"They're Corrupt Elites" - DEBATING Destiny On Donald Trump, Joe Rogan, Kamala Harris, Elon Musk

I'm Tom Bilyeu and today is Tuesday, October 29th and this is a special 2024 election episode of Impact Theory. This week we're doing something very different. With the election right around the corner, I wanted to do something really special and cut through the noise. So, we're bringing in some of the sharpest minds from both sides of the aisle to answer two very simple questions in addition to the normal interviews that we do. What values and beliefs are driving their voting choices and why do they think you should vote the same way? Each guest is going to break down the reasoning and make their case. Now, while I've got my own views, the goal here is very simple, to help you guys think for yourselves using the same first principles that all of us should be relying on. No BS, just straight talk. Now, without further ado, I bring you Steven Bonnell. Steven Bonnell, welcome back to the show. Tom, thank you for having me. Can you pronounce your last name again? Bilyeu. Bilyeu. I typed your last name incorrectly so many times trying to Not good for branding. I'm very disappointed. It You and me both. If only my parents had had better foresight, uh we'd be in great shape. The good news is that I can almost always get my name as my username because there are precious few people uh with the last name. So, yeah, not not easy to spell but far easier to pronounce, thankfully. That's good. So, all right. Let us uh get into something that I am dying to ask you. So, if you were trying to advise somebody in the 2028 election, so you don't know who the candidates are going to be, what values and beliefs would you want them to hold in their mind as they make a decision on who to vote for? This is what I would hope would happen. I would hope that you would consider that there are these core foundational ideas that make our country the coolest country on the planet. Um in so far as in the United States you can I think you can be the best version of yourself here, better than any other country in the world. We have our faults, but what we do well, we do better than anybody else. There's a reason why that is the case. There's There's these core American values that have endured through time, and that when you go to vote on a candidate in 2028, you're thinking in your mind, what are those core values that make America really cool and and unique and and put us ahead of everybody else, and who who aligns with that? That's like before you even consider a candidate, they have to be within that box. Can you name those values? So, I think that having a country that is built on um core principles of liberalism and capitalism are like some of the most important things that we do as Americans. So, when I say liberalism, I mean an understanding that we have a free press that can publish, you know, take down articles of politicians and celebrities alike, and that they enjoy a broad amount protections in doing so. Um free speech and that we have no hate speech laws in the United States. If I want to say uh racial slur, if I want to be incredibly disgusting or mean, if I want to march in a Nazi uniform or a Marxist uniform or whatever, um that I have the right to do that in America. Um another thing is that we have a broad base of people here, and we integrate people better than any other country in the world. We have so many different types of people here that all work together, that build things, that create an environment such that anybody from the world can go to places like LA or New York City or Seattle or even like Austin or Miami or any of these huge places. There's just so many different types of people, and we do so well. Um the uh free enterprise, the idea that, you know, if you have a really good idea and you want to start a business, you can do that here. Um there's a reason why, you know, Elon Musk came to the United States to do Tesla and SpaceX. There's a reason why Amazon and Bezos are here in the US. There's a reason why Zuckerberg's here. There's a reason why, you know, Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile industry and why the United States is the larger exporter of energy in the world. Like these are all like things that are yeah, part of the American project. I can go on for a while for this, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so obviously this has real world implications. So um getting if there are more, I would certainly love to hear them, but if those are the big ones uh because obviously now I'm going to bring it back. So you and I um we literally every value that you just laid out, we share to to a word. But yet I think we're thinking about this moment differently. And so the question becomes is one of us insincere? That's certainly a possibility. Or are we looking at the same thing and coming away with something different? And so now as you bring this back into this actual election, how are you mapping it on to the candidates and maybe the more interesting places um given I don't think anybody is going to be surprised. So you're uh very much in the Kamala Harris camp. And do you think that somebody could sincerely vote for Donald Trump if they share your values? Or at that point is it it's some delusional thing that either they have not yet mapped for themselves so they're blind to something in their own belief system? Uh or it's kayfabe. They're faking it. They're saying that they believe in those values, but in reality they believe in something else. Um I draw a huge distinction between the media, the content creators, um the people that are disseminating the message versus the individual citizenry. Um I think those are two very different groups of people. I do believe I want to believe that the citizens are genuine because it would just be exhausting to lie all the time and I I don't know why people do that. Like I I think that individuals are genuinely um sincere. My mom is a hardcore ride or die Trump supporter, so is my dad. I think they're pretty sincere. I've known that my whole life. Um the media pundits, um, and when I say media I'm heavily including and almost focusing on alternative media here. I think are incredibly insincere and I think they are a cancerous rot that is destroying this country or maybe have already destroyed it. Really? Possibly. Okay, so for you the stakes are legit like this is existential. Yeah, but I mean people say that every election so what is that? I mean if you sincerely believe it. So as somebody who is now pressing 50, I'm at this weird crossroads of does the way that I feel now relate more to the specific moment we're living in or do all people that hit 48 suddenly start feeling the way that I feel and I honestly have no idea. I don't know that I can tease those out. All I can say is it feels like this moment is legitimately different. Um, but anyway, we only get one go around so it's tough to know. Yeah. Okay, so uh, it is possible that the alternative media may have already ruined and I think I filled in the blank there. Have already ruined the country or the democracy? What exactly are you worried that they may have already ruined? So uh, authoritarian or autocratic regimes that have a single point of power, single party, single leadership relationship structure, um, don't really need an informed public. They just need to know themselves what's going on. So things like disinformation or people just blatantly, you know, publishing lies doesn't really impact those regimes as much. A democracy requires a somewhat informed public to be making decisions about what's going on. And disinformation destroys societies like that such that it makes them untenable. That if we thought that a nuclear bomb exploding in New York City was going to fix all of our problems and 80% of the public thought that, they would vote on that and then we would blow up New York City and it's like, oh well, shoot, I guess that wasn't good. In an autocratic regime, the leaders would say, well, this is obviously dumb, we're not going to do it, we don't care what the public wants. So I think that we exist at a point in time due to a confluence of things. Um, social media is a huge one. Uh, foreign pressure is one. Um, the general like populist rise in this country and really across all the Western world is one. But, these are things that are contributing to a media environment where we are more than ever before living in totally separate realities. Okay, so, uh, I'm going to infer some things from that, but I want to make sure that I'm inferring the correct things and not putting words in your mouth. So, uh, the given the nature of our media landscape, disinformation is the thing that causes us to have very different factual universes. And given that you believe the average citizen, forget the pundits, but average citizens are being sincere, but that sincerity, that that factual interpretation of the world is being so inappropriately colored by media sources that we're creating a wildly divergent world where there are just around it, two very separate worldviews that both sides think are factually correct, but we can actually track this back to disinformation. Yeah. Do you Do you ever play Metal Gear Solid? Did I what, Solid? Do you ever play Metal Gear Solid video Yes. Oh. I didn't expect that to come up. Yes. In Metal Gear Solid 1, Uh, it's the only one I haven't played. My god. How How the hell do you not know that? How do you start with two? Okay. Uh, okay. Well, it's two is kind of a rehash in a lot of ways of one. But, in Metal Gear Solid 1, Snake has to, um, Metal Gear is going to be active and it can go and nuke people and nobody knows where the nukes are coming from. And the only way to deactivate it is to re-enter the activation codes. So, Snake goes through, uh, the space Shadow Moses to figure out what the codes are and then he sneaks in and then he goes to put the codes in again to deactivate it. But, of course, it's a Metal Gear Solid game, so big plot twist, it wasn't activated and now he's activated it, right? So, I feel like this is the world we live in where I don't think Snake wanted to make Metal Gear active, but because he has so much bad information, he ends up activating it. And I think the same is true for a lot of Americans' perceptions of things like uh healthcare or immigration or foreign policy to where I don't want to believe that half this country is like full of hateful evil people. They just genuinely believe these things are, you know, really bad at destroying the country. Like somebody Maybe they There are people that really do think that um there were these top-down plans to steal the election or that Haitians were eating dogs in Springfield or that immigrants are stealing jobs and destroying the country. Right? And if you really do think that, then I understand why you're like, we need to put a stop on all this Of course, that makes sense, yeah. Okay, so given that you have to have an informed public to have a democracy, and that our current landscape is creating an environment where people are being misled, what is the solution? Um they have to be like very heavy-handed solutions. I don't know what those look like exactly. Um the The ideal solution is a culture change, and that's almost impossible that you just have like the whole world is like, "Oh, we need to change the way to do this." because the incentives aren't right for it. Um the second thing would be uh corporate change, and I would argue that Elon Musk is probably doing more damage to the world right now than any other individual actor. Uh so that's probably not going to do anything. Um because he's not going to change the way that X is working right now because he's obviously a full-on uh supporter for a single candidate. And then the third way would be some sort of sort of a government legislation where there are different like laws passed, some of which I can think of off the top of my head that I would be in favor of. Um like if you're a media alternative media, whatever, on, you know, any kind of American hosted media platform, uh you have to disclose like your nationality. I think that that would be I think that's important. I think we should know that if you're in the United States. Um yeah, and possibly even like income sources, too. I think that if you're giving media in the United States, people have a right to know if you're being funded by somebody internationally or whatever it is. So the goal there is you believe that you can start to build a map of their intentions based on how they're getting paid and to whom they owe national allegiance. Potentially. It's just more information. I think um the the real problem here is and there's a reason why none of this is ever going to happen. The real problem is that I think that humans fundamentally misunderstand what our brains are designed for and how humans perceive information in a given uh information saturated environment. People like you hear people say um hopefully you haven't said these things before. I mean we can fight about it. People say like oh the solution to these problems is you need more free speech, more speech, more speech. Um but if you step outside of this weird ideological jerk off bubble of like oh social media and you go in any other environment, you will never ever ever ever ever get that advice from anybody ever. Nobody will tell you like this book, I don't understand this. This is like confusing. Like oh read a hundred more books. They're like no no no. You need a good teacher. You need a good mentor. You need a good author. You need a good set of friends. You need a not just like a million things and then you'll figure it out. But when it comes to freedom of speech for some reason, everybody thinks like oh no if we just have, you know, instead of a hundred people saying misinformation, five million people all shouting and screaming, the true stuff will rise to the top. But it assumes that one, people want to know what's necessarily true, which is not true. And two, that there are good incentives for creating information that is necessarily true. Which is also not true. I think that those two things are things that 98% of people would disagree with me on. And as long as you disagree with me on that, you'll never agree with anything else I say about it. So. Okay. Uh it's very interesting. So I have a I think a fundamentally different approach to why people ought to debate. Mhm. Um and to me the reason that I like people debating is I I'm not even though I am trying to be persuasive, I don't consider