The Government Is Hiding Something Much Worse Than Epstein — Former CIA Spy Explains

As a former CIA operative, what do you read into the fact that the FBI is being so silent about the attempted assassination of Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the Epstein files? The FBI is leaning into the way our government is divided. Meaning how it's actually divided by the by our founding fathers, the legislative branch, the executive branch, the judicial branch. FBI falls under the judicial branch. The president falls under the executive branch, and of course Congress, the house all falls under the legislative branch. So, the three branches of government are built to keep each other's in check. But, they're also built to kind of protect their own um vertical, their own duties. So, I think FBI understands there's certain duties that they have that are defined by their role in government, and it doesn't matter what the house or the president has to say, those duties can't be messed with. But, then you also have this layer where Kash Patel was put in place by Donald Trump, the executive. So, you already have some of this cross-pollination that's unique. And it's it's unclear what it all means. Like, do we hear Trump talking about the Epstein files because he knows that the judicial branch isn't going to release anything? Is he letting this whole thing play out in in the House of Representatives because he knows that no matter how many votes happen in the house or the Senate, at the end of the day the judicial branch is going to be who determines what gets shared, what gets redacted, what gets kept and held back? And in all of those scenarios, Donald Trump has done what he can do to have the Epstein files released. And he knows that that the assassination attempts, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, like these all blend between branches of government and along with the checks and balances also comes a certain amount of of distancing of responsibility. But, Kash like went out of his way to say we're going to be super transparent, we know how important this is to the American people, and then we've gotten anything but. So, certainly I as a commentator on the internet start speculating like crazy. Um uh what do you read into that behavior from like are they are there signs that they're hiding something? Are there signs that they're just running a good investigation? Like, what do you see the signs being? >> The signs for sure there's there's lots of things being hidden. But, the things that are being hidden aren't necessarily nefarious. A lot of what's hidden in government is actually incompetence. And that's not something comforting to know, but it's the truth. >> But, do you actually see signs of incompetence in this investigation? >> absolutely. Like, you see you see Kash Patel and FBI coming out and releasing details about arrests before the actual state police who have made the arrest are willing to share the same details. You saw that very early on with the with the first announcement that they had apprehended a suspect in the Charlie Kirk killing. When in fact, what they had was a an old man who said it was me with no evidence, no proof. That did that was not a suspect, that was a volunteer. But, you saw it go out on on official channels, you saw it go out on social media. So, you see these updates that are coming out at the speed of social media because Kash Patel is used to working at the speed of social media. He's not used to working at the speed of government. And that has created all sorts of questions about whether or not he's fit for the role. And then that bleeds into whether or not FBI is up to snuff to do their job, and you can just see how it it snowballs out of control from there. >> So, do you think then that he just popped off too early and now he's realizing I got to keep my mouth shut until we really know what's going on? >> in that instance, he learned an important lesson about talking too fast, talking too early, and the importance of of vocabulary, right? Government people who are brought up and raised in government, when you've been a police officer, when you've been an FBI agent, and then you're appointed as the director of FBI, you already know this stuff because you spent all of your formative career building this this vocabulary for both dodging responsibility, but also for for denoting responsibility. And then you have somebody who's appointed to the role who does not have that upbringing, and now it's very easy for them to use the wrong term in the wrong context, and that's what we jump on. Unfortunately, I think most of what media jumps on these days is vernacular. They're jumping on words and word usage, not thinking about the intention behind the words. Kash Patel was just trying to comfort the American public and say, "Hey, FBI is doing their job. We already have people of interest that we're looking into." But, that's not the terminology he used. That's the terminology we're accustomed to, that's not the terminology he used. And now that puts the president in a place where he has to think whether or not punitive action is required for his FBI director. And there's and that's just one case that we're all aware of. There are hundreds of cases that FBI is working through all the time that they're communicating up to the White House and back again. So, what's what do all of those cases look like? And and what's the communication look like between the White House and FBI day-to-day? And how is it different from what it looked like when the whole world saw it with the killing of Charlie Kirk? Would you have expected more information to come out by this point? >> In effective professional government, the public is the last to know. And that's how it's supposed to be. We are supposed to be focused on making it through our everyday life. We're supposed to feel safe, we're supposed to feel comforted, we're supposed to feel secure enough that we focus our energy on our productivity. That's what we're supposed to do. That's how our country was designed. But, now there's so much distrust in government. Not just distrust that the government's working in our best interest, but also distrust that the government's even competent. There's so much distrust, we're actually reducing our productivity because we feel like we have to watch our own back. We feel like we can't necessarily trust the police, we feel like maybe we can't trust our schools to educate our children or even keep our children safe. We feel like we can't trust our neighbor because now the most violent criminals are turning out to be middle-class white boys. So, like there's all this stuff that's splitting our attention, it keeps us from doing the one thing we're supposed to be able to do, which is contribute to the economy. Going back to you looking at this as an outsider who has been trained on picking up on cues that other people might not see, uh does it seem plausible that in the case of Charlie Kirk's assassin that he acted alone, or do you see something more coordinated? You know, of all of the of all of the public killings, and I mean assassination attempts I'll I'll include in that that we've seen uh today, right? And you've got two assassination attempts on the president, you have the killing of the United Healthcare CEO, um Brian Thompson in December of last year. You have the killing of Charlie Kirk this year. In each of those instances, you you can start to with a trained eye, you can start to see how the premeditated efforts were executed. And some of them required seemingly required professional intervention, and others were completely amateur. The killing of Brian Thompson was a textbook amateur operation. Right? The guy was cased by a single individual, Luigi Mangione, who then found him in a a moment of vulnerability that's a mix of luck and planning, and then killed him in plain sight in front of cameras and the doorstep of his hotel. That's very amateur. But, he had he still showed some very intelligent premeditated movements to try to get off the X and cover his tracks, and it was just luck that he was captured in a McDonald's having french fries after flirting with a waitress or whatever the story is, right? The same thing is true, I feel, with Charlie Kirk. The the killer for Charlie Kirk shows very strong amateur tendencies. Premeditated, but amateur tendencies. And that lends itself to believe that he's most likely operating alone in his intent to kill. Does that mean that he wasn't um collaborating or sharing his plans with other people? Maybe, but I don't I don't get the sense from what I've seen of the evidence that he was supported externally by foreign governments or by um by rogue elements inside our own country. He just it the evidence points to an individual who made a plan and executed that plan premeditatedly on a soft target. Candace Owens would beg to disagree. Uh what do you take in her breakdown of all of this? Like, to me this is a fascinating thing that we're living through right now. We have this massive velocity and volume of information. Rightly, there's nobody trying to censor us, so people are able to say what they think. Um some people may think that she's a nefarious actor, that certainly is not what I read into it. Uh I don't think that she's right. I think that she has a bent towards the conspiratorial. Um but, anybody's able to say what they believe, and so you're getting a lot of narratives that are running wild, you're getting citizen journalism or podcaster journalism. I don't know what they call that new thing. Uh but, yeah, what do you what do you um see in the way that Candace is putting pieces together? So, I'm not I'm not very familiar with Candace's argument overall, but here's what I will say about Israel. >> Oh my gosh. >> I'll just simplify it for you. >> I mean, if that's the end conclusion, I I would I would love to poke holes in the entire process. Either way, there's a there's a very clear and predictable anatomy to conspiracy, which explains why conspiracy happens. Conspiracy has always happened. The the theory of a planned coordinated lie has been around as long as the United States and beyond. And it happens anytime there's a factual event that's immediately followed by an absence of information. Anytime those two things happen, a factual event followed by an absence of information, it just invites conspiracy because the human brain does not like an open loop. It does not like to not have a conclusion, it doesn't like to not know the answer, it doesn't like to accept um having to wait wait for a conclusion, wait for a resolution, wait for more information. Our brains don't like that. Our brains like very clear, very closed, very consistent loops. It keeps us happy, it keeps us satisfied, it keeps us feeling safe and secure. So, here with Charlie Kirk, like with mo- with any major criminal incident, there's going to be a long absence of information because the in order for our legal system to prosecute, it has to go through a process of building a case. And if if that case building process is is um undermined with with people reaching in and knowing about information and evidence before it can be presented to the court, then it makes it harder to build the case, which makes it harder for us to actually find the justice that we are promising, not only for the victims, but also for the criminals who are also protected under law as a US citizen. So, we have to accept that if we want our system to work the way that we all want our system to work, we have to give space for the courts to collect the information in secret that they need to collect. Otherwise, we're actually undermining the evidence trail because we demand the need to know. And that leads that that gap of information leads to some incredible conspiracies and conspiracy theories that float around, completely unsubstantiated. And you can make anything coincidental or anything um uh accidental sound like it's intentional until you kind of vet it through an analytical process that most conspiracy theorists don't vet. We'll be right back to the show, but first, let's talk about the difference between marketing hype and actual proof. When 5 million people buy 25 million shirts from the same company, that's not a gimmick, that's proof. Proof that someone finally solved the clothing problem that has plagued guys for decades. And this holiday season, that solution just became the easiest gift decision you will make. True Classic started with a simple mission. Premium quality should not require a premium price tag. If it is tailored where it matters, the fabric feels expensive without the markup, and it actually lasts. No shrinking, no fading, no falling apart. And that is why guys keep coming back. Make holiday shopping easy. Head to