The Truth Finally Slipped Out in 2025 — This Is How Power Really Works

What's up guys? To wrap up one of the best years yet, I have put together some of the most incredible advice that we heard on Impact [music] Theory this year. Hope you guys have a great holiday season and I'll see you next year. Till then, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Do you think that Trump is um somebody who has the elite view of like, "Hey, the right people are in power. Let's make these decisions for everybody else." Or do you believe he actually sits outside of that system and is actually trying to help the everyday person in the way that he presented himself while he was campaigning? Yeah, so as far as my perspective on Trump goes, it tends to do with the view it tends to revolve around the view that he is a businessman at heart and that the focus of his um political style, I guess, is deal making. Um and you know, I wrote a lot um in my book about Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn, who was among other things the general counsel to McCarthy during the McCarthy hearings. He was also, you know, a New York City lawyer that represented a lot of unsavory figures including some tied to organized crime and also had the ear of Ronald Reagan and top politicians in the United States and sort of bridged a variety of worlds and he very much essentially taught Trump the art of the deal as it were. And you know, a lot of his close Cohn's close associates like the Pope family, for example, were very politically connected, also connected to organized crime arguably. But we're very much in the business of uh making backroom deals and that that's how, you know, power political power in the United States functions. And so, you know, fundamentally I think a lot of what Trump likes to focus on and promote about his political style is around negotiations, whether those are diplomatic negotiations or negotiations with businessmen that lead to big number investments he can tout to the public, which is, you know, I think part of the impetus behind his having the Project Stargate press conference, you know, at the White House on his first full day you know, at at his second term. And I think that was all that's also kind of consistent with what we saw from Trump during his first term as well. So, when you're sort of focused on those metrics, I don't necessarily think that the focus is necessarily on how do I help how do I help everyday Joe? I'm sure that you know, in his mind well, I don't really necessarily want to speak for him. But if you're you know, of the opinion that I'm going to tout this big multi-million dollar investment in US AI infrastructure for for example, perhaps he view he views that as helpful the American economy and thus helpful for the American people. And I think it is very likely that over the next four years there certainly will be some Americans that economically benefit you know, from Trump's economic policy, but I don't necessarily think that's going to be um everybody. And I think, you know, generally based on what we've seen so far, there's been a lot of courting of big tech executives and and a lot of talk about making the US the AI and crypto capital of the world. And how much of that is necessarily going to translate or trickle down to sort of refer to, you know, Reaganite economic terms, you know, to the everyday American public, it's really hard to know. But again, you know, I just want to go back to someone like Eric Schmidt, for example, who as I noted earlier had sort of an outsized role in developing the AI policy of the military and intelligence community. He wrote a book called The Age of AI with a with Henry Kissinger and also I believe a professor from MIT who I'm sorry, his name escapes me at the moment, but basically that book positive that essentially AI is going to make a two-tiered society. There's going to be the top tier of people who develop and maintain AI and set and determine what its objective functions are and then sort of a a second class who which we would assume is larger than the first class so they don't explicitly say that, but who AI acts upon and eventually that that group will lose the ability to to understand and be really be able to conceive of how how AI is impacting their impacting their lives and will develop some sort of dependency on AI for things like decision making sort of leading to this phenomena that they refer to in the book as cognitive diminishment, which I sort of see as this idea of you know, we've all heard it before if you don't use it, you lose it. Sort of the idea of like mental math, you start using a calculator or a phone calculator or something like that and it becomes more difficult over time and eventually very difficult to be able to do mental math in your head when perhaps when you were in grade school it was much easier to do that because you were sort of you had to use that ability regularly. And so they sort they essentially argue that by not making those decisions and outsourcing that to AI, this particular class will lose the ability to make those decisions over time. And when you also have a factor in that there's a lot of effort to sort of outsource creativity, art and music to artificial intelligence, will that have an impact on people's ability to create and what sort of impact will this have on society? And you know, these are things that I think sort of get left out of the public discussion and I don't think they're really on someone like Trump's radar as a businessman. He's focused on sort of the bottom line, the number, the success of the negotiation and how successful it looks, frankly. Whether it's to his base or to businessmen he wants to court or, you know, other people foreign leaders, you know, um and you know, I I I I'll stop there, I guess. No, that was great. So, how do you feel when you hear about AI creating this two-tier system? Oh, I certainly don't think that's positive. I think it's sort of the technocratic model that we discussed earlier where you sort of have an elite class that sort of set um you know, the system that will micromanage the masses at the end of the day. I mean, they don't explicitly say that in the book, but if you're familiar with someone like Henry Kissinger, for example, and some of his more controversial views on on the masses and the public and some of his more infamous quotes, you know, I mean, is that a system that he wants to happen? I don't really know. He's dead and so no one can ask him, but I think it is kind of disturbing in a sense that someone that was >> his more infamous quotes? I'm not I'm not super familiar with Kissinger. I know who he is, but I couldn't quote him. Well, he created a national security memorandum, for example, that viewed people that live in the third world birth rates and and and you know, in the global south as national security threats to the United States and wanted to implement policies to reduce their population size, for example, and sort of had what I would argue was a eugenicist bent to some of his policies. And he was one of the mentors, of course, to people that have become infamous in recent years like the World Economic Forum chairman Klaus Schwab and um you know, some of his more infamous quotes that he's known for refer to, you know, soldiers being, you know, pawns of foreign policy essentially sort of like, you know, people's lives are just, you know, pawns on a chessboard for the sort of the elite figures to move around, you know, for for their benefit. That's sort of the mentality as I see it >> [clears throat] >> um of someone like him, but obviously he's been, you know, praised as a model statesman and and all of this stuff and has mentored Trump in his first administration, mentored Hillary Clinton, you know, people on both sides of the aisle. And but I personally, you know, I think the more you look into someone like that and his connections with sort of dubious oligarchs like David Rockefeller going, you know, significantly back in time, you know, he's sort of someone that promotes this idea of of a global technocracy. Okay, so do you have the impulse to want to see AI slow down or stop? Well, I don't necessarily want to say that I'm like a Luddite and we and we should all go back to the Stone Age or things like this, but I think there needs to be like an actual public discussion on this, particularly on the fact that our out of control national security state and Silicon Valley are have essentially been fusing over the past few decades and what necessarily that means because a lot of people be you know, will say stuff, "Well, it's AI in the private sector." But when that private sector company has multi-million dollar conflicts of interest with the national security state, I think that should um you know, be part of the discussion. necessarily and I think also there needs to be a way to sort of know um whether some of these algorithms are hyped or whether what the company says their accuracy is, for example, is actually accurate before decisions are made to outsource major decision making whether at the government level or the local level or really on any level, you know, to an algorithm. So, you know, as an example >> [clears throat] >> during COVID-19, the the governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo, sort of gave a green light to this Israeli company called Diagnostic