myself a debater. But when I speak, I'm trying to be persuasive. But I'm not necessarily sure that I want to persuade people. So my goal in any interaction is to find out if there's something that has utility in what the other person is saying. Um so to me it doesn't matter whether you and I ever come to an agreement. I want to find out okay, you if if you have a sincere world view, I want to know what it is so I can treat you essentially like an AI that I can build a mental model of you and how you would look at a problem so I can see that problem from your angle and I'm going to triangulate on something with a bunch of different viewpoints to then say, "Okay, what do I think has most utility?" Uh I'll plant a very quick flag. I'll try not to bog the conversation down in this, but I think all of this, every um word out of my mouth, every word out of anybody's mouth ought to be driving towards something, a known destination that they want to get to. When I'm talking to an entrepreneur, I call it KYG, know your goal. You have to know your goal. Where are you trying to end up? Everything is going to be benchmarked against that. Uh in fact, if I had to say the biggest problem I have with the political um setup that we have now is people will state a goal as like a campaign slogan, but they're never going to benchmark against it and see whether they actually made progress. So, you're just sort of steering blindly. So, anyway, um my goal would be to figure out ideas that have high utility and leading me towards my goal, which is human flourishing. We'll set it aside for now cuz it doesn't yet, I think, matter um whether that's the right goal, but to understand how I will structure a conversation or navigate it is all based on that. I'm trying to find a thing that has high utility. Mhm. Um okay, so you've gone into something that I call the dumb voter problem. So, I think everybody is trying to figure out, how do we deal with dumb voters? Because I think you trust yourself to navigate the world of all the misinformation, disinformation. Yes? Mhm. Okay. Uh I certainly trust myself to navigate that, but there are obviously, from where I'm standing, people that will not be able to navigate that. And they're the reason people attempt to manipulate people is because manipulation works so well. Uh and it can work on really smart people that don't have time to pay attention and so they're just existing at the headline level. Uh it can work because somebody just does not have the intellectual capacity to sort through all of that. Um so, I find that by simplifying the question down to what do you do about dumb voters, you can sort of get to where what somebody's stance is. So, um how do we, in your world, deal with dumb voters who are not ever going to be able to accurately identify what is true? So, Yeah. I don't like the term dumb voters because I think that most people This is something I've changed pretty radically on in the past couple years. I think that people are actually pretty smart. I think that something just happens politically or socially or there's another mechanism at play that is turning the key and shutting somebody's brain off when it comes to evaluating things uh that you have a a bigger emotional stake in. One of the best real-time examples I have ever seen in my life of this happening is a conversation that I saw of Joe Rogan having with Matt Walsh. Where Joe Rogan, in a very epistemically sound way, points out why flat-Earthers just kind of a ridiculous idea. So many people around the world have even bought into it. What's even the point of this? All the academic institutions, all the other countries, even our enemies, are like aligned with like He gives a perfect reason. But yeah, these are really good attacks against like flat-Earth from like a conceptual standpoint. Like it just doesn't It wouldn't even make any sense. And Matt Walsh agrees. And Matt Walsh is like, "Yeah, and like, you know, like those moon landing guys, too." And then all of a sudden Joe Rogan's brain shuts off and he's like, "Whoa, hold on. I don't know about the moon landing." It's like, Wait. You just gave a perfectly good walk-through for why flat-Earth was ridiculous. It all applies to the moon landing. But then his brain switches. Something happens. But he's not becoming stupid. It's not dumb. There's a another mechanism at play that is inhibiting his ability to apply the same rational thought process, I think. Yeah. So, I totally agree with that. Um that, while also important, I think allows for a layer of obfuscation. What I want to get to is can we agree that there are some people who don't They They do not have the intellectual horsepower to suss all this out. Possibly, but I would say those people are maybe like, if I had to guess, like less than 10%. Great, love that. Okay, so some number less than 10%. What do we do about them? Um Uh I guess it's your the onus is on you as a politician to find a way to appeal to those people because if your country needs those people to function and operate, then you have to find a way to get them to vote for you, I think. And if they vote in the quote-unquote wrong way, are you willing to accept that that's just the reality of the world we live in? Um probably cuz there's always going to be some percentage of people that are just, yeah. But I mean, ideally you have big enough majorities in the other percentages that And maybe part of it is like throwing those people a bone or something to get them to vote your way, I guess. We have to look at an application of what it would look like, but yeah, I mean, you have to bring everybody along. The prob- The problem democratically is that when you start trying to draw boxes around who should or shouldn't be able to vote, you've like entered into the 50 million Pandora's boxes of who's allowed and who's not allowed, and it's very hard to sort that out, you know? Yeah, that that is exactly my point. This is why I always want to get people's answer to what do you do about dumb voters? Mhm. My thing is I don't want anybody deciding whether I'm one of the dumb voters or not. Yeah. Since I'm perfectly willing to accept that there may be times where I'm in the dumb voter category, I still want to make sure that I am given the ability to look at all the available information out there, including uh flat-earthers, including whatever, whatever. Um going back to one of the earlier things that you said is we have the ability to wear the uh Marxist outfit, outfit, to talk, "Hey, I believe that the Earth is flat." I don't want anybody to get to decide what is true in a preemptive strike kind of way where this speech is now not available because some people are not going to be able to parse through that data. And so for me, that's where like I am prepared to live in a world where things very much do not go the way that I think that they should because I am so terrified of people being able to say top-down to protect you to protect you from dumb people whatever. Of course they're not going to say dumb, but to protect you, we're going to make sure that we get rid of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation cuz it ends up being bad. So, but it feels like there's while you agree with it at the extreme, you said there are heavy-handed things that you would want to do because misinformation could be potentially destroying our society. Yeah, absolutely. But that's different than keeping people from voting, I would say, right? Right, but Conceptually it maps onto the like, well, who identifies a dumb voter could be similar to who identifies misinformation potentially. But the issue right now is that the majority of the people in the United States of America that carry forward that really strict free speech banner, um, do so maliciously. Um, they do it as a as a cancer and they sneak in as a parasite to pretend that freedom of speech is what they really want, but what they really want is just the ability to lie with impunity and to do it for huge sums of cash. And that is right now what is happening. It's not a It's not becoming a problem. It's not going to become a prob It is a problem and it has been a problem and it's such that even if we were too heavy-handed in a, uh, media censorship environment, that would be preferable to where we are right now because the area that we're at right now is deplorable. And there are too many people, um, the Candace Owens, the Tim Pools, the Joe Rogans, the um, the the Robert Malones, the Lex Friedmans, these people who are, you know, saying like, oh, we just want like all these people to come and have conversations. They're not there to have conversations. They're there to lie with impunity. And that's why they can never back up any of the things they say. They have no accountability. They've got horrible track records. They're shown time and time and time again to be incorrect on a large number of things, but they'll point to like one or two conspiracies that they happen to be correct about and then they'll say, well, freedom of speech. It's like a guy who, you know, it has the right to drive a car. He got his driver's license and he's been in 15 car accidents and he's like, well, you know, it's a how you know, I can drive. I have my license and whatever. Uh, despite the fact that when your parents give you, you know, your first set of keys, you know, hey, this is a, you know, this might be a new privilege, but with it comes a lot of responsibility. And right now everyone wants the privilege of freedom of speech but none of the responsibility of it, which is disgusting to me. Okay, so walk me through what uh what is the responsibility of free speech? Like, what is the thing you have to do or whatever to earn earn? I don't want to put that word in your mouth. Sure. I mean, like you if you are working in media, disseminating information to people, you should be putting in the bare minimum level of research or understanding into the topics that you are talking about. You cannot be repeating things uncritically that you find on social media that are just blatantly and obviously false. And if you are, there has to be some kind of accountability tracking for it. Okay, and uh accountability tracking like would you propose that there's actually a score? Like, hey, you've misstepped this many times, uh but you got these things right, so your blended score is you're a B- minus. Sure, maybe something of that, but the problem with um where we're at right now with the media environment is for I'll say like on the conservative side, any type of scorekeeper or fact-checker is inherently seen as biased. So, that immediately fails with that with half the country right now. What if I told you there's a way to get all the nutrients your body needs, save time, and never skip another meal, all without sacrificing taste or breaking the bank? It is not too good to be true. It's Huel, the world's number one complete nutrition brand, and I'm very excited to tell you about it. Huel is a full meal ready in seconds. Just grab, shake, and go. Designed by nutrition experts, it gives your body everything it needs in one package. It tastes like a milkshake but with no low sugar and no artificial sweeteners. The black edition ready-to-drink packs 35 g of protein and 27 vitamins and minerals into one bottle. Plus, it's incredibly affordable. You're getting a high-protein meal for less than five bucks. Stop compromising on your nutrition. Try Huel and get 15% off with the code impact at huel.com. That's h u e l.com and use code impact for 15% off. So. Yeah, I mean so skipping forward to see where we disagree, my thing will be anytime that you're going to put that sort of check on uh the system, you're saying somebody actually is able to view the world objectively correct and isn't caught in a frame of reference. So, my view on the world is that quite literally nobody lives in an objectively true world. We are all doing our best to approximate the truth and that is why there's always these gaps because um I think while it is not impossible for humans to get to ground truth, ground truth is physics, right? So, once you understand a thing, it unlocks abilities, it unlocks um GPS was unlocked because we got past Newtonian physics which felt like it was an objectively true version of reality only to find out that it's not. And now physicists are saying that even Einsteinian physics is not objectively true, that it's a good approximation, it's better, it gave us GPS, but it unlocked the power of the the atom, but there's something beyond it that we don't yet understand. And so, once I get to that and I say objective reality is a number of photons that are reflecting off of you and landing on my eye. It's a big math equation in light spectrum, uh but I don't interface with the world like that. I interface basically like through a GUI, right? So, I am already dealing with rules of thumb, approximation, narrative, all of that. And so, for me it becomes a question of can anyone actually be trusted to say, "You're the person that knows what is objectively true?" And therefore, since you're uniquely, maybe not solely, but uniquely able to determine what is true, you can now give people a score or whatever and begin to shut down the people that get a low score. That's what scares me, that when it meets reality, it's just never going to hold up. So, here's my issue with this framing. I don't disagree with you conceptually. It doesn't have anything to do with the world that we live in right now. The what what we're what we're doing is I've drawn I've drawn a square in front of you, okay? And there might be two people who are intently looking at that square, okay? With no other congruent lines drawn on it. And they're going to argue what they think is a square or a rectangle, okay? Cuz one guy is saying, I think it might be a little bit longer, okay? And what you're saying is, I don't want somebody to come in and say, this answer is wrong, okay? But that's not the world that we have right now. Right now, we have that shape, and there are two people arguing whether it's a square or a rectangle, and then a 5,000 other people are arguing that that is actually WWE wrestling. Just the shape. And they're so clearly beyond outside of anything that would be even remotely We're not talking about Newtonian physics versus general and special relativity. We're talking about believing in genes versus Lysenkoism. Believing that bacteria That's That's where we're at. You laugh, but it's absolutely the case that that is where we're at. That I can be on stage now with conservatives