their
own protected environments. Right.
Right where they control everything and they completely focused on ornamentation they're completely focused on their clothes. And on there, you know, Lifestyles for our dashians they were
Kardashians.
I don't know if the Kardashians but if they did, they would be spectacular.
No doubt
they would be the most amazing. And so he kept railing is like stop with the fish ponds. Like stop
working the fit, like
get back out here, rejoin the Senate like get
back involved in the system. Let's keep this thing from caving in. Yeah and I
think it look guys, as you know the significance I think of you know Trump actually talked about this in the campaign you know his version of this talk on the campaign Trail. He's like look I could be off in a resort. I own all these. All right, well,
Many things I could.
Yeah, I like horse and he's 78 years old, they probably would like to do
that. Exactly. Right. And he's, you know, surrounded, his family loves him and like, you know, grandkids and like the whole thing and he's like, look I'm not doing it because like I need I need, I need to do this and it's interesting because, you know, he doesn't use, you know, he's not referencing Cicero when he says that but it's that Spirit, right? It's just real talked about where you know when times get tough do the people who are in a position to actually make positive change actually step up or not, right? And I think we've had a pretty long stretch where that hasn't been the case and I think maybe with Trump and I think also with a Lon
I think yes because he was the other guy, right? He he, for sure. Could what's the Coalition
right? It's not just him. It's vague ramaswamy. That's right. Which is
another guy by the way? Who? Yeah, could be kicking it on a beach
somewhere. 100%. Yeah it's a shit. Very successful and young and Handsome, Jack do whatever you want do anything. Yeah, exactly. That he's decided to go all in and then you of course you have Tulsi gabbard and you know, you have JD van. So I think is brilliant. You have all these brilliant people that are together which is very hopeful. This is what we didn't see the Biden.
Campaign. You know what? We saw from Harris and Waltz, you have waltzes guy who's it, seems like he's a compulsive liar, at the very least, he's lied multiple times about fairly insignificant things, you know, like whether or not he was a head coach or an assistant coach and the lies of always elevated him socially right? All the lies about his military service, or at least implying that he served in a different perspective and a different aspect. And then there was Tiananmen Square.
Where this, everything enhances his virtue. This is not what anybody wants. You want the opposite? You know, you want a guy like jade events, who served in the Marines and, you know, went to Yale comes from a single mother with addiction problems. Rose from hard work and dedication to become who he is. Now, like, that's the kind of guy that I like, yeah, that's what we all would like, like, okay. That looks like a leader to me.
Yeah, well, the Romans had this got their concept. They took very seriously, they called virtue, right? And like, did you did you there's a whole video ranking? By the way, the Roman virtues. And if you read them today, you just like want to burn.
Crying because you're just like, oh my God, I can't believe what we're missing. But like, yes, people with rich people, Rich. It's not just that. They think that they're good people there that they don't worry, buddy. They're good people. They actually act on it and actually step
up. Well, this is what's missing from today's secular society, right? Like we don't have like a doctrine that in encourages that sort of thinking and behavior and rewards it publicly, which religion does, you know what true Christianity, you know, not subverted fucking Giant.
Giant Arena Christianity, where the guy's flying, private jets and has rolls royces and shit, but actual like real Christian people
right on the room at the Romans had God's. I mean their riches that God's. Yeah. And so and so they like it was actually wrapped. It was it your point? It was like, encoded into their religion, it was wrapped up in their religion, they knew exactly what was expected of them. They knew exactly what their ancestors expected of them. They knew exactly what their gods expected of
them. I've recently read meditations. Again, a couple of months ago. I would listen to it in the sauna but it's brilliant and it's amazing that
This guy Marcus Aurelius was thinking like this so many years ago and it's so it's so valid today and it applies so well to Modern Life. It's so so strange you know how brilliant this person was while he was running this incredible Empire that he could write about human psychology and the value of forgiveness and you know, being true to yourself and constantly being truthful everywhere. And
Everything you do and all these virtues, and all these the the stoicism that he that he espoused, it's so valuable today. It's really remarkable that this person who was a leader. Was it 2,000 years ago? That his words still ring true today?
Yeah, you probably know he didn't write it for public
consumption. Right. Yeah. It was his even more amazing is
private notebook which is why it's so good.
Probably because he probably wrote it for a sub stack. You'd like wow people going to hate on this. Let me yeah let me let me.
You know, Louis preemptively attack the people in the comments are right. So do them, but he's like, he's like, he's
lecturing himself like he's telling himself how to act, right? Like, you know, he's very this very deep deep. These are very deep important. My favorite, my favorite part of a meditations. This is the section where something like you, you're going to wake up this morning and everybody's going to hit you and everybody's gonna lie to you and everybody's going to make dumb decisions and you're going to be incredibly frustrated and you're not going to get any credit for anything and you have to get up anyway.
Yeah. Like that's all. Yes, yes, yes. That's all.
All true, right? And you still have to get up and do your job. And, of
course, he's saying that to himself as the leader of Rome to himself.
Exactly. And, you know, and what's in there is just like, wow, his life was not, you know, he's just like the again, it's actually, if you don't like the CEO some, it's just like you're going to get pounded. Like, yeah, you're in. These positions are getting it powdered every day. It's as if you're operating out of a of a true sense of virtue if you're operating out of a true sense of like, exercising your responsibilities, you you get up and do it
anyway. It's amazing how much it resonates. Yeah, it really is, what's amazing, how much so many ancient
In writings resonate, you know there's so much valuable information just like in Sun Tzu's The Art of War or in the book of five rings you know, there's so many ancient books that you read and you go. First of all, I love reading them because I tried to imagine what, you know, what is this life like in like if you want to take like, Miyamoto Musashi 1400, when did he live Miyamoto? Musashi was like 14 20s or something like that. Like what's that?
At like, right? Like what is your life? Like, what is, what is the, what is the view of the world? When you you don't really have detailed maps or you don't have any photographs, you know, have any idea what the fuck is going on in Europe? Unless you go there? Like, what is, what is your version of the world, like, and then to see someone's words written down and you read them and try to just imagine yourself in their perspective and their mindset.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I look, I think if you're somebody like that
Somebody like Marcus Aurelius. You just have this incredible sense of responsibility. Yeah. Like you the one thing you do have is a sense of purpose like you know exactly why you're here, you know exactly what your role is. You know, exactly how you're supposed to behave. You know exactly how you're supposed to basically gain Glory. How you're supposed to honor your ancestors. Like it's just all, you know, exactly where you are in the community. Right. Right, you know, right? You have this like incredible sense of groundedness and rootedness and of course there's huge downsides to that, which is it really cuts off your ability to, you know, run off and, you know, you know, going American Idol, right? Like there's like a lot of things you can't.
Do right? But like, yeah, you know, you know what you're supposed to do and you rhyme either do it or you don't do it and these days to have people like that. We need people who choose to be that way, right? Which is, which is a, you know, which is arguably harder, right? Give it given all the choices that they actually choose to live that
way. Well, not only that, giving all the distractions that people face every day. That keeps them from sitting down and
writing a journal like that. That's right. Yeah.
You know, I mean back then there's not a lot of different things to entertain you
with correct. Yes, you had to be maybe a
It'll bit more serious because you couldn't, you could have as much fun, but my favorite and my other favorite numb. Our meditations Marcus. Aurelius thing is it's something like be the rocks on the shore, which the, at which the waves beat, right? Like yes, like yes, your job is to stand there like the Rocks do and just the surf just like keeps coming and keeps coming. And your job is just like stand there and take it.
Imagine what it was like addressing the people back then to just yelling out into these groups or speaking in front of all the leaders like
And now everyone's plotting to kill you. There is also a lot of that Goin.
Yeah, everyone's fact that you've been able to see how many times they try to kill Hitler, like everybody's trying to kill you. If you're, if you're running things, all your generals are probably secretly wanting to become the king. Yep.
Exactly. Yeah. All
these Surfers are waiting in the
wings. Easy lives. You know, today today most of the killings happened metaphorically.
Well, although every now and then yeah it's an interesting alternative timeline. Yes, yes, exactly. That's right, that's right. Yeah how fearful were
Were you leading up to the election? That it wouldn't go into the new timeline?
It was so weird because all the experts said it was 50/50 razor, you know, razor-sharp. You know, it's this tiny little, you know, thing 80,000 votes in eight counties. Yeah. And you know, and then no number one, then it wasn't which means we can take all those experts and just dismiss them forever going forward because they clearly have clearly have clearly have no clue. So it's another set of people we don't have to listen to but I had this really interesting conversation that kept nagging at me with a
Democrat. Who's on his way out of politics and he said unto the summer I said how how certain is are right, what's your viewing? And this person said a trucks going to win with 100% certainty. Really mr. Democrat. And from a sort of purple state, right? So, you know, not New York or California, but like a state with some sort of it may be Arizona, broader cross-section of people and this person basically said, yeah, look it said look, all you have to do is fly anywhere in the country into any purple in my place and go into a second.
Or third-tier, you know, sighs City, and take an Uber for 30 minutes, you land at the airport, take an Uber driver on for 30, mins come back and just ask the driver. Like, how's it going? And who they're voting for? And basically, 100% of the time, the answer is going to be Trump because people are just weird. People were just like completely fed up. They were just completely fed up. And then there was the, you know, Kamala enthusiasm, which this person said, you know, they come on Suzy. As is like, highly focused in New York and California which don't matter from an electoral standpoint, right? So they're not going to decide anything
but that is huge when it comes.
To Media.
Oh, sure. Of course. But that's, that's the thing. As a self-reinforcing nature of the bubble. This is what's actually. So interesting with these media, bubbles is the people in these media bubbles are not breaking out like this. Like they're getting deeper into this sort of collective psychosis that they indulge in. And part of it was getting excited about a candidate for, which there was very little popular support for once. You got outside of these, you know, heavily blue States. Yeah. And so it is in a lot of ways. It's the most you know, obviously explanation the world which is just people just fundamentally did not like the direction the country was going on and they were just fed up with
it. There's also this very bizarre.
Our arrogance of people that were certain that common house was going to win, like I'm sure you've seen the viral video of this lady who's a political analyst who talks about going to the liquor store and buying a bottle of champagne. All right I saw that yeah I don't want to show it the poor lady getting rid of she's probably living in hell right now but I'm Blue Sky. Yeah. She's probably on Blue Sky. She might be on that. Well, she was on X. I think she deleted her profile but the poor lady. I mean she but she was being very arrogant and she
In mock this man and said you do realize you wasted your vote, right? That's right. That's right, that's right. That's what she'll at which makes her hard to feel. Sorry for. That's right. It's like you were you were ready to mock this man but in her eyes it was all about reproductive freedom and she thought that that was under attack under the Trump Administration. And that women are going to stand up and going to stop that. Because in
her Echo chamber, that was the case. Everybody was universally, they all agreed were universally on board with this idea that Trump is evil. We got to get rid of them.
And women are going to vote, and it's going to be fun, but like, who you hanging out with lady? Yeah. You know, you could hang out with a
bunch of people that think baseball's awesome.
And then, you know, you run into someone from another country. Like, what
the fuck is baseball? Like you got to realize, there's a lot of people out
there. Yeah. And people really don't like being talked down to they really
don't. They don't like you mocking. The fact that first of all, nobody wasted their vote.
Like that's not how it goes. Like you don't waste your vote if you vote different in the other side wins. That's not
how the other side one. That's all it is. Like wasting the voters of
Easy way to look at it like it's because I think also people look at things like tribal games, you know, like, you know, in Texas is a huge football state and people love football and it's always we this we that when you T plays South Carolina, we this we that it's like people love to be a part of a team that's winning and they apply that especially if they're not in a sports to other things. I think it's just a war mentality, it's a tribal War mentality that's been source of the
Perverted in the human mind and applied to other things. It could be like Microsoft versus Apple, you know. It could be Android versus Apple, you know, iOS. It's weird how people get so tribal and then connect their own personal identity to other people agreeing with these ideas that they believe. Yeah, yeah, I do for to that 2001 is the Democrats for a long time with a big tent party. So the Democrats were the Coalition of people who had very different points of view on things and of course you know famously, it's all the different.
One of the groups and it's all the different, you know, economic and unions and all these things and Republicans were like the party of like rigidity, right? And just for whatever set of read a lot of the work stuff had a lot to do with it. Is it flips or to wear at least today. Trump's Republican party is the Big Ten party. Yeah and it's your point on having all these new people and many of whom are former Democrats, a lot of and the Democrats have decided to try to isolate out anybody, right? Who disagrees on any issue and demand right lockstep Conformity through the cancellation process. And so that that's a very interesting inversion that happened kind of without anybody saying anything about
It but it did happen and then I think the other the other inversion was the economic conversion which is remember the criticism of the Republican party for a long time. Was it was the party of trickle-down Economics. Yes the idea was rich. People are going to get all the money because Reagan cut taxes regulation and then basically if poor people get any money it's going to because the rich people like trickle trickle something, right? I think that inverted to where the Democrats, especially in the last four years became the trickle-down party, which was we're going to tax. And we're going to collect all the money and give it to the government and then we're going to let the government handed
out, right? But they did it under the guise of tax the rich they did it. Like then.
With his Robin Hood Mentality. At least they expressed that he, of course. That's how it starts. But then you end up with
35 trillion, dollar federal debt, you end up with this giant annual deficit, and then you end up with all this money being handed out, right? Right out and all these grants, and all these votes are things. Like, just this, there's like, shower of money coming from the government. But, of course, if the government giving you money, it also means the government can take money away, right? Like if you're making somebody dependent on you because you're giving the money, then you're in a, you're having tremendous position of power because you can make their life horrible by pulling the
money away, right? You can also
so control their
ideology though, what a percent. Yeah, you want that make, it's actually a form. You know, it's on this fits on the Spectrum to a form of like domination. Right now, that should make us very uncomfortable. And so the and, and maybe that would be fine if the, if the debt and the deficit is Now to control and inflation to get out of control. But it did and then at that point, it's like, okay, the gate like this, this new kind of sort of, tax-and-spend driven. Trickle-down economics is clearly not sustainable as not going to work.
So the way the Trump Administration is going to approach the economy they want less
They want tariffs and less regulation, and they want more more Reliance on US Energy, right? They want to drill more, more natural gas, more fracking, more drilling for oil. And then allow companies to to work without regulations inhibiting their performance, this will boost the economy, you'll have more productivity, you have more American manufacturing, you have more things
happening. Yeah, so the to headline things, you hear from them.
Whenever they talk about this deadline, things are number one growth. You just need faster growth. But by the way, it's the only way to resolve the long-term fiscal situation. It's the only way to resolve the debt. There's only two ways to do it. You can inflate your way out of it and end up in 1930s. Germany with hyperinflation like that. That's one track you can get on, which is a very bad track. And you don't want to go there or you can grow faster. Because if you grow faster than your economy, can catch up to the debt and you can, you can pay down the debt has it as you're growing. So they want to go for a higher rate of growth and then the other thing is they want America to win and this is my partner. Ben and I are able to spend time with
The summer and that was like his like adamant, think he kept going back which is like look America has to win and I'm and specifically what that means is America has to win in business and in technology and in Industry generally globally. Like our company should be the ones that win these you know broad but we should win Global markets like our company should be, it should be the
goal. How could anybody be against that? I happen to think that makes a lot of sense. Yes, I know I mean obviously you're wealthy man and I am as well, but it's like, how could you not want that? Yes,
by the way, if
If you are in favor of a high level of social support, if you want there to be lots of welfare programs, and food, assistance programs, all these things, he I would argue you also want that because it's the growth that will pay for all the social programs right there. Like that's how you square the circle. That's how you actually have your cake and eat it too. Which is like, first, you'd your economy just generates a fountain of money through growth and economic economic success. And then you can pay for and you can pay for whatever programs you want. I actually don't personally like I'm totally fine. Like set up all the programs. You want all the social spending on all the safety nets you want and
As long as it's easy to pay for because you're growing so fast, then everybody wins.
Yeah. I mean I've always said if I knew that I paid more taxes, people in the world in this country would live better, I would do it, right? Of course, I just don't believe that they're good at spending
it. That's the thing, right? It's like if you're putting in this, if you've generated 35 trillion of debt and these are the results. Yeah. Like this, this is not the deal. And this is my the, my friend that I talked about earlier, that, that was the point you made is just like, look, the the deal has been broken. Like this is not the deal. Anybody signed up for this is not how it's supposed to work.