Robotics to use, you know, the health data in the state to predict COVID-19 outbreaks before they could happen. Right? And Gina Raimondo, by the way, >> laws? Well, I'm sure a lot of those were sort of suspended under the emergency justification of COVID-19, but I'm not exactly familiar with the legal or potential legal snafus of that at the time or maybe they justified it by allegedly, you know, saying they they they sort of took anonymized the data. I don't really know. But the idea was to sort of use that data to identify local hotspots and predict outbreaks before they happen. And so obviously if you know, the algorithm of this company predicts an outbreak, there would be sort of these localized lockdowns and people would lose their ability to engage in in-person commerce and freedom of movement etc. So you know, consequences that are pretty significant to the people living there. And when I reported on it at the time as I recall, but it's been a few years, but I do know that the algorithm per the company was under 80% accurate. I think it was somewhere in the 70s. And so that's the company, right? So if it's not independently vetted, and if this is sort of you know, company PR at the end of the day, is that over inflated? It's quite possible, right? And so what if the accuracy of that isn't really in the 70s, it's in the 60s or near the 50s? It's no better than a coin toss, right? Is it really worth putting that kind of power in the hand of an algorithm that isn't necessarily going to be more efficient and accurate, but all this hype that's been generated around AI as an industry suggests that that's sort of created this public perception that AI is inherently smarter than human decision-makers and more efficient and more cost-effective, for example. Um I think these are kind of problematic scenarios that need to be considered. I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer or poo-poo on on innovation, but I think you know, civil liberties do matter and I think people need to be very mindful of that, especially considering again the Silicon Valley fusion with the national security state and the national security state's tendency to opportunistically whittle down American civil liberties for their benefit. It's a really interesting intersection that I clearly need to start thinking more about. We will be right back to the show in a second, but first I want to address the gap between wanting to be an entrepreneur [music] and actually becoming one. January is when everyone talks about change. February is when you see who actually meant it. Do not let February arrive with the same old story. [music] Make 2026 the year you stop planning and you start selling. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person. Choose from hundreds of beautiful templates on Shopify that you can customize to match your brand. 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So the reason that national security would be fusing with technology is that technology is going to be the front where these battles are fought. And so anybody that's seen, you know, the however many thousands of drones that China can launch and get to, you know, dance like a dragon, it's very compelling. When you see it, it looks so cool. And then you imagine, well, what happens when 10,000 drones like that are able to go over aircraft carrier and each one drops a reasonable size payload that by itself would do next to nothing, but you drop 10,000 of those little somethings on that ship and you turn it into Swiss cheese, you realize, ooh, the way that we've been doing national defense is not going to work in a modern combat scenario. And so it is going to be these tech guys that we're going to need, even if you just grant me that AI is going to get really good at hacking, which there was a recent announcement. I forget if it was from Deep Seek. I can't remember, but there was a company that was doing this where they wanted to see how well their AI was at hacking and it was unbelievably good. And so they were doing it as a red team inside of a company, so they can say, okay, here's how we broke our own systems. Now we need a blue team that can come in and shore these up. But you're going to have to have that. Like if you are living in a world where one country has AI and another does not, the country without it will lose. And so to me this feels like an arms race we cannot afford to not engage in. And so it just becomes a question of, all right, well, given the stakes, how do we actually navigate this? So I would not want to pull apart the national security apparatus from the tech bros to be dismissive. So what do you do? I don't know if you want to stay in the lane of like, I just want people looking at the right things or if you actually have an insight there, but I'd be very curious. You know, I do prefer to stay in in my lane as much as possible, frankly, especially on sort of these sticky stickier issues, but I do have some opinions. So first of all, as I referred to earlier with the national submission national security commission on artificial intelligence and some of these FOIA'd documents that came out of there, there is the promotion of the idea that essentially the US needs to do what China has done and and replicate this civil-military fusion model in order to win the AI arms race. And sort of the argument inherent in that is that in order to beat China, we must become China even more than China is. And and you know, a lot of the justifications you know, around China as an adversary are related to how China is not as protective of civil liberties as the as the United States at least postures itself as being, for example, and a major difference in the value system between the China between China and the United States. And so if you're willing to adopt exactly that model, civil-military fusion in my opinion is really not that different than fascism at the end of the day. It's it's the corporatist model and I don't think it's necessarily [laughter] what what Americans want. And yeah, there is a trade-off and I think people should consider it. But again, I'm not um in the business of telling people what to think, but what happens if we go so far out of a desperation to win an AI arms race with China, for example, that we completely surrender our the value system that supposedly makes us a freer better society in the process. I think that is complicated. And I would also point to the fact that you know, transnational capital, a lot of that has enabled China's AI arms race. There is a lot of cross-pollination in these you know, Chinese government adjacent tech corporations and the United States. You can look at people like Larry Fink, for example, who definitely have a lot of ties at to Chinese industry, for example, and people like Steve Schwarzman, quite similarly very much tied there, who's you know, head of Blackstone. And they're both very close personal friends of Donald Trump and also of course Fink has ties to the Democrats as well. And a lot of you know, Henry Kissinger who I mentioned earlier, a lot of top CCP officials have pictures of them with Henry Kissinger in their offices. They love the guy. And there was that effort of course to open up China to to commerce and partnerships with western companies, for example, you know, back several decades ago and a lot of that involved um you know, US capital and and some firms like Bechtel, for example, that were very much tied to the national security state of Ronald Reagan, for example. A lot of top people that served in his and top national security positions under him were involved in Bechtel, which was building a lot of the infrastructure that helped enable China to become uh this, you know, the power that it is and why is that not being talked about? And I mean, this is really isn't exclusive to Democrats either, though they often get >> [clears throat] >> rightly pointed out for having some conflicts of interest of this nature. But someone like Howard Lutnick, for example, who was head of the transition team for Trump and his incoming secretary of commerce, has the same his his a company he runs has the same tie, arguably a more direct tie, to a Chinese government majority-owned financial entity that was a a big scandal for conservatives when Hunter Biden's Rosemont Seneca was also tied to it. But there's been no conservative uproar over this tie. And you have to kind of ask why that may be. And why you have a lot of >> [clears throat] >> these big tech people, Elon Musk included, who has a major role in the national security state of the United States, is one of the top contractors to Space Force and the Pentagon, for example, and Starlink and all of these things have, you know, through Tesla has a lot of ties to, you know, Chinese commerce and and tech giants that also have rather cozy relationships with the Chinese government as well. Why is that not being discussed as, you know, a potential national security risk if we do really need to become China to beat China. You see what I'm saying? Like if it was really that was really the key driver of our issue, shouldn't we be scrutinizing all of the ties of these oligarchs to both China and you know some of and our own national security state. And you know again I think if people are familiar with my books and my work there is a scandal that really exposed a lot of this that happened during