who will lie with impunity about, say, January 6th. The cops let people in. And I'll And I did this recently in a debate. I'll bet you $5,000 right now that the first first person that broke into the building was a guy with a riot shield. Who was a Dominic Pisciotta or Dominic Pizzola, I think. A Proud Boy. He was arrested. It's all on video. And then they'll go quiet. When they don't say anything, that communicates to me that you know that you're lying. You know that you're up here telling a lie. And so many of these people do it. That they lie and they lie and they lie and they lie and they lie. And then the frustrating thing is, not to not calling you out, but cuz I used to be part of this, too, is that people will come forth to defend these people under the guise of free speech. And these people are just parasites. They don't actually care about free speech. They're just using it to sell lies. They'll go, yeah, free speech is important and that's why blah blah blah blah blah and then they just lie lie lie. And it's like this is a very frustrating environment to live in because I agree conceptually again with your world that it is kind of scary to have somebody come in and say, well, should you be able to say this or that? Although we do to some extent. I can't go on TV and tell you to drink poison, right? I would get in trouble, right? Um but right now the lies are so outlandish that it's destroying We live in different realities right now in the United States. Uh I agree with that. I think what I disagree with, I don't think that is because of the nature of people going out and wielding lies. Um I look at all of the facts laid out before me in terms of how to deal with the 2024 election and I make the decision that even though I hate that this is the decision that I'm going to vote for Trump. You look at that and think, yo, what the Like how can people like are their brains broken? Um and so the reason that I come to that, obviously it's multivariate, I can walk through it, but you can if you go look at like all the January 6th stuff for instance, I'm like, yeah, like there's nothing to argue, but I look at all of that and go if you could show me that Trump was legitimately lying, that he knew that the election um that he had lost fair and square and he was still doing these things, does that completely discredit him? And so yes, at that point I would say if you had a um a mind reading device and you knew that, that would completely change my take on it because I walk away from watching the or hearing the calls of him literally on your stream, uh him doing the calls and everything, I walk away going, I think he actually believed it. Now, whether he's a fool or not to believe it is a totally different question. Whether he's completely delusional is a totally different question. But if you could show me into his heart, no, he for real is lying, okay, cool, that changes my perspective. Now, I I want you to point said mind reading device at all the fears that I have over on the left because I want to know what's going on in their hearts as well. But I have a very definable thing that would allow me to change my mind. Um, and so but I don't think for a second that you're WWE-ing any of this either. I think you really believe it's obvious that he's lying. How could anybody believe anything differently? Um So my thing is given that the only heart I can see inside is my own and I know that I'm not making it up and I know that um and it'll be easy cuz I'm sure you'll push me on a lot of the stuff and you'll see which ways I'll break and go one way or the other. Um, but I feel that good faith people of a certain level of intellect can look at that and walk away with different views and I want them to. And when I look at putting hardcore controls in to make sure that we account for disinformation that uh you make the world worse. Like I'm way more terrified of that than I am it being more difficult for the public to think through what is true than I am the world where we're being told what is true. Gotcha. I think that the thought process that you have right now in terms of people being able to reasonably disagree on that I think is the end of this country probably. It's probably why I might be looking to leave after this election cycle. Because I think that people just Yes. I It's just so beyond the pale that we can have reasonable disagreements over whether or not the last president tried to lead a rebellion against the government to entrench himself in power. I don't know how we can have people that disagree on that and still function. Because who's to say the next deal isn't I need to murder our political opponents which he now has criminal immunity to do. Or that I need to silence the media because as he said multiple times the media is the enemy of the people or if he comes into office and he does suspend the Constitution as he said multiple times he would like to do and he is a dictator on day one which he's told Sean Hannity that he wants to be, right? Then I that point like I have nothing I can say because we don't we don't misalign on values. It's just we've just seen I don't think we've even seen the same set of facts. Because like even or you can respond to that if you want, yeah. So, I was just I have a theory that the way that people should be approaching this is to just completely rule out preemptive strikes. So, the thing that worries me cuz here's what my hope would be. Like if Kamala Harris wins and shout out to David Packman, he's the first person that I heard say it in the opposite direction. Uh he said, "Look, if Trump wins, I'm not going to spend any time talking about the election was stolen. I'm just going to be like, cool. How do we make sure that only um policies get put in place that are actually good for the American people?" And I'm like, yeah. If I end up uh if Trump doesn't get elected and Kamala Harris does, not going to spend any time saying, "Oh, the election was stolen." It's like, word, man. I actually hope, whatever direction, it's a landslide. And so now, even though like let's say in fact let's make it way harder. If you point the um mind-reading device at Trump and I realize, "Oh my god, he was actually lying. That was a legitimate attempted coup and he is going to do everything he can to take over the government and make sure that a Republican is in there forever." Then immediately, I'm a thousand percent opposed to that. Bad. Not good. But, at that point, that's where I go into I don't do preemptive strikes. I want to see how this plays out, but I would for sure I'm now in second amendment territory. I'm now in the uh I am hunkering down, preparing for the worst, looking at getting out of a major city. But because I don't know that I'm right, I don't know that that's going to go in a horrible direction. Um I want to wait and see. But, would you wait and see before you left the country or would you be like My I'm just the overall investment in whatever project we have now just collapses immediately. I'm just What what project? I don't understand. The American project, I guess. Right? Yeah. That the I think that it's Um the problem is just it's just there's just so many it's just a wide collection of facts, I guess. Um But where would you go? Uh I don't know. Someplace in a I either just hunker down in some no income tax place in the US and just say screw it or I'd go to Canada or Mexico or the knows. I don't know. Okay, so you are somebody who I think is extraordinarily good at all right, what are the facts on the ground? Um being very dispassionate, just looking at things um very objectively. It that feels emotional. It feels like you so believe and so love in this country that there's something in there that would break your heart and it is a response to having your heart broken. Is that a misread or does that feel accurate? it's partially true. But I mean, like heartbroken over like the like imagine you're a 1/3 owner, I guess, in a business and the 2/3 other guys decide that you're not going to make cars anymore. You're going to make anime dolls and you're like, Buy me out. I'm leaving, right? So I guess in that sense, yeah. Cuz it would just mean that the direction and what this country stands for, what it means internationally for the United States just like everything is like changed fundamentally so much that I don't even know if I identify strongly with it anymore. Doesn't it feel like in this moment? Like in this moment, that's where we're at. But like I can only imagine in the middle of the Civil War, that had to be pretty gnarly. Like the fact that, you know, to put myself on the good guy side, the fact that half the country wants to keep slaves, that's bananas. And I can't believe that I live in this world have to look at the media environment back then cuz I probably think that that media environment it's it's possible that it would have been better. Because at least those people This is really about the media environment. because those people, my guess is, and I'm not an expert on the Civil War, my guess is those people knew what they were fighting over, right? One side thought they had the right to maintain slaves, the other side didn't. But right now, what are we fighting over? Whether or not Hugo Chavez came back from the dead and created a Dominion voting systems to You laugh at this, but the guy that you're voting for believes everything that I'm saying or purports to. He doesn't actually. But he he tells his fans that constantly and he lies about it even to this day, right? Or that, you know, from the top down there was this grand conspiracy to steal the election from Donald Trump or that the 50 million other crazy wild ridiculous things he said. Like these We don't even know like why we disagree with each other now. Like is FEMA stealing homes from people because it's giving out money and then they disguised it as a loan or is there 50 million illegal immigrants that are coming in because Kamala Harris is, you know, personally unlocking the tunnels to let them in to destroy the Like we don't even know what we're fighting at anymore. And and conservatives have gotten so good at controlling the whole media environment even in media places they don't control directly that they've like memory holed so many things. It's just like it's it's unbelievable to me, I guess. I don't know. Why do you attribute that to one side? Because they do way worse than the other side. It's not even remotely You will never You will never of the human mind? You will never ever ever ever be able to give me an example of a mainstream media organization in the United States behaving like Fox News did over the Dominion stuff. You just know equivalent. That in and of itself should have been the destruction of that political party. Um for people that don't know, Fox News, all of the execs and all of the hosts knew that all the Dominion claims were lies from the very start and they continued to push the lie because they knew they were losing viewership to OAN and Newsmax. None of this is debated. None of this is controversial. All of this is public after the depositions. There's a reason why Fox News settled that suit for the largest settlement in all of corporate defamation history for some $787 million. So every single person, and I would guess if I had to estimate, 80% plus Republicans to this day believe something that Fox News was knowingly lying about that came from Trump's campaign. That's just unbelievable to me. Okay. So, what you take away from that is that the media landscape is so corrupt and the way that the human mind works is so uh it's so easy to bamboozle it that if we can't get uh tight constraints around what can and can't be said from media, we will never be able to have the informed public that we need to get back to the America that you can resonate with and be a part of. Sure. And I'm not even saying like tight constraints. It just there has to be some way to make it so that you cannot lie with impunity. It can't be like every single day. If somebody gets something wrong, that's different or somebody has a different uh you know, subjective political belief. Like I don't think Trump being mean to people is a big deal or I think that Kamala's race or whatever is real. Like all of these are fine. These are differences of opinion or whatever is fine. But it can't just be that somebody can lie with impunity every single day as a as a pattern and be fine. That just we can't survive. We're not surviving right now. The country's like not doing well right now. Internationally, we're a mess. Domestically, we're about to tear ourselves apart in this upcoming election. It's just we can't agree on what aid looks like. We can't We We literally had a bill like it like there's so many individual We We like Here's So, here's the thing and I tell this to every single conservative that illegal immigration isn't a problem at all in this country. In fact, it's not even close to being a problem and nobody actually cares about it. And the reason why is because they'll say it was the number one issue to them. It was one of the most important things is figuring out like all of the asylum people. When a bill was in front of Congress to fix it, okay? Senate and um the House were ready to sign it. Biden was ready to sign it into law. Donald Trump pulled the plug on it. He told conservatives, he said, "Don't sign this bill. We need to keep the border open for the election." This None of this is private. None of this is secret. All of this is public. McConnell talked about it. Cruz talked about it. Lankford, the original bill author in the Senate, talked about it. And that bill got shot down with nothing. There was no negotiating. There was no nothing. Why? I thought it was a huge problem. For politics, right? So, I Yeah, I don't even know we don't even live in the same We don't live in the same world. Nobody Nobody in this country on the left or right is two two totally different realities. That I agree with, but I think this is really born of something that is just true of the human mind. And so, uh if I am right that the problem we have is a problem of the architecture of the human mind, then there's nowhere to go to escape it. So, um when you look at So, for instance, why didn't we just build the wall the first time? Nobody was here for that. It Everyone was trying to make Trump sound like he was an absolute lunatic, xenophobe, racist for wanting to build the wall. Now, Kamala Harris in her most recent interview was like, "I'll take a good idea from wherever it comes." Referring to