What Does Trump’s Win Mean for YOU? Inflation, Debt, Immigration, Bitcoin, Abortion & AI

A lot of people wondering what a Trump victory means, especially given that he won the popular vote and the electoral vote, and we are going to talk about it today. Immigration, debt, inflation, Bitcoin, abortion, and AI. Let's get into it. Drew, welcome. I'm excited to be here. Are you? I am. I'm not sure if I get that from your face right now, Drew. I'm going to be honest. You know, it is what it is. I just I feel like it's nice to know. I like the anxiety when you think about nice to know nice to know what? Where the country is? Nice to know that it's over. The The votes are counted. Trump won. I I can I Now I can reframe my mind and I can live my life. But this Yeah, this is one of the important things, something that you and I talked about in a previous episode is run the thought experiment. So that it was easy enough, I think, for all of us to say, "Okay, wait a second. Right now I don't know. There's a ton of uncertainty." But run the thought experiment. If they got elected, then where does my emotion go after that? That way you understand at a visceral level what the stuff really matters to you. And so I think the way that people need to interpret this is this really is a referendum on the government and the way that we've been running it for the last 4 years, where people feel like, "Hey, wait a second. You're telling me that the job numbers are great. You're telling me that the economy is great, but when I go into the grocery store, it doesn't feel great. You're telling me to sit down and shut up. You're censoring my information. You're saying that these points of view can't even be heard." And I think a lot of people really felt disenfranchised by that. I think we have a banger clip to this effect. I'm interpreting the results tonight as the revenge of just a regular old working-class American, the anonymous American. They're not garbage. They're not Nazis. They're just regular people who get up and go to work every day and are trying to make a better life for their kids, and they feel like they have been told to just shut up. The revenge of the working class. Yeah, that's how it felt to me. I like that a lot. I think that's really a great way to characterize this. There's this whole notion of the country is ultimately run by elites and I think in many ways that is true. What we're witnessing though is the breakdown where there's finally an avenue in new media for people to talk about this, to be able to point to it, to say this is exactly what's happening, for people to be able to walk into a grocery store and film it and say, "This is absolutely insane. This is outrageous." For a song like uh Rich Men North of Richmond, for that to pop off and go hyper viral, there are ways for these voices that traditionally would never be able to get onto a major network to say their piece, they're able to go out and make known the way that they are thinking and feeling in this moment. And when you give people words to put to the thing that they're going through, or you give them a meme to capture how they feel, now you've really got something. And Elon tweeted out this morning, "You're the media now." And I think that understanding what that means, understanding guys that all of us are now able to say the things that we're thinking and feeling, and that becomes fodder for other people to organize their own thoughts. That ultimately is what gets me excited is I want people to have a way to think through these problems, to not be beholden to their emotions, to step outside of that and say, "Okay, hold on a second. Where am I trying to get to?" I want to be able to walk into a grocery store and buy things. I want to be able to take care of my family. I want to have a thriving middle class. And so that idea of the revenge of the working class really resonates with me because ultimately when you have a thriving middle class, when the economy is growing, when people feel like, "My kids' lives are going to be better than mine," you're in really good shape. That feels like if I had to really sum up what this moment is, it's, "Hey, I have been promised that if I do all of these things, go to school, get a good education, keep my head down, be a hard worker, that my kids' lives are going to be better than mine." And that just isn't coming true largely because whether the elites are sinister or not, um there is a sense that I know better than you. So, this is what I lovingly refer to as the dumb voter problem. Mhm. Every political party has to deal with the dumb voter. And so, do I believe that I know better than them? Or do I believe that we need to let all voices be heard? And I think the vote is that. There are people who still believe I should get to control what you think, what you see, what you say. And then there are other people that say, "Nah, you just got to let people speak and let the chips fall where they may." Where do we go from here? What what's next? All right. So, now this is getting elected, as crazy as the election was, getting elected is the easy part. Now, actually doing good policy that has positive outcomes is going to be difficult. And all kinds of people who were excited to see Trump get elected are now going to be like, "Hey, tick-tock, [ __ ] Like, where where are my prices coming down? Is this actually working?" Um is he going to lean into the crazier parts of his rhetoric or is he going to navigate like a