the Clinton administration and was not properly investigated at all. It's remembered as as China gate and it was really of you know sort of today is I would argue misremembered as a campaign finance scandal for the Clinton re-election campaign. But what was the scant what what was the alleged bribery of the Clinton re-election campaign meant to accomplish? And if you look at what these you know forces gained what these what these figures gained by sort of you know for all intents and purposes bribing the Clinton re-election campaign it was facilitating exports of sensitive national security technology to China. And a lot of that was done through a company called Laurel. Which is since become I think part of Lockheed Martin and the guy that that ran Laurel at the time Bernard Schwartz nothing ever happened to him at all despite the fact that he helped pass very sensitive satellites and other military technology from the US. You know directly to the Chinese military and nothing was done about it and he was actually a major backer of Biden in 2020. Why was that not covered? Don't you think conservatives should be all over that story? And you know again that sort of um makes me concerned because I think there's not enough talk about transnational capital in these types of situations. And there's a very urgent need to go back and re-examine a lot of the past scandals of our national security state. China gate specifically because as I noted in my book the death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and a lot of people at the ITA Department of Commerce those were the most people targeted as this bribery scandal of China gate because the Commerce Department oversees the export of sensitive technology to foreign powers. Right? And the fact that most of the employees that knew about that scandal were all essentially blown up in the same you know aircraft accident and that Ron Brown had a bullet hole in his head when his body was discovered in the plane. Why has that not been? Well it's true. You can look at the evidence. And it's absolutely there and um you know why can't we examine this? And shouldn't it be disturbing that the incoming head of the Commerce Department has a direct tie to the Chinese government in the context of that type of scandal of China gate and targeting the Commerce Department specifically? Is that Howard Lutnick who are we talking about? >> Yes. 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. Has said you'll never get the Epstein files. Like he's been saying that from day one. 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's 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 on and to gain and grant access to a wider net of bad guys. >> And this is specifically an FBI thing. It's specifically a law enforcement thing. Okay. >> So is it the CIA or FBI? CIA is not law enforcement. Interesting. >> Yeah CIA's job is intelligence collection not not law enforcement. >> They used to be more able to kill people than they currently are. >> [snorts] >> So law enforcement falls under 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 how 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 mass 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 have >> 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 can they can choose to do that on their own as long as it 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 subcommittee 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 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 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 was he exfilled by the FBI so they could either protect their sources or did somebody actually have him killed or was this just a guy that was like I don't want to go through the trial? Yeah I don't think he killed himself. 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 door knob at low out at a low distance from the ground it's a very difficult thing to do. So 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 murder 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 like this one is wild to me in terms of >> [snorts] >> what what does it say about the state of the government, I guess? It doesn't say anything new. Like 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. 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 happened. I was like, "Oh my god!" 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 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 were 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, the 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 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 [snorts] 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. The election is existential now on both sides. So, 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 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 [laughter] Bustamante now. So if you can >> If you can affiliate Venezuela with drugs then boom, yeah, of course 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, [ __ ] 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, [ __ ] 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, woo, [ __ ] yeah, that 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. >> [snorts] >> 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 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, ballistic missiles, etc. that they're using against India. It doesn't give us any And Pakistan is 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 >> [snorts] >> 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 majoritatively owned by US investment firms instead of majoritatively 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 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 are 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 Mexi- or between Venezuela and 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 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, right? But that's what we're doing. Maybe it's five Maybe it's a $50,000 missile, not $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 fraction of the 15% maximum of cocaine flow that's actually coming into the United States. I totally 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 silly. >> 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, they predominantly own multiple >> not Venezuela? So do you It's that oh, 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 Well, I lived through the whole thing. I'm older [laughter] 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 a 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. >> It's nice. Right? Especially since we I think we grow the rice and they actually buy our rice. So that is 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, 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 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 had not sort of 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. 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, "Oh, 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 >> I think 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's 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-10. 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. And that started to become their new mantra. [snorts] 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 health care devices, storage devices, computers, software, the cloud, etc. So, that's what China's been focusing on, telecom, technology, AI, robotics. They've been focusing 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. So does South Korea. So does Japan. So do lots of pro-Western Asian countries. So does the United States. 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. Is Trump right to call for the lowering of interest rates or is Jerome Powell actually wise to be holding off? In fiscal dominance, almost everything the central bank does is wrong. That's the problem is that cuz if they hold interest rates high, so go back to what kind of what we said earlier. The primary purpose of raising interest rates is to slow down bank lending. The problem is that there the whole period of inflation you've had for the past 5 years was not caused by excessive bank lending. It was caused by those fiscal deficits. Uh originally it was intentional stimulus and now it's just kind of this this background higher deficit. So, the Fed in some ways has been trying to raise interest rates to slow down bank lending to offset the real problem, which is the federal deficits. Uh but by doing so, because the debt's over 100% GDP, by keeping interest rates high, they're also actually keeping the deficit high because they're keeping uh federal uh rates high. Uh and yet if they if they cut interest rates while you have stocks at all-time highs, gold at all-time highs, Bitcoin at all-time highs, uh you know, property values at all-time highs, then they're adding fuel to the fire, too. And that's why you get to that statistic where 98% of economies when they reach these debt levels tend to have some sort of default, which which can be through purchasing power because their own central bank kind of runs out of options. Um and so, I I think that, you know, it's probably due for a mild cut uh just based on the on the deterioration of economic conditions, but I view that as a much like a smaller lever uh to pull than the fiscal situation. Uh kind of one way of