Donald Trump wanting the wall and having earmarked the money to build it. And so, that to me is just like, "Yeah, I get it. It's the game of politics. I hate it. I'm not coming to bat for it. I'm just saying I try to always find where the rubber meets the road. And the reality is people will manipulate people to get what they want because people are manipulatable. And so, you create a structure where people want power and manipulation works, and they're going to manipulate. Donald Trump is going to manipulate. Whoever is on the Democratic side is going to manipulate. Everybody's going to manipulate. And so, now the only bullwark that we have against that is that people can say what they believe to be true. Now, do I wish that we could culturally get closer to something where people weren't just out there saying whatever crazy thing crazy lie I'll just take lies cuz they're harder to deal with be out there lying nonstop? Yes, I wish that people would not lie nonstop. Hopefully, there are opt-in things that we can do so that people are disincentivized to lie without something some big overhanded thing governmental agency giving you the social score, which terrifies me to no end. Um but I think the reality is that we just have to deal with it and deal with it with something like, I'll be very curious to see your take on this, community notes, where it's like people that have historically disagreed on the same all come and say that's crazy. That doesn't make any sense and here is the truth of that matter. And especially given AI, the ability to just chew through so much information, it feels like we could come up with something that would flag a post, so rather than the person and have it be a part of your permanent record, it's just this post uh has this rating from these different algorithms or these different people. The community notes are just like liberal propaganda. Like that's it, the people like don't take it seriously that much anymore. Like it just yeah, it just the incentives aren't there for people to care about what's true or not. The people are looking for the psychological comfort basically uh when they go and they consume news. Um I to so I'm focusing on one thing I guess. I'm curious. Two questions. One, what would you need to see to believe that Donald Trump did know that he lost the election? And then number two, um let's say that he knew or let's say that he really thought he won, but he couldn't find evidence of it. Does that justify him attempting to coup the government? Amazing questions. So, uh number one, anything where Trump is like, "Look, we both know that we lost, but we shouldn't have. We're the better side. So, just go find me, go make up 12,000 votes if you have to." Right there, done, finished. For me, I need hear nothing else. Bad. Uh now, on the other side, um what I would say is let's say that Tom Bilyeu was running for president. Don't worry, I will never. But let's just in this world, uh I'm running for president. I am utterly convinced that I won. I Dude, pass a lie detector test. This is fraud, I know it. I believe that the peaceful transfer of power is more important and what anybody in that situation, Trump for sure, should have handed over the keys and said, "I think this is bad. I'm going to fight this legally. I'm going to go see what my options are, but it is way more important that I hand over these keys now, even if that means that the next step is those guys now have an opportunity to go become tyrannical leaders." I have a base assumption that people should not be doing a preemptive strike. You cannot read their minds. I know Trump or anybody thinks that, "Oh my god, like we could never hand over the keys to these other people." You have to. So, then do you not think he tried to coup the government, or then why isn't that a huge factor? the difference between whether he tried to coup the government is whether he believes he actually won the election. And from listening to him speak, it really does sound like he believes it. Now, again, if he did So, then if he thought that he won, then it is okay if he tries to coup the government. thought that he won, he should have still handed over the keys, for sure. I'm trying to figure out what would be disqualifying in your mind. For him to ever run again? Yeah. For him to have he tried So, if he thinks he won, even though he's seen no evidence of it, he thinks he won, he can try to coup the government. You're like, "Okay, I'll consider him again." Cuz I think he thought he won, so he, you know, I understand why he tried to coup the government. That is correct. Yeah. Now, I think that's terrible. I hate that that's true, and this is where you have to understand, I am not moving towards Trump. I don't see anything on Trump's side that has moved towards me. But, my particular fears are triggered more by the left right now. In its current state, the left scares me more in terms of the future being worse for the middle class. That's it. And so, for Can I go back to the first point about what you would need to see from him? Yep. Um Are you aware that that standard of evidence is higher than like any standard of evidence that for any crime in the world, we never require a confession to like convict on a person's state of mind, right? Yeah, I mean, this comes down to people are building a mental model of what am I willing to concede that in a normal circumstance, I would never consider conceding. And so, this is where it's been said so many times, the lesser of evils, that it loses its punch. Trump is going to spend inordinate amounts of money, which is actually like my number one thing. We are driving this country into a wall through debt. We are stealing from people that cannot afford to be stolen from. It is a moral outrage, and both sides do it. So, I'm already homeless in terms of nobody for me to move towards. The only candidate that at least had rhetoric around this was RFK. Didn't get on the the ballot, but that was like my siren song. I was being drawn to that. I think you might have criticisms there, which I could not be more open to. But, that was my thing was like, "Yo, he's talking about making people healthy again. He's at least saying this budget is crazy. You cannot keep doing this. We are stealing from future generations." Which is true. I don't even have kids, and I'm like, "This is a moral outrage." But, both of them do it, so I can't disqualify either of them on that. I think the fact that we've ended up with Trump to vote for again is bananas. We had other people that for my money, maybe they are unelectable for other reasons, but for my money would have been way more interesting. It is what it is. And then, over here, when Kamala Harris first got announced, I was like, "Maybe maybe this is where we go." She felt presidential. I was like, "Okay, there's something here." I could feel that energy, and I immediately was like, "This this might be my exit." And then, she started talking about economics, and I was pieced out. But, Donald Trump's plan to just fund everything through in like the tariffs on everything is a good I think your read on tariffs is is off, and I think that there is um if you look, I Trump is not a super genius. But, do I think that he actually likes to keep people off base and I think his rhetoric on tariffs, one, they do work as a protectionism. He is a protectionist. He is America first. So, I get the card he's trying to play. Sure. There's a quick thing. Protectionism and America first have nothing to do with one another cuz protectionism would hurt the American economy in basically every conceivable way as well. Um Uh tease them apart for me. I'm not Uh if you protect protectionism through the form of tariffs, it's just going to make everything in the United States cost more and it's going to take away from our ability to manufacture more final stage products cuz we don't have an infinite amount of people. Right now, we can manufacture everything that we do because we import things from other countries. If we inhibit our ability to do it and we manufacture all of it at home, then instead of building Teslas, we're going to be building widgets. Which if people want to do that, that's fine, but it's that's not an America first policy. That's like a let's just do base manufacturing and let China and India be the people that make Tesla and we'll just like put together nuts and bolts, I guess. If you make protectionism blanket, which is what he's saying, so I get why people are triggered by that, but if you read that as him trying to um fire a shot across the bow cuz if he actually does that, he's a just to be nice and cut and dry. But if that is him trying to signal to other people to knock them off balance, which I have every reason to believe he does, that he is full kayfabe, that he is perfectly willing to walk into a room and act just a little bit crazy. He's talked openly about it. He does that to unbalance people cuz they don't know which part of what he's saying is crazy. A tariff across the board on everything is is a fool's errand from where I'm sitting. Uh but a selective tariff to protect certain industries, I think does make potential sense. Now, it's one I'd have to dig way more in, all of that, and to me, everything is about you try it, if it yields the outcome that you predicted ahead of time, you keep doing it. If it yields something you did not predict ahead of time, then you stop doing it, which is a whole philosophy I have about the government that we don't do. Anyway, we'll set that aside for now. So, uh I don't think Trump is like some economic genius by any stretch of the imagination, but the second that you say uh we're going to tax unrealized gains, I'm out. That That is That's a level of financial illiteracy that is And look, that's not the only thing, but that was the one where I was like, Okay, the the taxing unrealized gains over a certain amount is incredibly stupid. It's not even close to as stupid as Trump's tariff idea. Not even remotely close. I'm saying that Yeah, it's not even remotely as stupid as That isn't true. There from Look, this is where we're going to disagree. They're both terrible. So, yay, no problem. Uh but because the unrealized gains, they they actually don't exist. You have to liquidate something in order to get that money, which would literally just grind everything to a halt. You are being the most tax inefficient. People are going to stop investing. I mean, it would just be That would be catastrophic. I think that the way that they phrase it, it was it would only impact people with net worths of over Was it 500 million or doesn't matter. It absolutely matters because the tariff idea is a trillion times more catastrophic. You're forcing people to sell. And you're forcing poor people to pay 20% more on clothes and food. Hold on. If you want to talk poor people, which I know you do, and I really believe you sincerely give a and I love that about you, uh the only thing to talk about is inflation. The second you print money, you are What do you think tariffs would do? Tariffs would cause tons of inflation. Remember, you have to map me. So, my thing on tariffs is that most of it's posturing, that he's going to do it selectively, and if he doesn't, and he really does it across everything, he's a But he's already done tariffs. Why would we not assume he wouldn't do more? But he did tariffs reasonably well. He But he didn't though, right? It just increased the cost of goods in the United States. We didn't actually bring anything where you want to do that. So, take the chips, for instance. If we're really trying to onshore things, or take things that are weapons manufacturing, anything that's in that chain, even if it's slightly more expensive for us to do it uh domestically, we need to do it because I think again, I think and I Nobody I do not want to be dictator very much cuz I think I'm very fallible. Uh but it is odds are that we're moving towards conflict with China. The last thing I want are my artillery shells or bullets or whatever to be hamstrung by their ability to produce. That Which I think is I think that's fair and I think that there are national security arguments you can use for tariffs. Uh Trump very rarely makes these. He usually makes economic arguments for it. But in the world that you're talking about, they would say you you'd say we'll probably pay a little bit more for this, but it's probably worth it for the national security implications and I could agree with some of that for sure. Yeah. That's not an across-the-board tariff though. I agree. So so where are we going with this? Across the board is that Kamala is suggesting the tax on unrealized gains, which I'll bet you here and now we can bet, you know, $5,000, $10,000 will never happen because it's such a stupid policy. All forms of wealth tax, financial transaction tax, unrealized gain taxes are untenable for a billion different reasons. Okay? So I know it won't happen. Um even Okay, even if she might have flirted with the idea. I don't know how much she talked about it now, but so we're we're saying that she will do that. We're cuz generally concerned about that. But we're not generally concerned about Trump doing the only economic policy that he's given that he's basically running on, that he's shown indications of and has done a little bit in the past. Because one, I've seen what four years under Trump looks like and so for everything that you care about. It was horrible. He spent like crazy, printed money like crazy. Yeah, he did. On that, they're both But he did that in in a time of economic uh uh uh prosperity. Yeah. So why would we ever expect him to buckle down? He But then he's just going to keep spending. Correct. Remember, if you try to map me as somebody who's going to bat for Trump, you're always going to be confused. Okay. If you go, "Whoa, this is weird. Tom is even though Trump has all this scary like what the Uh he's still more scared of Kamala Harris. What the How is that possible?" That becomes if somebody's trying to map my mind, if they keep going to Tom loves Trump, that isn't true. No one has ever heard me go to bed and be like, "Oh my god, he's man, I'm so excited." That I'm just saying So inflation and money printing, you don't actually care about that then. Money printing and inflation I care about so deeply. If I thought Kamala Harris would do less of it, I'd be voting for Kamala Harris. But okay, but the fact that Donald Trump was willing to have the largest deficits in US history in times of economic prosperity. Yep. And the fact that he tried to