trueclassic.com/impact and grab the perfect gift for everyone on your list. Again, that's trueclassic.com/impact. And now, let's get back to the show. All right. So, if you were going to build a um module into Everyday Spy and you were going to teach people how not to fall prey to conspiracy theory, but we are in a vacuum. Like, we we have this dearth of information. Like, really use Charlie Kirk's assassin. We don't know. The FBI promised to tell us things, but they're not telling us things. So, if you were going to teach me how to deal in this moment, even if it's just a sit comfortably with uncertainty, how would you walk me through it? How would you help me dissect, I get you don't know the specifics, but how would you help me dissect somebody like Candace who makes like she comes with, I'll say, coincidental receipts, but nonetheless receipts that in a John Nash sort of way, which people know more from like uh It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with like all the strings. Like, she can paint a picture of look at how all of these things are connected. How do you help somebody have the defenses to know when something is true or likely to be true and how to debunk information from somebody who is, let's say, both well-meaning, intelligent, and coming with very specific examples. So, the answer is is kind of twofold. You have to understand the difference between um objective information versus subjective information. Objective information is information that can be proven, that can be verified, and that is coming from more than one source. So, proven, if she's got receipts, they're proven. If she's got uh you know, samples, kind of like with 9/11, people can show that there are certain flight manifests that are suspicious. They can show that there are there are there's timing that's suspicious. Like, those are facts. That's objective reality. Okay, cool. So, you have facts. That's one part of what makes something objective. Another part of what makes it objective is having multiple sources of it, not just one source. Many conspiracy theories all boil down to one person or one location, one source that started the theory. And then everybody else is repeating the theory. That's called circular reporting. When all the new information actually ties back to one original source. So, you're always trying to find multiple verifiable independent sources when you're talking about objective information. So, if if she's saying certain receipts are valid, where is somebody else independent of her verifying the same information? How do we know that the receipts are real? How do we know that the receipts actually have the connections that they have? Or is it just suspicious? If it's just suspicious, then it's not objective, it's subjective. It's based on the individual, it's based on feelings and emotion. So, you have to understand that there's objective and subjective information that that makes the overwhelming amount of information that we're dealing with difficult to navigate. And then second to that, >> Does it make it difficult to navigate or there's just such a volume of subjective information that you have to filter it out quickly? >> I think of it like being in a river, right? If anybody's ever tried to swim in a fast river, if you've fallen off of a white water raft into a fast river, you know what this feels like, too. There's an incredible volume of water that's moving. And it makes it hard for you not just to stay afloat, but it also makes it hard for you to move the direction you want to move. So, it's actually hard to move in the water because the flow of the water, even if you swim arm over arm, this water's going to overpower you. So, many times you have to learn how to navigate in that much volume of water. In a white water situation, when you fall into the water, you're actually not supposed to try to swim upstream. You're supposed to turn around and let the water carry you, and then you just push yourself left or right, and then the water will eventually carry you to one shore or the other. And because of the volume of water. You do the same the same amount of water with no flow in like a pool or a lake, and you can swim anywhere you want. So, that's how I see information in our world right now. We're in this this just tidal wave of information, subjective and objective, factual and feelings-based. And if you try to fight it, it's going to continue to just choke you. There's a certain element that you have to weave your way into it to move where you want to move, or else you're not going to get where you need to go. So, that's when I talk about navigating, I mean the word like controlling yourself, going where you want to go, whether it's towards the facts or whether it's towards the fabrication. Like, people choose where they want to go in a lot of this stuff. Okay. So, we've got this massive torrent. Uh we are though right now teaching the course on how to figure out what is real and what is not. So, we've got objective, subjective. So, we try to find things that are corroborated by multiple people that are establishing a simple thing that this happened, and we see it from multiple angles. Then the second thing that you need is some sort of index that you can use to to um compare the probability of information against the reliability of the source. So, probability and and reliability are very important when it comes to analytical rigor around the information or around the conclusion that you're trying to to arrive at. If something is coming from a highly reliable source, but it's very unpredic- like, it's um it's improbable, right? A a very trusted source says that Russia's going to drop a bomb in New York City. That is a difficult thing to to analyze. Whereas an a low reliability source saying the same thing is much easier to put at a lower probability. Similarly, when you have a high reliable source saying something that's also high probability, something that's that's highly likely. So, if the if it's a Russian nuclear missile general saying that I received orders to launch a missile on New York City, now all of a sudden, that's a very reliable source, and if you have SIGINT that says that the Russians are targeting New York City, now you have something that's also very likely. So, it's >> SIGINT significant intel or something like that? >> SIGINT is signals intelligence. So, you have a verified secondary source, SIGINT, that matches the human intelligence source, the general, that are both saying the same thing. Now, all of a sudden, you have a high probability incident. When you have single source reporting, like we're talking about here in the Charlie Kirk case, that immediately reduces the probability of accuracy, the probability of likelihood. And then, when you have a low reliability source, so you've got a low reliability source, and then you have an unlikely situation because you don't have secondary reporting saying that Israel's involved in any way. So, you have this situation where in our index, this is very unlikely and low probability that what she's saying is true. If there's a second independent source that's saying the same thing, that moves up the probability scale. Or if there's a more reliable source, not just a conspiracy theorist, then that also would move up the probability scale. But here we have uh we have single source reporting from a low reliability source, that makes it less probable. Okay. One thing that I know a lot of people that buy into Candace, specifically, are falling into the not falling into, they're aligning with the very anti-Israel sentiment of they're controlling a lot of things behind the scenes, maybe all the way to blackmail on President Trump, which is why they would read Trump as acting like somebody towards Israel that could only possibly be being blackmailed because it's so unpopular with his base, but he's doing it anyway. Um you, when I first mentioned that was Candace's stance, you immediately had a okay, that's ridiculous. What is it about your worldview that has led you to believe the exact opposite of what feels like the new torrent of beliefs, which is Israel is manipulating the world? Um yeah, how does your mental model diverge from that? First of all, everybody's trying to manipulate the world. The The fact that we're focused on Israel just kind of shows our ignorance of the reality that everybody's trying to shape the world. The Chinese are trying to shape the world, the Russians, the North Koreans, the the Botswanians, right? You name every country in the world is trying to shape the world. We're all trying to influence in in the the most beneficial way for ourselves in our limited spheres of influence, which some are very limited. Some people may only be able to influence their neighbor. Some can only influence their family. Others can influence entire, you know, international markets. So, everybody's trying to influence everybody. So, to to single out Israel is is just juvenile. Of course, Israel's playing a role. And if they're playing an effective role, we shouldn't be surprised because they have very strong allies, they have a strong economy, they have a uh uh a history that has made them very self-reliant and um and independent. So, if they're good at influencing, that's then we shouldn't be surprised by that. The United States is also very good at this. The Russians are also very good at this. The Chinese are also very good at this. Why aren't people blaming the Russians or the North Koreans for what's going on with Charlie Kirk? That leads to the second point, that it's because there's an anti-Israeli sentiment. Our country is so susceptible to these nationalized um biases. Do you remember when we had Islamophobia? Do you remember when we had Asia Asia phobia? Now we have Jew phobia, Israel phobia, whatever you want to call it, right? Like we we are so susceptible to this in large part because as a population we are so unskilled at differentiating between information. So, we start to think that oh, because Israel is attacking and killing Palestinians in Gaza, and because the whole world has turned against them for that decision, they must also be villains in many other places. And now everywhere we see villainy, we can blame it on Israel. That's that's not accurate. It's It's not any more accurate than when we were saying, "Oh, now that Al-Qaeda blew up the two buildings the Twin Towers in New York, everything's terrorism." That's not really true. And for sure, what's terrorism is not always Islamic extremism, and what's always Islamic extremism isn't always Al-Qaeda specific. So, we've got to learn how to differentiate between our feelings and the facts that are out there. The one of the big reasons that you heard me kind of scoff at that is because there's there's also an element of um that we call blowback. Blowback in government is is probably the the biggest concern that we have. And that blowback can be public blowback, but even worse than public blowback for us is diplomatic or or international blowback. When you make a bad call that then becomes knowledge to your allies and your rivals, there's a blowback penalty that's very real. Sometimes it means they stop trading with you, sometimes it means they stop sharing intelligence with you, sometimes it means they stop cooperating with you, they activate their own independent cells inside your country, whatever. Israel does not want to risk that level of blowback inside the United States. They don't want to risk alienating the United States, especially not the conservative base of the United States. >> You're saying by assassinating Charlie Kirk? >> Correct. What What would What would they have to gain from that long-term? Outside of the fact that we want to accuse Israel of every villainy that's out there right now, what would they actually have to gain empirically? What would they actually have to gain substantially that wouldn't have asymmetrical risk instead? Their fight's not with the United States. Their fight is with their own survival because they're surrounded by enemies on all sides. So, we want to look at these through analytical laws or what we call razors. Occam's razor is that the simplest solution is often the correct solution. But there's a second razor that's called Hanlon's razor. And Hanlon's razor says, you should not subscribe to conspiracy that which can be explained through um incompetence. Meaning incompetence is more likely than conspiracy. So, what's really more likely? That Charlie Kirk was killed at a public event as a soft target because the security wasn't up to snuff to prevent his killing? Is that more likely? Or is it more likely that Israel launched a secret operation to have him killed and was so effective at it that nobody has been able to collect evidence to demonstrate that except one