Everybody knows
it and when you were talking about giving people social programs and giving them benefits and then you could take that away at any moment, this was one of the big fears that people had about letting illegal immigrants into the country and moving them to swing states, which clearly happened. And also giving them a bunch of benefits which clearly happened. Money, food stamps, housing, all that happened. Stuff that wasn't available to Veterans stuff. That wasn't available to homeless. People wasn't available to the
Rapport of this country. All sudden people came here illegally, got those things, that's right. And the thought was, if you gave these people, these things and you gave them away better life. Look, if I was living in a third world country with a family, and I knew that I could come to America, and I could get a job, an actual job and make money and my family's going to definitely eat. I'll vote for whoever the fuck you want me to vote for I don't care. My life is infinitely better than it was in this totalitarian shithole.
That I was in until I walked here. I'll do whatever you want. Like I just want my family to survive and I think everything's going to it's so much better than where I was if I'm in some War torn, part of the world. It's so much better here. I don't care if the Democrats win or the Republic is, I'm in America and if the Republicans didn't give me any money and they want to get me out, right? They want to deport me, right? But this nice lady she gave me an EBT card and I'm staying at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City and I can get a flight somewhere.
I want to go there. Oh this is wonderful,
right? So that's how it starts and there is a lot of that going on but I will say what's one of the things that's interesting is it doesn't necessarily stick that way and the sort of evidence for that is the rapid rapid of sort of dramatic ramp-up in the Hispanic vote for Trump.
Well Hispanic people generally are very hard
workers so this gets this gets the thing. So I was just equestrian is so after the the night after the 2016 election, like literally everybody, I knew was just like completely traumatized. Like we were all just like completely freaked out. Everybody was shocked freaked out.
Yeah, I was
completely freaked out. Yeah, everybody was like I didn't expect him to win the nomination. I don't expect them to win
the race like and you know, the media is unlike full historical blast and it's the end of the world and he's, you know, he's a Russian spy, all this crazy stuff that we know not to be true. It's just like, it's just like full-on. So a group of us, a group of us went out to dinner at a restaurant in Palo Alto and, you know, to and the atmosphere was like a funeral. I mean, like, everybody in the restaurant was just like despondent like ready to spread his slit their wrists. And so we're sitting there eating and like the food doesn't taste good and you know, it's just, I can't taste the food. He can't. He's the drinks, like everybody's just depressed. Wow. And you know, it gets
Thing of like, you know, my my God I can't believe that, you know, Trump, you know this that, you know, so you see, you know, right, you know, racist and you know, anti-hispanic and all this stuff and it was, it was it was one of those moments where the young waiter who's, you know, Hispanic young man in his 20s. What does rare moments where he broke into the conversation stable, right? But if it was in context, it was like, oh, thank God
because like, weird right, we're just depressing
ourselves to death. So like thank God, he's gonna say something and he said, you know, I think you guys are looking at all wrong. He is like, my father thinks Trump is fantastic. He's my father came here as an immigrant, whatever 30 years ago.
Built a life here. Became a citizen bought into the system. Pays taxes like, raised a
family, mowing his lawn with a maggot hat on. He'll eat. This is how you fix. This guy is great. You think this guy's fantastic. And he voted for him, and he just had and be and, and, and then, you know,
you for this before. But then it's like in the thing that is this guy said the thing. My father thinks is terrible is if other people are able to come here, they're able to cut in line. They you know they didn't have to go through the process. They didn't have to prove anything, they're not bought into the system right there. They're able to jump in and then they you know, they don't and they're not buying into the system and, you know,
Part of it may be, they're not being accepted, but also part of it is they're not buying in, they're not, they're, you know, they're not, they're not assimilating, they're not becoming part of the, you know, of what makes America America. And you know, in some cases and by the way, in some cases, you know, the criminals are coming across and terrorists are coming across and gangs. Yeah. And it's like my father's not in favor of any of that, right, right. My father wants to be part of a Great Society of a Great America, not some dysfunctional, you know, basically just disaster Zone and I remember the group of us. It was my first glimmer of like okay I need to like completely rethink my whole sense of like how the world
Works.
Because one conversation.
Yeah well it was, it was weird because it was like, so what happened to me, as I grew up in rural Wisconsin, which is now like completely Trump country. And so, from like 0 to 18, like, I completely understood the mentality and I was always like, explaining my friends of like, no, no, like this is, you know, this is like a different place, and people think differently. And then somehow between the ages of, like, 18 and 40 or whatever, I just like for God, and I became a California became, I became a fully assimilated, California, and I was just like, well, of course, The Californians are much more sophisticated and
advanced than, right? The people who, you know, where I came from. And so, of
course,
Course. Of course everybody. California has it figured out and of course, California is going to lead the country and of course in all this thinking, right? And Trump was for me, Trump was the drumsticks 2016 was the wake-up. Call like no no no, no. Like that's just like, completely that is such an impoverished world, view of how this country works. And how people think that it doesn't explain what you, because you have to explain what happened. And then you have to like if you have what some sense of being able to predict what's next, which is what I'm supposed to be doing for a living, you know, sort of investing is supposed to be. It's like, okay, I got to rebuild my entire model of the world for like, how
how this all works and how this whole system has country works. But it was that conversation that kick-started it for me.
So what was the process of altering? Your perspective or at least opening it up?
Yeah, so for me it was primarily it was reading and so I started actually read my way back in history and I actually went all the way back. I try to read of like we're the origins of like left-wing thought came from and then communism. And how did that evolve and you liberal democracy and then also right wing thought and like, you know, everybody's calling everybody fascist now. So like what was fascism is that what this is
Right. And how did how did the Germans do with it? You know. So all of those questions and then, you know, kind of converging on in the last 80 years like how is that you know, either stabilized or not stabilized and so I did that. But the other thing is, I just started talking to a lot more people and I just stopped assuming that because I read it in the New York Times, that it was true and, you know, and by the way and then of course, what unfolded in the Years, you know, kind of sense was, you know, the I followed the whole Russia gate thing like super closely like I read everything and I read all the
reports. And what did you think, initially? Do you think it was true? Because it's like just overwhelming
consensus from the entire
A class that of course, is a Russian spy rice had on stage. I went to Hillary's first post election, loss speech, which he gave at Stanford, the very first one and I said, we know that people organizing it. So we sat literally like 15 feet from the front from Hilary and her first appearance as the whole thing is fraught with. So it's like incredible tension because, and, and the Russia gay stuff is in full full-blown, full-blown display. And I go there and I'm like, alright, this is going to mean to me and, you know, the in the audience at Stanford audience and so it's all 100% Hillary Clinton supporters, right? And I'm sitting there, and I'm on my best behavior because I'm with my wife, and I have to, like, not
You know, after not act out there and Hillary gets up there and she says, Trump is only president today because Vladimir Putin hacked Facebook and made him the President, right? And I'm sitting in the audience and I'm like on the Facebook board and I'm like, that's not like,
that's not true. I know for an absolute
fact that that's not true, right? And so that got me thinking and then the Russia gets tough unspooled and I was like, you know, the whole over the the The Dodd steel dossier. Like all this stuff
comes out. What was the accusations about Facebook? How did she think that Russia had?
At Facebook and made Trump the president. Yeah. So it's this whole thing with this is remember
this whole thing Cambridge analytical. And so it's this whole thing that there was this basically there was this data. So there was this Theory which by the way is like completely, it is like a completely fake thing like this didn't. So there was this date. There was this, there was this data set on user behavior. That in theory, there's an academic. There's a theory that you could sort of impute, human behavior from this data set and then you could use it to predict what people would do and how they would react to different kinds of messages. And it was like this like magical breakthrough and basically thought control and
There was this company called Cambridge, Analytical in the UK, that figured out a way to do this and then it was this like new kind of literally like mind control like you know them by far like the most powerful meme weapon of all time for getting people to vote the way that the way that you want and it was this data breach of face. The whole thing was weird because Facebook had been criticized for a decade leading up to 2016 that it kept all the data closed, right? So the criticism was Facebook nevertheless any of the data? It doesn't share the data, right? And the criticism for years was Facebook is the roach motel of data and The Virtuous thing for it to do is to actually free the data and let
Nobody else have access to the data and then in 2016, like flipped 180 degrees and it was Facebook is the most evil company of all time because it let camera gentle etiquette get access to this data. And then Russia ran basically a psychological operation and American
citizens use? Why did a Facebook push
back? They did earlier, it's just this they they did early on, they do today in their way but you know, they're trying to run a business, the trying to get to the next quarter. They're trained 15 play bass and everybody copacetic a try. Not to get just completely destroyed by the politicians, they're getting right slammed.
Every single day on every conceivable issue you can imagine. And it's actually very interesting when you're when you're in these companies. Like these big issues are big issues, but you're also literally trying to like make the quarter, right? You're right. You're trying to ship your products, you're trying to close your sales. You're trying to keep your employees from quitting, right? You have these active responsibilities, right? You have practical concern responsibilities and so sometimes these companies get kind of wedged because they can't do the things that they would do. If they were just in damage control mode and then they write and then they'll, you know, then they may be the message doesn't get out.
But so what was it bigger?
Shift the waiter or the Hillary
speech, always the waiter. I mean by that it was the waiter was too much bigger shift because it was listening to a normal person's listening to a person with her feet on the ground actually explaining the way the world worked. Whereas with Hillary, it was, it was culprit. It was, it was delusion. Oh, is she that bad? It was, it was amazing by the way. She then spent the next hour and a half when I'm in a place where I don't know. If I'm to control myself, I bring a little notepad along because I can work out my demons like, on Rod dicks. But
what I don't say anything, right like Superbad. So I brought my little
My little
tiny little Fisher Space Pen, right? I pull it out and I started making a list of all of the people and organizations that she blamed for her to feed the were not named Hillary Clinton. And I got 20. My favorite was Netflix, by the way,
she claimed that Flex. What did Netflix do?
Netflix are anti-clinton documentaries
this opinion facts. Well this is particularly funny because the CEO Netflix is a
famous Democrats of super Democrat bastard. Well not actually dead but also specifically read.
Reed, Reed Reed Hastings. And his wife are very enthusiastic left-wingers, but I mean, it was just this Litany of, you know, basically excuses and complaints right. With no sense of like responsibility personal responsibility at all, you know, just like pure grievance. And it's so it was the - was - lesser like okay like whatever that is is not the
path like itchy blame Comey.
Oh yeah, I'll follow my absolutely yeah. Oh yeah. She definitely hated that guy. Yeah. No question. That was a wild one hundred percent. Yeah. Exactly. And by the way like that was super weird. Yeah, you know, I don't think she was completely
wrong.
Don't understand that one. Honestly, if they didn't want Trump to win, I don't get that one.
Well, she's kitschy. We know she's guilty but we're not going to charge her, right is weird. That's crazy. Is it weird
message? It's almost as weird as the Biden one where we don't think he's competent to stand trial for the documents that he had. That were classified, exactly, but he can. What have his finger on the button if fuck? Are you
talking about exactly? We know, we know he's guilty but we never convict him because the jury would say that he's a senile old
man, which is crazy because he's still running for president the
Time is running for re-election. Well, then
remember everybody at the time said, the media said that the prosecutor was lying, right? Because if we, if
that pointy sharp, as a tack sharp, as a
tack,
my favorite is Joe Scarborough that's, this is the best Biden intellectually. The best one I've ever seen. Like, dude. Yes. And then, meanwhile, he had to go tomorrow, Lago, Kiss the Ring? Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
My favorite was the remember the about about earlier this year was the invention of the term cheap.
Fake cheap fake.
She's back because everybody's worried about that.
I defect, which really didn't then there was really nothing, nothing happened to that and so that the cheap fake, we learned is a video that just simply shows, you something,
right, right? That it's claimed to
be out of context, but it actually turns out that it's actually just telling you the
truth. She didn't Nancy Pelosi start using that one cheap fake.
Yeah, exactly. Because the theory was, it was going to be Clips out of context. Yeah. But it turned out they were cliffs in
context. Have you seen? There's a gentleman who made a video here. I'll send it to Jamie because I sensed. Duncan, it's pretty fucking crazy of what AI is capable of now
Now by come on my phone updated, you son of a bitch come on, don't make me go to fucking Android because I will
This guy did this insane video where it's all completely Ai and everything he did including his voice. It's here, I'll set it to Jamie. It's 100%. A i generated and it's so hard to believe because it's so good and it really puts you in this. When you talking about cheap fake, I just wanted to Jim cheap fakes and deep fakes. Let's put the headphones on a washer.
This is so crazy. We're at that moment where you cannot tell, right? And let's look at it because it's pretty extraordinary. This is the best version that I've seen so far this is completely a. I
speak like me, one of our companies are can invoke any text and will sound like me then I trained. Hey Jen with a video of mine. I input the audio file to generate a video based on my text. The video you are watching right now is
The result 100% generated in AI. What do you think of that guys? I know this might sound crazy at this. How crazy
is that? Oh, that's your company that's him, that's him. Yeah, that is. That's the AI
generate. Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. That's two companies. One of the voices ours and then that's another great company called, hey, Jenna the devoted the visuals, but, you know, that's
right. That's not. Yeah, well, this is part of the first
internet, as I've said, first internet election, probably the first internet election will be, the one that has this kind of thing, actually. And it
People get
rich. Why didn't they do that with common errors? We took turns out. They're done, an amazing job of it. Like really knocked out of the park with a solid speech. They didn't? Yes. Ever say it on the internet. Yes. Just have a bunch of viral videos of her speaking. So eloquently in perfectly when would think exactly that's the fear of the future, right?
Yeah. And so like I think that's that's going to be the kind that's going to be the kind of thing is going to happen in terms of like the dirty tricks. I'd I think that you know that will be a part of it right there. Yeah. There's always some way to try to try to gain these
things. Just have the most brilliant writers. Formulate, you know, get AI to do it. Like you're selling a i as
All these solutions to things that are super logical. And well, there's no like weird thinking in it so I can, you know, cut all the fat out.
So I think we have a theory on how to fix this. And the theory basically is we're going to have to switch our sense of what's real from, basically just trying to eyeball, it figure out whether it's real to only taking seriously, the things that we know are real and the way that we would know things are real as well, have them register registered on a blockchain. Right? And so I think the way this is going to work in the future, is every politician will have an account on a blonde. A blot on a blockchain service, like a crypto crypto service and
Every politician whenever they say anything in public whenever their video would be going to have people around them with cameras. All the time, whenever they put out a statement they're going to cryptographically sign it on the blockchain so that it can be validated that is actually content from them. And then I think we're just going to have to reach an understanding that we're just going to have to write off everything else that we see. Wow which frankly is a good idea anyway because they're just is a lot of noise, you know, in the environment. There's a, how
would you integrate that with social media though? Because one of the one of the issues is these low information voters that are getting information.
Ian, either from clickbait headlines on these websites, where they don't even read the actual paragraph with Mike, which might be completely different than the headline itself. The headline is just inflammatory just and then viral videos, like how would you
so? So the thing is, so that's already happening even pre aii, right? And so, I would say that's, that's a pre-existing problem. And so like we can't, we can't, we can't go by. And, by the way, that's been happening for a long time. Like newspapers. Have been Scandal sheets, forever. If you go back, hundreds of you, if you go back
Is of years for the first newspapers. They were running all kinds of. Scroll has the first newspaper, was a scandal sheet to the Vatican, like, in real your 1500, it was all these like terrible rumors about like the pope and the Bishops and all these the Cardinals. And all that was the first newspaper was the very first newspaper was in the Vatican. And then the American, all the American Colonial newspapers were like that in the revolutionary era. It was all crazy rumors and innuendo and people accusing each other. Of there was a famous election in 1800 which was Jefferson versus Adams that we think of, as these like super upstanding, you know, operate people and they've just like smearing this crap out of each other in their respective.
Of newspapers because they would actually owned newspapers in those days and I'll just God attack each other on things. Change Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin, with your printed newspapers before he became a became when a government and he created 15 different sock puppets created 15, different pseudonyms. He was, he was a suit or a non, and then he would basically have them argue with each other in his newspaper without telling people that it was all him. So, he had all these different personalities and so like, we've been in a world of like information Warfare
Very long time, we've been in a world of quick sensationalist you know? Nightly News if it was a, if it bleeds it leads. Yeah, you know sensationalist stuff for a long time. We've been in the world of like yeah propaganda for a long time. So so that, you know, that that you're not going to fix that. You're never going to make that goal.