pressure the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low, and he said he'll do it again. All of these things lead to inflation and more money circulation. Absolute insanity. But you think the Democrats will do it worse even though they haven't talked about pressure in the Fed to keep rates low. They haven't talked about Which one will be worse, I won't even say. I As I look at them both, I just say the way that they think about the government is very different. So you've got Trump on one side who is bringing in Elon Musk, uh trying to get more efficient, very open to reducing taxes. survives on government subsidies and contracts is important to keep in mind, right? Okay, why does that matter? Because the government is printing money to subsidize an industry, right? Sure. So he's the guy that's going to come in now and be in the government to make it more efficient. he'll make it efficient with a wild slant of things to do. I don't think he would make it efficient. I don't know if he knows how to make a company run efficiently because he survives on government subsidies and contracts. He's not competing with Like SpaceX and the things to attack him on, not knowing how to run a company efficiently would not be the one. driven X into the ground completely. Number one, I think every Nobody evaluates or evaluates that company as the same worth that it was before, and he's doing so floating tremendous debt doing it. Number one, we can say that that was like a pet project for the media or whatever. Um SpaceX is an awesome company, but who's their competition? The Virgin Atlantic or the Jeff Bezos? Like they don't really have competition. Physics. Shh. That's fine, but physics is not a company. But I'm saying that SpaceX so ungenerous. Like saying that if you want to say like, "Here's a guy that can take a company make it run efficiently." And then you show me a guy whose the majority of his funding is through government subsidies and government contracts. Well, how efficient does he have to be? He has to make a product, but does he have to do it efficiently? I'll say this. I've My first company sold both to consumers and to the government. And selling to the government was so hard that I was like, "Oh my god, like don't even talk to me about that anymore. I just want to sell directly to consumers." So, that one is not easier. I would say that's harder. This is a guy who the government, judging by all the lawsuits, is not exactly a big fan of Elon. And yet, his service is so much better that he's still able to unlock those dollars. That's how I would look at it. And then just just as an entrepreneur, dude, running one company is brutally difficult. It is so sobering. As I try to launch a video game company, I think, "Oh my gosh, this is so hard. I can't believe I'm doing anything this difficult." And then I look at he catches a skyscraper with chopsticks. It's like it What he's done from an engineering perspective, both in SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company. disagree with anything you're saying. Just none of that has anything to do with efficiency. Oh, god. That's where we disagree. To So, I have a may not be the right place to take this conversation. It will be fun. No, we'll bring it back around to where we were going. So, when I'm teaching entrepreneurs or when I'm talking to my own staff, I am trying to orient everybody to what I call the chaos machine. It's the second law of thermodynamics. So, in a closed system, everything moves towards entropy, and the only way to bring order to that system is to pour energy into it. So, the energy into the system is exceedingly difficult. And to build one successful company ever is brutally difficult. To do it two, three, four, five, I forget how many billion-dollar companies he's created. It's a lot. It's like seven or eight. It it is literally unprecedented, certainly in any of our lifetimes. It may be unprecedented, full stop. And what are the seven? I I thought it was two. No, no. So, he's done I did um PayPal. That's he did that. That was not a billion-dollar valuation when he sold it. And the product wasn't even the same. PayPal I guess not There's no credit card right? So, I know we've got Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, I'm pretty sure crossed a billion. When they When we say crossed a billion, is this like net like valuation? With how much personal money poured into it? Because like let's say like I have a company with a billion-dollar valuation, but I've invested like 1.5 billion in capital assets, expenses, and everything else. I don't know how impressive that is. Like does The Boring Company even have a product they sell yet? Let me ask the question a slightly different way. Go. Okay, yeah. Um you have an opportunity to um co-found a company with any entrepreneur in the world. Mhm. And if the company fails, you and everyone you love die, who is the entrepreneur that you go, I want to found this company with this person? Without knowing much about like their business backgrounds, my guesses would probably be either Gates or Bezos. Um Bezos has worked a long time. He's built Amazon to like this Yeah, he's amazing. another country crazy thing. Elon Musk has had an atrocious track record recently with Twitter with the money that he's loaned out for it, um and and everything else. And I don't know like the you I mean you said yourself the difference between SpaceX succeeding and failing might have been somebody in government saying, I don't think we should invest in this and now the whole company gets the plug pulled on it. Um yeah. Yeah, I think though so this goes back to engineering and efficiency. So Bezos not a terrible choice, by the way. He's amazing. But when you look at he's trying to do Blue Origin. Obviously has not been able to keep up with Elon, not not by even a fraction. Elon did a hundred launches, I think this month. It's It is truly spectacular. Anyway, Yeah. uh this like I often see you ask people orienting questions. I'm certainly not trying to persuade you or for whatever reason it does not ring true to you that he is an extraordinary entrepreneur. to be clear, I think Tesla and SpaceX are awesome companies. I like that we can launch American rockets now to put American astronauts into space instead of shooting them over to Russia and doing it. I think that's really cool. It's just it's interesting to me um people will talk about things differently depending upon the political orientation of the subject matter, I guess. And when I look at something like SpaceX and I look at something like Tesla, in my mind these are amazing examples of social democracy. That Tesla doesn't exist without massive government subsidy. That's just a fact. SpaceX doesn't exist without massive government subsidy. That's just a fact. That doesn't take away anything from those companies. I think that's an amazing example of Like in the beginning of this you asked me why I thought America was an awesome country and I think that SpaceX and Tesla I think are examples of why America's so cool. You've got a foreign investor from South Africa who looked at the United States and he said that because of the talent here, because of the land and real estate here, and because of the government's willingness to participate here, I'm going to come here and I'm going to build and and jump-start two of like the coolest companies in the world um that are pushing ahead electric vehicles by 10 or 20 years, that are pushing ahead America's space program an infinite number of years. had nothing slated for it. And but I think that's the confluence of a whole bunch of other things. But to I know what you're saying you're not necessarily saying this, but just saying like oh that's just basically an efficient capitalist uh in a pure capital free market environment we wouldn't even know who Elon Musk is. It's interesting. So I think that's false for one very simple reason and one company that we forgot was Starlink. What makes Elon interesting and the thing that I hope he's remembered for far more than the revenue that he's generated is he did all of this by becoming an extraordinary engineer. And because he's such a gifted engineer and because he is such an efficient entrepreneur, he's able to make these things at scale. And I think the thing that he probably doesn't get enough credit for is just the facilities that he's been able to build. Sleeping on them for months on the floor of them for months at a time to make sure that they get everything right. Just the level of I I have built a manufacturing facility. I know very much first hand that is obscenely difficult. And looking at the level of complexity of what he's done as somebody who's done a minor version of that, I'm just like holy hell. And the fact that he did it at the same time across multiple companies is crazy. Even if it was government subsidies that allowed him to do it, you could give government subsidies to virtually anybody on planet Earth and they're not going to be able to pull off what he pulled off simply because he has learned engineering, self-taught for most of it. Uh just it's unbelievable. And that to me somebody like that that can come in and say what you will, maybe he has forever ruined the value of X. I would say I wouldn't cash that chip yet. Um but for him to come in and remove 80% of the staff and be able to turn out more features, not more revenue, I get that, but more features is very impressive. And when I think about what's going on in the government in terms of the sort of Lilliputian strings tying you down through regulation, that's somebody who came in and said, "Okay, wait a second. I know how to make this more efficiently more efficient to get more done with less, which is precisely how I think he's going to be looking at the government." Now, it remains to be seen whether he is just doing it so he can angle everything towards himself and there's a human tendency to do that. And so if he does it, him. But if he really does come in with a sincere desire to unlock other entrepreneurs, more innovation, to make this the place that you're describing, um that would be amazing. Okay. I guess we'll see what happens. Maybe uh Yeah, I wouldn't bet on that. Okay, I'm curious uh in walking through a few things. Stop me if you Yeah, if you want to move past. No, go for it. So do you agree Okay, so how do we lay out things that I know to be true and we see how much we line up or agree. So uh prior to the 2020 election, Donald Trump was telling people for a year leading up to it, he was telling people explicitly that mail-in ballots were going to be rigged. He didn't give any suggestions on how to make them more secure, and he was encouraging his voter base to vote in person on the day of. Do you accept those three things as true? Sure. Okay. We know that there have been leaked calls now of Steve Bannon and Roger Stone saying that the plan on election night is he's probably just going to claim that he won that night because we know that as the night goes on, as the mail-in votes are counted, that it's going to start to swing the other way, and it might even be enough to make him lose in some states that it looks like he's winning on, okay? Are you familiar with those two leaked calls? Yep. Okay. We know that there were a plethora of people, including uh people like Steppien, like people in Trump's campaign, um people on the media, famously uh Bernie Sanders was on I think Jimmy Kimmel or um Fallon or whatever, and and Jimmy um uh Sanders was saying that, "Hey, um uh Bernie Sanders was saying, "We know that on the election night it might look one way, but as the mail-in votes come in, it's going to start to change." Okay, right? Do you remember all of this? All of this talk, yeah, okay. All of this talk, okay. I've watched plenty of Destiny streams. Sure, okay. All of this happened, and then rolling up to the night of the election, everything plays out exactly as everybody had said for a year beforehand. It looks like states are one way, um but then as the mail-in votes start to come in, some things look like it might go another way. Very famously, and to the chagrin of Trump and his inner camp, um Fox News calls Arizona early for Biden with a lot of votes outstanding. Trump goes into a fury, and then later that night he comes out and he says he won the election, there was rampant voter fraud, fraud, he's not going to let anybody steal the election from him. Do you think that when he made that statement at that point in time, do you think he had any evidence whatsoever that voter fraud had happened? Uh evidence, probably not. Do I think that he believed it? Yes. Why would he believe that? So, for 4 years he was attacked from every direction that you can be attacked. Now, imagine there's one possibility that he's just a lunatic and nobody wants to work for him because rightly so he's a lunatic and who would want to be around him or that from his perspective I'm a good guy just trying to do right by the American people and I've got all these deep state operatives that want things to stay the way that they've always been and they're not and so I've got all these guys constantly betraying me and this sucks and now I can't trust anybody and so everything from the fact that um the media is lying about me always trying to frame me in a disingenuous way um and I don't know who I can trust even people that I was told I could trust I clearly can't trust I don't trust the agencies like I've I've really been assailed and so now he's getting into again I'm I'm guessing here I don't know that any of this is true but getting into like a paranoid defensive posture and that things just played out like that because he really believed that this was designed from the ground up there's no way that they're going to let me win Let's say that you grant you all of that you've described like a paranoid narcissist why would you ever want that person with the keys to the presidency? Again you're I'm never going to make sense to you if you think I want that person to be president Well but why this feels like what everything you've described so far like here I'm curious who do you think has been attacked more um in their life of public service Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Um well just cuz she's been in it longer Hillary Clinton Donald Trump or Barack Obama? That one I just am blind to I just don't know Barack Obama didn't have a Supreme Court pick first time in US history because of the Republican Congress because McConnell said he was going to make him a one-term