moderate? So, now it's going to be rubber meets the road. He has said so many times, even as president-elect, "I'm going to be able to shut down the war in Ukraine." All right. Time to put up or shut up, right? And so, here's where I think we're going to see this is not going to be as easy as any politician wants you to believe when they're campaigning. So, please, boys and girls, do not forget that. Like, you got a lot of promises made, but now we want to actually make good. If we cannot make the middle class thrive, we are going to be back here in four years wildly divided. This really has to be a very clear metric. What are we going to do to ensure that wages are beginning to rise for the middle class, that people are feeling better about their lives? Because when they project out, they say life is going to be better for me a year, five years, 10 years from now than it is today. Life is going to be better for my kids than it is for me. So, that my kids when they're 20 are going to be better off than I was when I was 20. Now, if you can get the country to feel that based on grounded things in the real world, the price of gas, the price of bread, um job opportunities, am I getting promoted, what are the educational opportunities, how are we doing, where are we faring as a nation on KPIs that matter, things are going to be great and 4 years from now we're going to feel good and everybody's going to be um in a positive frame of mind. But, it has to be measurable things. And now it can't be campaign promises, it has to be things that are delivered on. And I think he's going to struggle. I think the American system is designed for it to be hard to push things through. So, we're about to find out whether he and this group of people that he's surrounded themselves with can build coalitions. And that to me is a huge question mark on Donald Trump. He certainly was not able to do that well first presidency. He's extraordinarily good at triggering people and dividing them. And so, that to me is the big question mark. Now, I'm a big believer in gridlock, so I'm not worried about that so much. Um I think it should be hard to get things through uh so that only a select few things get through. But, that's going to be the real question. Can we turn things around for the middle class, for working people in the country? Honestly, he has a a path ahead of him. He already won the Senate, he got the Senate, and it looks like he's going to get the house. So, he'll have complete control of the government. Not meaning that he can strip away constitutions or take away amendment rights. But, if there is a valid bill that needs to be passed, it should be no problem. If he did want to fund a war or remove funding from a war, it shouldn't be a problem. So, let's see if he actually brings RFK and Elon and Tulsi and Vivek and all these other people together and really put them in place to do something, because he doesn't have the resistance that typical people do when they get into office. Biden the last 2 years has been fighting the uphill battle. We all remember the classic Obama gridlock, so at least from now until 2026, it's all on Trump. If he does what he says he's going to do, if his plans are executed efficiently, he shouldn't have that resistance from the government. So, at this point it's a wait and see. Yeah, and now that sequence of words I wouldn't blame anybody for saying I have legitimate fears about that. And so I was saying before the election, the only thing I don't want is a judiciary, house, senate, and president all in alignment with one party. And so the fact that we've ended up there, I mean certainly I read as again the revenge of the working class. It's people speaking very clearly about this is not working for them. Young men have been just isolated beyond belief. Uh and so as somebody who I'm wildly apolitical, I just want results. I'm like, okay, there's like that's a message that's loud and clear. And let's make sure that we don't get lost in data that can be spun. And we also, cuz you do need that. You need the data. You need measurable things you can speak to. But you also need to go talk to people about like what is the experience on the ground? Where you at? And given the world of social media, this becomes easier than ever to get a pretty broad swath uh a sentiment that covers a pretty broad swath of people. Um but I think that's going to be very important that we be careful that having that kind of grease shoot can create problems. Let's take the emotion away from it. Let's take the feelings away from it. He won the popular vote, any one key battleground states. He got Wisconsin, PA, Georgia, North Carolina. Like these are usually the states that it takes 3:00 a.m. two recounts. We don't know when these votes are coming in. He was just picking them up one by one by one. And it as of right now, he's going to sweep the swing states. That's unheard of. And just to what the what the clip we just referenced, this was the first time in 20 years that a Republican won the popular vote. So they just say you know, that person's not smart enough or these are dumb voters. Like this is a clear indicator that this isn't he strategically beat them. He just had one good win and one good run. No, this is the country clearly saying, both on the popular vote numbers and on the Electoral College numbers, there's no hesitation, there's no doubting. They didn't want Kamala, they wanted Trump. Now, I want to say, when Trump