Isn't it funny that we don't think of the past like that? Oh yeah. We just assume virtuous and we assumed they had it all figured out. Yeah.
That that very much is not true there. It's all kinds of crazy. Crazy bananas stuff. My favorite is in the Vietnam War. What was it was the the Gulf of Tonkin that sort of kicked off?
Off the sort of big escalation, feel like we now know, for a fact, you didn't happen right with the whole thing, just didn't happen. And now there's this big debate about like we did, they know it didn't happen or did they fake name? Fake it. But like so there's always been stuff like that in history so that we can't fix. And a I will be a new way to do that kind of thing. But what we can do is we can reorient people to say, okay? Now you're going to have to like, take seriously. This stuff is real and if you want to actually know what's happening, this stuff is real and we can prove that it's real. And if it's not, it's entertainment and you can choose to believe it or not, right? But but, but you should not rely on it and it look, it's not going to be perfect and
Going to take time. But there is there is a way to address this.
Hmm. Okay. So that would be the solution to deep fakes, the block
change. You flip it? You flip it.
Yeah. That focus on the real stuff that's logical that actually does make sense that that actually kind of gives me hope. I do generally have hope. Even though I look at the pessimistic side of things, I generally optimistic because my real feeling about human beings is most people are good. I've genuinely believe there's far more good people in the world than bad people. This for more people that just
to live a good life and have a good time and enjoy themselves. Then there are people who are tyrants. Yeah,
I'm super optimistic, I'm incredibly optimistic and I was optimistic already with flashes of pessimism but like I'm really optimistic and especially now. So I think this is going to be. We have the real, we have the real potential here for Golden Age.
We really do you really do. Yeah. The capabilities that
we have and the people that we have a look at my day job, I meet these young you know I meet these 22 girls. Every day that are just like the smartest people in the world is far as people I've ever met.
They're getting better by the way as time passes there by the time they're 22. They just know a lot more.
Hmm. They have so much more access to information than we did. There's
so much better trained capable and ready to go. Yeah, fired up. And they know each other able to connect online and they're already in communities and they know how to help each other and so like yeah, the the productive and inventive and creative, you know, aspect particularly of this country is just like there's never been anything like it in
the world. I think there's also the real potential for a shift in perspective.
Positive patriotic shift in perspective that can happen in this country. And if you think about what happened with the woke ideology, how it's swept so quickly over the country and change, so many aspects of the way we deal with things socially. It happens. So radically and so quickly and such a large change that people are susceptible to change. It's possible to to enact change and a positive change in a good direction where people are optimistic about the future.
What you are and I am, I mean, I think that's probably contagious. Yeah, that's right. I really do think that it's an upward spiral it was Evan. Hey, who said that thing about psychology the other day? It was one of is a friend of mine who was a former special forces guy said that psychology is more contagious than the
flu, right? Right. Exactly. Yes, yes. Yeah, that's right. So one of the interesting things is going to happen right now. You know we talked a lot about Trump's Victory and Republicans but there's now a civil war that kicked off inside the
Democratic party, which is very interesting because really they will because they lost so badly, right? So they the fact that they lost the White House and they lost the popular vote and they lost the Congress and they lost the Senate and they lost the Supreme Court, right? Like this time it's undeniable that like the current path that they've been on is not working like it's your foot like being an exclusionary party and kicking people out for wrong. Think like, it's not, they're not going to lecture. They're not
just kicking people out there. Borrowing people from making it to the primaries. Yes, which is very
undemocratic. That's right. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Starting with Bernie and try 16 and then right,
I'm Donna Rice has book, she documented that right.
And so so like the I would say the smart Democrats know that this is not a, it's not a viable path. You can't have a political party that doesn't win. It doesn't mean it's not me. It's not useful and so you know, there's going to have there's a civil war that's underway inside that party that's kicking off right now where they're going to have to recalibrate get started what they want the future to be and it's going to be a big decision in the. Same thing happened by the way when Reagan be Carter, really badly in 80 and then and then and then had a landslide 94 it then
Took Democrats 12 years right to get to Bill Clinton and actually win again. And so they have this cautionary, tale of, they went too far in the 60s and 70s, and it took them 12 years to recover. And so, if you talk to the like, really smart Democrats ran out of luck with this, can't be 12 years, that's crazy. We have to do this a lot faster, but we have to reorient and we have to get back to Common Sense. We have to get back to normal. We have to get back to, you know, sensible. We have to get back to
moderate. We were actually playing Bill, Clinton debating during the elections of what year was that Jamie?
I forget what it was when he first ran. What you what year
did he first run? Oh yeah. 90
Chinese 292. Yeah, so is the night and I was like, I vote for that guy. Yeah, exactly heartbeat because awesome also we played a clip of Hurley Clinton Hillary Clinton where she sounded more Maga than anybody who's maggot today. Sure where she was talk about, the penalties that illegal immigrants should face. They should pay a stiff fine because they came to this country illegally and if there are criminal they should be jailed or kicked out of the country without question like all this was like, so Maga.
I like this is so wild to hear from Hillary in
2008. That's right. That's right. And and and Hillary and Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein all these people that wanted to build a
wall. Uh-huh.
That's that Dianne Feinstein. Eric, there's our Center in California that I'm very, very left-wing. She was down in the Border like the photo ops in front of the wall. That was being built like trying to take credit for it. Crazy. Yeah. Like 18 years ago? Yeah. And so yeah. So another reason for optimism is I think that they're going to be able to pull their way back. Like I think they're going to be able I think getting losing this bad is very motivating to be able to pull your
I can become more normal. And I think again, that would be like, I mean, how great would it be if you had two parties that actually had like sense. Yes, caramel normal
policy. I mean, imagine tablet and was running up against Trump. Yes, exactly. Like he was so good. We played that speech that he gave after Sister Sister Souljah and said a bunch of like very anti, white things about white people and he gave this like, super eloquent. But yet compassionate speech about this where he's very charitable about her position as being a young person.
Person and not having the best perspective on things. It was fucking brilliant. Yeah it's was pretty like that's the guy like that's a
president. Now by modern standards of course he was a
fascist. Yeah well rest of your life because fascism by definition is almost always applied to right-wing totalitarian governments but it's really kind of just adherence to the state and enforcing a Doctrine and forcing people to think and behave of expert which is what the left wing does. And then you talk about like being pro,
Or well. Who's more pro-war right now Trump or the Biden Administration? Clearly Trump is less pro-war. Correct, clearly. Trump wants to end the wars. Clearly Biden just allowed, Ukraine, to use long-range missiles into Russia. Like this is, I don't know what's going on. In terms of negotiations, I hear all kinds of different things, but if you looked at one side, that is pushing for these wars and seems to be all in on it. And the other side, that's not like with the fucking polish.
Shift is so dramatic. That's right. It's really weird that the free speech thing, which is always a tenant of the left-wing party. It was like, you know, I mean was Doctrine, like, free speech is necessary. It's the foundation of our ability to discuss and find out what's right? And what's wrong, right? You have to be at mean, it's the ADL. He still let fucking Nazis speech these to let them March. They would defend their right to do it,
right? Right? Yeah. Because you needed air out the idea to be a show
I was wrong, exactly. Yeah. So look, it was not that long ago. When you had Democrats that were very much in favor of many of these extremely sensible positions, super recent. It was pretty recent. And so I think, but again reason for after I got to know if they're going to, I don't know if they're going to pull it off. They might just get, they might go crazier like they might just go right off the cliff, like it's certainly possible but like, it is also possible that they'll drag it back and it might happen quite quickly. And I'm hopeful and
optimize, I am as well. I think the temperature of society like the mindset of society is so clearly moving away from that Madness.
Is that they're going to have to course correct, which is just logical. There's no way they're going to keep doing it the same way or double down. It's just not going to. It's like they're going to go the way that MSNBC, they're going to become ridiculous. Yeah, that's right. So they have to, which is good for
everyone for everyone. So one of my theory is you can separate the concepts of the United States and America and you can be very optimistic about America and have all kinds of issues that the United States, but still be positive about America. And the difference is that the United States is the formal system of the government.
And the politics and all the stuff we get mad about in America's the people, right? Right. And so, you can be incredible. I am incredibly bullish about the people and then, it's just a question of whether an America part, and it's just a question, whether you can get the United States Park, kind of lined up to it, at least, not prevent good things from prying and ideally help, good
things. Well, what are the things that you think about this administration? At least what they're proposing. That would move us in that direction as opposed to the way things were
going. There's a lot of things. I mean. So yeah, I think you got to start with the Doge, the department of government efficiency. Yeah.
Oh Allah, I think
it's hilarious. That it just winds up being Doge Gog. Even. He's just pushing Dogecoin forever. Universe speaks. Yeah. It's just so so many things are just so on the nose that you like it's a simulation real? Yes. I mean it has to be
real. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And Yolanda's programming in the
back room late at night in between playing, we certainly got a good position in the game in treating exactly the number one Diablo player in the world right now. We just got number 1, which means fucking bananas. How do you have the time to do that? Which means he could be the guy
In the Simplicity, the same. Yeah, yeah. So look, this goes back to her talking about before like it just you. It is time to carve this this government back in size and scope. It's time to take it over. Alt it. You know you can talk about distribution of taxes but it's time to take the overall tax slow down. It's time to take this bending down. It's time to get the government out of the position of deciding who gets money. It's time to unleash economic growth.
You'll on explained. This more agencies than there have been years of the United
States? Yeah, 450 federal agencies and two new ones a year and they're my favorite. Twist is we have this thing called independent.
Agencies. So for example, with this thing called the Consumer Finance, Protection Bureau cfpb, which was the the it's sort of Elizabeth Warren's personal agency that she gets to control and it's an independent agency that just gets to run and do whatever it wants, right? And if you read the Constitution, like there is no such thing as an independent agency. And yet, there it is. What is her agency? Do whatever she wants. What does it do though? We basically terrorized Furniture, terrorized financial institutions, prevent fintech prevent new competition. New startups that want to compete with the big bang. Oh yeah.
Well,
just like Terror terrorizing, anybody, who tries to do anything new in financial services, and can you give me an example? Like I said, you don't have D banking. This is where a lot of the dpd banking comes from as the, is these agency Saudi banking is when you were, you as either a person or your company, or literally kicked out of the banking system, like they did the Kanye exactly. Like they did the Kanye, my partner Ben's father has been debunked. Really. We had an employee who or what we for having the wrong politics, Surfer saying, unacceptable things under current banking regulations under. Okay, here's a great, here's a great thing under current banking regulations, after
All the reforms the last 20 years there's now a category called a politically exposed person pep and if you were a pep, you are required by Financial Regulators to kick them off of your of, to kick them out of your back. While you're not allowed to
have your politically on the left that's fine because they're good because they're not politically exposed. So no one on the left gets
deep bank. Now, I have not heard of a single instance of anybody to lift getting to.
Can you tell me what the person that you know, did what they said that got them?
DeBell. Well Diamond Dave, her, what's is a right-wing, you know, he's pro-trump. I mean, he said all kinds of things.
He's been very anti Islamic terrorism. He's been very worried about him, a great, migration, all these things, and they D Bank time for the databank to you. So you get kicked out, you get, kicked out of your bank account, you get you get kicked out of the car. You can't do credit card transactions. By the way, you can't run us that legal. Well, exactly. So this is the thing and so and then you're going to think of like well there's no this is where the government, the companies get intertwined that your fascism point which is there's no there's a constitutional amendment that says The Government Can restrict your speech but there's no constitutional amendment. That says, the government can't debunk you, right? And so they if they can't
Do the one thing that they do the other thing and then they don't have to do Bank. You, they just have to put pressure on the private company Banks to do it and then the private company Banks do it because they're expected to, but the government gets to say, we didn't do it. It was the private company that did it and of course, JPMorgan can decide who they want to have his customers, of course, right? Is there a private company and so it's this. It's this sleight of hand that happens. So it's basically it's a privatized sanctions regime that lets bureaucrats due to American citizens. The same thing that we do to Iran, won't kick you out of the financial system. And so the
Has been happening to all the crypto entrepreneurs in the last four years. This has been happening. A lot of the fin Tech entrepreneurs, anybody trying to start any kind of new banking service, because you're trying to protect the big Banks. And then this has been happening by the way, also, in legal fields of economic activity, that they don't like. So a lot of this started about 15 years ago. With this thing called operation truck point where they decided to as marijuana start to become legal as prostitution start to become legal and then guns, which there's always a fight about under the Obama Administration. They started to D Bank,
Legal marijuana businesses, Frost escort businesses, and then, and then, and then gun shops, just like your gun manufacturers and just like, you're done, you're out of the banking system. And so, if you're running a medical marijuana dispensary, in 2012, like you guess what? You're doing your business, all in cash because you literally can't get a bank account. You can't get a Visa terminal, you can't process transactions, you can't do payroll. You can't do direct deposit. You can't get insurance. Like, none of that stuff. Is if you've been sanctioned right, none of that stuff is available and then this Administration extended that concept to apply it to
Ders crypto Founders and then just generally political opponents. So yeah. So that's that's been like super pernicious. I wasn't aware of though, 100% as the called Apsos operation, chokepoint 1.0 was 15 years ago, against the pot and the guns drop point 2.0 is primarily against their political enemies and then to their disfavored Tech startups. And it's hit the tech world. Like we've hard. We've had like, 30 Founders debunked in the last, for real? Yeah, it's been, it's been a big recurring, pattern, 30. This is one of the reasons why we ended up.
Supporting Trump. It's like we just can't. We can't live in this world. We can't live in a world where somebody starts a company. That's a completely legal thing and then they literally like get sanctioned right an embargoed by the United States government through a completely unaccountable know, by the way, no due process. None of this is written down. There's no rules, there's no court. There's no decision process, there's no appeal who do you appeal to write? Like who do you go to to get your bank account back, right? You know, and then and then you know and then there's
This ended there's also the Civil asset forfeiture side of it, which is right, the other side and that doesn't happen to us. But that happens to people in a lot of places now who get arrested and all of a sudden, you know, the state takes their money. Yeah, so let's that happen to people. If they get pulled over
they have a large amount of cash. Yes, I'm
States. Right? Or, you know, they'll be there been in, you know, well-publicized examples of like, you know, there was like, you know, there'll be some investigation into, like, you know, safe deposit boxes and the next thing, you know, the feds of season, all the stuff, all the contents, in the state deposit, right safe deposit boxes in that, that stuff never gets returned. And so it's this, and this is what, you know, there's one Trump.
Says the Deep State, you know, I like the way we would describe it as its administrative power, its political power being administered, not through legislation, right? So there's no defined law that covers. This it's not through regulation, right? There's nothing. You can you can't go sue a regulator to fix this. It's not through any kind of court judgment. It's just raw power. It's just raw or administrative power. It's the government or politicians just deciding that things are going to be a certain way and then they just apply pressure until they get
it. So what happens to those 30 tech people that you
No, to go into a different field, like try to do something different and try to try to try to get, you know,
complete up ending of your life. Yeah,
complete up. Any of your life and try to try to? Yeah, try to change your life. Try to get out of try to get away from the eye of Sauron, try to get out of whatever is Zone. Got you into this and keep applying for new bank accounts at different banks. And hope that at some point a bank will say, you know, okay, you know, it's okay. We've checked it. It's now. All right. Whoa,
but there's no. So what do they do with their money? Like what happens?
You I mean you gotta cash. I mean,
You go to Cache? Are you can't have a yeah. So where do you put it under your mattress under your mattress? Yes exactly. Yeah,
exactly. Is so insane that if someone has 30 million dollars in the bank and they get d-bag
diamonds art, you know, do you I don't know. Go overseas somewhere. Holy shit. Yeah, it just like it. Just how it just happens. And again, it's really important. There's no fingerprints. Like, there's no,
right? There's no person who has no stick above the strings.
Yeah.
Exactly, right? It just happened and we can trace it back as we understand exactly. You know, we know, we know that, we know the politicians involved and we know how the agency's work and we know how to pressure is applied and we know that these Banks get phone calls and so forth and so we can Loosely, like we understand the flow of power as it happens, but when you're on the receiving end of this, your specific instance of it, like, you can trace it back and there's nothing.