putting it is that when the money's weak, people will monetize other things. And then by doing so, they make those things uh less available to those who just want to hold them for their actual utility use, not their monetary use. Uh and so, by monetizing our equity market, by monetizing our real estate market uh at because our money's weak, it causes all these more structural imbalances and therefore they causes periods of malinvestment and it causes that kind of along with other policy decisions those high uh levels of wealth concentration. Okay, so if I'm understanding you correctly, the way that Jerome Powell is looking at this, uh he knows what you know, which is I don't really have any great options, but the one thing that if the real problem is the government is taking on too much debt, that's causing them to print a bunch of money, that's causing the high inflation, um then it seems like I should be trying to pull down the interest rate. Obviously, I need to find a sweet spot, but I should be trying to pull down the interest rate um knowing that I'm going to have a bigger impact on the government, certainly at first, than I would have on the banks then suddenly going crazy because I have a bigger problem with the accrual of uh compounding interest because we're adding right now a trillion dollars every 100 days to the um government uh deficit, which is just absolutely insane. So, why wouldn't that alone be a signal to like, "Bro, look, there's obviously a breaking point and then you're going to trigger the private market too much, but uh we we've got to bring this public debt uh interest payment down. I think because the optics are so bad. Like a a key part of central banking is that they're supposed to have some degree of kind of optical independence, which is that they're they're focusing on their mandates, you know, employment levels, uh inflation, things like that. And they're not really supposed to take into account uh the the fiscal situation of the country. Uh and yet in practice, of course, you find that that they, you know, when they when the rubber meets the road, they do. So, when there's a war, when there's a fiscal crisis, the central bank's options shrink because at the end of the day they have to kind of support that bond market. And so, we saw this uh you know, in in in recent years. And basically, from their perspective, they can't say out loud that because the the debt's a problem that we have to kind of change how we would otherwise do things. And I think actually like that going at my prior point where I would say it's hard to criticize the the head of the central bank, even though I'm kind of critical of the whole practice of central banking, the one thing I think that is fair to be critical of is the asymmetric uh talking point they've had around the fiscal deficit. So, for example, during COVID, during the depths of it, the the federal uh the head of the Fed called for more fiscal. He basically said, "Our tools are limited here given what's happening. We need more fiscal spending." Uh and they got that. There was, of course, very large uh stimulus efforts. And now on the other side of that, they won't go out and say the the opposite. They won't say that our our ability to control inflation and kind of tweak all this is being hampered by the fiscal side. They basically our tools are not geared to to doing that, and if anything could make it worse. Uh so, they have to kind of show confidence and say, "Look, we got this. Our tools can fix this." But the problem is that I I think it it doesn't. Uh they basically that their their tools are largely unrelated to what the core issue is. Uh and and you know, I think that the first step is basically to say that, and they're not doing that part. That's interesting. So, let me give you my layman's counterpoint to this, which would be I'm the Fed, I'm Jay Powell, I look at this, and I know one simple thing. If I jack up interest rates, you're going to have to spend less because you're going to hit a point where it is just absolutely untenable for you to keep spending what you're spending. Um is it that Jerome Powell knows, "Oh, we'll hit a political crisis first. They'll oust me. They'll find some way." They'll oust me before that because other than that, like this is one of those where he once said something akin to um I want to be in a position where uh I can raise interest rates because it's essentially breaking the leg of the economy, and I know how to heal a broken leg. Uh so, he like gets that that's exactly what would happen. So, why isn't he doing that if if he's really trying to control inflation? He has to do that. Yeah, I think I think that's what he has been trying to do, which is by holding interest rates high, uh it makes the dollar fairly strong compared to other currencies. It kind of puts pressure on the rest of the world. Uh it does keep commodity prices in check. For example, you know, oil, generally speaking, it's hard to have out-of-control inflation if oil prices are pretty low, which they are. Uh so, it's having those effects, but then the problem is it's grinding out more and more of this public debt, uh which is actually ironically spewing more dollars into the market. The problem is that in in kind of no world, if there was like an acute bond crisis, would they kind of blink and just let it happen because one of their kind of shadow mandates is financial stability, and that goes at the heart of financial stability. A really good example is the Bank of England, uh which which was under similar strain. So, back in 2022, uh inflation there was like 10%. Um the the Bank of England was going to do a speech around balance sheet reduction, uh so, quantitative tightening, and then the gilt crisis happened. So, for people that that aren't familiar, uh the UK sovereign bond market kind of broke. Uh it was just kind of this leveraged uh vicious cycle. So, yields were rapidly rising, causing more entities to sell, and ironically the the Bank of England had to cancel their speech on balance sheet reduction, and they had to go and buy the bonds uh despite the fact that inflation was 10%. Uh so, they they did something that is normally only done uh in a low inflation environment. Uh and they basically had to do it out of an emergency uh to maintain kind of disfunctioning like sovereign bond markets cuz everything would have kind of ground to a halt. And, you know, I think we would see the similar thing in the US. They basically they can try to pretend as though uh that by increasing interest rates that they would maybe change the the fiscal trajectory of the country, but I think in practice, the problem is that the fiscal side would pretty much just ignore them uh as they have recently. For example, the big beautiful bill doesn't really have deficit reduction as part of it. The only thing that that kind of some ways is is deficit reduction is the tariffs. Um but basically, there's there's been kind of no change during that process. And if they actually were to get called out on it with some sort of bond issue, um I think we'd see that the Fed pretty much ride in there. We also saw this back during the uh 2023 regional bank crisis. So, inflation was still above target back then, even more than it is now. Um and, you know, if they let banks fail, that does destroy part of the money supply, uh but they were more worried about the cascading perceptions of bank instability. So, they actually went to a period of temporarily balance sheet increases and liquidity provision to put out that fire despite the fact that inflation was above target. So, generally speaking, whenever they actually run into a true crisis, uh they do generally err toward allowing that inflation, uh keeping things nominally together, uh and then trying to slow things down in the future. Okay, so uh if I remember correctly, it was Volcker that raised rates north of 10%. I want to say north of 15%. Like it was wild. Uh he was what able to do that because government debt was so low? Like why couldn't we run that playbook now? Exactly. He was able to do that because total total debt levels, both public and private, were low, and in particular, the primary cause of inflation, in addition to the oil shortages, was that elevated rate of bank lending. So, he went after the actual the kind of root cause, uh which was the the accelerated bank lending, and he made bank borrowing bank lending less attractive by raising interest rates. So, in addition to solving the oil constraints, that was kind of the one-two punch that helped get that inflation under control. The problem in this environment is excessive bank lending is not the cause of inflation, and both in the private market and the public market, debt's very high. So, if you jack up rates super high, you actually blow out the deficit even more. Um and that's that's I mean, that's for example why Argentina, I mean, they had very high rates for for quite a while, and it didn't really slow down their inflation or their deficit because it's not a bank lending issue primarily, it's a fiscal issue. So, certain tools work when the problem is coming from certain things. So, in this case, the the Federal Reserve has tools to deal with bank-driven inflation, but they just don't really have the tools to deal with fiscal uh driven inflation. That's mostly a president and Congress uh thing, and that's, you