president and they weren't going to pass anything through Yeah that's trash Okay So I I think that for Donald Trump to have this the whole world was with um Obama Sure but to be fair also Donald Trump Donald Trump the his fans do a thing with him that drives them crazy cuz I see some people do this thing um So I have a I would say now I've chilled out a bit but I have have very particular personality um I can come off as very blunt, rash, or kind of an to some people. And when people say when people ask me like, "Oh, why do you think that you, you know, maybe I everybody isn't as friendly with you as they could be or whatever." My answer is, I have a very blunt, rash personality. Like, not everybody's going to like me. I understand that. But, I accept that. Okay? There's another type of character that's similar to that what I just described myself as where they go, "Oh, I guess people just can't handle the truth. I guess people just can't handle me at my, you know, because I'm a little bit edgy or whatever, right?" And that person is delusional. When I see a person like that, I say like, "Oh, you're just a child. You haven't grown up yet. You don't realize that. When you act like a piece of nobody's going to like you, right?" Now, you can be a piece of and accept that people won't like you for it, which is fine. Um, I think that person is way more grounded. But, Donald Trump intentionally came in making enemy out of every single part of the government and out of every single country in the world and out of half the country. So, why does he get to use that excuse that well, everybody's mean to me when he came in screaming about draining the swamp, screaming about how evil the government is, screaming about how the media's the enemy of the people, screaming about how all these other countries are ripping us off, screaming about how NATO was horrible and terrible, screaming about how everybody was ripping us off in trade. Like, well, wouldn't you expect them to fight with everybody? Isn't that like you're setting yourself up? Like, isn't that your own fault? And more importantly, if you were a business person, wouldn't you know this? Yeah, all of it. So, the thing that I hope to do in this cuz again, remember I'm trying to be persuasive, but I'm not trying to persuade. Sure. Uh, all I want is to map out how some people can look at all of those things and go, "Yeah, but I'm still there." And where the breaking point would be for me, just speaking as one person, what would break me over. But, like looking at all that stuff, yeah, problems he created for himself. He literally every time he talks, I'm like, "What the are you doing?" The first four years, I was trying my best not to pay attention at all because everything just like gave me the heebie-jeebies. Literally, I remember the night before he got elected in 2016, my staff was freaking out. And I was like, "Guys, he said grab them in the He will never get elected. You can all just go home and relax." Like it did not He just seemed completely unelectable, not the type of personality that would ever work. But whether or not he gets to dodge the consequences of that is irrelevant. It's just we're living in a world where people believe that he believed it or even more amped up for his side, they also believe it. And so that's where I think you end up going, "Yeah, exactly. That's why we can't have people lying all the time. We can't have all this dis- disinformation." And that's why I wanted to present to you that the vast majority of the information that I've taken in around January 6th and all that is from you. And I find you incredibly compelling. So then what So okay, so then if So if on the night of he said it was rigged, he had no reason to or he had no evidence at least to think that. Maybe he had a thought in his mind. For the next few weeks he goes to his Department of Justice, he goes to Barr, he goes to the FBI, he starts making phone calls to the states, he starts having Giuliani, Powell launch all these lawsuits. Every single area where they try to turn up voter fraud, they either get nothing. He's either directly rebuked by Barr, um by his own agencies, by his own people, or the court cases that they end up filing are all blatant lies of which now we've seen lawsuits that have proven that. At what point can he see and he's like, "Okay, Maybe I did lose this." Or is he allowed in your mind to have such a strong delusion that he won the election that we were going to always assume that he's sincere in that, but he maybe he's legitimately like a some kind of mental illness or he's actually like so delusional he's resistant to all outside pressure. Like I'm just cu- cuz it seems it seems in a world where I could remove half the evidence, I feel like I could have a debate over whether or not he really thought he won or not, but there's so much overwhelming evidence that nobody told him that he won. There was no good reason to think he did. All of the cases failed in every area. Everything was coming up as All the attorneys working for him are now like like disbarred or sued or settled. Like at what point and he still thinks he won the 2020 election. Like this is a guy that I want to have the keys to the nuclear button. the guy you don't want. Um so here's how this this gets complicated and so people are certainly going to get weird. I'm sure with what I'm about to say, but this is how the world works. So certainly in business for you to succeed, you have to have three traits. One, you have to just have an absolute belief in yourself that you can get it done. You have to have a crushing fear that you're not good enough and you have to have the ability to postpone gratification. And so people that succeed and I know you don't believe in his success. You don't believe in Elon Musk's success in business. You definitely not going to believe in Elon I To be fair, I do believe in his success in business, but a lot of it happened not because of efficiency, but because he worked alongside government like subsidies and stuff, which I think is great. It's tremendous. It's good. Well, we'll agree to disagree. disagree. That's fine. That's all. Uh so Trump has if he if his business life has been like so many other entrepreneurs before him that you get where you get because you're the guy that never takes no. You find that answer. Now, I'm always careful when I'm teaching entrepreneurs that you have to have a code of ethics. Everything has to be inside that code of ethics. Now, I will not speak to whether he has them, whether he abides by them, but you do learn pretty fast that there is often a path while very hard that if you just keep asking like how do we get there? What what is the thing that we can do to find a path through this what seems impossible to everybody else there probably is a way. Now, if he really believes that he's on the side of justice and he really believes that he's correct, then it's like, yeah, you want somebody to keep fighting, to keep pushing, to keep doing these very difficult things. And if you've ever read about JFK, one of the things that's, you know, despite all of his personal and moral flaws, one thing that's very impressive is this guy really took on the establishment. He ends up getting killed for it, but it's it's very impressive how he begins to understand how all the different pieces work, who's working against him and all that, and he just keeps saying, there's going to be a way, there's going to be a way, there's going to be a way, and he ends up being like the moral guy you always pray for right when it counted most. I mean, just really, really extraordinary. But everybody was telling him, you've got to preemptively strike. There's no other way out of this. And so, I fully understand that most people will read Trump's, or if they're not on Trump's side, they will read that as there was something dark, there was something ugly happening to him doing that. But it is that impulse of the person that ends up being very successful that just keeps saying, there is a way to get to the positive outcome here. Why are we not worried that he could think that that way is through nuking an enemy? Yeah, he could, man, and this is where it gets terrifying. This is what I want people to understand. These are high-stakes games. They are absolutely just unnerving, and we are living at a moment that I'm super freaked out by, but I have a personal belief that you shouldn't do a preemptive strike. And so, you have to let people vote, you have to do everything you can to secure the election, you have to do the peaceful transfer of power, even if you smell a rat. Like, you you have to let these things play out. And and and I hate to say this because I'm just not this guy, but like, I think people ought to, I use that as a moral imperative, peaceful transfer of power, but if it really does then devolve into like, now we're going towards tyranny, that's where the Second Amendment comes in, you hunker down, and you get ready to resist. Okay, I guess then So, then I guess like tossing that then I So, what what exactly is this like catastrophic outcome that you're so worried about I guess on for Kamala's presidency? Okay, so the thing that leads to tyranny, uh there's a a trilogy of books that that I read that really began to shape my sense of how you end up with a tyrannical government and just how bad tyranny is. Mhm. And uh those three books are Mao: The Unknown Story, um The Gulag Archipelago, and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. And when you read those back-to-back, it's like, "Yo, there are all these marks along the way that you see start getting stripped away. Uh freedom of speech, freedom of the press, uh ability to um protest." Like they just I'm curious, when you look at who attacks speech and press the most, you think that Democrats, you think Kamala would be more against that then? One, I think Kamala is a figurehead for a um I wish I had a non-offensive word for it, but a blob that I it is a thing that was is running the country when you have a president that clearly is not up to the task psychologically. Um and I that is exactly how changes get made. I'm going to try to explain something real fast unless Sure. Okay. Um I I don't know how to say this well yet, so bear with me and please push on it if something seems weak. The reason that I am so morally outraged, and it may be the only thing that morally outrages me, but the reason I'm so morally outraged by printing money is that printing money is a taxation where they don't have to get you to vote on it. So, without your permission, they can take your money. I will call that theft. It is a confusing enough thing that people don't realize that it's actually happening, but it's happening and it's happening fast, and it is immoral in my opinion. And they go in and do it because there's there's just nothing for people to hold on to. They don't know what to point to until it's too late where they're like, "The cost of bread is too high." But a very nefarious thing was going on for a very long time. And there's a very known thing to do that you can do to stop it, like peg your currency to gold or one day when Bitcoin is a boring asset class that isn't highly volatile, like it can't be inflated. Gold inflates roughly 2% a year, but anyway, you get the idea. the economy be better if we had a gold standard? Yes. Okay, the answer's not even close. It would be catastrophic. It would be the end of the world. It would be the most destructive and damaging thing you could ever do. happen if we switched over like that. matter. There's a reason why no Why do you think no country in the world doesn't utilize central banking principles? Do you think everybody's making the wrong choice? Yes. I think everybody is okay with the debt cycle, and the debt cycle ends in so much blood and despair. Everyone just hopes it doesn't happen to them. What hasn't the debt cycle produced or sorry, almost look beyond if it weren't for the fact that the whole time they're stealing your money from you, and they create and this is the thing that I'm actually railing against and I'm morally outraged by. The average person is never going to get to understand the stock market, and stop asking them to. Stop turning everybody into a gambler, which is what they're doing now because you are going to lose. All of the sudden you realize if I save my money, I'm losing money. I don't know why, I don't know how, but suddenly groceries are getting more expensive, and so people just know saving your money isn't going to work, and it won't work. And the second you make it such that people cannot save their money, you have done something, in my opinion, that is completely immoral. So, you have to give people, even if you want to with the fiat currency, you have to give them a way that they can save their money that can't be inflated. And right now, they don't understand that they need to go buy gold. They don't understand that they need to go buy crypto. So, I'm trying to protect the average person that is never going to figure that stuff out. And so, up until 1971, or dollar was pegged to gold. And hey, we were doing just fine until we broke that and people look at the stock market and they're like, bro, but the stock market's up. Just put your money in a 401k, you're going to be fine. No, you're not. You're just keeping pace with inflation for the most part. There are some nuance there that we could get into later. that's not even close, right? Misery index inflation is approximately like Just see the misery index? Uh misery index would be your portfolio gains less inflation is I think about like 7%. Like your annual historic average returns on a market should be around 10%. Inflation should be around like two, 2.5, I think, right? You're not just keeping up with inflation if you're broadly invested. Inflation should be zero. In fact, it should be going in the opposite direction. Deflation? Yeah. Okay. So, you think deflation would break the economy? the economy. It'd utterly devastate us, yeah. So, There's not a single country or economist in the world that disagrees with me who's reputable. There's a reason why no country on the planet aims for a deflationary cycle or aims for like having a gold standard back in their currency. Okay. Well, first of all, you look at the amount of gold that's being purchased right now by BRICS and China Well, China's part of BRICS anyway. Uh it will be interesting to see if they are moving to something that is going to be pegged because if you don't, what ends up happening with fiat currency is