person? What's more likely? What's more probable? Which one's Which one is the one that actually meets the index of possibility and source reliability? Which one actually meets both conditions of the razor? Which one actually meets the idea of subjective and and objective information? When you look at it professionally, that's why it's laughable. We will return to the show in just a second. But first, let's talk about the one advantage that beats everything else in business. The market does not reward perfection. It rewards speed. Your competitor with a mediocre product who launches today is going to beat your perfect product that launches in 6 months. Be the one who launches first with Shopify. Start with hundreds of ready-to-use templates that build a beautiful online store matching your brand style. Shopify's AI tools write product descriptions, page headlines, and enhance your product photography instantly. Create email and social media campaigns like you have a marketing team behind you. Shopify's world-class enterprise handles it automatically. No integration headaches. Just start selling. Turn your big business idea into reality with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/impact. And now, let's get back to the show. I'm going to channel what they they uh would say. So, first I'll lay my thoughts on the table so people know when I'm uh pushing my own beliefs versus when I'm channeling somebody else. Uh I think we're going to find out the kid acted alone. I think that there is enough internal hatred in America that you do see left-wing, right-wing violence. I don't think that you have to go much further than somebody who uh becomes radicalized by an ideology that says um you're going to hurt people that I love, and so I'm willing to take you out, especially when I become the young, disaffected, intelligent young man who is hyper-educated and underemployed. That's going to be a phenomenon that we in the West are not used to dealing with, and for a long time we just thought we washed our hands of it with video games and pornography, and we're finding out that that is not true. Um that Jordan Peterson is right, that people have a Christ complex, and they want something that makes them feel like they've done they've carried their cross and they've done something meaningful, and even if that means um shooting a healthcare CEO and spending the rest of your life in jail or getting the death penalty, or uh for your lover killing the person that you think ideologically is the biggest risk to their well-being. And that people get sucked up into a narrative, which is exactly what I think is happening to Candace and other people, but everybody needs a worldview, and they're going to tell themselves a story about the world, and when that gets reinforced, there there is quite literally no end to how far they will go. No one's going to remember Heaven's Gate, but like people will literally kill themselves because they think the aliens are coming to whisk them away to heaven. Just recently we had people that thought that the rapture was going to happen, and they were like giving away all their stuff and selling their stuff. I'm just absolutely wild uh what people can get sucked into. So, anyway, that to me seems the most obvious razor-enabled outcome. We'll see. Now, to go back to what they're channeling, it goes something like this. Um Israel has already proven that they are extremely good at putting together very future-facing, long-term plans to get people. Uh the pager thing I think really it it did two things. People had to be like, "Damn, that's impressive." That they were able to create a distribution network for pagers. Like that's so wild. Uh so, and then to kill people with such precision in a coordinated fashion, like very, very impressive. So, people know that they do that, and also I think um I don't know if it was intentional, but there's been a lot of media around how savvy the Mossad is. Like I forget the Steven Spielberg movie Munich? Munich? Where they show like, "Oh, you um killed a bunch of our athletes, bro. Forget it. Like we're we're going to hunt you down one after the other." So, there's been plenty of media around the just relentlessness, the ruthlessness, the um brilliant cunning that they have displayed. So, you've got that. So, they would say, "Well, hold on a second. Like we know that they do this kind of thing." And then Charlie Kirk was killed days after saying, "I just lost a big Jewish donor because I'm going to have Tucker on um and I might be turning away from it." So, what motive does Israel have? The motive that Israel has is that Charlie Kirk was one of the most effective people at turning put that could potentially turn the youth against Israel. We couldn't have it. We can see he's going in the Tucker anti-Israel direction. Nope, hard pass. Got to take him out. So, first of all, you cannot compare Israel's response to its ex- existential threats like Hamas, like Hezbollah, like Iran. You can't compare its response and preparation for those threats to political threats like what they would have in the United States from a senator, a congressperson, a president, anybody else, a nonprofit. You can't compare the two. And you you certainly can't compare the two in terms of the budget that they will spend and the risk, the blowback, that they would risk in response. The pager incident. Hezbollah has been a existential threat for Israel for decades. Decades. Why did they have a plan in place to put explosives into pagers? Because they knew that Hezbollah and they knew that Hamas was using pagers, they knew the model, they had already done the research, they knew the distribution channel because it had been years in the making because the threat was persistent and always there. Now, there's all sorts of intel operations that sit on a shelf, right? We should we The term shelving shelving something actually comes from this idea of military operations that are planned out just in case and then shelved so that in the event something happens like a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, you're not starting from scratch the day that you find out. You can pull something off the shelf that's 80% complete, 70% complete, 90% complete. Mossad, in defense of the nation of Israel, the existence of Israel. That's an existential threat. They have plans on the shelves that I'm sure would send all of our heads spinning. They knew what they were going to do in Natanz long before they ever asked the president to drop bombs on the Iranian uh enrichment facility. They already knew how to sneak across the border and launch drones. They had all of that on the shelf possibly for the last decade. They just chose to execute it at a certain time. That's what happens. That's what makes Mossad seem so impressive. They essentially only have a handful of enemies. But those enemies are existential enemies. Where the United States has binders full of enemies and almost none of those enemies are existential enemies. So, we don't put nearly as much money or time into planning that the Mossad puts into their planning for a handful of threats. So, to say that Charlie Kirk meets the same kind of budgetary or existential threat that Hezbollah or Hamas or or Iran meets is already flawed logic. It just doesn't happen. And then when you think about what is the most logical way to handle the threat of him potentially turning the youth against Israel, is it really better to kill the guy or is it better to spend a year or two trying to woo him back into your favor? Which wouldn't seem unrealistic, right? could you arrange a large donation? Could you arrange even a blackmail operation, which is completely and totally uh unlikely, but it would still be easier to launch a blackmail operation that somehow compromises him and forces him to verbalize his support for Israel rather than killing the guy because once you kill the guy, you can't There's no taking that back. The risk for blowback is too high. So, the fact that there that there's an argument at all that because of what Mossad is capable of with Hamas, therefore they must also be capable of that with every other target in the world is a ludicrous argument just based on how they prioritize their time, how they prioritize their efforts. The other thing that's important to talk about here is the information warfare landscape. It's so easy for us to forget. We're constantly in a landscape of information warfare. Not only is there information, not only is there good and bad information, but there's also intentionally bad information. What's called misinformation, what's called disinformation, and what's called malinformation. Misinformation, incomplete or incorrect. Disinformation, fully patently false. And malinformation, which is true information spun in a negative way. All of those are part of the landscape, too. Why did Israel let a movie like Munich become so popular? Why did Israel promote and and share on social media their incursions into Iran and the launching of their drones? Why did they share footage of what the what happened whenever uh whenever the pagers went off? Because they're shaping that information warfare landscape. They want the whole world to overestimate their capabilities. Can they do amazing things? Yes, but could they do that against 161 independent countries? No. They can do it against a handful of imminent existential threats to the homeland. Okay, you brought up blackmail. By the way, that was a wonderful argument. I'm sorry. I'm That was just a diatribe. >> That was great. Uh because I really think this is gaining steam and boy do I wish that people well I was going to say, boy do I wish that people look at history and go, pogroms rear their ugly head and never do we go, I'm really glad that we killed a bunch of Jews. We always end up going, ooh, those were monsters. Um but we're living through one of those moments right now and the distressing part has become that people go, yeah, but why do people keep launching pogroms on the Jews? That's the part where I'm like, oh my god. First of all, there's an obvious answer that when you have a minority that is very successful in populist moments where economics makes people uncertain, that anxiety has to be transmuted into anger because anxiety feels horrible and anger feels awesome. My audience will have heard this too many times to count, but uh there was a study done, very few people, but fascinating enough that uh if you open somebody's skull and start electroding their brain and you touch all the regions for emotions and then ask them which emotion did you enjoy the most that you want me to press again, they will universally say anger. So, anger comes with certainty, it comes with focus, it just feels good. It's an aggressive forward-moving thing. And so, when I hear pogroms, I'm like literally, if you were just like flipping through the pages of a history book and you're like, pogrom, I'm like, they're they're having economic problems. Guaranteed every time, 100% of the time. Uh because you need someone to blame. And so, when you want to transmute the anxiety into anger, you're like, who do I aim my anger at? And so, uh the right question for me around Israel or Jews, I guess uh is what is it in Jewish culture that makes them so effective that they can go into a strange land and become very successful. Now, is it just a focus on economics and they're just very good with money? In which case, learn about money. Uh I don't understand people's bizarre reaction. >> phenomenal book called Thou Shalt Prosper written by a rabbi, um a gentleman named Rabbi Lupin. And he goes through I 100% I recommend this book. If you're a business owner or if you're an entrepreneur, you must read this book. It literally answers the question that you just asked. What is it about Jews Mhm. that makes it possible for this religious um ideology to basically go anywhere and be successful, financially successful. I would argue and Rabbi Lupin would argue that their financial success is secondary. That what they're actually successful at first is community. They find real needs and real uh real opportunities to enhance the community that they are now part of and then they just maximize their contribution to the community, which has a secondary effect of maximizing cash flow, maximizing revenue, maximizing growth because they're servicing a need in the community that nobody else has previously serviced. And then as more and more Jews kind of come together, they also have a religious element of supporting each other. So then, you may not be good at business, but you have somebody else in the synagogue who is good at business and then they help you to develop your business idea. They help you to develop your business strategy, they help you to do your marketing, they