So these what are the instances, like, what is the company? What are they trying to do? And how do they run a foul all the
crypto startups in the last basically four years? So,
Do you remember the krypter krypter think got like really, you know, sort of everybody got excited and like entities and like all that stuff and bright just like stopped. Yeah, and the reason it stopped is because, basically every crypto founder ever crypto startup, they either got D, banked personally, and forced out of the industry, or their company got D banked. And so it couldn't keep operating or they got prosecuted charged or they got threatened with being charged. This is a fun. This is a fun twist as a fun little twist the SEC. The SEC sort of has been trying to kill the crypto industry under under
And this has been a big issue for us because we're the biggest Krypton crypto startup investor the SEC can they can investigate you, they can subpoena you, they can prosecute, you they can do all these things but they don't have to do any of those things to really damaged. You all they have to do is they issue what's called a World's notice? And the wells, notice is a notification that you may be charged at some point in the future, like you're like on notice that you might be doing something wrong and they might be coming after you at some point in the future. Oh my God. Okay, so
terrifying. Yeah, the I the eye of Sauron is on
you now.
Trying to be a company with a Wells, notice doing business with anybody
else. Oh my God,
right? Try to try to work with a big company, try to get access to a bank. Try to
do. So that's when they support, D, EI initiatives, and the
one in the SEC. The SEC under Biden, became the SEC under Biden became a direct application of exactly. So DUI. They started, it did a lot with that and then he has all the ESG stuff and he has to use a very malleable concept and they piled all kinds of new requirements into that. So through that, through this process, the SEC could basically just simply dictate what companies do.
With no accountability at all. Like there's no, you know, there's no over there's no over their hearings, were they get yelled at? But like nothing changed, nothing ever happened in hearing that ever change anything, just the raw application of power, right? And so, this is your
friends. This is happened to
oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, when we had like I said, we have an employee who got the bank because he had crypto in his job title used to encrypt, oh, policy for us and his bank booted him because he that's it because they did it. They did, as they did screen across the, it's what they told us is they did a screen across their, their customer base.
Yes. And if anyone would make do because because anybody with crypto became a politically exposed person because wow, this
crypto was politically
controversial, right? That's just your this sometimes is like completely honest. These terms compliance risk reputation management. Yeah, tone at the top, they have these lovely sounding terms that make it sound like everybody's going to be upstanding citizen. But when, you know, they're all code for is destroy the enemy, like bring the hammer of God, and the bank and the government, or whoever or the
Or the social media to bring it down and just like, crush the individual. Wow, with no due process and look, there's an argument in the long run that this is all unconstitutional because the Constitution gives us all the right to due process and this is government pressure and there's right. So like there's probably a Supreme Court case in five years that's going to find retroactively to, this was all illegal. But in the moment, when you're the guy who's been T banked, I mean, number
one and also the potential that if you do challenge them in court and lose the repercussions would be even heavier. Exactly. Yeah, like a present, why is it really worth your effort as it?
Worth the risk. That's right. Especially if you've already had your life upended. You ready to do it again? Yeah. That's right. When you barely build yourself back up. Yeah, so this is and I think this is
important context for like when you Lana vivec talk about like reducing regulation, you know, there's two ways to think about reducing regulation. It's like, oh my God, the water in there are going to get dirty and it's Foods going to get poison right now, some of those regulations I think are very important, but the other way to think about it is examples like this, which is just raw government, power being applied to ordinary people who are just trying to live their lives are just trying to do something legitimate. And did they just on the wrong?
Aside of something, the right one power have
decided, Well there's something that isn't illegal but they don't want to be done by crypto
a crypto or having the wrong political points of view. Well, the the trucker, you know, the other great examples, the trucker Strike Up in Canada. Yeah. Was it even more direct version of this because your, you had truckers physically showing up and it was something like step one, was they take away your driver's license, which, by the way, right is just somebody pressing a button on a keyboard. No more driver's license. Step two is I take away your insurance and step three is a tickle, your kids.
Right? And so like that was their version of this and that was a very specific take away your kid. That was the threat at the end to the truckers and the Canada trucker strike, because the truck because the trucker strike in Canada. I was going to jam up these cities because it was the farmers. Were the trucker's were very serious. They wanted to, they were doing a nonviolent protest, but they wanted to stall the city's, to be able to exert political pressure back on the government, right? And the government was like, will tolerate it for a little while. Then we'll take your driver license, then we'll take your insurance and we'll take your kids. And and
how do they say they would take their kids? Because it's a
Ministry. It's administrative power. Like you can't you can't write the theory will be. You can't let these aren't good parents if they're sitting in a truck in the middle of Calgary preventing. You know, goods and services from reaching people, right? Putting people's lives at risk. Wow, you know, child seat child seizure and I don't know if they actually seized any kids but it's just an example of. There's an agency in the Canadian government. Just like in the US government that if they want to they can take your
kids. Well, they were doing D banking there with people who donated to the trucker Convoy. That's what which is even crazier. That's right. Not even people who are there people.
Opposed to the mandates that Trudeau's Administration was imposing on people. And so they donated to these truckers and then they got their bank accounts taken away, which is really
crazy. And so, and I exactly. And I think that I think the right way to think about this is when we think about totalitarianism, we think about literally WWII, you know, we think about Nazis and jackboots with, like, tanks and guns. And, you know, beating people up and killing people like that. That's our mental. And that that's you might call that hard to tell at arianism, right? That's like very clearly like violent to Delta
Ernest, but there's this other version, you might call soft at allit arianism, which is just rules and power exercised arbitrarily. Hmm, that just simply suppresses everything, right? And this is to speech, Ctrl +, D Banking, and all these other things that we've been talking about and that is, that is a, you know, the good news is they're not coming up in like beating you up in the middle of the night. The bad news is like, you are under their complete control and they can do whatever they want to you. That doesn't involve physical violence which basically includes the entire aspect of, you know, every aspect of how you actually conduct your life, them support your
I am get an income and everything else
and most people aren't even aware of
it. Yeah, that's right. And then, you know, like these are, these are individual one-off things. Most people don't have a voice. It's very hard to organize, you know, organized around these. And then, by the way, if there's an organization that organizes to try to get these stories out yet, then itself can get, deep is suppressed and he back, well, it happened during the covert lockdowns, right? So the lockdown protests all got suppressed, right? So you went, you know, so it's like, so the lockdown went from two weeks to crush the curve to two months to two years, right? Right. Which is like, okay, what the hell, right? And then there were these
These protests that were there were these protests that were forming up nonviolent. Protests were forming up to protest lockdowns and I, you know, you could argue the issue different ways, but people have a legitimate right to protest for that just like they do for anything else. And the next thing you know is all the the lockdown protocol, got censured like just like Boop gone, right? And so at that point, like the normal process of being able to read to try to get redress from your government, right? For, you know, for to enforce your rights to literally, for example, see your family, all of a sudden, like you can't even organize a
protest. Do you how much you aware of?
Happen with the FTX crisis because one of the things that happen with the FDX thing was it was revealed that they were. I think they were the number two, donor to the Democratic party. Do you think that that is sort of a pre-emptive measure to avoid any of this deep Banking? And you know be financially invested in these people so they're not going to come after you. That was his expect. It
was explicitly his strategy that was Sam's. Yeah, Sam's approaches Sam, Sam's approaches just pay everybody so Sam's
It was just, I have eight billion dollars a customer funds that I can use for whatever I want, right? Which is the crime, right? And then a big part of what he used some of it. He used to like, hang out with celebrities and get am L to into our staff TX and Larry David commercial, and all this stuff, right? But a lot of that money, something like 150 million dollars of that money went to basically just pay politicians and a lot of that money was paid to politicians with no compliance at all, with all the, you know, campaign Finance regulations, that the rest of us will have to comply with. And so, the money was just shotgun out the door.
How come they don't have to comply?
Well, it was a lie. I mean, it was
Because he was breaking the law. I mean, it was to be clear. He was, he was illegal now, a very funny thing happened, which is when he was indicted by the US government they didn't they ended up not charging him on campaign campaign Finance fraud and because they'd have to give all the money back. Well so there's two theories on it. The thing that they said was their extradition agreement with Bermuda Bermuda threatened to not extradite him, if they charged him on that charge which is like super weird because you're the United States number one your the United States of America you can probably get the guy number two. Did he really want to stay in a
Isn't Bermuda, right? And so that was all weird and then and then look the other thing, there's no evidence for this but the other theory is, yeah. The whoever are the powers that be the decide these things in DC decided to not open it. It's, it's like the Upstream Client List. Like there are certain
boxes. Yeah, that are better not to open. At least the campaign Finance thing. Wouldn't they have to pay it
back? So then there's this like Panic, right? The minute one of these candles breaks like that. There's these panic Russian all of a sudden politicians, discover philanthropic causes, they can donate the money to write and then yeah, it's in the fullness of time that
He's my kumquat, the money back. So yeah there's a you know, it'll play out over it does but it is. It is interesting. It is a great example of it was the shotgun are money into the system under like basically just like over nakedly breaking the law and then it now look he's in prison. The other argument is he's in prison. He's in prison already. Like whatever it just would have been, you know, another sentence. But like you did break the law and he was not actually charged on that. And that prosecution has not happened and probably sitting here today, never
will. What's really fascinating about him? Is that he was, right? And if they didn't come,
Um, after him, he would have gotten all that money to those people. He would. It seems like it kind of turned around, right? It did get him off the hook though. It didn't know where we stood. Something he still did something illegal. He did. Yeah. Did he know it was illegal? He is in prison.
I think it's really hard to get inside that guy's head. Yeah, I don't know that I can represent his mental state be a fascinating podcast guest, if he was out, he flopped very hardly very hard at trial. Yeah. So he
He had an explanation but that's just it. The jury didn't buy it what was his explanation
that you know he was you know
that it was all the money was all being invested in. He was going to give it all back and it was all this and that you know the given that all these complicated theories around all this effective altruism and this and that the other thing and the prosecution is just like it was the customers money. It wasn't your money
right clearly?
Yeah. And so I like, I don't know,
like yeah, well there's also add feta means involved, which definitely tend to skew your judgment and mean him. And that lady, we're like,
Sort of proponents of amphetamine use.
And they were take. It was some anti Parkinson's drug. They were taking that has a side effect of reducing your risk
color, dopamine Agonist? Yeah. One of those. Yeah, like
re-equip, yeah, something like that. They were here. You have these Pat.
Wow. These patches that makes you do wild shit. That also makes people gamble exact. Well, yeah, yeah. There was a guy who won a lawsuit from GlaxoSmithKline because he took re-equip and became a gay sex and gambling addict. Yeah. I think they paid him the equivalent of
Five hundred plus thousand American dollars. I believe it was in Ireland. Yeah, dopamine Agonist or weird. They they do strange things to people.
If that happened to me, I would definitely Sue.
That's crazy that those guys were taking those things.
At least Sam was
boy, what a wild fella. I'm Sam confirmed, he wears in EM, Sam patch. What's in EM? Sam patch? She supposed to use the depression medication. Oh, his supposed use of the depression medication had kicked up some room.
So what is that's the stuff that's the it Parkinson's. I think that was is that a dopamine Agonist does it say I'm not sure?
Yeah, see put dopamine Agonist
that Parkinson's. There we go.
Yeah, interested I was
like related. It was not that. It's like a related
question. Interesting. How does it work? Does it say how it works?
Commonly used to depression. How's it work, though?
Okay, it's an MAO inhibitor. Interesting. Used to treat mental, depression. In adults. This medicine is a monoamine, oxidase inhibitor. Different one that says it, sludge sludge leaner. Oh okay, yeah, that's largely. So actually it is also people take that as well as a nootropic, I've heard that's what it is. So it is a sludge scheduling so cell alleging Celgene sell Angelina. I think it's largely, I knew a doctor who is taking that he was taking it as
As a, but not in a patch, you're taking a pill form and he said, it was a nootropic. So monoamine, oxidase inhibitor. So that's the stuff that's the active and that's what makes Ayahuasca orally, active, same thing, monoamine, oxidase inhibitor along with the plant that contains dimethyltryptamine which is not normally orally active. So this guy if he was doing drugs and taking MAO inhibitors, he was out of his fucking mind, guaranteed because I know people have taken
Like, prescription-grade MAO inhibitors and then taken mushrooms and literally almost never came back, like got to the point where four weeks they were fucked up. And then when they did come back there, like, I almost lost it. Like, I was almost gone gone like, you know, like the dude from Pink Floyd like never coming back. Shine On, You Crazy Diamond, you're gone. And that happens to people, right? So this fucking kid with billions of dollars. People's money is taking those kinds of
Oceans and in feta beings. And who knows what? Yeah,
you know, here on staff psychiatrist who is prescribing all this
stuff. Wonderful like Hitler and inside. Yeah, once again, that's so crazy. What a wild
boy. Are you following the cycle of the theories that are now emerging run is in pick, and psychological changes. That was epic has
no, but I did read that. It makes your heart
shrink. Well, there's there's something something to that, which is very concerning. But there's there's, yeah, it is, there's a fair amount of evidence that it resolves.
Alcohol, addiction, certain forms of drug
addiction addictions.
And current theory. Is that what it does is it, basically, it essentially increases your self control, your self discipline, and it reduces cravings. And there's a theory that this is very positive. Let's say this is true, which is what they think right now, we'll see you but that's what they think. So, the theory that it's positive, is the theory that, you know, if we were all like more responsible in our lives, we'd all be more successful in society would go better. Yeah. Counter-argument would be like, responsible is only part of living.
Ang and it's only part of what makes a society work. And we also need risk-taking and we need creativity. And yeah, we need impulsiveness. Yes. Right and we need variety. Yes. And maybe we're all going to get into a channel, right. And maybe we're not going to like, where that where that, that just by itself ends up.
Yeah, you can't have everybody discipline. You have to have wild fuckers out there. That's right. You have to have your jelly rolls of the world. Doesn't crazy people. They're fun. They make things more interesting. That's right. If it's so it's essentially discipline in you know a pill form or an injectable
form. Yeah.
Very sweet, very helpful, rather, prescribed, increasingly starting to prescribe it to alcoholics and apparently, it's working
quite well. That's crazy. Well, that's that brings me to ibogaine, which is the one thing that has, like, the most success for people with addictions, and it's illegal. In this country, people go down to Mexico and go to these ibogaine, Retreats, it's apparently, I haven't done it, but it's apparently this insane introspective Journey, that's very uncomfortable and it lasts about 24 hours. It's not something that's addictive in any way, shape, or form. Almost, everyone says, it's a very uncomfortable.
People experience, but you gained unbelievable insight into what is wrong with you. That makes you want to pick up heroin like what's going on in there that you're trying to escape like what is this pain? It recognizes that pathway and puts a chemical stop. There, it actually like stops people from having addictive cravings and it rewires the way they think about things. Particularly beneficial to Veterans a lot of veterans who have just seen way too much and come over and they're all fucked up and they don't have any way to straighten.
Brain out and they've had tremendous benefits using that. You know, I wonder with particularly with these these oh, Sam picks and way curvy and all these different types of weight loss, diabetic drugs. I wonder if there's a way to mitigate the side effects because, you know, when I've talked to people that think that like my friend Brigham bringing Bueller, who runs weights to well. He's
Learned about side effects of it. But he's also he looks at people that are just morbidly obese and he's like these people, they need some fucking help. There's, they've gone down this terrible Road. Yes. They shouldn't have done it. Yes. Okay, we all agree to that. Don't don't eat pie all day, but if you've gotten to 500 pounds, you're probably you're in a bad State and you could probably use some help and maybe that could get them back on track and maybe there's a way with maybe strength training because one of the things is
Lose a large percentage of muscle mass and bone density. Maybe that could be mitigated with strength training, maybe it's one of those things. Like, if you're going to get on his epic, you must lift weights. Three times a week, which is that might be it. I mean if it's just losing tissue, there's certainly that's, that's relatively easy to
fix, right? That's right. And there's by the way there's a ton of are indeed going into these drugs right now. So there's in Rhyme or versions of these things
hopeful that we could develop something where no one can ever be obese again. That would be
Be really interesting. I mean, maybe this is just the first steps of this, right? And then like these are crude versions of What will ultimately be a very comprehensive way of addressing an issue like
that. So the other thing I'd say, so I've been down in Florida, the last couple weeks working on some of the, you know, stuff happening down there. And one of the things I learned is that RFK, The RK is really in charge of Health for the country from here, you know, for like he's really in charge, you know, working with the president. And he you know for all the controversy around some of his positions like he's you know this whole like he's very serious.