you inflate it to high heaven and it collapses. Always and forever. You can look back in history. Never once has any currency not gone to zero. So, the fact that that is true, everyone is just hoping, hey, I hope it doesn't happen to me. But again, what I want to focus everybody on is you are turning everybody into gamblers. You have to gamble to beat inflation. The stock market is a gamble. And right now, the stock market is driven by roughly seven stocks. Seven stocks and the devaluation of the dollar. It is largely the devaluation of the dollar that makes it seem like the stock market is going up. You don't think that You don't think there's real value being created by any of the companies in the United States? Yeah, for sure. You think the majority of the appreciation of somebody's portfolio that's broadly invested in the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq is just inflationary? correct. For sure. Yes. But our inflation is not as bad as all the other countries, so that's why it seems like cuz why is it the case then that the USD is like so strong? It's like at a I think a 20-year high against the euro. Why is the USD is everybody else just inflating even more? That is part of it. Yes. And they're not the world's reserve currency, so we're able to distribute that out to the rest of the world, but it won't last forever. China is beginning to ditch their USD. They will keep doing that. BRICS is gaining momentum. Will it take 10 years, 50 years? I don't know, but it's probably not going to take much more than that. And our debt continues to just be absolutely outrageous and you're going to have to print at a faster and faster level in order to make good on just servicing the debt. We're servicing the debt in like 7 years or something ends up being all of our GDP. It's literally insane. The only hope we have You have two ways to get out of this. War where enough people die, you can just tip over the table. Everybody's in so much pain that you finally just say debt jubilee everybody. But again, that came with a whole lot of bloodshed, but that's normally how things transition. So, like that's how the British pound lost all of its worth is hey, the US and a bunch of other countries had to help bail them out and so they just had so much debt that they stopped being the reserve currency. It got handed off to the US. So, yeah, it's very possible that we end up in some gigantic conflict let's say. The war is so painful. At the end of it everybody's just so exhausted and maybe we win, maybe we don't, but you have this debt jubilee and all is forgiven and it is a bloodbath. All bad. When you hear the word jubilee, it sounds like it's good, but it's actually an absolute atrocity. And the people that get mowed over are the people that didn't know enough about finances to be protected from any of that. And so, but they're just so exhausted, they give up. Or they were all the ones that got sent to the front line and killed anyway. So, I mean this This is one of those you can look at the debt cycle over and over and over over the last 500 years with like freakish degree of clarity thanks to Ray Dalio and just see this is the game they play. Why do you think I'm just curious on a personal level, why do you think that no other country has figured this out and switched to like a gold standard or like stopped with central banking practice? reason that people will always pursue fame, they'll pursue wealth. Uh it works. It works until it doesn't. And so my big pitch, I'm not even saying stop having a fiat currency. If you want to do that and people want to opt into that system, great. But make sure that you give people a way to get their money out. I hate when people call crypto a lifeboat because if you're thinking about the Titanic, not everybody gets in the lifeboat. Uh but if people have that option, then okay. Now at least some people are going to be able to get out of this system when it collapses. Now, I don't know if it's going to collapse in 50 years or 100 years or 5 years. I've no idea. I'll put 5 years very very low. Which is why I don't do the preemptive strike thing. But if we could start, it's not going to be overnight. I think about the debt the way I think about climate change. You do not want to create a a solution that's worse than the problem. But you don't want to pretend that you don't have a problem. So we need to start being more efficient, start spending less money, start looking at whether it's going to be just being positive crypto, not having CBDCs, just giving people a way for people that are aware enough to begin pulling their money out of the stock market and all that stuff, getting it out of treasuries and bonds cuz the US could very much default at the rate that they're going. And cool. At least people that know what's going on can put a little bit away in something that can't be inflated. What do you think the ideally the US debt should be? I mean, the fantasy is that you have a surplus like we had in the '90s. But No, the US debt, not our deficit. Not our our year our budget deficit, but our debt. Do you think the debt should ideally be zero? Ooh, that's a good question. That might be to ask question I'm going to ask cuz I'm trapping, but the next question I'm going to ask is would you ever tell a business to run with zero debt? Yes. Really? Aggressively. No shot. Yes, way shot. When you were growing your, um, is it it's Quest, right? When you were growing Quest and you saw that you had a profitable thing and that if you expanded more that you could make more money, did you say, "I'm just going to wait until this store earns enough money so that I can put one payment on one other store and earn that?" Or did you like, "Well, we're going to grow. We're going to take We're going to borrow some money. We're going to expand this cuz we know that we can leverage." Do you not believe in leveraging or Uh, I believe that there are some people that are so good with leverage that they'll be able to do magical things. Mhm. And the way that I think about debt is it is high risk but high potential. The right way to think about debt is the following. So, what we did at Quest was at the very beginning when we realized, "Okay, we could really unlock some growth." Mhm. So, we took on something called mezzanine debt. It was an incredibly small amount because the what the person really wanted was equity. And we had the option to pay the debt back in a certain time period and if we could get out from under the debt, then we reduce the amount of equity that they got. Okay. And so, we paid the debt back very quickly and while they got some equity, we kept it very, very small. Then after that, we got a revolving line of credit. So, I could show a banker, "Look, I have this delay from when I have to buy the almonds, for instance, to when I get paid from the customer. I'm going to need to close that gap, but I've got 3 years of historicals and so, if you loan me that money, I pay a small vig on it and now I've just got this revolving door of credit Yeah. versus debt. So, Well, wait, what's the difference between credit and debt in your mind, I guess? In that the way that I'm thinking about credit is I know I'm going to pay it back. Like, I don't have any debt that carries on, let's say, more than 120 days, something like that. So, you constantly have somewhere between where we were half of that amount and the full amount and it was constantly going up and down, up and down based on what we were doing, but we had the level of profitability that there was nothing accruing. It was never getting bigger. So, I'll call it a line of credit when it's not when you're paying it off every month, essentially. I'll call it debt when it's like, "Oh god, I'm paying interest on this and I hope that I may be able to pay it off or something." was getting bigger, but it was always remaining the same like percentage of AR, correct? Yeah. I feel like when we look at debt for the US, people tend to look at it as an absolute figure rather than like as a percentage of GDP. I feel like it's a more fair way to look at it because if we have a debt of $1 trillion and a GDP of $100 trillion, you'd rather have that than a debt of $2 trillion with a GDP of like, you know, $20 trillion, right? It depends on what you're doing. If you have a balanced budget, but you've got to float somehow because you've got money due that is due before you've got the actual tax revenue coming in, sure. But, when you have something where you don't have a balanced budget, you are adding to the deficit in like extremely high numbers with rapidity. We add what, a trillion dollars every 100 days or something? I think we actually did it slightly faster than that recently. Um that is crazy. And that is quite literally robbing from future children. So, there is just going to be um there's going to come a day of reckoning. I I I just don't understand how people can't see that. Are you worried at all for the C- I think it's the CBO, I think the Congressional Budget Office puts out estimates and they think that like Donald Trump's economic plans would add over the next 4 years twice as much to the deficit as Kamala Harris's. Do you think that they're just terrible. being bi- Okay. I'll be terrible. Wait, so what is the single issue then that you're thinking Kamala would be worse on than Trump that like drives you towards a Trump voting direction? So, the economy broken up into debt as a huge part of it, money printing, uh and then the what I call wearing the dead flesh of a democracy. Jeez. Okay. I guess I'm just I'm I'm just The interesting part is I just I feel like feel like uh an obvious point where if his debt is going to be worse than just right there get out. The first thing that I have a huge problem with is um I legitimately don't think Donald Trump understands any of the figures that he's talking about. I don't I think that if you were to put a gun to his head and say, "Donald Trump, explain to me the difference between the budget deficit uh our um trade deficit and our national debt I don't think he would be able to explain what any of those three things are interchange I don't think he'd be able to give you the difference. Number one. Number two, when Donald Trump was in office and he was coming in off of an economy that was already running pretty well under Obama and then it was continued to run well under him and he spent spent spent spent spent even more. So, even when times are good, he's willing to spend more and run historically huge deficits. Um when a catastrophe happens for COVID, he people will argue whether or not he mismanaged it. I think arguably I think he did mismanage it in the beginning. I think he prepared us uh poorly for it by denying its existence and I think he prepared governors poorly for it. Um but I mean we can argue whatever, but undeniably he ran a huge budget deficit when he didn't have a reason to. He did a huge tax cut, which is more government spending and he didn't pair it with any spending cuts and he pressured the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates as low as possible. Um he did it publicly, privately he just admitted recently that he did it privately and he'll say more when he comes back into office, he'll do it um publicly and privately. He said, "I'm going to pressure them to keep interest rates low." And then he's talking about tariffs broad tariffs over the whole market. Now, you're saying maybe he won't do it, maybe he'll just do some. Every single action here that he's talking about and every single action that he did is deficit increasing and spending increasing with uh no paired uh revenue raising things. He's talked about ways that would decrease the revenue. So, things like tariffs would be decreasing the revenue and he's talking about things that would increase the cost of of goods and services, which is inflationary um like tariffs or or um yeah, but I mean tariffs are the real big one. So, I just I don't ever see how Donald Trump is the guy for anything having to do with money printing, spending, dev I just it seems like he's and I don't even to be to be super blunt I'm probably to the right of Kamala when it comes to economic stuff. So I'm not even fully on board with a lot of her plans, but just even in terms of spending I feel like Donald Trump is just his track record is worse. So for me thinking back to what did it look like for people on the lower income bracket when he was president their wages were going up which is certainly very encouraging. Obviously COVID becomes this major disruption that maybe is all his fault and then we should be accounting for that. That isn't my think it's all his fault to be clear, but But so you've got that like just thinking back to how were things for those four years not only for myself but for the demographic that I really want to see protected and then when I look at the policies that Kamala is putting forward they are very much all like giving money giving money. I don't I'm not sure where she's at on the college debt forgiveness, but certainly she hasn't made any distinctions between her and Biden Biden was pushing that hard. So you've got that just giving money away for that. You've got new home ownership giving money away for that. The child tax credit giving money away for that and some of the that one specifically like I would love to find a trade-off that we could do so that we could afford to do that cuz that kind of thing I think is great. But when I look at what what is the default answer for the the Democratic stance it's more government. And that's the the default stance that I think ultimately yields something that is going to be more terrifying over time because the the base assumption upon which their ideology is built is more government is better. To be clear protectionist is the most government you could ever do is anti-free trade. That is like the hardest government intervention. Like if I were to grab a libertarian back from 2006 and I was like, "Hey, what do you think about protectionism tariffs?" Their minds would explode. Like protectionism, tariffs, and heavy immigration enforcement are the least free market, most big government, most protectionist things you can do. Yep. So, one, again, this is not me saying, "Hey, Trump has the plan for me." Well, I'm just I'm comparing the two. I'm just comparing the yeah. So, the reason that I think ultimately, even though Lord knows I do not expect him to knock my socks off, is again, one, going back, I've had four years with him, it wasn't insane. Two, that I think the impulse to