know, that that's the part that has to be addressed, and it's not. So, what I'm hearing uh is that this is where we realize that the Federal Reserve, the central bank, really isn't independent uh because if the government wants to spend, they are going to spend. Because he has, assuming that there was true independence, the Fed could just say, "Uh you guys are $2 trillion a year over budget, and we're going to keep cranking up the interest rate until you balance your budget, and then we will um you know, lower it again." Uh and then the government would be like, "Oh my god, like this would be disastrous, so we're going to have to balance our budget." That clearly doesn't happen. I mean, I'm hearing you, you're being very clear. Minus a political problem, that seems like basically, said another way, when it's people, the private sector, that's getting out of hand, too much bank lending, uh the Fed just slaps them around. Raises interest rates until they calm down. But when it's the government doing the same thing, printing too much money, they're like, "Oh gee, well, we don't have anything that we can do to stop this." Yes, you do. Raise interest rates. Yeah, pretty much. If they were willing to let the sovereign default uh or have basically illiquid action in its bond market, um then that could affect it. Um but kind of if you just look at >> that. It's your your going to end up doing a hard default, and that's why we're going to keep going. Uh one, did I understand that correctly? And two, are you like, "Yes, dummy, that's what they should do." Um I actually don't because it go it actually ends up hitting their mandate. The problem with the default is then it cascades through the whole system. So, for example, banks, they hold treasuries. Uh so, if the US government defaults, uh basically banks risk becoming insolvent. So, then people's accounts at the banks risk becoming insolvent. Same for their insurers. Uh same for retirees, right? Uh that's generally speaking why they wouldn't just say, "You know what? Let's let's let default happen." Uh they always instead say, "Look, we can do a gradual default through debasement and inflation." That's almost how they always do it. Uh and the problem is that if if the if the if they start doing that approach, which they almost always do, and they currently are, uh but then the actual things remain unresolved. So, we have entitlement reform that doesn't happen, or, you know, a Pentagon audit and and clear out, you know, pork in in defense spending and make sure that's all right-sized. If none of that happens, then it just kind of keeps over time accumulating. And so people going back to my earlier point it's not that we have one big debt crisis is they have a bunch of little mini ones all in a row. So if you think about that UK guilt crisis was a debt crisis even though it wasn't you know it wasn't the end of England it was just a crisis that they put the fire out they kicked the can down the road they'll have another one and the same thing happens generally speaking in the US where it generally comes out in the form of inflation comes out in the form of populism and then the problem is it just keeps getting worse until there's some sort of pretty radical change. And if you look at public polls people don't want to cut social security they don't want to cut Medicare they don't want to cut a lot of these key things and so I think we have to probably go through a lot more pain before we potentially come out on the other side of this stronger. I agree that this is a super precarious moment and boy do I wish that everybody could just say can't we all get along but we won't that that I'll just take off the table that's not going to happen. And given that that's not going to happen how else do you play it? When we get to the point where we take out the capitalist arbitrage which was the entire idea of a capitalist is how can I get labor or you know manpower to do the work for less than what I can sell it for right? Now interestingly as we take humans out of the workforce it equalizes across the world. It's five years away okay could be sooner by the way if we start with interesting industries. The second is and I say that with a ton of respect is when at war war does not have to be aggressive. Okay so so the idea here of pissing off Taiwan sorry pissing off China around Taiwan makes makes China who also depends on Taiwan for the chips of everything that they make right? Basically think the same way. So so if America has foothold over Taiwan we China are afraid. So you're escalating the fear okay? The opposite is true the opposite is to say again like we said with CERN you know can we agree that Taiwan is just going to be continuing to support everyone right? And and I think that's a conversation that is very difficult to have but if it is the the switch between humanities existence and continuation and not it will get resolved. The third which I think is really where the core issue is is you know when times get tough we tend to do more of what we know how to do best. Okay which is normally what got things to be tough in in the first place right? So when when when you know when America competes with China on artificial intelligence for example they sort of say okay only H80s no H100s in Nvidia chips and you know we're going to sanction you from this you know we're going to make it illegal for people to invest in China we're going to do this we're going to do that you know no more Chinese students can come and study in America da da da da da. Okay? And and those tactics could work if China was 70 years ago starving to death. Okay? When you do you take those taxes tactics against this China they immediately say okay how much does it cost for us to create our own fabs and create our own microchips. Right? How much does it you know what can we what do we need to change about our students so that they become the best in the world 42% of all AI scientists in America are Chinese. Who's being hurt by that fight it's America. Okay? And and it's you know it is interesting that the American people are not fully informed of this that that you know those bully strategies are now met with the world saying okay you know what if if you're going to sanction Russia by taking 300 billion dollars out of the Russian oligarchs then by definition okay every other oligarch in the world is going to de-dollarize. Now instead of you saying you know what I'm going to you know tap the table and I'm going to shout at everyone and I'm going to be even more bully okay? You might as well say okay guys you know what I understand that upset you can we talk? Right? Because the one that's being hurt by this is the American people. Okay? The American policy somehow is running in a way that basically says do more of what you know how to do best. Now the the more interesting part of this Tom and I I really urge you to think about this is that Russia sorry China historically has never in all of history invaded outside its border ever. Okay? There was one case in Vietnam which was again instigated by the US. Right? And it didn't last for long. Hm? Now the the other side of this is that if you look at the world at the map of the world today hm? With with America having 180 plus bases you know military bases across the world China has one. That protects shipping through the the the Red Sea. Okay? They explicitly are giving the world signals that all we want we don't want to dominate the world like the empire okay? We want to become prominent for the world mainly economically so that we can feed our 1.4 billion people. Okay? And I may be wrong but but but there there has not been a sign of aggression issued by China in your lifetime or mine. There hasn't been one. Okay? So what are we reacting to? We're either reacting to manufactured signs so that we can continue to have our forever war. Okay? Or maybe we're exaggerating and hurting ourselves in the process. And I think this is where the conversation needs to happen. Now there could be this could mean that millions of people die in Vietnam like we saw in the the 1960s and 70s and the you know un unbeli- I mean some place like Vietnam across the world which is unacceptable if you ask me but you know what American people will not feel it. Right? But to bring the war home economically the way America is doing it is clear if you're sitting in my seat outside the US that everyone everywhere in the global south is saying I don't want to be bullied anymore. And the minute you give them an alternative through BRICS or whatever that says hey can you you know ship to me using my currency they take it. Okay? And and somehow it's not that we don't like America it's just we don't want to be bullied anymore. And and in a very interesting way it's the benefit of America to suddenly say you know what while I'm still taller than all of you I'll make you my friends okay? So that when you're taller than me or as tall as I am we can play together. This cold war is working believe it or not against America. And this cold war believe it or not even in tech in AI is being lost by America. Okay? So deep sea comes in a manas comes in quantum computing chips comes in come in they have 105 cubits now in China. Okay? And and I don't know how much more I can tell the politicians in America you're not losing you're not winning this through aggression win it through