About this. Hmm. And a lot of people including a lot of the most qualified people, I know in the field are like, yes, it is. Long overdue that we look at the food system. Yes. And we look at all these, all the just whatever it to your point. The horrible track that we've been on for 40 years. Yeah. It's just a complete catastrophe and I think it's a this is concept in Psychology called common knowledge which is it's like, it's something that everybody knows but yet nobody States out loud. And so it like it's like known but then it all of a sudden, there's a Tipping Point, all of a sudden. It's not only known, but it's like obvious. All of a sudden everybody agrees on it. Yes.
This feels like one of those moments where it's like nutrition and behavioral, you know, exercise, like the path that people are on to become obese. Like no, like this actually needs to be addressed. Yeah, this is actually a profound issue and it's we're on the road to hell and like it has to get fixed. And maybe it gets it gets fixed chemically and maybe it gets fixed behaviorally or other things. Maybe the culture has to change but like it has to get fixed. And I'm actually I've been very encouraged that. I think this is not going to be a very big Focus here and not just by the government. But I think also in the
culture I agree and I'm very encouraged as well.
I think as we were talking before about a sort of a shift in perspective of the country, I think a shift in perspective of the country towards that being something that you should strive towards, I think that's coming to, I think that's happening. Right now. One of the happiest moments for me is when I run into someone and they said, they were inspired to get fit and healthy. From, listen to me talking about the benefits of it. And I've talked to so many people that are lost 100 pounds, 150 pounds, they're exercising regularly, they eat healthy, it's fantastic.
It's one of my favorite things when I run into people that are fans of the podcast.
So what one of my theories on this is that this is it part of this, what happened is something very specific happen during covert which is the public health people by and large looked very unhealthy.
Yes it right they didn't look good
right? And so you've got these people standing up there, telling everybody, how they've got. I like do all the electrons in the masks and like all that stuff and
like yeah, Bill Gates should get jacked, that would be very helpful, he's got a lot of money review. Extremely helpful.
When he writes the book and goes in the press to her, to talk about public health trainer is, that would be great. Yeah, be great. By the way, be great for
him and his family and Society, you'll be very
reassuring. Bill Gates had a six-pack, I'd listen to him or that I think would be absolutely fantastic. And so like it's just this thing, it's just like well of
course like yes, the people who are telling us all how to live and eat ought to be healthy like and if they're
not like clearly, that's where RFK comes in play 100%. He looks fantastic. That's right.
It was great. Yeah, super tight like yeah. It's just like, wow. Yeah, we're taking pics. I'm like dude, you Jack look, I put my arm on him. Like you're fucking Jack, dude. Yeah, it sucks out all the time at Gold's Gym in Venice. There we go. Jeans on. AW, works out with jeans on that's old school. I don't get that. That's amazing. That seems weird. It seems like it gets in the way your squats and that's the way I like like origin jeans or suddenly. So that's kind of a stretchy fabric to it. You got it, you have to give stretchy jeans but even then, like, put some shorts on your fucking weirdo. What are you doing, man? That's like, that's like that's like that's like
Prison yard credibility. That's why it's fantastic. It is a little it is a little streak running school. You know. We're in Timberlands. Yes. Timberlands and a pair of jeans and doing your squats. It's kind of crazy. Exactly. But the promotion of health is like, I don't know how anybody could be against that. Do you want more energy? Do you want more Vitality in your life? Well, you should be healthier. It's like, you're let you out your body's race car and you could choose if you work hard enough to jack up the horsepower, you can make better brakes. You can have a better fuel injection.
System, like, the whole thing could work way better or do I have to do is work at it and that is your vehicle for propelling you through this, life will give you more energy for creativity. More energy for your family, more energy for your hobbies, your Recreations. Time with your friends, you literally have more energy as a human which is what we all. Like, nobody likes waking up and feeling like shit. Everybody's been hungover who's had a few drinks and you wake up in the morning, like, what am I doing? I want to do this again. Why did I do this to myself? And then you can't wait for the day when you feel better, like you
Electrolytes. You get your sleep, you do. Whatever the fuck you can you like, I'll be over the soon go. Oh, your head. Oh, and you, you know, everybody likes having more energy. It's better for you. And we could promote that as a society and the this RF K Jr. Appointment is a really big step in that direction that we've really never had
before. That's right. Yeah, you have to go back to like, literally his uncle, jack JFK had a program like this and like 1962. Yeah, been a long
time. Well, Michelle Obama did for a bit,
right.
But although that was like, vegetarian you know, getting into like
vegetarians but was she saying, vegetarian if she was
vegetarian but label, Eric Adams, you know, the comfort of Mayor mayor of New York is push that return school lunches?
No, it's not right? No, that's not right, it's so dumb. I can't wait until they could figure out the plants really can think and feel. Right. Exactly is they're really close, the real close to proving that they've demonstrated intelligence and allocation of resources through mycelium. There's a lot of stuff that we know. Now about plants that we didn't know then,
I think they're all conscious. I think everything's conscious. Yeah.
I think we need to really audio recordings of the screams.
Yeah. You know the law and it's just like Armageddon. You know, the thing to play audio recordings of caterpillars, eating leaves, and it changes the flavor profile of all the plants around it. Awesome! Oh yeah. They've done this because there's a phenomenon when Greg giraffes if giraffes are eating if they are upwind and they're eating leaves as though the wind comes down and gets to the other acacia trees, the acacia trees, will they'll come up with this?
I do chemical. They produce a phytochemical that's disgusting to the giraffes and the giraffes, a literally starve because they won't eat those trees. And they do this somehow or another through communication, it's like, they're preventing War, they're being attacked by mammals. And they're like, we have to stop the attack and nature has provided them with this mechanism to do that, which is really crazy. It's
amazing Sobek to it back to the judge for a moment. So the one of the reasons why everybody became unhealthy as because the government directly exerted, put itself into the food system and specifically high fructose corn syrup
Right high fructose corn syrup was an artifact of government agriculture subsidies. Right? The right. The country
was, which was good during WWII because we needed food at
one time. Yeah. Right. But like, by the 1970s we were massively overproducing specifically were massively over producing corn, and the corn and the corn Lobby, the, for the sort of Agriculture Lobby became very powerful. And, and we have this government agency, one of the 450, government agencies is the USDA and the USDA has a dual mandate it's to promote us agriculture. Specifically, things like corn, and it's also to advise us on what we should eat, and they also
Do the food pyramid. That's why the food pyramid is upside down right? For all those decades where we're supposed to eat carbs and not protein and fat was because literally this the agency that's responsible for promoting Agriculture and that. And then that agency, it's inserted itself through laws regulations and this kind of administrative pressure and basically, he said, Thou shalt use high fructose corn syrup because it is a byproduct of corn as opposed to sugar. Right? And as we now know, that was absolutely poisonous decision like that was like literally
Little poison absolutely ruin. His decision, just an absolute terrible
idea. OKC means was on here and she was explaining the very mechanism by which high fructose corn syrup encourages overconsumption, right? And then, it's essentially like it's an evolutionary thing that like, we're bears would eat like a bunch of berries to get fat for the winter. It's like these high fructose corn syrup encourages you to over-consume. Yeah, we were not
supposed to be eating this, right? This was not supposed to happen. It would not have
specially drinking it. 100% look. Yeah,
100%.
So then, but this would not have happened, had the government not made it happen and so it traces directly back to a government decision to do that. Now, they didn't, of course, they didn't understand the consequences, but that's kind of the point, which is they interfere without understanding the consequences. And so, that's the kind of thing where you look at it and you're just like, all right, like and then you're 40 years later and you're still doing it, right? And then it's and then at some point, you know, what the consequences are. And then at some point, there's a question of whether they're being covered up, right? Right. And it's just like, okay, at some point, this has to stop, right? And and literally they just need to stop like they just need to stop subsidizing.
Isn't corn, they did stop forcing the food companies to do this, they just need to stop. And so there this goes back to like the regulatory reform thing which is like there's just like tremendous amount of this that may have been good intentioned at one point. Yeah. But sitting here today we're living with these horrible, Downstream consequences. And unless somebody steps in with a hammer, none of this
is going to happen. And they also is going to have the insane amount of money that's involved. Because RJ Reynolds, these tobacco companies, when they were getting sanction, they were getting in trouble. They decided, Well, let's buy all these food companies and so now,
Now, these same companies that lied about whether or not cigarettes are addictive and cause cancer. Now, these same companies are pushing super unhealthy food on people or at least selling super unhealthy food people, which I think you should be allowed to buy. I think you should be allowed to buy. Whatever the fuck you want. I'm all for that. But I do think we should be like much more aware of what's actually going on like you're saying, and why this stuff is in there in the first place.
Well then then you get any other, you know, more delicate questions. But it's like, okay, food assistance programs for like, you know, low
People in low-income children, it's like, okay. Should they be do we want little kids who have no control over this? To end up on the receiving end of this food production pipeline ride for with government money and being 300 pounds. By the time they're
18 right? And cheaper than other Foods
cheaper than other Foods because they're subsidized because they're subsidized. And so and you just you have this very perverse outcome where you have these government officials who have been standing up there for 40 years saying we're protecting you protecting you and what's been happening as they've been poisoning us. Yeah, and so it like stuff like it just needs to stop.
Top and and that's that's where you need something like the Doge. So and somebody like, President Trump,
what would they be able to do to mitigate a lot of these issues? Like how would they if you want to would you make it illegal to put high fructose, corn syrup, present and as an ingredient or would you simply stop subsidizing like and what would be? How would that work within the government? Like how would you apply something like that? Yeah, I think there's three things you can do to of, which involve direct action. And then the third is
Even the most important. So one is, you can just stop doing things that are harmful. You can stop doing things. If the government can stop subsidizing bad things. It's an example. Let me give you a nice parallel, parallel thing, if you want to clean up universities, you need to stop feeding them student loans, right? So right, the government should stop paying for things that are clearly, harmful, so that's one. And then two is look, there may be a role for additional protections are prohibitions. And so, for example, maybe you let people freely by all the Oreos they want, but maybe you can't get them with food assistance programs so that you know, kids who have no control over it or not, they're not being
Poison and so, you know, maybe do that. But, but I always think the third thing is culture culture, like there's always a Temptation with these discussions, because the government, so, powerful to talk about what the government does or doesn't do. And I think so much of this has to do with the culture, it's actually upstream or Downstream from politics which is like like what is the cultural tone of the country, right what's the value system? Where what are the role models, right? Right. What are people being inspired to do also what form of shaming is an effect? Like what are what are we not going to tolerate?
Take the perverse fat studies like right, are we gonna glorify obesity? Right right. No, no.
And that's not necessarily a legal
judgment or a court case, but it's a cultural statement. And if the if and I and it's not that the government plays should control the culture. But our leader certainly played a big role in that. Yeah. And so in both in and outside of government and so, for our leaders to step up at A Moment Like This and basically say, y'all know, this is not the kind of culture we're going to have, it's not the kind of society. We're going to have us, not what kids should be looking up.
Ooh, I think I think is just as powerful as the actual government actions. It's
interesting you saying the kind of shaming because I don't want to shame anybody for being fat, but boy, that's that
work. Maybe you should shame that shaming work. Maybe you should shame parents if their kids are
fat, right? Problem is, and maybe you're so many people that are ignorant as to what exactly is going on
of course. And that's it's that like absolutely required land.
They're being fed, bullshit,
100%. And yeah. But again it's also cultural which is it's like, okay. Is the media thing? Like, is the media educating people on this and if the mainstream media is not doing it, right?
There should there be new media sources that are? Yeah, who gets in which source and then therefore, which sources in the media get respect, right? So we have this giant Collective culture question, right? That we get to, we all get to ask and answer and particularly those of us in a position to be able to send messages that a lot of people here.
So that will help that will help move the needle. And but what specifically can RF K Jr. Do once he actually gets in, I mean
there's always terminate his, he'll have the Secretary of HHS he has very broad, you know, I would say a very broad ability to
Look at this holistically inside the
government. What kind of pushback is there going to be against that? Like that seems like a wild amount of money is going to be lost.
Yeah, so they're there. So there's there's there's the work that the cabinet secretaries like he will be doing formally and then there's the work that the Doge and and the president will be doing kind of in parallel with that. And you know, there will be some convergence between those and and you know there's the will see there's a potential here for quite dramatic action. On a lot of these
fronts, could you imagine if you're running an agency and you have to have a meeting with vevey candy Lon
On.
And you got to open your books. Yes. Yes. Like office space for they brought in the bobs for
consoling. What you do here? Exactly, that's exactly what it's like. Is there a meme like that? Is there a meme like that? I think there's a meme where they take those guys. They put Ilan and vivex heads on
them. Yes. If there was a another key timeline split, what happened to Silicon Valley? About two years ago? Actually, two and a half years ago when he landed actually right before he took over Twitter, where he got in an e-mail fight with the
CEO Twitter. At the time, whose they actually guy, who's A friend of mine has a really good guy. But had it literally this guy had just been promoted from engineering to run the company and then like a month later he ends up trying to deal with Ilan situation. So kind of get a little bit sandbagged on it. But yes,
of course he said, Elon Musk says he re-watched office space to prepare for Doge. Of course, he did. Of course he did, fucking psycho. Exactly. God. We're so lucky that guys.
Around. Exactly. So there was this
moment in the Twitter takeover Ilan sends this email and he says the line is, what did you get done this week?
Whoa.
What did you get done this week? And in the context of Silicon Valley companies that was a provocative statement because a lot of Silicon Valley companies, take months or years to do anything, but imagine that statement being applied to the government, oh my God, right? Like the level of like accelerated like, okay, what are the problems that are? We going to fix them? And what have you gotten done this week?
Yeah, you think D banking.
Did some lives?
Yes, exactly. So yes, what have you done this week? And by the way when he learns it's actually interesting. A guy just tweeted guy just tweeted or posted or seated what it's like to work for Ilan at his AI company xai and he said, he like came in last week and he said, he'll on spent 18 hours at the office and in five minute chunks and it was every five minutes. Each person had a five-minute speaking slot to explain to you on what they were doing. Wow. And he did that for, you know, five times, whatever right? Over 18 hours, Jesus Christ. And so think about what that meant every employee had an opportunity to
to tell the big boss, what they were working on, every employee had an opportunity to be recognized for their effort. Every employee had an opportunity to get live feedback from the big boss who had a comprehensive overview of everything as to what they should be doing. Whoa, and there's no place to hide.
Right. Well I think about different, it is for a company to be run that way, right? And even again in the valley companies generally are quite well run by sort of business standards and even that like that's a level of intensity, the most Valley companies aren't even close to.
Now imagine that applied to government government and
they're just and it's and again this is the kind of thing. There's no law that like, there's no reason it can't be done. There's no law that prevents that. There's nothing in the Constitution that says you can't do that. It's a choice. How the government is run as a choice on the part of the executive branch of the president for how it's going to get run.
And there's no reason why the government can't literally be run baby, run this
way. And here's what's crazy, the pushback against even the concept of this by leftist. So leftist defending bureaucratic bloat and big government is wild to
watch which they really shouldn't be doing, which is a weird thing to have wedge themselves into my hope is they'll figure out how weird this is.
Do you think it's like just an ideological thing? Like the right wants this. So we oppose
it, I think I think they I think the left thinks they control the government.
Like I think 50 years ago they would have been on the other side of this of this issue like Noam Chomsky 50 years ago, of course had been on the other side of this you would have used government power as an extension of like the state and big business intertwined. Any of these ducks just turn manufacturing of consent, where it's like government business are conspiring against you. Yeah. So he would have been on the other side of this but I think today's leftist think they control the government which in many ways they do well. So Washington, d.c. the Washington, d.c. voted 94% 4, comma 6 percent for Trump. Right? And so, okay. So two data points that is data point number,
Data point number 24 of the 10, wealthiest counties in the country are suburbs of Washington. D.c., wow. Lobbyists, lobbyists. Yeah. Take how Beltway Bandits?
Yeah, pretty crazy job. This is the actual term
and these aren't people working for the government. These are people making money from Riser. These are people sponging, sponging, off the government. And so like, yeah, for to the extent, the Democrats have wedge themselves into a position where they're defending this. They really shouldn't. They should really rethink this. They should figure out how to get.
Back to write the correct, the correct mentality on this that they used
to have know that if there's less government bloat, then there's less tax dollars. The you don't you don't you don't need as much money to fund these things. That's right. There's like people can be taxed less, they're going to be more allegation of these funds towards the social programs that we all want.