help you to negotiate your lease, they help you to manage your books because that's part of the community and then as a result, you end up having this thriving mhm sector of people who share a faith. Compare that to Christians, compare that to to Islam, compare that to Buddhism. We don't share the same focus on community, we don't share the same focus on finding gaps in the existing community. We focus Many of those religions focus first on their own kind. And in fact, Jews don't focus on their own kind first. They focus on on making the most of the environment that they're in at that moment. They kind of assume hardship and they try to work their way through the hardship first. Wait, are you saying that Jews don't focus on Jews first? I don't According to what I've read and according to the book that I'm referring to you right now, that's not the first focus. The first focus is wherever they relocate to, the first focus is how do I serve how do I exist in this community? >> Mhm. I I'm not a scholar, but I have a worldview right now that says that they are very insular, that they do focus on the Jewish community first. I'll be interested to see if that's true. I am very open to being wrong, but when I mentally map them, I take away like, ooh, must remember this uh in terms of helping each other. So, helping people that are on your team, however you define team, but that you create a community, you find uh a closed system and you say, cool, we're all going to help each other so that we can rise up and then also, and I don't know if this will hold up to historical scrutiny, but um if they really do focus on money, that's brilliant. And and I'm just PSA, thou shalt listen to the the following rant. So, uh I learned how to make money, but I did not know how to invest money. And the last 6 years of my life has been basically about learning the economy. And when I say everybody must learn the economy, otherwise you will be manipulated by your government, like right now, the the litany of people that have lived and died under regimes that were manipulating them economically is so horrifying and I see what America is now doing and it's an organism doing it to you. It's not like individual people. It's just that the incentive structure is such that uh the people that have a a roll of the dice before we started rolling we were talking about playing games like D&D where you roll your character and you give them skills and trades based on rolls of the dice. Humans are actually like that. So we all have traits. The people that really score high on the Machiavellian scale and they really want to accumulate power uh they are going to rise to the top and they will learn as every empire before them learns that oh you have to you have to counterfeit your own currency is the fastest way to say it. We call it money printing or quantitative easing. We give it fancy names, but it is literally just counterfeiting your own currency and you realize that it benefits the elite that know how to invest in assets and it just absolutely slaughters everybody else. So every empire ever in all of history has done the same thing and so there's just something in the human mind to avoid being taken advantage of by that, you must learn how it works because once you learn how it works it's like oh my god the emperor really has no clothes and a very small dick and you're just like I know exactly what the [ __ ] is going on right now. And uh most people just don't learn it. So the the way that people go oh they do that and that's so gross. I'm just like [ __ ] hell. Like please for the love of God if it's that effective will you just learn the skill? Like instead of uh dismissing somebody just be like oh that must be really effective. Let me go figure that out. Uh but that's not the moment that we're in. The moment that we're in right now is anybody that's good at that I'm going to take them down. And that is really history says this is very distressing and you become the bad guy very fast. So your I I love what you just said and it's important I I think it's important to highlight that what you just said has a handful of powerful truths that all need to be broken out and detailed in order for the layperson to understand let alone for the layperson to accept >> Yeah. the the truth of what you just kind of spat out, right? Much to my dismay. Well, but it's all it's fair. You're dedicating a huge portion of your life to teaching people how to do this. >> Enjoy it while it lasts. We're talking about that. But I appreciate I appreciate that you're you're making that dedication. As a fellow teacher, I appreciate the dedication to trying. There's so many people who will learn the information and they're like oh it's my information. I have a client in in Florida. Sent some millionaire client. No he he and I have had the same conversations you and I you you and I just had here. Mhm. Right? Over bourbon, cigars at his giant uh plantation. Damn. And he's not sharing it. He's not telling anybody. He's like yeah this is the way it is. Sucks for everybody else, but here's what I'm doing. >> That's so wild. But that's how most people are. That's when you understand how the system works there's there's a instinctive an instinctual response in the human brain that makes it so that you know something somebody else doesn't know. That means you don't share it. Dude people should have people like that should have to not have to. They should understand the utility in hanging a painting of Marie Antoinette on their wall. Mhm. I don't I don't disagree with you. Um but the reality is reality. So I there's two things I want to say kind of to to close the door unequivocally in my opinion on the Jewish topic, right? First read thou shalt prosper. Go find the book, find it on audio, find it in the library or however you like to read. Read the book because it was incredibly enlightening to me as a business owner and as a as a member of the human race to to read and understand more about how Jewish people think through the lens of a rabbi talking about business. I loved it. It was life-changing for me. I can't not do everything I can to express people look up that book thou shalt prosper. And then second differentiating between Israel and Judaism. It's an important distinction. Israelis and Jews are two completely different bodies. They might be they might consist of many of the same people but Israel is a nation. It is a it is an a government that has been created with a with an infrastructure above it. They don't separate between church and state, but nevertheless Israel is a government. You have an Israeli passport. You don't have a Jewish passport, right? Judaism is a faith. You can be a Jew and not be Israeli. You can be Israeli and not be a Jew. There's all sorts of differences between the two, but we live in a world where we we talk and we assume so quickly that we put the two hand in hand. There are plenty of Jews that don't agree with the policies of Israel. And it's important to have that distinction between the two because the government of Israel can be a ruthless government. It is proving to be corrupt in its own ways. It is proving to be isolating in terms of its international policy. But that doesn't mean that Jews as a body of faith-based people all reflect the same ideologies as their government does. I think you're exactly right that when there is economic pressure when there is fear people don't like the way fear feels. They would rather feel anger. So as fear reaches a peak, people find something to focus their anger on. When COVID was at its peak, we all hated the Chinese. When World War II was at its peak, we created concentration camps here in the United States for Japanese that were living inside the United States. >> Yeah. We've ostracized everybody. I mean if if you're if you're an Indian in the United States, you have felt what it's like to have people racist against you just because you're Indian. If you're Chinese, if you're Korean, if you're Mexican, we all know what it's like to have America turn against us culturally because of some fear from somewhere else whether it's jobs and we all now are afraid of Mexicans or whether it's uh whether it's fentanyl and now we're all afraid of Colombians or whatever else. Like it is there's all sorts of reasons where we choose anger in the face of fear because of how it feels. And the Jews have been victim to that too. The whole world knows about that when they were victimized because they were the target of anger in Germany and then that it went the way it went. So we know that that's that we're susceptible to that. It takes effort to work against that. It takes effort to say hey what else could be the root cause to the pressure to the fear that I'm feeling right now in our economy right now. What else could be the real driver? Is it that is it really a war in Venezuela that we need? Is it really um to shut off H1 visas to foreigners? Is that really what we need? Is that going to actually solve my concern or is that just focusing my anger and giving me a very convenient answer to close a loop in my mind that allows me to sleep better at night so I can focus back on my productivity. Mhm. All right. Speaking of blackmail and open loops, uh Epstein. You've put a very interesting idea out that he looks far more like an FBI intel agent CIA. I was like I see. Uh walk me through that because this one gets weirder by the day >> Yeah. in terms of Trump uh releasing it all. You guys are still obsessed. What's happening? They better release everything. Like it's so wild uh watching him vacillate, watching um Kash Patel and Dan Bongino go from bro day one we got you to uh I think a Putin every time men in black suits coming up to them whispering in their ear this is not how the government works and them just suddenly like nobody's interested. This this one's crazy. This one feels like um the ugly under the hood machinations of the world came up to the surface and people just like there's no way I'm going to let you see how things actually work. Um Drew my producer who's just off camera right now. Hi Drew. Uh has said you'll never get the Epstein files. Like he's been saying that from day one. How what's happening? Give me the FBI angle. Yeah there's there's a the truth is somewhere in between the two extremes which is what so often turns out to be true, right? So um Jeffrey Epstein was doing a lot of illegal stuff on his own. In the eyes of the justice system a bad guy doing bad things is useful. It's helpful. >> That's so wild. Because bad guys doing bad things are almost always connected to other bad guys doing other bad things. And that opens up this access route this utility for the Justice Department to say oh well now we have a smorgasbord of bad guys, but we only have access to these bad guys through this one bad guy here. So they created this process called a CI a covert informant or a clandestine informant. The CI's job is to inform and to gain and grant access to a wider net of bad guys. >> And this is specifically an FBI thing. It's specifically a a law enforcement thing. Okay. >> So So is it CIA or FBI? >> CIA is not law enforcement. Interesting. >> Yeah. CIA's job is intelligence collection not not law enforcement. >> to kill people. They used to be more able to kill people than they currently are. So law enforcement falls under the under the judicial branch. Intelligence collection falls under the executive branch. That's why the president can do whatever the hell he wants to with CIA, but the president cannot do whatever he wants to with FBI. Right? >> That's that's how it was that FBI could could investigate the president and how he decided to have a backlash against the FBI. CIA he just says no. He just shuts off their budget and and tells them he doesn't listen to them and and stops using them and that's how you have the max the mass exodus of 2016 that you had at CIA during Trump's first administration. So you have these two different branches of government. One controls CIA, the executive branch. One controls FBI, the judicial branch. That also means that Donald Trump can say, "Release the Epstein files." and that doesn't have any impact on the judicial branch. They don't But is Kash Patel that makes that decision or someone else? So, they can they can be pressured into acting when the legislative branch and the executive branch both work together in a checks and balance way. >> Like if Pam Bondi and Kash Patel say we're releasing it. Is there's nobody else, right? >> Not really, yeah. They they can they can choose to do that on their own as long as it fall it fits American law. American law is dictated by the legislative branch. So, here's why I'm saying this. I'm saying this because even if our legislative branch votes to have the judicial branch release the