diplomacy. Everyone wants your market. Everyone loves you loves them movies you send us they we love your music we we we really we have nothing against America but the rest of the world needs to also protect their own sovereignty and more aggression is not so helping anyone. Okay so let me see if I understand what you're saying is that you you America need to understand that you China is a rising power that the whole world has their own >> no no no I'm sorry to interrupt you I'm sorry to interrupt you. China is the world super power. It is the world super power in purchasing power parity they are a bigger GDP than America and have been for very long time. And most of the world is much more dependent because of the trade deficit of America for for so many years most of the world is much more dependent on China than they are on America. Okay so you guys have already been passed economically by China. So the cold war that you're trying to wage with them does not make any sense because not you're the only ones that are going to get hurt but you are going to be disproportionately hurt. Um I'm going to stop there because I think the next thing I'm going to say is going to be a prognostic it's going to be I think that statement makes a prediction but first I just want to make sure that I got that far correctly. I I I I don't I don't think you're going to be disproportionately hurt is accurate we nobody knows okay? I think the rest of the world will probably pay more than the two two super powers right? But but you're going to be hurt like there is a way where this doesn't hurt anyone. So so there is no need for the pain. So walk me through the way that this doesn't hurt anyone. Because you're your what you're about to say is going to be based on your assumption that China is not an aggressive nation they're a nation of influence to be sure but they're not going to put military bases everywhere they're not going to go into foreign incursions the way the US has, and so therefore you have I don't know that you'd use these words, but you have nothing to fear essentially from a strong China. From a military point of view, the day China puts in a second base against your 187 or whatever, start to worry. Okay? But it's one military base outside China versus more than 180 for America. You're still the world's superpower militarily, okay? So, nobody wants anyone. This is not a war, okay? From an economics point of view, from an economics point of view, the biggest threat, I believe America has, is not debt, okay? Because you have the military power to back your debt. The The biggest challenge, in my point of view, I'm I'm not an economist, is inflation. And how inflation will hit your nation. And inflation is two sides. One is the cost of goods on on you know, American soil, which is going up because of tariffs for imported goods and locally manufactured goods, which will have a margin to increase their prices in. Okay? But more interestingly, it's because everyone is sending you your dollars back. Right? So, I'll I'll tell you very openly, I'm very interested in classic cars, hm? Now, I buy most of my classic cars in America. Why? Because then I can send you dollars and get the goods. Okay? I can send you dollars that I'm afraid will be inflated into lower value. Okay? And then if I if I keep the classic car here, I can sell it here, or I can sell it in Europe, or I can sell it in Japan, hm? For money that is real money as the US dollar loses its loses its value. And the risk The risk of of inflation, in my mind, is that American people are paying for it. Okay? And America's not the safest place on Earth if people become hungry. Because of the Second Amendment. This truly, in my mind, I'm really sorry, I don't have the right I honestly do not have the right to comment on American policy. I'm just looking at it from a very very >> is so helpful. I I get it. You have to worry more about the comments than you have to worry about me, but I hunger for perspectives that are not my own. Uh and so getting a chance to look back at America through your eyes is incredibly useful. So, if at the risk of you having to deal with whatever uh people will think, I am grateful. Uh I have all I have all good intentions, by the way, for for people who are about to comment. I only have good intentions. I'm not against America or against China or against anyone. I'm just basically saying my daughter and everyone's daughter is at risk. And And if that means you're going to comment negatively on what I say, smash me. It's okay. But keep my daughter safe. Okay, so uh one, we certainly share a belief that inflation is Oh, my audience has heard me talk about this so much. Uh inflation is the devastating force that everybody has to worry about. Um you You've given me a perspective on China that is very fascinating. Uh one, I'd be so curious to get more data on. My understanding of the Chinese economy is that they beat us in some areas and they lose to us in others, that overall GDP we still win, but you're saying that's inaccurate, that's basically Western spin. >> That's in Yeah, it's US dollars GDP. Yeah, so that's very interesting. Um also, I have a formulated vision of the Chinese economy as being weak at this point uh given all the crazy investments that they made in getting their own populace to buy housing. Again, I'm perfectly willing to accept this is all spin, please. Yeah, there is a huge spin on that. So, what what ended up happening when America declared economically that they are going to try to slow down China, is that China is China's very different than America when it comes to economics because they're able to make a decision at a state level that they don't need to convince the capitalists of. Right? They basically They simply instructed their banks to stop paying mortgages because housing is less important than industrial capacity. Okay? So, what you see, if you want to to slice the the the the economy and look at housing and the mortgage crisis and what hap what's happening in China, it looks like an economy in decline. But as those funds are being reinvested in the industrial capacity, they're building industrial capacity in the in the spaces where America threatened to starve them. So, when it comes to microchips, for example, you know, a lot of the Chinese officials will tell you within 6 to 8 years, we will be we will be building chips that are more powerful than Nvidia. Okay? So So, this this shift economically doesn't mean they're poor, they're just using a different strategy to invest in a different part of their economy. Talk to me about Trump. Give me a report card. So, people may have thought they were voting for one thing, what have they actually gotten? I think many people, uh certainly people on the right, are going to be surprised to hear you say that Trump is more socialist than Mondani. Um so, give us the the litany of receipts there. What is Trump getting wrong, certainly, uh and then if you think that he's gotten anything right, I'll take that as well. Trump's instincts are often very strong. It's just his execution. I think he recognized before other people the uh asymmetric trade relationship with China. I I think you got to give him credit for that. I thought I think they were taking advantage of us stealing our IP and then selling back selling it back to us less expensive and gutting our manufacturing sector. I think he saw that. Uh I think that he saw immigration as a big problem. You know, the Vice President, her big thing was supposed to be enforcing the border. She didn't do a great job. When a quarter of a million people can come over in December of '23 by just raising their hand and say asylum, you know, they had to say asylum and then boom, they were in. That's a problem. So, I think he recognized immigration. I think his messaging around affordability was the right message. Um I would argue that the level of corruption we have seen under the Trump administration is unprecedented in history in the West. You know, cramming launching a crypto coin, a meme coin the Friday before his inauguration under the cover of dark, such that someone could put in 10 million bucks in that thing and then say, "Please stop shipping arms to Ukraine." and we would never know that that happened. I think overrunning co-equal branches of government, just basically ignoring Congress, um you know, I could go sending in a mass secret police to terrorize cities and people who've been here for 20 or 30 years when he could just show up with a clipboard and say, "Hi, car wash. You have social security filings for these people. I need proof of their documentation or I'm going to find you $10,000 a day." Ooh, we have turned a blind eye to the immigration problem for 40 years cuz the sad truth of or the uncomfortable truth about immigration is that people say it's the secret sauce of America. Okay, that's nice. That's a Hallmark commercial and part of that is true. But the most profitable part of immigration is illegal immigration. Because they come across the border when our crops are coming due or our grandma needs her ass wiped or we want cheap food at a restaurant. And then when the jobs dry up, they don't go on unemployment, they don't collect social security, they melt back to their countries. They usually don't stick around longer to cause to They They pay social security taxes, but they usually don't get