You know, most federal workers never came back to work. Really? Yeah there is a work from home. Most most yeah we've got a very large percentage. Something like half just literally just never came back. Whoa. They stopped by the way, still draw page.
Check. They're still on their jobs, but literally they're not the office or in some cases, they have an agreement where there's one agency by won't name, but there's one agency over. There's the were the there's okay. Here's another great thing. Their agencies of the federal government whose work forces are both civil servants. Simple steps full Civil Service protections and the and unionized
Entirely paid for by the taxpayer but they both have Civil Service protections which by the way are totally made up. There's no Concept in the constitution of like Civil Service protections is just like a totally made-up thing and they're unionized and there's a particular agency that I know of where the union agreement, the union negotiated the return to the office from covet. And the agreement was you have to be in the office one day a month. Whoa. And actually with the pattern, I was what they do is the employees come in on the last day of the month, and the first day of the following month. So they only have to be there for two days, for two months out of state, out of 60
days. That's
crazy as a
As many of them have actually left the area, right? Because they get their government paycheck, right, calibrated for living there and then they go live someplace nice. You know someplace nice but you know, they go live in the Ozarks or something, where it's right off, the living is cheaper and they have big a bigger house and you know, in theory, they're working from home but like, you know, like as it as it actually happening. So and this is what again, this is the do is one of the things that do is they've already announced. The thing they said is you can work from home, just not for the federal government, right? Yeah. And so when people are talking about like is the dough is going to be able to do anything.
I'm like it's just okay, there's fifty percent of the federal Workforce.
Right. And as a, you know, as yes as a taxpayer how do you feel about that and you know, teach your point on paying taxes like if those people are in the office and they're dynamos of activity and they're making the country better, right? Fair enough. Of course. But if they're kicking it at home
right, maybe not. Yeah, maybe not. And that's the how much oversight has there been on whether or not? They've been kicking it. Excellent
question. Yeah, now it turns out there are way there are. Actually, there are ways to figure this out. So for example, for many, for many jobs, where you have to login, to be able to get access like that,
Hell, you can actually check in like a few, a vpns to get into the corporate Network. You can actually audit and you can see who's been working and then there's a do, you know about Mouse? We're Learners. Yes, yes, so G. No, no actually
physical though, their physical Mouse particular, yeah, physical Mouse
Whalers. And so it's a physical device that holds your mouse and and then on a intermittently, Wiggles it and a friend of mine who runs a big tech company, he just had like a nagging feeling the back of his head.
Maybe all of his remote workers weren't pulling their weight and so he actually wrote himself on a weekend algorithm to inspect, all the mouse movements of Olives employees for a week and then and then he bought all 50, like Mouse wigglers from China that you can buy and he fingerprint of them all. And he found that he had like a whole bunch of employees who are using mouths word mouths word clears, right? And so, how many federal employees are using those would work great. So,
how crazy is that? That's how they can measure whether or not you're active. Yeah. Whether your mouse is moving. Yeah. Like what do they? What are they seeing? Just I just a
Enough movement of the mouse. That's it. While the mouse. The mouse Wiggler's move in a way that you can
fingerprint do so. Is this like you do you agree to a certain amount of disclosure of your personal information while you're working? Like how do you get access to Mouse
Wiggles? Oh, so it's very common. So, in corporate environments, it's very common that the your company issued computer has some kind of software on it. That lets the company control the software and gives them. It gives the company some level of visibility to what you're doing. And it doesn't mean it doesn't mean they're watching literally washing you that it means that they have the ability to kind of reach in.
And be able to be able to see, you know, how much is the computer on? Wow, he's not moving it. So that's actually a reasonably reasonably common.
Thought I heard the most ridiculous argument against this that I would you going to do with all those employees that get fired. Like what do you do with all those people are stealing hubcaps they're making a living stealing. What you going to do? If you make hubcap stealing your legal like what are you talking about? They're essentially stealing tax dollars if they really are doing something that's totally useless and they're wasting enormous amounts of money on this. Every year the
The what you going to do? If those people can't do that anymore, is really
crazy. Yeah. Well the answer is they can do something productive.
Yeah, and people are more than capable can. You don't have to infantilize someone to say like this is the only thing they're capable of doing because I didn't work for the government for 20 years. This is all they can
do. Yeah, and then, by the way, there's multiple knock on effect, positive knock-on effects. If you can cut government spending, there's multiple knock-on effects. So, one is, if you cut the spending, you can cut the taxes and you can just simply the private economy than just really has more money because it hasn't been taken. And so if there's less
Public spend there will be more private spend right? Right because the money reallocation so there might be just as much demand in the economy is just coming from people choosing to buy things instead of the government forcing it. So, that's number one. Number two, you can bring down government debt, which means you can bring down government interest and the government today, the federal government today, pays more in interest than we pay for the Department of Defense. But how much of that is salary? No, no, that's just interest on the debt, right? That's just interest on the old debt, okay, we pay like 1.2 billion a year. Right now I think is latest number which is which is just interest on debt. It's not paying for
Any good or service is just interest on debt? But again what percentage of that is the of the GDP. Do you? Well that? So that the total government spending is on the order of 7 trillion? Interest payments are like 1.2 trillion. Something like that point to try. Think that's the current number DOD, as 800 billion
years old. 1.2 trillion just off the top. Yeah, just off the
top and again, no Tech. Nobody's benefiting from that it's just interest
payments that's
banana and total GDP is like, I don't have insurance, I don't know, it's I don't know, it's 20, 30 40 trillion, it's you know,
Much larger than that. But like still
it's enough. This is a lot of money and any and the total accumulated
debt is 35 trillion and the total accumulated debt is 35 trillion and adds another trillion of accumulated debt every hundred days.
Yes.
Oh my God, it hurts my head. There's a
congressman, actually, Thomas Massie, you should have. So, he's the one guy in Washington who talks about this. And he's an MIT is a liberty. He's one of the only Libertarians and he's a, he's an MIT engineer and he actually designed himself, they pocket lapel pin calculator of the of the of the government debt. And he wears it everyday. And she walks around with
this role, he walks with a little
scrolling LEDs. Oh, my God, on his lapel, and it literally counts. It counts that and it's
It is pulling data from the US Treasury and it's actually an accurate count. And so it's like 34 trillion, 35 trillion, 36 trillion, here's the kicker at the current pace of the compounding, it'll cross the debt will cross 100 trillion in the foreseeable future. So he's already working on the redesign because he needs a bigger device of the bigger screen to be able to display the bigger number, how much anxiety to get standing around him looking at, that's his goal, right? He wants because otherwise, the status quo in Washington is just let this happen, right? And so anyway, so another way you benefit is reduction of interest and then another way you benefit is reduction of in
Prostrates. If you bring down the amount of debt in the economy, you bring down interest rates and then everybody else, who buys things, when you go to buy for house, your mortgage is cheaper, right? So everybody who buys, anybody whoever borrows money in the real economy than therefore is better off, right?
This is the arguments against being only good for wealthy people, it's
good for everybody, right? That's good for anybody who ever gets car loan home loan, small business loan, you going to bring down interest rate
but this fundamental discussion of it. The the like the argument particularly from the left is that all these tax cuts
Deregulation. All this all this is going to do is make Trump supporters and Trump's people wealthier, and it's going to ruin the middle class and ruin the lower. Everyone else is going to
suffer. So just observation Ali. Almost all the rich people in our society are four common law, right? Really? Yeah, well, Democrat Democratic party. So the, the so Democrat. Republican, it's a, it's what they call. It's a political scientist called top plus bottom versus middle, is the configuration. So, the Democratic party is the top and the bottom versus the middle. So the
Top is what you might call the sort of upper middle class Coastal Elites. So it's everybody wants to fancy schools. It's everybody with a fancy jobs. It's for sure. Me, I guess you're grandfathered in. Yeah. Right. But it's like it's like you know, it's like it's like fancy. It's like high-net-worth high-income people with primarily knowledge working jobs. Right? So something Professor recorder programmer, right? Database expert. Author author lawyer. Yeah. You know, accountant Banker, like all this sort of, you know, quote the elite jobs and all the elite.
By the way, who all went to the top schools and got like, you know, they're the only degree. So, so that's the top, and then the bottom is what you call the clientele underclass, right? So it's and it's if they call the Rainbow Coalition, right? So it's the minority groups, right? And so it's the Assembly of, you know, low income African Americans low-income Latinos you know dot dot dot, dot dot recent immigrants, recent immigrants and so forth. Right? And so that's the Democratic Coalition that they explicitly program against and then Republicans in our era Republicans are in the, it's the, it's the middle class lower middle.
The class, you know, it's all the people who don't have the fancy degrees and that are doing all the actual work, that's basically making the country run, right? So it's everybody from the small business owner of the restaurant tour, you know, they talk drivers of truck drivers, you Farmers you know all the way in you know garbage man. And janitor it's like everybody who goes to work, nine to five has a job, probably probably either small business or a physical job. You know what? You know, it's sort of say labor, like real labor like actual labor calluses on the hands, right? Kinds of stuff. So kind of the
Called real economy, which is why I write the Republicans, are concentrated in the center and the South because that's where all those things are. And then Democrats are concentrated in New York and California and on the coast, which is where all the symbolic, you know, creative intellectual jobs are. And so, so, let's so in, so the weird thing that's happened is progress liberalism progressivism started speaking for The Working Man, right? Like 100 years ago it's booked for the Working Man. And now what's happened is there's been a complete reorientation where the working man has separated out. And then and then you saw that in this most recent election,
Where the Union's, the union leadership, still for the most part indoors Kamala. But the rank-and-file voted majority for Trump in a lot of cases. And the, the data point that I remember is the teamsters voted 70 percent for
Trump. What do you think the motivation of all these wealthy people to vote for Kamala Harris? Was because they
feel great because they're saving the world and it's amazing to be in charge and control society and decide how everything works and decide who's good and who's bad and like your Elite.
Get to be the elite. You get to make the elite
decisions and if you want to be in that
group you have to have got it you got it. You got to do this and you feel good about yourself because you feel like what you're doing is on behalf of your, you feel like what you're doing is on behalf of your client of your clientele and it's
reinforced by the echo chamber. You live in. Yeah.
And use. This is why the cotton. If you read, if you read the media on your times, it's just, it's either your times only has two articles in a horse either, how evil are Republicans or how innocent and helpless are, you know, you know, poor agree with minorities or identity groups, right? And so, the oppositional force and then
But we're the party of good with the camera because we're taking care of all these poor marginalized people. So it's a very compelling, you feel great about yourself, right? It's just definitely amazing. And by the way, it just so happens that the economy is wired up in a way, where you're getting paid a ton of money. Yeah, working very hard, right? Great. And then you're completely isolated away from the lived experience of just normal people, which is the state that I found myself in where it would never even occur to you to talk to a garbage man or to a somebody, you know.
In a restaurant or whatever. Because, well, it's just like you're not affected by the rise in crime rates, but you live in a safe neighborhood, right? And you've got, you know, you're against the wall on the border, but you gotta walk around your house, right? And so you just, you're in this bubble and then you only ever talk to people who agree with you, right? And then the media is constantly reinforcing it and then you get ostracized if you disagree.
And that's, that's the wedge. Like that's the
way it works like look for a long time at work for 40 50, 60 years. It worked as a way to gain and hold political power. It's just it's just
Has gotten wedged in kind of this corner where it can no longer win. And so therefore it has to be
re-examined. So for you, when you have the shift of thinking, you talk to the waiter and then the Hillary Clinton speech, and then like, how long is it before you start publicly expressing these things? And like how much over the reluctance is there?
Also from 2617 to 2020? I was just like trying to figure out what the hell is going on and then covet hit. And then I was trying to figure out what the hell is going on with covet and know our business, you know, went crazy.
Just caved in and had all kinds of crazy, horrible things happening. And we, you know, we have all these companies, we have hundreds of companies were responsible for startups. And so we're working with them to try to keep them afloat, going to get the money and everything. But really it was I mean really the big thing was that Biden Administration just like flat-out. Try to kill us. Like they just came like straight out us and they came straight at our Founders. And so and they try to kill crypto and they work. They were on their way to try to kill a tie. I mean there were horrible. Like do we give the second was the motivation to kill AI? Because it's because they don't blame.
They want control. I mean they want control, they want to control. They want to control in the same way they can. So they recognize the
potential of it and they wanted to head it off at the pass. They want to
control what they want to put in a headlock. They don't necessarily want to stop it, but they want to make sure that they control it in the same way that they controlled social media in the same way that they control the Press. So, how are they trying to do that? So, since your, I mean, so it's the AI is think about it as the same dynamics that cause censorship to happen on social media were also going to happen in Ai. And and so there's a couple steps. So one is, you just want a small number of companies that do AI because you want to be able to put
Headlight control them. So you basically want to give you basically want to have a government. You want to bless a small set of large companies with the cartel instead of a regulatory structure, where those companies are intertwined with the government and then you want to prevent startups from being able to enter that cartel, this is, how would they do that? That's a threat to the control. So, it's concept of regulatory capture. And so, the way it when this is, this has happened many times for, you know, hundreds of years, this is like a very well-established kind of thing and economics and politics. So if it is it, if suppose you're a big head, suppose your big Banks
Bossier, Jamie dimon you run, JPMorgan Chase like what's like the biggest possible threat of what you could possibly face. It's that there's some disruptive change that comes along that upends your entire business. You know your Kodak you know right. Your Kodak. You're right. We're making a ton of money on on analog film and digital cameras come along and you get destroyed and further in your obituaries, like, you're the idiot. You know who Blockbuster Video Blockbuster Video? Like that's the cautionary tale that those are the ghost stories of those guys. Tell around the campfire at night, we're just absolutely terrifying, right? And like Business Schools, teach you like,
It's the one thing you do not want to do and so there's two ways to try to deal with that one is you could try to invent the future before it happens to you. But that's hard because you're running a big company and, you know, these startups are out there doing all these crazy things and can you really do that? And it's hard and frisky and dangerous. The other thing you can do is you go to the government, you can basically say, okay, what we're going to we would like to propose, basically, a trade, which is we would like the government to put up a wall of Regulation, right? We would like the government to put in place rules, right? That are potentially thousands of pages long, right? And in fact, the more the
Better, right? We wanted very, very, very high bar for regulation for what's required to be in this business because I'm a big company. I can afford ten thousand lawyers and compliance people, right? I voluntarily put myself under basically the government thumb, but in return, the government has erected this wall of regulations such that the next startup comes along and just literally the next company comes along and just literally can't function. And by the way, this is literally what happened in banking. So pre-2008 pre the financial crisis, there was
Many different banks in the country. Big's big medium, small and lots of new bank startups. Every year, that would be able to just start Banks, entrepreneurial Banks of many different kinds after the financial crisis, we have this problem called the too-big-to-fail banks, right? The banks were too big and so, there was this legislation called Dodd-Frank which was regulatory reform for banking, which is going to fix the too-big-to-fail banking problem, they implemented that in 2011, I call that the big Bank protection act of 2011. It was marketed as it was going to solve the problem of the too-big-to-fail banks. What it actually did was it made the much larger.
So those banks are those back. There's too big to fail Banks. The same ones we bailed out are now much larger than they were before. The the banking industry has concentrated into those Banks. All the mid-size banks are being shaken out and you know there periodically they'll go under like are we back in Silicon Valley is called Silicon Valley Bank. Right? And you know it went under and this has been happening all across the economy and then since Dodd-Frank the number of new Banks create in the United States has dropped to zero. Whoa. And so the banking system is being centralized basically into
And big Banks, they actually actually actually have a term. They have a great term called G sub globally, significant something something bank and so there's like ten g-sibs and then basically what's going to happen is those are going to consolidate basically into the into the three big Banks
and if you get D Bank by one of the big three you're done, you're absolutely
done oh my God. But but think about it from the other side. If you're the treasury secretary and you want your political enemy D. Banked is just a phone call, right? Which is which is what has been happening, which was happening under
Under the under the prior regime. Wow. Right. And and again, like, at
that 00, new Banks. Yeah.
0. It really literally was like Cardiac Arrest. It was like, that's it for new bank Charters. And we've had companies that have tried to start new Banks. And it's essentially impossible because you have to comply with the wall of Regulation. You need. You need to go higher, your 10,000 compliance people in your lawyers, but you can't afford to do that because you're not big enough yet. So you can't function like you can't exist, like it's not, it's ruled that is by definition is ruled out, you can't do it. It's not financially viable.