files, that does not mean that they control what gets released or where it's released. So, the files might be released only to the Senate Intelligence Committee or only to a sub committee in charge of law enforcement, not to the American people. You're not going to They're not going to vote today and then tomorrow you're going to have full access to every file. They also might only release redacted files because there's going to be lines and details inside all of the files that have law enforcement, intelligence, or national security relevance. So, it's all going to be redacted. You're already seeing that in the emails that were leaked recently from house members. Who makes those redactions? The Department of Justice makes those redactions. Why do they make those redactions? Because they're protecting other cases that they're trying to close for criminal conviction. So, release the files. What what's laughable to me is that they can release the files and uh the average American still won't see them because they're not going to be released to the public. They'll be released to subcommittees. They'll be released from the current kind of bucket of control they're in in the Justice Department and they'll be released to the legislative department. And then the legislative department and the subcommittees there will determine whether or not it should be released to the public or it should go right back to the judicial department because we have to protect XYZ case. Epstein as a CI was incredibly valuable because as much as he did bad things the people that he had in his sphere of influence did worse things in the eyes of the law. This is an uncomfortable truth that people need to understand. In the eyes of national security a pedophile is not that big a risk. Yo. That sucks, but it's true. If you're trying to protect a country, if you're trying to protect national secrets, if you're trying to protect our ability to win a war against China a guy having sex with a an underage child is not that important. But when that pedophile is connected to other world leaders, when that pedophile is connected to politicians that might be corrupt, politicians that might be allowing foreign influence in American policy now all of a sudden that person can be granted amnesty in exchange for their cooperation in advancing the cases for all these other targets. That makes the most sense in in any research I've done, in any expert I've spoken to, in any review of the evidence that we've gotten so far on Epstein, that explanation makes the most sense of any other. That the United States said, "Hey, you're doing shitty You're doing bad things. Here's a whole list of things that we can arrest you for and and convict you for today." And he saw that list and then they said, "Or you can cooperate with us to bring down bigger fish." And what's a guy like that going to say? This isn't the mafia. He doesn't have to worry about somebody, you know, whacking him, he didn't think. So, he's like, "Okay, I'll cooperate with you because then if I cooperate with you, you bring down some big fish, I don't ever go to jail for the things that I have to do to stay influential in my network and now I'm protected. Right? At the end of the day, we all have two instincts that we have to deal with. Our survival instinct and our tribal instinct. And those those are the two instincts that drive us. Sometimes we're very survival based. Sometimes we'll sacrifice our survival to be part of a group. In that moment Epstein was like, "I need to survive. I need to take care of me more than I need to take care of my friends, which are my tribal instinct." And then life just is. That's just how human beings are wired. All of us have that same decision matrix every day. And what do you think about um was he exfilled by the FBI so they could either protect their sources or did somebody actually have him killed or was this just the guy that was like, "I don't want to go through the trial." Yeah, I don't think he killed himself. I I will say that >> Because of evidence. What has been released to us so far when I look at it, it just it doesn't make biological sense to to be able to hang yourself essentially off of a doorknob at low out at at a low distance from the ground. It's a very difficult thing to do. So, I it it just seems biologically improbable, not impossible, but improbable. And then even though I have I have I have supported wealthy people who have been convicted and are going to prison. I I provide counseling and I provide um training Oh, [ __ ] >> to shape to shape their mindset before they go into prison. Woah. >> Because they're going to come out of prison, too, right? So, I have I have helped people in that way. Okay. I've helped people in that way and they all have that same thought that Epstein most likely had where they're like, "It's all over. My wealth is gone. My reputation is gone. My family will forever hate me. My kids are better off without me, so I'm just going to kill myself in jail. I'm just going to give up and never talk to anybody again." They all have that moment and it's just a mindset moment that they have to work their way through. Without a doubt, Jeffrey Epstein had a consultant like me who came in and coached him on his mindset. Without a doubt, his attorneys would have done it for sure. He had too much wealth behind him for someone not to invest in that way for him. So, when I think of probability, probability is he would not have killed himself. Probability is even if he tried biologically it wouldn't have been successful. So then, what did happen? Was he killed in an organized criminal activity or was he or was he killed as a political martyr of some sort? But most likely, most probable to me he was violently attacked. Whether they intended to kill him or just intimidate him, I don't know. But that seems the more likely case. That's completely separate from his role as a CI. If he would have been discovered as a CI, he would have been even more likely to be killed. If he was not known to be a CI, they still wouldn't want to release the details because to release the details of his role as a CI would be to undermine the all the other CIs in the world right now who are providing information about worse bad guys than them to the FBI. The promise the FBI makes, the promise CIA makes to all of their assets is we will protect you. You will provide us information. We will protect you to the best of our ability. The best of their ability when they're protecting a US citizen in the United States is pretty high. Mhm. It is uh like this one is wild to me in terms of um what what does it say about the state of the government, I guess, or just how dirty the work is. >> Like that We've all been We've all believed that we're good. We've all believed that we're on the right side of humankind and we're a good and decent government. Why do we >> When I watched House of Cards, it didn't seem plausible. So, it was fun. I enjoyed it. Very over the top. I'm like, "Get out of here." And then Epstein having it, I was like, "Oh my god." >> Yeah. Like this might actually be like the level of chicanery that's actually going on. That that's where I'm like "Wow, this is really hard to metabolize." >> Again, you have to look at those two razors that we talked about, right? Occam's razor and Hanlon's razor. Is it more likely that we only recently became corrupt as a federal government? Is it only recently that we became highly politicized and and survival oriented? Or have we always been that way but the advent of technology has made it more transparent to the layperson? Which one of those is more likely? Well, if you keep If you take the most simplest explanation, we've always been that way. So, it meets Occam's razor to believe that we've always been this way. We've always been this way. It's just that technology has made it so that you and I can now keep up with it at a faster pace. And then if you look at Hanlon's razor, don't subscribe to conspiracy that which can be explained through uh idiocy. Then again, we've always been this way. It's not that we've been able to keep a secret. It's just that nobody's had real-time access into so much information about what's happening in government. We've never had so many leaks. We've never had so much press interest. We've never had so many channels to communicate the information that we're collecting. We've never had, like you were saying before, um podcast journalism or social journalism or community journalism, whatever whatever isms you want to call them. We've never had that before. Everybody was too busy working on an assembly line or trying to scrape together two sticks to make a light, right? We never We never had that in the past. So, when I look through the laws of analysis, it just confirms for me what I learned when I was at CIA. The average American has no concept of how the government works. And the average world citizen has no concept of how their government works and for sure they have no concept of how the US government works, the largest, wealthiest, most militarily powerful government in the world. You think that we became that way by playing fair? You think we became that way by by standing on the moral high ground? That's not how government works. That's never been how government works. That will never be how government works. The whole reason we have a representative government is so that we don't have to have blood on our hands as the voters. We can elect someone else to go do the dirty work. Are we ever going to get transparency into who Epstein was and what he did? I don't believe we will. I don't believe we will because it doesn't benefit our national security infrastructure to tell the true story. We might get answers, but we'll never know if the answers that we're given are complete, accurate, or truthful. Because every government knows you have to give the people something to follow. And then you that doesn't have to be the truth. Just like what's happening right now in the Caribbean. Why do we have a military build-up in the Caribbean? Because of Venezuela? Run that through the two razors that we talked about. It doesn't make any sense. But that's what we're being told. And because we're being told that, we accept that. Nobody's questioning whether or not our military presence in the Caribbean is due to something else. You think it's China? That's what I believe. >> We'll get to that in a minute. If you were advising the Trump administration right now, how do you get enough Epstein file out there, lie or otherwise, that people go, "Cool. Got it. Check. Thanks. We finally got the transparency that we needed." >> You don't want people to say, "Cool. I'm done." You always want to have this red herring. This is the definition of a red herring. A red herring is is a useful tool that you can use to to distract people. You want the Epstein case to always be available as a red herring. So, if I was advising the Donald Trump organization, I would say do exactly what you're doing right now. Donald Trump, you tell the people officially, I think that you should let the House vote on releasing the files. Even though the president, as the leader of the executive branch, could do it himself. He could tell the the judicial branch to do it and and they would arguably, as commander-in-chief, be hard-pressed not to listen to him. But he's not doing that. Instead, he's making it the House's problem. He's making it Congress's problem. So, he's like, "Hey Congress, you do this thing from the legislative branch, and I'm going to be the one that's the figurehead saying the leader saying you do the thing that's going to help the American people." And then simultaneously, you're telling Kash Patel, "Release whatever you need to release that doesn't compromise current investigations and anything that looks bad on our current administration, redact." Now, Kash Patel, leader of the FBI, Pam Bondi, the the head of Homeland Security, they can both go in there and they can they can redact anything that they that they decide looks bad on the current administration or is related to a current criminal investigation and release that. And the American people will say, "Oh, well, now we have all the files, but what about all these redactions?" And now the Justice Department can always say, "Those redactions are critical for national security because the stability of the federal government, the survivability of the current administration is considered a national security priority. Yeah, this is going to get weird. Like this has not been good for his presidency and his inability to fix the economy in a timely manner, which I think is impossible, but nonetheless, uh is a double whammy. We we shall see. Well, that's I think what's happening. I think Donald Trump is also he's a very practical personality. No matter how you cut it, you can kind of accept that there's a pragmatism when you look at it through the lens of Donald Trump protecting Donald Trump. That's survival instinct. He's any any failure that he has in a campaign promise is something that he can distract from. He also promised to not start any new wars. And he's gone back on that several times, right? He's turning into a very conflict-oriented president. Not only with Iran, but also with Venezuela. That complete that goes completely against the campaign promise. He's done an about-face on releasing JFK files. He's done an about-face on releasing Epstein files. Those were also campaign promises. Uh you you see him trying to like trying to boost the economy in traditional ways. The traditional ways are not that different from the way Biden or Obama tried to boost the economy, either. Even though he tries to make it look different. He knows that probability-wise, this is his last term. And coming out of this term, he wants all the benefits of being a former president and he wants to shore up as few risks as possible that carried over with him into the presidency. So, Donald Trump's there to take care of Donald Trump and the United States will be a secondary benefit, but that's his primary goal. 