them. They commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens. They don't call 911 or use the police. So, we have turned a blind eye to illegal immigration for 40 years on purpose. Has it gotten out of control? Yes. Has it created real structural problems in the US? Yes. Should we have borders? Yes. He was good at leveraging that in people's frustration, especially in border states, and also a lot of young struggling men like to blame women for their romantic problems and immigrants for their economic problems. He tapped into that. He flew right into the manosphere. Genius political strategy, focusing on affordability, the asymmetric trade relationship with China. The implementation, it's as if he went to ChatGPT and said, "I want to reduce the prosperity of America elegantly and consistently." And it would come back and say, "I know, tariffs. I know, scare the best and brightest PhD students from coming to the US. I know, reduce the greatest ROI investment in history, investing money through our great academic institutions that produce medical and technological breakthroughs. I know, make people feel bad about America by showing these horrific videos of people who are so ashamed of what they're doing. It's so their activity is so depraved and vile, they have to wear masks. And people say, "Well, they could be doxed." Judges put mob bosses in prisons. They don't wear masks. So, some of his political instincts, I think are correct. I think he's a great campaigner. I would argue that the economic policies of America right now, putting drunks in charge of the Department of Defense, putting conspiracy theorists who believe that vaccines cause autism in charge of our health and human services. I mean, I feel like this is a literally a clown car running the nation right now. It's a corrupt crime family, all right? And the even worse news is Michael is running the grift and Fredo's running the government. I wish they brought half the competence to their grift that they're bringing to the government. Trolling around the Gulf and and not going to the democracies Turkey and Israel because they know they can't give you a plane or a golf course or a building. Only going to the nations that are comfortable saying, "Hey, take this $400 million plane, wink wink." Oh, and then oh, what do you know? You're going to What? You're going to give us Article 5 NATO protection? For free? We basically just give Qatar NATO protection, a security guarantee. Oh, and he accepted a $400 million plane a few months before? I mean, that's just not That erodes the very fabric of what it means to be American. And it hurts us It hurts our reputation around the world. It makes us much weaker. Let's start bombing fishing boats that would take 20 stops to refuel and get to Miami in a nation where there's no evidence, there is no fentanyl, while we let Ukraine fall? I mean, the the poor decision-making here, the incompetence and the corruption are noxious. They're stifling. The optimism is that we have been in worse places than this before. Americans are narcissists and we always tend to think this is the worst thing ever. We were in turning Japanese families in camps because they were Japanese. Slave owners used to be the most powerful political force in America. We opened fire on veterans marching in front of the White House after the Great Depression protesting economic conditions. We have been in worse places before and America has come back stronger. And I believe we are going to come back stronger here. So, yeah, I do think Trump gets some stuff right. I think he has good instincts around certain things. I think he's an amazing campaigner. He is a stain on the American experience. Now, do you think this is a great man theory of history where he just brought these things randomly got elected or is he a symptom of something that the populace is going through? Well, okay. So, I want to acknowledge I'm a hammer and everything I see is a nail. I think the reason we elected an insurrectionist I focus a lot on the struggles of young men. And young men are doing worse than have fallen further or faster than any cohort in American history. Four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be homeless and addicted. And what happened was he recognized this and he flew right into the manosphere. As Vice President Harris is going on MSNBC and CNN, he went on Rogan, Andrew Schulz, Theo Von, crypto, [snorts] World Wrestling Federation, Rockets. He went right into His campaign reeked of testosterone. Because if you look at the three groups that pivoted hardest from blue to red, 2020 to 2024, in order. One was Latinos. That says nothing. We should stop tracking them as a group. Mexican-Americans in Southern California have much different priorities than Cuban-Americans in Florida. It's stupid to make any reductive generalizations about the Latino community. Number two, hardest pivot, people under the age of 30. They're not doing well. When you're not doing well, you don't want to parse nuance. You just want different, even if it means chaos. And then the most interesting thing is the third group that pivoted hardest was 45 to 64-year-old women. And my thesis, Tom, is that's their mothers. And that is if your son is in the basement playing video games and vaping, you don't give a [ __ ] about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine or transgender rights, you just want change. So, and also what we don't like to admit is there are a lot of women in America who will vote for who they perceive as being in the best interest of their husbands and sons. We talk about the patriarchy, men versus women. Women's rights were supposed to be the defining issue of this election. It did not show up. 54% of white women voted for Trump. So, my sense is if we want to stave off if we want things to be better in America, if I were to do anything, it would be economic programs that lift young people up. And just as the economic bludgeoning of young people in America has disproportionately hurt young men who are disproportionately evaluated on their economic viability, lifting young people up economically will have a disproportionately positive effect on young men. I get it to I just wrote a book called Notes on Being a Man. I get attacked by all these therapist. By the way, 80% of therapists are women. It's always work on yourself. Therapy is the answer for everything. And I want to be clear. If you struggle with mental illness or have mental illness in your family or you can afford it, have at it. I I believe it's hugely beneficial. But this dogma online if if therapy solves all problems, you know what would be the best therapy in America? 8 million homes in 10 years. $25 an hour minimum wage. Universal child care. Eliminate 40% of the medical debt on households. You know what makes you mentally [ __ ] stressed out? When you can't afford your 16-year-old's root canal. When you don't make enough money to pay your rent. So, while I'm a big fan of blood pressure medication and statins and diabetes medication, here's an idea. Get everyone working out first and see if we can avoid that. So, I think the mental health in America, I think the the stress young people feel, the anxiety they feel is nothing no amount of mental health or therapy is going to replace economic precarity. And mental I want to detonate a nuclear bomb of mental of therapy called minimum massive increase in minimum wage, tax holiday for people under the age of 30, massive explosion in new home construction, more third places, more mating opportunities for people to meet. Uh universal child care, dignity around lower the cost of education through competition. And then the three per 10,000 people who are actually therapists won't need to go on TikTok and say that therapy is the only solve for our issues. I'm a little triggered by therapists right now, as you can see. >> that. I I like it, to be honest. I think that there is a lot of truth in that. Um I want to get explicit though about why exactly you consider those things therapy, especially for young men. I feel like, and this is one of the questions I wanted to ask you, I feel like you're dancing around there's sort of an archetypal beneficial male path, not the only. I I do not think you think that and I'm not certainly not trying to put those words in your mouth. But that there is an archetypal path that I've never met the kid, never going to meet the kid, don't know anything about him, but if he were to follow this kind of path uh we might be in better shape. Um one, is that accurate? And two, if so, what is that archetypal path? Yeah, look. So, I want to be clear. I'm guilty of projecting what's worked for me. I got economically secure. I worked really hard. I got the skills, the certification, took the risks. I also had an unfair advantage being born a white heterosexual male in the '60s. And then I found I've had great relationships, great friends. So, I feel like money and relationships are kind of the solve. And I think some legitimate feedback is Scott winning in capitalism and having a romantic partner sometimes isn't the end-all be-all for everybody. That some people do There's different paths for different people. I get it. So, I you know, I understand that. And also we need to figure out a way to recognize more of the emotional labor that women have been expected to give around caregiving