Wow,
so that happened in banking, that's what they've been doing. In social media has been the same expensive by the way. This has happened in many other industries, by the way, this app, this is, this happened in the food and the food industry is greatly Consolidated. That's a lot of what's happened in that industry as well and it's think what it's the intertwining of government and the company, right? Because because at that point it's like okay is this a private company? Yes. Like it's still a private company. It has a stock price at as a CEO. Does the CEO have to do everything that the relevant cabinet. Secretary tells them to do. Yes, he does.
Does, why does he have to do that? Because if not, it's going to be investigations and subpoenas and prosecutions and tautological examinations for the rest of his
life. Wow, everything. He's essentially what we accuse the CCP of doing in China,
it's the employee self. It's so, so if you combine Banking and social media, and now ai, you have basically privatize social credit score. Right? Is is where you end up with this, right? And this goes back to the trucker strike thing. You don't have to threaten to take away somebody's kids, you just like these Rancic, whether interest.
No threat to take away their and it's not government. Insurance has been taken away. The same thing has happened in the insurance industry, its Consolidated down to a small, handful of companies, they're super regulated. If the government doesn't want you to have insurance, you're not going to have insurance and there's no constitutional right to insurance. So
there's no. So
there's there's no appeal process. We're back to the dpd banking thing. And so that happened in banking that's been happening in an intact social media generally. It's been happening in many other sectors, and then it's happening. Specifically in Ai. And what you have an AI, as you have a set of CEOs,
Of some of the big AI companies that want this to happen. Because again, they're big threat, is that we're going to fund a start-up that's going to eat their lunch, right? Is going to really screw them up and so they're like, look if we could just take the position, we have in, lock it in with government protection. The trade is, will do whatever the government wants. And if you assume the government is controlled by, you know, people who want to censor and punished and cancel their political opponents that's going to come right along with it. And so that's why when these AI systems come out like nine times out of ten, they're tremendously politically biased. You can do this.
Today, you just go on, you go on any of the system's today and you just like, ask you start asking
click really. Basic question is the best example that right when they had. Multiracial not see the black Nazis. Yeah.
Once again we're back. Yeah Rebecca are back. But Nazis. Yes. So it turns out according to Gemini to Hitler had an excellent deai policy.
Yeah now in reality he did not
It's important to understand that in reality, he did not. But yeah, Jim and I happily threw up, but Nazis, because it's because it's by, they programmed it to be biased, they were all crammed it in a political direction is this guy David Rosato who's been doing these analyses on the social media side, where he shows the incidence rates of the rise of, like, all of the woke, like language, like in the media and either similar studies that have come out for the AI, where your there's studies that have been done. That, basically, show the political orientation of the LMS because you can ask some question you can ask me questions and they'll tell you
And they're just like nine out of ten of them are like tremendously biased and then there's a handful that aren't and then there's tremendous pressure. This is one of the threats from the government is is the government. Basically going to force our startups to come into compliance, not just with their trade rules, but also with all of their might be based based essentially a censorship regime on AI. That's exactly. Like the censorship machine that we had on social media. Wow, that's terrifying. Yeah, exactly. And yes, and this is my belief and what I've been trying to tell people in Washington, which is, if you thought social media censorship was bad. This has the potential
Be a thousand times worse. And the reason is social media is important, but at the end of the day it's you know, it's quote just people talking to each other. AI is going to be the control layer on everything. Right? So AI is going to be the control layer on how your kids learn at school. It's good to be the control layer on who gets loans. It's going to be the control layer on. Does your house open? When you come to the front door, it's gonna be the control are on everything, right? And so if that gets wired into the political system, the way that the bank's did and the way that social media did like we are in for a very bad future.
ER and that's a big thing that we've been trying to prevent is to keep that from happening and and the B Administration was explicitly on that path like they were very clearly going for that. And it was it was just like Crystal Clear, that's where it was
headed and do you feel like with a second Administration? They'd be even more emboldened to act in that direction.
Yes. 100%. Another bottom. Another Biden Administration, for sure. And then there was a there's an open question on Kamala and they open question. There was just she wouldn't as you know she wouldn't declare if her issues positions where the same as Biden's or if they were different.
Right. And so in, you know, you could imagine a combo Administration that had a very different approach but she refused to clarify any of her positions, right? And so, we had to assume that they would be the same as Biden's, which I think is, the default. Now
is this closeted sort of a perspective and Silicon Valley? It to people hide. These thoughts. That this Administration would be bad for business. I mean much less now
than ya. Do ya do ya? I got ya. You'll on really broke a lot of you wanted to things that.
Early. Open a lot of this up. One is he bought Twitter, which really gave us a place to talk about this stuff all of us. But then also, he himself core started to actually Express himself and so he gave a lot of the rest of us. It's his permission structure. Yeah, to be able to say these things. And then look at it, you know, is like a Cascade where people are, like, okay. Apparently you cannot talk about things, okay? I have some things to say.
Yeah, well, they look also, just,
they went too far, they tighten the screws. I mean, they, they really came out heart and so, you know, the harder they come at us. Like we didn't predict when buying one like,
Don't think it would have negative effects on our business. We thought. Yeah, probably taxes will go up but like we'll just keep doing business but then they did all these things. Right. It took a couple years to figure out that this was not like a temporary thing. Like this was like a concerted campaign and that they were really coming.
What agencies specifically is involved in doing
that. Oh I mean it's their alphabet soup but like SEC SEC try to kill crypto very specifically FTC you know was thoroughly weaponized something called the cftc which is the other part of the crypto puzzle Commodities futures.
Crypto create, there's crypto. That's a security. There's some forms of crypto that our security in the SEC regulates, there's other kinds of crypto that are a commodity that the cftc regulates is this the cfpb. I mentioned earlier, so that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau right? Decided that they were also going to regulate a, I write, which they just volunteered for. And then, you know, at the fa a--, the FB I killed the Drone industry years ago. The reason why we don't have the reason why the Chinese are winning in the Drone. The Drone Wars, this goes
Very busy made runs at legal in the US years ago. So like the FAA has been a big problem, you know, the what is it, the F also therefore when you say made drones
illegal but you can still buy drones. Like what have they done?
So legally, you cannot fly a drone in the u.s. that is beyond line of sight. If you don't have a pilot's license, wow, which means if you're a US drone manufacturer, you have to build a system that enforces that regulation. So,
you would, if you're a high handicap, your ability.
Yes. So either, the either the US drone needs to either not fly
Beyond line of sight, which is not very useful, right? Or it needs to somehow validate, it only have customers that have by left Pilots licenses China. There's no such restriction and the Chinese we have because we run a more open economy. The Chinese drones you can just buy in the US and use however, you want technically, as the user of the Drone, you're out of compliance with the law, but they ignore that part. They just punish the American drone makers. Wow, that's why that's why Chinese on the Drone market. And that's why 90% of the drones used by the US Military and by us.
These are Chinese made drones which, again, that
sounds like a terrible
security. Risk is a very bad idea because every Chinese drone is both a potential surveillance platform and a potential weapon.
Oh criminy! Yes. Well I've seen the advancements in Chinese drones in particular the choreographed dances that they do in the sky where they had. You see the Dragon one. Yeah. See if you can find that Jamie Chinese dragon drone display. It's like one of the largest ones they ever did.
Yeah, it's unbelievable. How much more advanced? They are ya
and I will tell you the Biden administration had zero interest in addressing this like we're worse than 0. Like just I would say absolute contempt for the idea of a US drone industry.
Yeah, so let's watch this thing. So you can go full screen on that. Like this is just a grid in the sky. Look at this. They're flying up together. They did one that was at night Jamie because they're all lit up video. It's just okay.
Skip ahead. It's imagine those with
guns. She's Jesus
Christ coming at you, right?
Well, we get to see some of that Ukraine. Yeah, 100%, absolutely. Yeah. We've seen those suicide drones like, look at this. That is that dragon in the sky its drones that are all lit up? Mean that is unbelievable. It even has a puff of Fire coming out of its mouth. Yeah, but that that's incredible. If they send that a football
stadium during a game with grenades on those drones, oh my God Carnage.
Dude don't even put that out there. Put that voodoo on me. Ricky Bobby sorry look at that heart in the sky with a heartbeat, correct.
This is insane. Correct. Yes, it's so incredible. Yes, they had a little one like that that played over the Eminem concert at when I was at a coda at the Circuit of the Americas here. They had this giant Eminem concerts like 100,000 people there and then afterwards. They had like, drones in the sky. That did little dances Chinese drums. I bet I bet they were. They weren't like this though. They didn't didn't not. Wasn't it, that level? I mean, that that's on believe it during the show while you can. That's crazy. That that's a Chinese thing.
Only yeah. Why don't ya book deal DeRozan Caesars soldiers in the field. You use very common soldiers, just soldiers normal normal, grunts soldiers in the field carry drones in their backpacks because they want to be able to see what's around the building or Up on the
Roof. Yeah. And these are Chinese
restaurants and every single one of them can be taken over by China and use for whatever they
want. Oh my God, anytime they want, this is the Trump Administration on
this. They're very there where I don't know what they'll do, you know, it's somewhere in the priority order, the things that they're doing but they are. Yes they are. Well aware of this and
well, it's, it's
the kind, it's the kind of thing. I would hope that would get some
attention.
Oh, yeah. Well this is the brings us back to the uaap thing because if that's what we're seeing is we're seeing super sophisticated Chinese drones that operate on some novel propulsion system? That's not good. And that could be because they put ridiculous regulations on drone manufacturers in America. That's right. And they got way ahead of us. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, we did. These are bad things are bad. These are
basically, you're just opening my eyes to this. I always had this rose-colored glasses view of our society.
This is the Chinese Society where our society is more open so people can innovate and come up with new startups, all these crazy ideas, because there's so much freedom in America, then I have to deal with the government being involved in every business. Silly me. Well, it's silly me, I was wrong.
So this is my art, is my argument. I make geopolitical in DC which is our. If you imagine that, the 21st century is going to be, lets say a contest between the US and China. The same way that in the 20th century. It was the u.s. versus the Soviet Union and like contest competition.
Old war, maybe Hot War. Yeah, like that's that's the basic fundamental kind of geopolitical puzzle of the 21st century. Then you want to think very clearly about the strengths and weaknesses of both yourselves and about the other side. And then, as you think about how to beat the other guy, is the answer to become more, like them or more like
yourself, Maxine Waters. Made that argument when it comes to social digital scores and cryptocurrency and decentralized digital currency. She was talking about the LED in order to compete with China. We have to come up with a centralized digital currency
which in my view.
Is exactly the wrong thing.
Yes, I heard that. I was like, that's a terrible idea. It's exactly the right gonna be like China to compete with China. It's
exactly the wrong thing. It's exactly the wrong thing, you don't want that because because because as, you know, the China system has its problems. Like they terrorize their own population directly. They do impose the social credit score still right. They do their own thing and they do all the stuff. And then, by the way, here's a, here's something we have going for us, which is the Chinese system is, turned on capitalism Xi Jinping is not a capitalist and he, there is a broad-based Crackdown on private business. In China to the point.
This is the friend of mine investment of the leading investors in China. He said, every single Chinese Tech founder has either left China or wants to leave China. Wow, they're all trying to get their money out and I'll try to get their families out because it's now too dangerous. To run a tech company in China because the government might just snatch you like literally physically snatch you at any point. Yeah, and you may or may not come back and then every Chinese CEO has a political officer of the Chinese Communist Party, sitting down the hall, who can come in and override your decisions, anytime he wants to, and Willie. And by the way, and drag you in a training, there's a great thing, okay? So you're sitting
You're the CEO of a company with, you know, 50 billion in revenue and 100,000 employees. And this guy from the CCP comes in and pulls you. And you sit in the conference room, down the hall for 7 hours, getting grilled on how well, you understand marks, right? So like that actually happens, right? It's a political officers and that's the kind of thing that happened in Soviet Union and that's the kind of thing that happens in China. So you'd rather be a CEO in the u.s. than in China for sure. As long as the u.s. system, actually stays open where you can actually get all the benefits of all the power of all these incredibly smart people building.
Companies are building products. But and that's why this Administration freaked us out somewhere on this, because it felt like they were trying to become Waverly, China
Sea. I was not nearly as aware as I should have been about the all these things you're saying. I didn't know this. I did know about the banks and I certainly didn't know that they were cracking down on AI the same way they crack down on social media.
The acting was very alarming, we had me, we had meetings, the spring that were the most alarming meetings. I've ever been in where they were taking us through their plans and it was what kind of platini talk about it. Basically, just full government, full government control, like,
sort of thing. There will be a small number of large companies that will be completely regulated controlled by the government. They told us, they told us they just said, don't even start. Don't even start startups. Like, don't even bother like there's just no way, there's no way that they can succeed. There's no way that we're going to permit that to happen. Wow. You said this is already over, it's going to be two or three companies and we're just going to, we're going to we're going to control them and that's that like this is already
finished. Oh my God. No. Then when you leave a meeting like that. What do you do? You do endorse Donald Trump?
Oh my God. And again, like I was tell you like, you know, look like because I'm going to get a lot of, you know, the flak I'm gonna get for this is in, he's just a crazy. Whatever. Right winger. But like I was a Democrat. I was like a day I was at, don't I supported Bill Clinton in 92, I supported Clinton in 1996. I supported Gore who knew very well in 2000. I knew John Kerry I supported him in 04 I supported Obama I supported Hillary and 16 like I was like a democrat in good standing and
then
I you know completely out in the cocktail circuit now like you love to hang out with people.
So there's now this is actually true. There's now two kinds of dinner parties in Silicon Valley, they fractured if the fracture cleanly in half, there's the ones where every person their believes every single thing that was in the New York Times that day, which by the way is often very different than whatever was in the near time. Six months ago. But everybody has fully updated their views for that day and that's what they talk about at the dinner party. And yeah I'm no longer invited to those.
Nor do I want to go to them and then and then there's the other kind, which is, you know, David Sachs and like all these guys and all these people and, you know, just this growing Universe, you know, it's a microcosm of what's happening more broadly in the culture which is like a. Let's actually get together and talk about things and have
right. But it's so much more comforting when it's you guys and not the my pillow guy. I mean, obviously no disrespect Mike to the my pillow guy but you know I'm saying, like, I want people that are smarter than me to be saying these things. That's what helps it helps. When you say, well, this person actually knows what
I came out there very well. Informed, and they understand the repercussions. They understand what, like, what's been coming their way and there's people like yourself that can speak about these. The plans that you're laying out, what they were trying to do with a eyes fucking terrified, that should terrify everybody, where you have bureaucrats or now control of potentially the most, the biggest ancient of change in the history of the human race. That's potentially. Yeah. And you're going to let what the people that can't even balance the budget people to don't know what the fuck is going on.
On that sounds insane.
Yeah and look my hope my I think I think under Clinton Gore I think that they they do with is very dry. I mean look, they dealt with internet very differently than the current crop are dealing with these
Technologies. Well, it was very different, it was very different but also,
they were much more clinton-gore. In particular were much more understanding that you could add
So used to be this thing, I call the deal of the capital D and the deal was you could be and this is what I was, you could be a tech founder, you could start a private company. You could create a tech product. Everybody loved you. It was great glowing, press coverage the whole thing. You take the company public, it employs, a lot of people creates a lot of jobs. You make a lot of money at some point. You cash out and then you donate all the money to charity and everybody thinks you're a hero, right? That's just great, right? And this is how it ran for a very long time, and this was the deal, this was, you know, the deal this is of clinton-gore, with 100% support of that. And they were 100% Pro capitalism in this way. And under
I protect and actually did a lot to Foster this kind of environment and basically what happened is the last 15 years or so Democrats. Culminating in this Administration basically broke every part of that deal for people in my world like every single part of that was shattered, right? We're just like technology became presumptively evil right? And like you know, if you're a business person, you were presumptively a bad person. And then technology was presumptively, had bad effects, and dot dot dot. And then they were going to regulate you and try to kill you and wash you. And then the kicker was philanthropy became evil. And this is a real culture change in the last.