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Terms apply. That's money. That's Cash App. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC. See terms and conditions at cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Promotions provided by Cash App, a Block Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. >> The election is existential now on both sides. So, uh Trump is obviously going after his political rivals. If the Republicans win, I would imagine that whoever comes into office will pardon Trump just to end all of that. Uh I believe he can't pardon himself, so that's off the table, but if the Democrats win, they're going to go after him legally in a big way. So, the bad news is that becoming president is now existential in office and out of office. And this is why if I were advising Trump, I would say, "Whatever you do, don't pursue Obama. That would be a huge mistake." Because they will come after you tenfold. And then when it switches again, they will come after them tenfold. So, anyway, we're in a super weird death loop. But um talk to me about Venezuela. So, China is the thing that I'm very sad anytime people get distracted because uh while I would love to hold hands and march into the future with China as an ally, um but we not decouple, but we get realistic about not letting anyone control certain aspects of our way of life. Uh certainly not somebody who has proven that they will very rapidly become an adversary. Um what is Venezuela all about? How does China figure into this and what should we do? I'll I'll answer your question directly first and then I'll kind of backfill it with why I think I think the way I think. I believe Venezuela is a red herring. I believe that all of the Venezuela talk and the Venezuela focus is not actually the focus of the president, not actually the focus of the Department of War, as it's now called. I believe that that is all a red herring that's being given to us as a pill that we'll accept because we all kind of agree Venezuela's we don't know anything about it. That's what we all really believe. We don't know anything about Venezuela except Maduro bad. And we all hate drugs. So, if you can speak for yourself, Andrew Bustamante now. So, if you can >> I'm kidding. >> If you can affiliate Venezuela with drugs, then boom, yeah, of course we're against it. Rah, rah, rah. Let's let's blow up boats and let's show American power off the coast of our own country. I mean, who doesn't want to cheer for that? I lived in Tampa. It gives you a giant erection every time an F-22 takes off and you're like, "Fuck, yeah! That's America, right?" Like when you're standing in the field and there's Abram tanks that are driving by, the whole world rumbles and you're like, "Fuck, yeah! That's America." Trust me, I get it. I get it. And now we get to do that off the coast of Florida. And of course Texas, and of course Mississippi, Louisiana. We're all like, "Ooh, [ __ ] yeah! That like we we're awesome." Cuz we get to do it here. We've been projecting that power worldwide. We don't get to rah, rah, rah when it's, you know, off the coast of Israel. But here it's different. So, all of that's to say, I believe Venezuela is a big red herring. Now, why do I believe that that's a big red herring? When you look at the actual evidence, the objective realities of the claims that are being made, we're fighting a drug war against narcoterrorisms or narcoterrorists, right? The term narcoterrorist has an actual definition, right? And that definition for a terrorist has to be the use of violence to gain a political change. That's that is what's required of a terrorist. They must use violent lethal attacks in an effort to force political change. Narcoterrorists would just be drug-funded or drug-related terrorists. That's the definition that's out there for everybody to look up. Well, the cartels aren't doing that. The cartels aren't using violence, particularly not violence against the United States, to change politics. That's where the argument comes from recently that they're trying to say, "Oh, no. Maduro weaponized cocaine. He weaponized cocaine specifically to attack Americans." Even if that was the case, what's the political change that he's trying to drive? Because that's the important part about a terrorist. They have to be driving a political agenda. Secondly, only 15% of all the cocaine, at most, only 15% of the cocaine that enters the United States comes through Venezuela. Um 100 of it 100% of it almost is created in Colombia. But then a small fraction is sent through Venezuela and then shipped up to um Puerto Rico where it goes into the American postal system and then it can be shipped all over the United States. A small percentage. Upwards of 90% of all cocaine goes through Mexico. So, why are we focused on Venezuela? If we're trying to fight cocaine, why wouldn't why wouldn't we focus on Mexico? Why are we focused on Venezuela? Doesn't make any sense in terms of volume. Then you start to think about other issues. What one of uh Venezuela's top two military weapons partners are Russia and China. Russia historically, China more currently. Venezuela also maintains one of the largest amphibious assault forces in all of Latin America. And guess who provided all of their amphibious assault weapons? China. >> China. So, if you really want to know what an amphibious assault would look like of China against Taiwan, you want to get a look under the hood of what the amphibious assault looks like in Venezuela. What do their capabilities look like? What do the weapons look like? How would they use them? China's number one trading partner is actually Pakistan. So, China's number one weapons importer is Pakistan. Pakistan buys the most Chinese weapons. But almost all of the weapons that Pakistan buys from China are focused on ground warfare and airborne warfare, radar detection, uh ballistic missiles, et cetera. That they're using against India. It doesn't give us any And Pakistan's a US ally. So, we know everything we need to know about Chinese weapons because our Pakistani partners are probably giving us the information. But we know very little about China's amphibious assault capability. But Venezuela would be our best insight into that. Add into that mix the fact that the Panama Canal was a major focus of Trump during the presidential administration because he claimed that China controlled the Panama Canal. That's not fully correct. The more correct way of saying it would be that China controlled the entrance and exit ports of the Panama Canal. They were predominantly owned by a Hong Kong subsidiary. In March of this year, Trump demanded that that Hong Kong subsidiary sell a majority stake to US investment company BlackRock, I believe it was. So, then in August of this year that that transfer actually happened. So, it was only in August, August 25th of this year, that the Panama Canal became majoritively owned by US investment firms instead of majoritively owned by Chinese investment firms. And then within 2 weeks after that date, the first drug boat was blown up off the coast of Venezuela. >> Really? So, I'm not saying we have smoking guns, but I'm saying we have multiple verified s- uh independent sources of information that point to the fact that our conflict in Venezuela actually isn't about Venezuela. >> So, uh the boats that we're blowing up, are they us really going, "Oh, these are narco boats." or these boats that China is working with them to do a thing and we want to keep sending a message to China. >> No, I believe that they're actually carrying drugs. And if you look at some of the drug Not only the drug boats between Mexic- or between Venezuela and the United States, but even the drug boats that are going to Europe, like they're busted old boats. They're handmade, they're leaky, they're they're s- they're they're not they're not um significant enough that you would imagine they'd be worth a six-figure missile to blow them up. >> Mhm. Right? But that's what we're doing. Maybe it's five Maybe it's a $50,000 missile, not a $100,000 missile that we're using to blow up the boat. Either way, it's a $50 boat. So, I do believe that there really are drugs. I do believe those drugs really are moving. And I do believe that we really are impacting the flow of drugs. But we're impacting a part like a a fraction of the 15% maximum of cocaine flow that's actually coming into the United States. If we really >> buy that that's all a red herring. But now I want to understand So, if this is really I think we're already in a cold war with China. That seems patently obvious to me. So, in in the rubric of this is a cold war with China, why what are we doing blowing up the boats? Is it just a reminder we have these missiles? I mean, it seems so insincere. >> consolidate our military in the Caribbean. To justify sending them there. Yeah, to justify sending our military to the Caribbean because China not only predominantly owned the entrance and exit port for the Panama Canal, >> Mhm. they predominantly own multiple >> not Venezuela. So, do you It's that o- it's that part of the ocean. >> Mhm. Right? But do you think there's a clandestine battle that's happening that we just aren't aware of? Uh So, I think the answer to that is the simplest answer is yes. My the book that I wrote about my own experience with CIA talks about the start of what we call a shadow conflict with China, right? An intelligence battle, an intelligence war with China. And the big difference between the Cold War that you and I lived through the tail end of with Russia and the Well, I lived through the whole thing. I'm older than you, my friend. Not the whole thing, I suppose, since it started at World War II, but But the big difference between the Cold War with Russia and I don't know. We should come up with a name for it. Let's just call it the rice war. I'll be I'll be racist. >> Damn. >> The rice war that we're dealing with now >> everybody. The rice war that we're dealing with now is that during the Cold War, the United States had no economic reliance on Russia. They were two completely separate economies. >> Yep. But now we have a major economic reliance on our largest geopolitical adversary. So, it's not so easy to have a standard cold war where we just turn our cold shoulder and we put up an iron curtain. Now, we have to meet over rice. We have to talk. We have to pretend like we're friends even though we wonder who's poisoning the rice, right? On both sides. I kind of like this this analogy right now. >> Right? Especially since I think we grow the rice and they actually buy our rice. >> That is >> There's all sorts of interesting [ __ ] up things about our relationship with China. But that's what we're dealing with. So, we can't just out China. If we out China, we go back into a tariff war, we stop getting plastics, they stop getting chips. It all gets really [ __ ] messy. So, we have to find this way to like be in bed together, but still kick each other under the sheets. It reminds me It reminds me of the sport water polo. I don't know if you follow water polo. I know enough about it to know exactly where you're headed. >> Yes. I I knew nothing about water polo till I went to college and then I became friends with a water polo player and I only then discovered it's a dirty [ __ ] sport. Under the water, >> Yeah. they do horrible things to each other and then they just pass the ball up top. So, when we watch, we get to see all this cool action above the water, but all the nasty shit's happening under >> Mhm. the water. That's what this war is like with China right now. So, China owns huge chunks of the Caribbean. China has massive leases on infrastructure and military bases and ports all across the Caribbean. They have rare earth mineral rights across the Caribbean. Their major shipping routes go through the Caribbean. We move all of our [ __ ] to the Caribbean just to tell the Chinese, "Don't forget. Don't forget. This is our house." And that's what we're doing here right now. We've consolidated our forces. Look how fast it happened when we were fighting Venezuela. How fast do you think it's going to happen if you mess with us? How fast can we take your your Caribbean investments? How fast can we cut off your flow not just to the American uh the American market, but also to all of your own rare earth minerals and all of your supply chains in the Caribbean. And oh, by the way, if you think that you're going to continue to grow influence in Latin America and South America, which it has, China's increased its partnerships all across Latin America. >> Massively. Look up the gold corridor. >> Yeah. By the way, don't forget that we're their neighbor. It's a huge message. It's a huge message that was arguably effective enough to walk China off the tariff cliff that Trump just closed with them recently. That is a very good breakdown. I knew that this was a move about China, but to be honest, I'd not started putting the pieces together of specifically what they're doing. I didn't realize how much of China's shipping went through the Caribbean. That is very interesting. Um how do you see this playing out? Is China So, first of all, this is one of those I have to be very careful because I really want to believe this, uh but I'm hearing reports that Xi is losing power in China. Now, for anybody that follows the timeline of China, Deng Xiaoping, listen, he was the Tiananmen Square guy, so only clap so hard. But he's also the one actually responsible for China's Great Leap Forward. Um Xi is a reversion to Mao. >> Mhm. And so, seeing Xi come into power and turn the Mao spigot on and start purging a whole bunch of people, uh start really going back to their communist ways, that makes me uneasy uh for the Chinese people. Now, they may tell me not to worry and they love it. Entirely possible. But as somebody who has just an absolute allergic reaction to um Mao, Stalin, Lenin, like a a massive allergic reaction, I'm looking at this going, "I really hope he's losing power." Do you um have you paid close attention? Is he losing power? Is that just a pipe dream on my behalf? >> Well, I don't think it's just on your behalf. So, Xi Jinping is one of the strongest leaders that China has ever seen. Um He's very much like a Putin. He's very much like a Netanyahu to the Chinese. There are many people who celebrate him as a hero, not necessarily as any kind of villain. >> Right. So, your allergic reaction is a valid reaction as a Westerner. But as an Easterner, we have to try to look at the situation through their eyes. Under Xi Jinping in the last 10 years, their country has modernized, increased their GDP, increased their global positioning, increased the their um reduced their reliance on manual fabrication and manufacturing, increased their reliance on high technology, which increases their overall standing not only as a as a center of excellence in a modern first world country, but also as a global alternative to the United States. That's what Xi's goal is. The reason he's turning back to Maoist tendencies isn't because he believes that communism is the way of the future. It's because he understands that consolidated power means he can move faster. Whereas >> he also looked at Russia and was like, "We're not going to let that happen here." And so these capitalists, like, yeah, useful, but they get a bit uppity, but I know how to handle that. Possibly, but the the the point is what what all of the world's authoritarians are trying to do right now, whether it's Putin or whether it's Netanyahu, I do classify him as authoritarian, right? Again, Israel's different than Jews. Israel knows that Netanyahu is an authoritarian, you know I'm talking to you, Israel. Um but either way, Xi Jinping understands that he needs to bypass the process to move fast enough. When you look at their when you look at I mean the most obvious thing to look at is their is their fighter aircraft. If you compare Chinese fighter aircraft to American and Russian fighter aircraft, there's only like seven of them that are in production right now. Every one of their aircraft is almost a carbon copy of either an American model or a Russian model. It's crystal clear that they're fabricating based off of stolen stolen plans. Right. They even number them the same way, right? We have an F-35, they have a J-35. Why is it called J-35? Because the J stands for Jian Ji Ji, which is the word fighter in Chinese. So, it's literally the F-35, right? They they have they've modeled this all the way down to the to the Su-30. So, they've got this they they copy and then they refabricate on their own. And that largely took off in 2017. In 2017, you started to see a huge reduction in Chinese importing of technology, specifically technology that was related to their military infrastructure. And it was because they had finally grown their own indigenous capability to create high-performance weapons, high-performance engines, high-performance avionics, high-performance you name it, technology. Mhm. And that started to become their new mantra. China knows that the United States gained global dominance because we stopped creating corn and soybeans and we started creating financial tools and we started creating software and we started creating weapons and we started creating digital healthcare devices, storage devices, computers, software, the cloud, etc. So, that's what China's been focusing on, telecom, technology, AI, robotics. They've been on that the whole time that we were focusing on a war on terror. So, from 2001, when we got distracted by a global war on terror, they started focusing in on, "How can we just suck the West dry of technological information and use this as an opportunity to build our future economy?" That's all under Xi's guidance. So, the average Chinese person sees the rise of their middle class. The average Chinese person sees more money, more power, more influence, more global standing. They can reach more parts of the world. The world welcomes the Chinese in a way it never did before outside of the United States. Do they still have a real estate crisis? Yes. Do they still have an aging population? Yes. But so does South Korea, so does Japan, so do lots of pro-Western Asian countries. So does the United States. Right. So, is it really such a big deal? Like we we try to keep a scorecard, you can't keep a scorecard between East and West. That you couldn't imagine two more different cultures than American culture and Chinese culture. Thanks for letting me. I give you these long-ass answers today, I apologize. Why? Because it seems What whatever's educational, I want to learn more. So, I'll take it. If I think you're uh going too hard on a tangent, well, first, yes, we could edit it, but I would just interrupt you. Um okay, so that all makes sense. Is China going to take Taiwan? I still believe that China is is on track to take Taiwan. Do we have a timeline? >> We we all think that it's going to We all assume it's some kind of military takeover. My original estimate was that China would make aggressive moves on Taiwan before the 2024 election. In hindsight, you can actually see that I I estimated correctly. They didn't launch an amphibious assault of Taiwan. Instead, what they did is they launched an espionage campaign that shaped the election of the prime minister of Taiwan in October of '23, just before the election in the United States and just before Donald Trump took over in '24. So, you can see right now Taiwan has a split government. The prime minister is pro-independence, but the parliament is predominantly majoritatively pro-China reunification. Wow, I didn't realize there was a movement inside of Taiwan. >> Oh, absolutely. The KMT is a The KMT, which was interestingly the original group that left the mainland um under Chiang Kai-shek to take refuge in Taiwan. They were the original people who separated from China. And now they are the ones that want to reunify back with the homeland. So, it's a very interesting turn in politics, very similar to how our feels like to me if the southern states and the northern states had split and all of a sudden, you know, whatever years later, the South is like, "Actually, we want to reunify with the northern states." Like it feels like they would still be bitter rivals. Right, exactly. And that's what's so interesting, that they're not. The KMT is pro-reunification, whereas there's the real movement on Taiwan has been a movement of independence. That's been what's really been interesting about the growth of Taiwan. It never intended to be a an independent country. It intended to reunify and kind of take it back over from Mao Zedong. Chiang Kai-shek was backed by the United States when he took refuge on Taiwan. They all expected they would come back and take the country again. It just never happened. So, that's changed over time to now just be a reunification party in general. And and they own they control the majority of the parliament on Taiwan. So, you you have a split government in Taiwan very much like you have a split government here in the United States. So, we're already seeing China heavily invest in espionage, information warfare. Another fantastic search term for anybody who wants to look this up themselves is just Chinese espionage on Taiwan, Chinese information warfare, Chinese covert influence on Taiwan. You'll see it. It's there. It's just not making the front page of any newspapers, right? So, they're making those moves now. I believe China will take Taiwan the same way they took Hong Kong in 2019. They did it administratively. They changed laws, they created administrative bridges that put Hong Kong under Chinese Beijing control, and then they just wrote laws and signed those laws into law so that when they moved into Hong Kong physically, anybody who tried to resist was breaking the law. And that gave them the reign that they needed to get violent and and arrest people, and we all forgot about that because it happened at the same time as COVID. But in 2019, China went into Hong Kong in a very violent, very abrupt, very big way, and ever since then Hong Kong has been part of China. That's the MO for what they'll do in Taiwan. Timeline? That's the difficult part. Xi has promised to reunify with Taiwan by I believe it was 2027. I believe he made that public promise as part of his 25-year plan. Um but he's and he has worked very hard to meet his promises. He had a promise in 2024 to be economically or to be a uh technologically dominant in the world. And I think Chinese people would agree he has met that goal. And now his next big promise is reunification with Taiwan. So, between now and then, we should probably expect some more big moves from China. Wowza. How do you think that'll play out for the US? What will our reaction be? >> we're going to sit on our thumbs cuz it'll be administrative, that's not violent. We have no access to part of it. We Why Why put American troops in harm's way? Why stand in the way of this rice war that we're already in the middle of, right? If we try to fight for Taiwan, then China's going to cut off our access to other things that we need. China cut off our access to to rare earth minerals and we changed our almost overnight we changed our narrative. They know they have they have levers that they can pull for us because we're dependent on them. So, the question will become, is Taiwan worth us breaking our dependence and our reliance on China? And what would that mean for the United States to not have what China's giving us, not have uh disposable goods, not have cloths and fabrics, not have shoes, not I mean, what would that actually look like? We don't even have the manufacturing capability here to do it. That's why we're making friends with India, hoping that India will be there for us when we cut ties with China. But China's also making inroads with India to make sure that India sides with them when they cut sides when they cut ties with us. So, India's in the best geopolitical position of any country out there right now having the the two largest economics economic superpowers kind of vying for its affection. Right. But uh I don't I believe that when China makes its move on Taiwan, we'll put up our vote in the UN that it's that it's uh illegal and it's not supposed to happen and we should and you should back out, just like we're seeing