and start to recognize that a form of masculinity and surplus value is when men do that. So, I think that society needs some what I'll call nuance and calibration and manicuring. And now let's talk about the world we live in. 75% of women say economic viability is important in a mate, only 25% of women. The likelihood of divorce does not increase when a woman gets fired or her income goes down. When the female in the relationship is now earns more man money than the man, the likelihood of divorce doubles and the use of erectile dysfunction drugs triples. Beyoncé could work at McDonald's and marry Jay-Z. The opposite is not true. And I don't care how many subscriptions to the Atlantic or the New York Times you have, that's not going to change in a few years. And I get all I'll give you an example that triggers a lot of people. I tell my sons, when you're in the company of a woman, you pay for everything. What? What? You You That's the patriarchy. You do not own women. You do not You should not have expectations from them. They are not your sexual Of course they're not. Women aren't responsible for servicing men. Men's problems aren't women's fault. I Women entering the workforce probably won World War II for us. It's the only reason we're not a second-rate power to China. Women making a lot of money is wonderful. We should do nothing to get in the way of that. I had a single mother who lived and died a secretary. It did not work out for her with my father or other men. Um but the biggest strain in our life was she didn't have a lot of economic opportunity. If you were a woman without a college degree back in the '70s, you could either be a travel agent or a real estate broker. You couldn't even be or secretary. You couldn't even be a teacher. You had to have a a college degree. That was the biggest strain in our lives. So, I'm all for the economic liberation of women. A lot of women are doing the math. Three-quarters of divorce filings are women cuz they wake up and go, "Okay, I'm ascending economically and boss, you're flatlining around domestic and emotional logistical contribution in the home. I'm out." I get it. I get it. And I put a lot of pressure on young men who have more agency than they think to raise their game and then pressure on people our age to join Big Brothers. Three times as many women joining Big Sisters. As Big Brothers, men our age need to step up step up. We need more economic programs to put money in people's pockets. I genuinely believe that young people having more economic opportunity, more third places to meet and demonstrate excellence to each other and establish more friendships, more uh romantic relationships and then policies that regulate Big Tech such that they don't have an economic incentive to sequester young men from their relationships, from work, from school with their more dopa-hungry, immature brains would solve a lot of our problems. So, are there different ways to demonstrate masculinity and be happy? Should you be more supportive of your partner who happens to be better at that money thing than you? Absolutely. In the in the short and medium run before before we come a more evolved species, I'm here for it. I'm here for the world where the man is celebrating in those relationships where the man wants to stay home. Until then, we have to acknowledge the reality in that is men are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic strength, women on their aesthetics. And an economically unviable man feels really bad about himself and generally speaking has very little currency in the mating market. So, where I start is how do we create structural changes that maintain the momentum of women, maintain it. I don't buy this Charlie Kirk [ __ ] of of women were sold a bag of goods and they were told if they just worked really hard and they end up being partners in law firms and then they're miserable and childless. So, what's the answer? Have them be broke and alone? Of course they should continue to kill it. That's great. Good for them. But at the same time, let's figure out ways that young men, one in seven young men, are NEETs, neither in employment, education, or training, that one in three of them aren't living at home under the age of 25, that one in five of them aren't living at home under the age of 30. What are the programs to do that? Male affirmative action? No, I don't want to go there. Programs that lift all young people up. Best thing for men, universal child care that takes an economic strain off of young families. More college freshman seats such that we can get more gay kids, more Republican white kids, more men, more women in college which still is a fantastic upward lubricant. $25 an hour minimum wage. Give people incentive to work. And that would not hurt us. If productivity if minimum wage had kept pace with productivity and inflation, it'd be 23 bucks. Let's go crazy and raise it to 25. Let's more housing. The archetype of of a man, I get it. Maybe what works for me doesn't work for young people. But we don't want to recognize the world we live in. Um marriage has become the new luxury item. One in four men in the lower quintile of income-earning households get married. Three in four men in the upper quintile get married. And you think, "Well, marriage isn't the answer." Well, it's a pretty good answer for men. Men live four to seven years longer in a relationship. Women live longer, two to four years. But what it ends up is that men benefit more from relationships than women, which isn't to say women owe men anything. It's to say that men do really well in relationships and there are a lot of women out there that would like more economically and emotionally viable men. So, let's lift let's lift up young people. Let's let's figure out a way. Are you married? I am, yeah. Okay. Do you enjoy being married? Aggressively. I I Look, I didn't want to get married. I didn't want to have kids. It has given me purpose and meaning in my life, which I did not have. So, I am projecting it on other people. And by the way, my first marriage didn't work out. 84% of people, all this all these TikToks about marriage is a failed technology. Well, then why do 84% of people who did it once and it didn't work out get remarried within five years? So, you you I I I I Anyone listening to your podcast, Adam, is not going to be surprised by this. I struggle with depression and anger. So, I decided I'm going to write a book on happiness. I wrote a book called The Algebra of Happiness. I have read, I think, every peer-reviewed research study on happiness. It all comes down to the basic things. Number two, a basic level of economic sustainability. You don't have to be rich. You just have to be able to have some level of health care and education. But the number one number one source of happiness is the number of deep and meaningful relationships you have. And unfortunately for a man, his relationship with himself and his ability to have a primary relationship with a romantic partner is unfairly and absolutely inextricably linked to his economic viability. And until our species changes, that's not going to change. So, let's at least have an honest conversation around how we level up the mental health, the prosperity, and the purpose of our young people. Should it come at the cost of women? 100% no. Are women responsible for fixing this? No. Are they responsible for this problem? No. First and foremost, young men need to level up. I hate the term incel. When I coach young men and they describe themselves as an incel, I'm like, "No. I've met you. You're not Brad Pitt, but you're not bad looking. You're you're you're not disabled. You're you're you you have you're physically fine. You're a little [ __ ] up in the head, but you're you wouldn't you wouldn't be described as clinically depressed. You are a V-cell. You are voluntarily celibate. Right? I wanted a girlfriend desperately when I was in high school. I wanted to have sex desperately. I could not find anyone to do that with me. Uh so, quote-unquote, I was an incel. I worked on myself. I worked out. I tried to develop excellence. I went to college. I developed a sense of resilience. I started talking to women and I entered into a series of skills such that I could develop the most important things that have given me purpose and meaning in my life, friends, colleagues at work, and uh a wonderful mate I get to raise wonderful kids with. I want to create the infrastructure such that more and more young people have access to that. And if they decide they don't want it, have at it. Watch Netflix all day. Do your own thing. Go to Saint-Tropez. Be alone. But 60% of 30-year-olds used to have a child in the house. Now it's 27%. Is that because they've all discovered that chil- children suck and they don't want children? No, it's because they're having trouble finding a viable mate and they have less money. So, I want to go to the world where men are celebrated on their character [snorts] and their purp- and their self- worth. Call me when we get there. If you like this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. America is in a precarious position. We show no signs of being willing to cut spending, so without massive growth, we will go bankrupt. But where is that growth going to come from? We're supposed to be the ultimate deal maker on the global stage. We're supposedly the ones holding all the