Five years that I hope will reverse now which is philanthropy now is a dirty word on the left because it's the private person choosing to give away the money as opposed to the government. Choosing a way to give the money, I'll give you the ultimate case to here's where I radicalized on this topic. So you'll recall some years back Mark, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla, you know, we have a ton of money in Facebook. Stock they created a non-profit entity called the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, which the original Mission was to literally cure all disease. And this could be like, you know, two hundred billion dollars going to cure all disease, right? So like big deal,
They said, they committed to donate 99% of their assets to this, to this New Foundation. They got brutally attacked from the left, and the attack was their only doing it to save money on taxes.
Now, basic mathematics, you don't give away 99% of your money to save money, how to save money on taxes, right? But it was a vicious attack, it was like a very, very aggressive attack. And the fundamental reason for the attack was how dare they treat that money. Like it's their own. How dare they decide where it goes? Instead, tax rates for billionaires, should go to 90 something percent. The government should take the money and the government should allocate it and that would be the morally. Proper and correct thing to
do. What do you think? Is the root of that? Kind of thinking
utopian?
And this is a utopian collectivism you know it's socialism that works. Well is mm yeah it's there is the core idea. Socialism like the core idea is this is this is sort of a there's a radical egalitarianism. Everybody should be exactly the same. All outcome should be exactly the same. Everything should be completely fair at all. Some root of it has to be an Envy of course. Yeah, Envy resentment. Yeah, Nietzsche had this great term a called re sentiments and it's like, turbocharged resentment. And so the way he described as re sentiment is envy
Resentment and bitterness. That is so intense, that it causes an inversion of values. And the things that used to be good become bad, in the things that used to be bad become good,
right? And that's how to plant their feet becomes bad
for philanthropy becomes bad because it should be the state operating on behalf of the people as a whole or hang out the money.
Not the individual. I was not aware of that blowback, I would have loved to read some of those comments. Yeah, I would like to go to their page and see what else they come.
I'll give you another example. Here's another radicalizing moment for me so much, my friend Cheryl Sandberg.
I work with very closely for a long time and Facebook. And by the way Democrat, you know, liberal and by the way, endorse Kamala like very much not on the same page as me on these things, she changed worked in the Clinton ministration dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. She wrote this book called lean in about 12 years ago. It's this sort of feminist, Manifesto and and it basically soon in is a really neat lean in lean in. And the thesis of lean in was that women in their lives and careers could quote-unquote lean in it. She said what she observed in? A lot of meetings was the men were leaning into the table and sitting like in front. And then the women were like
Me back and wait to be called on. She said, the women should lean in it. Became a metaphor for her, for women should, like, leaning on their careers. They should like aggressively advocate for themselves to get like raises and promotions like men, do they like men? Do they should basically women should basically become more aggressive in the workplace and then therefore perform better. And so it was like it was a Manifesto, two women basically saying be more confident be more assertive be more aggressive be more successful and I read the draft of the book when she was writing it and I said when you realize, you've written a right-wing Manifesto.
Right? She looks at me like I've lost my mind, right? Because she's a wife, like, lifelong left and she's like, what do you mean? I'm like you. This book is a statement that women have agency, write. This book is a statement that the things that women choose to do will lead to better results. But that's what people believe, on the right on the left of people believe is that women are only always a never victims. Wow. And if a woman, doesn't succeed in a career, it's because she's being discriminated against. And so, I said, I said, I predicted when this book comes out, right? Wingers are going to think it's great and you're going to get it. Like, the left is going to come at you because you're violating the fundamental.
So, full of the left, which is anybody who does last? Well as a victim, which in that case is exactly what happened there. By the way, the reviews were all by women and they tore into her like, every major publication, they just like completely ripped her. How dare this Rich entitled woman? Be telling us, you know, these would be telling women that they're not victims and that they're, you know, that they have all this agency because every this is denial of sexism? Right, is denial of Oppression.
Wow. Because imagine if a man wrote a book like that for men,
right? That was patriarchy, right? That's
Yeah, that
well but I mean Fabrics, but men wouldn't attack it. All right, exactly, right. It would be a guidebook. Yeah. That's this is how you kick ass and get ahead. Yeah, we call itself, lean in bromeliad, just called lean in, bro. Exactly right? Wow, that's crazy. It's like an attack for that. So, again, it's just introduced. This is the inversion, it's
receptiveness. The inversion, which is like advocating on your own behalf and choosing to do things that
make you. What was her reaction to that
below? But I would say she was I don't want to speak for her, but she was not not pleased. I
mean she'll also was she
Chakra, you're correct. You have a follow-up conversation with her. Whether she's talked about a lot like God damn it. Mark, how'd you see that one coming? So she was in the, but the answer is, she would
share her world view of how these things worked was from a different. It was from the clinton-gore era, right? In which you could win, which you he's a talk like that you could talk like yes. And by the time the book came out it was already into the second Obama term, heading it, and right? And it and then the what woke stuff started. And then at that point, you could no longer say things like that. Wow. And everything got classified through.
This very hard-edged right US versus them, right? Oppressor versus
oppressed boy. And so it's such a, it's such a contrast to what we hoped would happen when Obama would be president. That's right. My thought was okay, look, there's still some racism. But clearly, if you're the baddest motherfucker, you can get ahead. Like, you can win the country will vote for you. That's not what happened. No, and you can win again, you do it twice then twice and and be like I've always said up until I've lost a lot of respect.
Peck for them, from some of the things that he said during this election cycle, because I think they got desperate, and they just resorted to actualize, and I thought, this is crazy to see him lying, especially the very fine people hoax, and we played the video back and forth of what Obama said, he said, and what he actually said, and it's pretty shocking because he's very explicit, you know? He's saying, not white nationalist, not neo-nazis, they should be condemned, he says it very clearly. That's not all talking about talk about people who are protesting the taking down of the statue, right?
And when you see a guy like Obama do that, it's such a bummer because he was the guy for me that was like our best spokesman. He was like here's a guy that came from a single family are single parent household. He wasn't some rich entitled kid, who was given everything in life. He's just brilliant speaker. He he's like he's handsome. He represents like what we're hoping for, we're hoping for a colorblind Society, just treats people on the Merit of who they are. And anyone can achieve and look here he is. He made it. And then also
Sudden identity politics goes through the fucking roof and victim. Mentality becomes a thing that people choose to side with and it gives gets real weird for a long time. That's
right, that's right. I don't look like I said, I hope I can find their way
back so but this lady still on team Kamala. Oh yeah, she got a few lessons out of that but not all of them will know. This is the if you're at, you know, if you've been a lifelong
Democrat, this is if you've been a lifelong Democrat and if that's, you know, it's that is in this court, a lot of people's value systems
And it's a real challenge, you know? Yeah, it's my parents when your
movement. They're all in goes in directions. Well, yeah.
And there's, you know, right? And you can shoot you, or you can choose to follow. You can choose to follow into the, you know, the craziest version of it. Or you can choose to say, you know what, like, I'm still not going to switch sides, but at least I'm going to Advocate right for my team to come back. Yeah, this is Richie Torres. Scott is a congressman, in, in, in Queens. I think are the Rocks. He's actually, it actually started out everybody thought he was gonna be a far left because he's gay. He's black, he's Latino. He was like, he was like, at least associated with
The squad early on and he's like one of the guys the Democratic party who has now stood up and he's been doing this in public for the last two weeks. Saying clearly we have to get back to sense like we have to get back to Common Sense. We have to go back to moderation. Yeah, we have to have law enforcement. We have to have Creole can't have crime in the streets. We have to have a border, you know, we have to, we have to get, we Democrats have to get back to moderation and sense. And so, he's hoping to lead the party. That's great, that I think he's, we support him. And I think he's like a really, I think he's a very impressive guy. So there are people like, and he's young and very energetic. And you know,
I think he has a very bright future, but that's the kind of person who could lead the
party. Well, the big nietzschean shift was, when Dick Cheney endorse Kamala and everybody cheered.
If there's not a better example than that, please tell me what it is because that one was fucking nuts. Like, Dick Cheney was always the hard, right? Like during the Bush Administration, all the lefties looked at him like that was Satan. That's right. He was the profiteer threatened, he was the the manipulator. He was the guy, pulling the strings, he was the CEO of Halliburton that came the whole thing was so crazy. And to see, oh Dick. Cheney just endorsed comma and everybody's
Like Yay. Look, Dick. Cheney's on our side. Like what the fuck are you guys talking about? This is, this is the best shift of it, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right.
All of us here at all of a sudden, we're only all of a sudden we'd overall neo-cons all of a sudden, as you said all of a sudden were pro-war. Who's like, wait wait, you know, because like as you know, like the number you know. Yeah. The Democrats used to be the anti-war party. Yes they were the anti-war party for a very long time. Yes yes. And yeah, it
except back when they were trying to keep slavery and I think that's part of the problem that was a different. No, don't realize that it was a
Our, but you know what, coming out of Vietnam, they were definitely the anti-war party for, like, you know,
third that isn't that a shift as well? Yeah. But the shift of the Republicans from back in the day, being Abraham, Lincoln, and that trying to get rid of slavery and the Democrats fighting to keep it like this, these weird ideological swings they happen and you know, we're still attached. The idea of being a Democrat is like being a Clinton Democrat. We're in this weird sort of denial.
Isle of what the ideology actually stands for first, as well, we think of ourselves when we say I'm a Democrat, I'm a good person. You know, I support civil rights, women's rights bubba. Bubba, bubba bubba down the line. I'm a Democrat. And if you go against that well now you're against all these things that you know to be inherently important for society. That's right. They gotcha. Yeah. That's where they got. Yeah. They roped into some crazy thing we're supporting war and then there's the big faction, right? There's the big free Palestine versus support Israel because the
Always supported us, real 100%. And then all of a sudden, there's just free Palestine movement, which divides the left even further. Yeah,
there's this is a book written some, some of yours back by the sky Norman podhoretz and that's great. This is a wire Jews liberal, right? And he was a right-wing, she was right, when you're a very important Jewish thinker American Jewish thinkers of, like, this in the 60s, 70s 80s. And he's like that, he'd basically is like, basically he had this thesis that like these Jewish liberal voters in the u.s. like base, we are voting against ultimately they're voting for the wrong team because what they don't understand basically is there
This is sort of a path number 12, anti-Semitism, which is what's happened. But number two, the the basically you're never going to have long-term support for Israel from the left because Israel, the basic concept of Israel violates that you know, the idea that Israel is like, literally a religious ethno state, right? And that's like inherently a right-wing idea. Not a left-wing, right? Like the left doesn't have room
for that, a military superpower in the
military, right? And is able to write is able to write this able
to and it's run by a former Special Forces.
Operator very yes. Very yes. A very capable. Yes. But yeah, typical soldier in his fucking assassin. Exactly. Yeah.
So, you know, he argued that it was like, whatever 20 years ago. He's like, this is headed in the wrong direction and but, you know, the argument was ignored at the time and then, you know, at least a lot of my Jewish friends after October 7th, you know, they were completely horrified, you know, to find out. For example, the D I was actually anti-jewish right? Which is what everybody learned with the scandals at the University's, right? And it's like, you know, and there's two ways of looking at that one is, oh my God. D. EI is anti-jewish therefore we need to add choose to the DUI scorecard.
Right. Well what would the the heads of Harvard?
And and was it a Mite? Was it Yale know. It's hard when MIT in Colombia.
Yeah, that was yeah, that's right.
That was just so in everyone's face and so bananas. And then we saw
that you have righties and then we saw is that this, the same sort of radicalized left had actually slid into, not just anti-Semitism, and not just an to Israel, but also Pro, I mean, ultimately Pro Terrors for Hamas. Yeah. You know that the new acronym, LGBT H mu, right? But there's a bunch of other stuff in there. Now is Q that's to Spirit, you know. But you got to get in there now for a mosque. Oh boy.
Really. Yeah, of course, of course, of
course. And so, so like cash, bring it, I bring it up. Just as in, he's not to take a position just as an example of, it's the kind of realignment. Yeah, a lot of Jewish Americans now are having to kind of rethink fundamental questions about political structure and alliances, and who they should be part of and who they shouldn't be part of. So I think to your point, I think like, the whole country is going through, I think we're going through the first like profound political realignment probably since the 1960s. Yeah, which is what which is, when everything shifted up being between Johnson and Nixon in the south
I think we're going through like the most profound version of that right now. And I think it's something like the multi-ethnic working-class Coalition, you know, the came together around Trump. You know, basically, again against this sort of super exaggerated Elite plus underclass, you know, kind of structure that the Democrats have built themselves and it just it just turns out there's just a lot more people in the middle. Mmm. And so, I think, but by the way, including like, a lot of, a lot of black people, a lot of black people, you know, black vote for Trump is way up. Hispanic vote for Trump is way up Bryce. Vote for Trump is way up. Way up. Gay boat is like all of
Yes, all of the identity groups that Democrats relied on all these years or union vote is for Trump.
I'm sure you've seen the down the map, the electoral map of California 2024 and 2020? Yes in contrast, it's a crazy Red Wave. It's going through across the whole the most of the state is red. Now
those of us on the coaster going to get pushed into the ocean. Yes. Yeah.
Well, I think, you know, maybe the other way we were talking about the hopeful way that the Democrats will wake up. Yeah. And come up with a more reasonable. I
I mean there's obviously clear cultural push back a lot of these crazier crazier issues. Include I mean like the giant push back from women about biological men competing against women. I mean this is a giant one where women are cycles and we create a Title Nine for a reason. Like we want women's sports to be for women. You can't have them for mentally ill men that think that they can be able to just decide there a woman in compete against women, which is what it is, in a lot of places, you don't even have to get tested. There's not like, some sort of a hormone,
All. It's just like it's just what your identity is which is just nuts. And that's one of the things that I think a lot of people on the left are having a really hard time
justifying, right? Because how can you how can you deny a victim group, right? Right. You can't. I mean in the full version of that easy on the extreme version ideology, you cannot deny any of you cannot deny victim
claimed. What also comes with this reared caveat where you have to deny the existence of perverts, right? Because a pervert, all they have to do is say I identify as a woman throwing away.
Big. And now you can go hang around the women's room and no one could say anything. Well, you've emboldened empowered, one of the worst groups in society that we've always protected women from and you have to pretend they don't exist. If you just want to base it solely on identity especially like a self-described identity, he just decide and then that's it. And you know I mean there's states that have that now with prisoners that all prisoner has to do is identify with being a woman.
And you are now housed in women's prisons. California is 47 of them. When the last time I looked at it, and there's hundreds that are waiting on, like a waiting list to try to get in. So you have women who, you know, especially if you're someone, who's dealing with, if you've ever been raped or sexually abused and now you have to share space with a man who might be a fucking pervert. And some of these men even have some crimes that are along those lines that they're in jail for.
Or it's crazy. I mean, Canada, is the worst at it. There's a bunch of different examples of these type of people getting female prisons. And it's just, it's insanity. And I think the left we reject that to, for the most part, this is the sensible version of the left. That is like, hey yeah, I'm pro-gay rights. Yeah, I'm Pro women's rights on pro-civil rights. I'm pro-choice and pro this. I'm anti warm up, but also you can't let psychos just put on a fucking dress and hang out and women's rooms just because we want to be kind.
That's nuts. So there has to be some and then there's legitimate transwomen. So like how do you make the distinction? Well, clearly, we have to have a fucking conversation and if you don't allow that conversation, take place. Like, if you go to Blue Sky and you type in there are only two genders. Your band tell your new to write their papers on it. There's a bunch of people have done it. It's fun. Yeah it's fun. They have like they've create a little sock puppet account. They say some shit that should have been a reasonable thing to say, just 20 years ago.
Yeah, well, you make me hopeful Mark, could you do what you do? Because you lay things out and like a really well thought out way that is not hyperbolic and you're making a lot of sense. So, I'm glad we talked, I feel better good, fantastic. I think the world does, too. I really do. I mean, I've talked to a lot of people even people that are Democrats who say, I feel better that Trump won
it every day. It feels better, it's just like they do in saying, it's feels like just things are
opening up. Its, the Obama campaign is Hope and change.
Change. Never. It's hope you changing. This is kind of actually hope and change. Yeah, this is actually, It Feels Like Oxygen return. Yes. Well, thank you very much, Mark. Really appreciate you tell everybody. There's sub stack, how to find you on social media? Oh, I'm on, I'm on. I'm on
X under P Mark. A my what's up stack? Google me. All right, as perplexity. All right, a strategy PT and it will deny that know. It will happily tell you what,
what about Wikipedia? We don't know.
Thank you very much.