with Ukraine and Russia right now. All the all the UN members who are like, "Oh, we vote against. This is a bad idea. You're breaking the law." But they're not doing anything else. That's how it's going to work. What about though um the T TSMC, TMSE, the chips? Like how do we get around that? >> So, Biden launched the CHIP Act when he was still in office here. And a part of that CHIP Act was not only creating an avenue for TSMC to start building manufacturing base here on the United States or here in the United States, but also creating an indigenous capability for the United States to create their own high-performance chips. Yeah. TSMC doesn't have IP over the chips that they create. Their chips that they create are ours. Yes, but like we can't yet manufacture. Correct. >> as I know, the person that's the closest is Elon with the new chip, but they're making a chip specifically for xAI, either xAI or Tesla, I can't remember which. Uh, but that's with TMSC. TSMC, I cannot ever remember those four letters. >> I think it's TS TSMC, but somebody can fact-check us. Yes. Um, so if China were to take Taiwan administratively or otherwise, and then say you can no longer interface with them, since we cut them off for so long from those chips, I can't imagine they're going to smile on that, and that would be a very um, like that's a kill shot. >> That's cuz you're assuming that China would cut them off. That's why the United States doesn't want a hot conflict on Taiwan. Because if >> Yeah, I get that, but like if I'm trying to Listen, uh, I've read enough about China to prognosticate. So, here's how I think this is going to play out. >> Okay. Uh, I'm Xi Jinping. Yeah, in 2027, I'm not going to cut off your access to chips because there are things that I need to do to make sure that I can squeeze you to death. And so, I'm going to make a couple moves, uh, and then in whatever 2033, I'm going to start suddenly now you can't get access to the chips that you need. And so, if the US does not get very aggressive about decoupling is always a risky word cuz people really start going crazy, but uh, if we aren't able to make ourselves technologically independent, we are going to be in a very weakened position. People need to only look to the communications that Xi has done when it's aimed at a Chinese audience, where he's like, "Yeah, we're going to start being dismissive of the US on an international stage." Like that was a very conscious move. Uh, and so, this is how Thucydides Trap goes off, where the US is like, "Okay, we're not going to do anything in Taiwan because we don't have the plausible deniability that we do need, but all of a sudden, uh, "Ooh, sorry, did we sink a Chinese ship going through the Caribbean? Our bad. Like we totally thought that was a Venezuelan drug boat." So, it'll be it'll be things like that that will just keep like escalating the tension. Uh, China is China believes that they have a mandate from heaven to run the world. Uh, and they can't have an uppity declining power like America stand in the way of that. So, I mean, it's like 12 out of 16 times when a rising superpower has collided with a declining superpower, it has ended up in hot conflict. >> Yeah. So, maybe we're in the four out of 16, but the odds aren't with us. >> Correct. I I'm on the same page as you are. And it's just a matter of when and how those chips start to fall. Because China outmaneuvered us for about 12 years by by building a rival or building the the beginnings of a rival technological economy. And in creating that rival, it gave the rest of the world an option. Do you buy from the United States or do you buy from China? You all need this technology. You all need cell phones. You all need laptops. You all need, um, MRI machines. You all need, you know, pacemakers. You all need it. So, who you going to buy it from? The United States at the same premium that they've always charged? Because they've been the global monopoly? Or are you going to buy it from us, our Chinese alternative, which might be less effective, might be less good, might just be a copy of them, but it comes at a much reduced price. More and more countries of the world are buying Chinese. They're buying Chinese alternatives, which is not only diminishing our economy, it's also diminishing the premium that we put on our own materials. And the only solution that we've been able to come up with so far is to start tariffing the rest of the world and negotiating, if you stop buying Chinese and you start buying American, we'll reduce your tariffs. That was the whole tariff war that that that Trump put in motion that nobody seemed to understand at the moment, and hopefully they understand that now. He wasn't trying to like increase tariffs to make money from Europe. He was trying to to create an artificial negotiating point to get Europe to concede to United States technology rather than Chinese technology, especially when the majority of the cars, the electric cars in Germany are Chinese. The electric cars in Spain are Chinese. The electric cars in France are Chinese. They're not American electric cars. So, you see all of this playing out. I agree with you. A hot conflict is the most likely conflict, traditionally speaking. China knows that, too. And both countries know that as soon as a hot conflict erupts, as as soon as there is interstate war, everybody loses. They both lose people, they lose reputation, they lose technology, they lose growth opportunity, they lose economic benefits that they lose because that's what history has shown us. So, how long can they can they, um, kind of keep this rice war in perpetuity? And in the hopes that the United States melts down on its own, or what we're talking about here, China's going to melt down on its own. They're hoping for an internal meltdown without ever having to resort to hot conflict. Talk to me about America's meltdown. What do you think the likelihood is? I mean, when you when you put it in probabilities, I can I'm only talking about an economic meltdown. I believe that all of our woes are tied to our economy. You and me both. Um, and I don't see us taking any steps that are going to resolve our economy right now. So, my my estimate is that 10 to 15 years is kind of 10 to 15 years is our window to fix our economy. But I don't think anyone's going to fix it. So, it's really after the 15-year mark that we're going to be either in a hurt locker, where we have declined too much to fix ourselves, or we're actually on the fringe of social meltdown or political meltdown. So, but I do believe we have about 15 years to figure it out. The question is, are we willing to put ourselves in a a great depression that we start for ourselves in order to fix our own financial problems? And that's really the only solution that we have, because just like you were saying earlier, all the economic incentives for a government are inflationary. Create more currency, increase the value of assets artificially, make the wealthy who own the assets artificially wealthier using more dollars that actually value at less per dollar. And that's how you keep everybody appeased, and you squeeze the the the bottom class, and the middle class gets squeezed cuz they have they have no way of investing in assets, but the overall wealth remains predominantly high. Do you ever watch Dexter? No. My wife does, and so I've seen like little snippets of it, and there was a spoiler alert, uh, there was a very interesting scene where a serial killer, not Dexter, has a woman on a ledge, and he's like, "You have to jump." And she's like, "Can you please push me?" Mhm. And he goes, "That's not how this works." And she's like, "But I don't know if I can." And he goes, "Well, I bet if I go, get your kids, and start throwing them off, sooner or later, you're going to jump." And that's the position that the American economy is in right now. We are going to fall. If we jump, we can actually fix things. If we wait to be pushed, then it's too late. And we really can't get We can't make ourselves jump. It's so wild. And it's been I mean, I've talked about it many times. Exactly what you do. It's called a beautiful deleveraging, which is a terrible word for everyone is going to suffer, but we'll try to make sure everybody suffers roughly on par so that nobody feels singled out. Um, but we're all going to suffer, but on the other side of this, like we can get back to, like, growth and being the America that we used to be. People just can't do it. It's It's the same way I feel when people are like, "Americans won't pick strawberries." or whatever. I'm like, "Well, if there's no other option, they'll pick the [ __ ] out of those strawberries." The problem is right now, they can get government subsidies. And the really bad news is, as you subsidize them, you are pushing us off the cliff. And so, sure, they they fall a little bit later, but they fall a lot harder. >> Yeah. So, there's a lot more blood splattered on the ground. I just It It's one of those where getting people to pay attention long enough to actually understand the thing that you just explained, um, is impossible, I'm finding. And so, it's terrifying. When I cuz I I try to educate my company, um, on where where our economy is going. Because I want I want the people that work for my company to have the most success possible. And I understand that just by virtue of the fact that they work for my company and don't own my company, that already puts them at a disadvantage. So, I try to get them to understand how this works. And I recently had a conversation with a few of the folks that are my full-time staff, and this seems to connect with them, right? We have to hire a new person just because of the growth of the company. We have to hire a new person. So, as we were evaluating how much we were willing to pay and who we were going to find and what our qualifications were, my people themselves landed on the conclusion like, "Oh, we're in a down economy right now. Everybody's looking for work. So, we'll be able to get a very good person at a very low price." They understood economics enough to understand that they have negotiating power. We have the job. There's lots of people out there looking for the job. >> Right. So, we don't have to pay the person what they're worth, we just have to pay them what the market is worth and the market right now is down. So, we can get a $90,000 a year person for $75,000 a year. And they understood that and I was like I was super proud of them. I was like, yes, you get it. That is with everything else in our economy right now, too. Right? Everything is desperate. Everything is on the decline. So, so not only are you are you is a well-educated, skilled, hard-working professional not only are they worth less in terms of dollars right now, but the dollars that you will be paying them will actually be worth less every year moving forward that you continue to pay them. So, I'm going to We're going to pay somebody $75,000 a year who's worth $90,000 a year and then next year when we pay them the same salary, we're actually paying them less because the dollar has going to decrease in value. And project that over three or five years and then it started to really connect with the people in my company. They're like, oh [ __ ] They connected it to their own salary. They're like, that means that the money I'm making right now is going to be the same next year, but worth less. It's going to buy less car. It's going to buy less milk. It's going to buy less eggs. And then I was like, yeah, that's why I want to encourage you to learn about how to invest, how to invest in the market, how to invest in currency, how to invest in anything. I had a another wealthy client who was like, all you have to do is throw a dart at the NASDAQ and wherever it lands, you're more likely to have success there than if you keep your money in cash. Sad, but true. For a while, it all gets very volatile very fast. Um I love sitting down with you. Uh where can people follow along with you? Uh you'll always find me at everydayspy.com. You'll find me on social media everywhere at everydayspy. I have a YouTube channel for Andrew Bustamante. >> Yes, you do and it's killing it. I appreciate you very much, sir. Uh and then of course, you'll find me on bookshelves now all over the world with my with my CIA memoir. >> Best-selling author. >> Times best-seller. It's amazing, man. >> It is amazing. >> you. And that book is called Shadow Cell and uh yeah, anywhere people want to find me, I'm happy to meet them there. I love it. All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. We just had a socialist elected to the be mayor of the biggest financial city in the world. Um what do you take away from that? Do you think that that's going to make New York City better? Is this a good direction for