onshore certain things is makes a lot of sense to me and is very important from a national security standpoint. I have to I think we have to be thoughtful about that. Again, if he does tariffs across the board, then I'll be like, that was stupid. And in no uncertain terms, that I'm sure would have a massive detrimental impact on the economy and I would be absolutely outraged. Uh and yeah, at that point you just have to go, "Well, what a fool am I?" Now, I'll be Could also be a tipping point, too. One thing that people say a lot is that if the tariffs were so bad, why didn't Biden get rid of all of them? A tariff is really hard to take down once it's put up because when a like if I want to say, "Fuck Tom, okay? If you want to do my podcast, I'm charging you $1,000 ever." And you're like, "Okay, well, it." I can do that very easily. I can say that amount. Well, let's say you're like, "Okay, well, you. If anybody in your group wants to be on my podcast, I'm also charging them $1,000." When we have a bilateral tariff up, well, now I can't just drop mine because now you're going to be destroying me, right? I have to engage in negotiations with you and we have to slowly work to bring these down together in order to ensure fairness between our markets. So, it's very easy to throw up a tariff, but it's a lot harder cuz you've got to negotiate to bring them down. So, if Donald Trump does come up and he's like, "Fucking 20% tariffs on everything, let's go." And now the rest of the world is like, "Okay, well, America." If we start to recede as a result of that and something like BRICS for instance starts to increase as a result of that, now we're struggling, you're like the UK is. We'd be struggling to like, okay, hold on, let's try to take on these tariffs while BRICS or some other, you know, the EU is is is starting to capitalize on our losses and now we've kind of like lost a footing and to regain it is going to be a very tricky game. We are the largest economy in the world, so there's going to be a fair amount of buffer there that we'll be able to deal with unless again he does something moronic like across everything tariffs, that becomes a totally different game. Um but yeah, the default answer of more government spending, more government programs, um that that default stance is the thing that worries me versus and again, maybe this is signaling and and it ends up not being true and maybe uh Elon and Trump end up hating each other and Elon's like, I can't work with this guy and pieces out and no efficiency is brought. Uh but right now between the um the things that I've seen Elon do out in the real world, the idea that he's going to be able to apply that inside the government, um that is very enticing. Again, because I see the very thing that he is unbelievably good at is getting efficiency, getting a large group of people to do very difficult and complicated tasks uh working together. So, we'll see. This this is all going to play out in real time. Uh the only thing I won't do is double down. If this ends up being wrong and and we'll never have the counterfactual, but hey, if this doesn't go somewhere positive I'll be like, well, that was a mistake. Okay. All right. So, if you somebody who I think is extremely compelling at this stuff, Mhm. um if you had a chance to make your case for why people should ignore the out of me and vote for Kamala Harris, what would the pitch be? Um the problem is that like all of these things are like there's a lot of things that intuitively sound really good and they require a bit more examination and then I think they sound a lot worse and to argue in favor of each of those things is just incredibly difficult. Um I can give you two examples off the top of my head. Do you think it's better to have a stronger currency or a weaker currency? Stronger. Okay. I think intuitively that feels incredibly true. The actual answer is it depends on your economy. So if you're in the European Union you want to join the um it's Eurozone or the European Economic Opportunity whatever if you if you're part of the Euro, right? It's hard to join the Euro because you lose the ability to control your currency. A stronger currency is really good for your import market. Uh stronger currency is really bad for your export market. A weaker currency um is really good for your export market but it's bad for your import market. So in times where you might want to export a whole bunch more having a weaker currency is better but in times where you want to import a whole lot more having a stronger currency is better. This is one of the reasons why central banks exist to give you the ability to kind of control your currency based upon what your current economy is doing cuz there might be times where you want to export a bunch there might be times you want to import a bunch. So having a really strong USD for instance is really fun when you go to travel around the world or whatever cuz it's like holy my dollar is going so far. Hey you got a Euro I got a dollar they're almost one to one now. But when you're trying to sell things to other people in the world they're like bro I can't afford your I'm sorry but the USD is way too strong right now like I'm buying less from you. It hurts you. Um so that's like an unintuitive way that stronger and weaker currency isn't necessarily better or worse they just like excel at different things and I'm sure there will be people posting for there's probably a ton of there's a lot of nuance in there and ways that it can be better ways it can be worse but that's one thing. Um manufacturing things at home. Would it be better to manufacture things here or manufacture things abroad? The intuitive answer is we should manufacture things here. Um the reality is is there is um there's only so many people that can do so many things, right? Um if you've got a guy here who's a computer programmer the only reason why he can be a computer programmer is because somebody put that computer together for him. The only reason the people that put the computer together were able to do it is because somebody was able to build the components. And then because somebody was able to refine the material. And then because somebody was able to mine the material, right? This requires a an amount of people that if we were to say we're going to do everything at home, okay, well, fine. You're probably going to have to scale back all of your processes like two or three or four steps because now you have to have people go to the earth and mine the material and then refine material and do that. You don't have people left to be computer programmers anymore. Sometimes it's good to export parts of your supply chain because it frees up your economy to do more productive labor. There's a reason why the American workforce is one of the most productive workforces in the world. Productivity is not a moral normative term. Productivity just means that for every um hour of labor, the unit of revenue or whatever that you produce is is is such a a figure. And because the United States workforce is so educated and because we work in so many like final stages of manufacturing, um Donald Trump made fun of it and he said we just put things together like Legos, but that is your highest value add of manufacturing. Again, can you name me a single company around the world that mines any of the materials for Tesla? Probably not, but we all know Tesla, right? We know we know Samsung, we know and these people are final manufacturers cuz that's like the most important part or one of the most important parts of manufacturing. Um so, that's like an example of like it's better sometimes to export parts of your supply chain. You don't want to do all of it. You want to do what you excel at, which is the most complicated, educated, whatever work. So, all that to say that when I'm looking at somebody like Kamala versus Donald Trump, I feel like Donald Trump has a very childish understanding of the economy. When he says things like I want to bring back manufacturing by throwing tariffs up everywhere, we don't want to bring back that manufacturing. We don't want it. We want our labor to be specialized into more productive and more profit generating things because we make more money doing it. It makes us a better, stronger country and it increases the total pie that's available for everybody to eat from. Um when Kamala Harris talks about crazy economic policies, some of which I think she kind of has, I trust that the Democratic Party can pull her back from the brink where it's like hey, this policy is horrible. Biden had a terrible debate performance from Donald Trump and there was pressure from the left-leaning media to get him to step down. There was pressure internally from the party to get him to step down and then when that didn't work, that pressure became external until he finally stepped back and he said fine, Kamala can run. When Donald Trump up, if anybody questions him, he exercises that person from the conservative party. He moves like an autocrat. I won't say the F word, the fascist word, but he moves like an autocrat. You're either with him or he will do everything he can to destroy your career. And he says it over and over and over again at every speech. I can't when he on the call to Raffensperger, he's talking about the governor of Georgia. I can't believe I helped this schmuck get elected cuz he wouldn't help him throw the election. There's a reason why every single person that's worked around Trump basically hates him now. Where is Where is his last vice president? Pence, right? Why are all of the people that are were in his last cabinet? Why you know, it's like 40 of these guys won't even vouch for him and support him anymore in the new administration. Like there's a reason why everybody around him doesn't like him. And he doesn't have like a comprehensive vision for the country that sounds like a mature statesman or economics understand or anything. Um, does it sounds like he just has like slogans. I I guess like my final like my final thing when I think about Donald Trump and I think about Trump, the thing that I think is the most interesting about Trump is I think Donald Trump his brand is his brand and it's very interesting to me. When I think of like the brand of a person, usually it stands for some good or service that they have. They are a coach, they make cars, they do whatever. But for Donald Trump, like and you can tell me because you've been richer way longer than I have. Uh, I'm in Omaha. I've never heard anybody say you got to have a Trump steak. Um, I've heard people call out specific hotels and stuff. I've never heard somebody say, you got to go to the Trump Tower and you that's the experience you need, right? His brand was just having a brand. And when I look at him as president and the and the policies and things that he advocates for, it feels the same way. We're just going to tariff everything and bring it all back. And I was like, that sounds good, but I think that's it just is wholly unrealistic. And then when I when I compare the time in office, like what did people say for Trump? Honest to God, when he was coming in, reasonable people I don't think would have said much would have happened. I think it was a worse than people expected. The immunity ruling from the Supreme Court is crazy. The January 6th stuff was insane. Um his his his COVID response was terrible. The BLM riots happened under him, even though some we like memory hole of this. All the lockdowns, the lack of coordination between the governors. Like, it wasn't the best time. And and somehow conservatives will say like, "Do you think you were better off 4 years ago?" 4 years ago we were all living under lockdowns. Do you not remember this? I don't think we were better off 4 years ago. Maybe 6 years ago. But also, if you look at at every metric for the economy, we were coming off of Obama Obama's economy, which was running really hot on his last term. But every time a a Democrat comes in, it's always on the back of some Republican catastrophe. Like, in 2007 2008, we had to come in Obama came in after George W. Bush had to laid waste Well, not I shouldn't blame him completely, but the whole housing crisis. And then Biden had to come in after um you know, after COVID and everything for that. But the um the actions in the government I think speak volumes, right? There's a reason why when Trump asked for that immunity ruling, not a single Republican is worried about what Biden will do because they don't think Biden will do anything. Um because Democrats wouldn't abuse their power in that way. So, I guess I wish that people would just look at like the actions in government and look at what the people have actually done and then what they say they're going to do. And I feel like the answer is just so clear. Like, we had 8 years of Obama and there is no communism or socialism. We had 4 years of Biden, we're still not communist or socialist. He didn't destroy everything. Um we had 4 years of Trump and we got, in my opinion, a handful of some of the worst Supreme Court rulings that I think are like a blemish on the court um that in the history of of United States judicial review. Um and then a guy that has convinced 80% of the Republican Party that the last three elections, the last two elections have all been fraudulent because Donald Trump doesn't believe in the results of the 2016 one as well. He also thinks he won the popular vote by 3 million illegals voted with no evidence. So, I guess broadly speaking, that would be my my spiel on it, yeah. It's pretty good. Awesome, man. I think you are an incredible voice in many spheres, but certainly the political. Where can people find you and follow along? Uh I'll be living in Venezuela. No, I'm just kidding. Uh I guess uh youtube.com/destiny, kick.com/destiny. Uh yeah, I'll be hanging out there. I love it. Well, guys, whether you agree or disagree with somebody, if they are well thought out, I think it goes a long way to forming your own opinions. So, spend some time with them. I cannot recommend highly enough spending more time with Destiny. And speaking of people you should spend time with, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you liked this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. What's up, guys? Tom Bilyeu here, and this week we're doing something a little bit different. With the election right around the corner, I wanted to do something special and really cut through the noise. So, we're bringing in some of the sharpest minds from both sides of the aisle to answer two simple questions.