speaks, it's a bit like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. But, I take this vote as a commentary on I don't want a slick politician. I don't want somebody who every line feels rehearsed. I want somebody that can sit down with Joe Rogan for 3 hours, shoot the [ __ ] say what they think, and not feel like, and this was the thing that freaked me out about the Democratic run at all of this. And I won't even say Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris always felt like a figurehead to a blob that I didn't know who they were, I didn't know what they wanted, and I think a lot of people feel that. They feel like I want a candidate that he might be a little loose cannon, but at least I know what he thinks. He's not afraid to go into the lion's den. He's not afraid to to have hard conversations. He's not afraid to pop off the top of his head. He is like He is like the world's worst freestyle rapper. Like, he will say whatever he thinks. Uh it doesn't often rhyme, but at least you can figure out how does his mind work. And I remember last time, I saw the whole thing where he was like, you know, is there going to be a way I don't think he said inject bleach. But, let's just say for a second that he literally said, "Is there a way to inject bleach into your vein and get this to work?" That's somebody who's trying to get down to first principles, okay? I'm not saying Trump is a super genius, but I am saying that's how these things work. Like, if you're trying to find a solution, whether you're so I I've done this as writers groups, you come in and you say, all right, dirty pitch, bad idea, whatever, and you just don't judge me right now. Let me just get the ideas out. Yeah. Um and so, he doesn't have that polish that people like from a politician, but you can see he's actually trying to figure out like, "Okay, wait. How does this connect to this? Is there going to be a way to do that?" And when you have somebody running through those hypotheses, as long as they're not on stage like rolling up their sleeve with a vial of bleach being like, "Well, let's find out." Or worse, rolling up somebody else's sleeve. Um, I think people want that. They want the just sort of naked he's just a dude. He's a dude with the gold toilets. But he talks like a guy. But this is this is I want people to interpret this. He Dude, he's a billionaire who could not be more detached from everybody else in terms of how he lives his life. I can't relate, okay? And I'm filthy rich. But the way that he talks, you feel like, "Oh, I'm actually talking to him. He actually runs the country." And there's I think profound unease that people have with the other alternative, which is totally buttoned up. But is there like if I peel away your flesh, like what's underneath? You know what I mean? And I think people are freaked out by that. I think you nailed it after the Rogan interview calling him like that uncle on Thanksgiving that like I don't see you stole from you. Yeah. Yes. I was trying to give you credit, Tom. well, I try never to take credit for something that's not mine. But yeah, the funny uncle that you think is a little unhinged, but It's like yeah, like ah, he's cool. All right, I'll see him in a couple months. Like he has gold toilets. He lives in a penthouse overlooking the Hudson. Like he is literally on an island. He's he's away from everybody. But yet he's more relatable to people in the middle in the middle of America. It's amazing. Bringing it back down to like grounded. I know there's a lot of headlines. There's a lot of news. There's a lot of emotions. I think Van Jones is crying on CNN again. really? He always cries. What I'm really trying to get to is like what does this actually mean? I know my Bitcoin is up. I'm excited for my crypto bros out there. I know Aiden Ross is excited after me winning that bet. out as well. Aiden Ross got shouted out by um uh oh god UFC Dana White. Oh Dana White, nice. So I I know a couple people are really happy but 50% of the country isn't happy. 50% of the country is worried about their reproductive rights. They're worried about if they're going to get raided. They're worried about if they're going to be out on the street. There's a lot of legitimate fears. So let's just ground it for a second. Hold on. Yeah. There's a lot of legitimate fears or there's a lot of fears? That I think Let's dig into that. Yeah, that's the real question. I think right now everybody has to write down. I would highly encourage you guys to write down. What is the North Star? What are you aiming at? Like for me it's very easy. If Trump doesn't get inflation under control, if he does not get the debt under control, if he doesn't go in and make the government more efficient, if he doesn't actually let RFK and a team of people go in and make America healthy again, it's it's nothing but a sea of red flags for me. If he comes in and he starts attacking political opponents, red flag. So there are things that you can mark and say, "Okay, wait a second. Are these things happening? Yes or no?" And if they are happening, then now all of a sudden all those fears were legitimate. But the whole idea of a preemptive strike is a mistake. Going in and assuming that this guy is going to act like Hitler when he's already been president for 4 years. He actually he says crazy rhetoric but he governs like a moderate. So I don't believe that we have reason to think that it's all going to break loose and it's going to get crazy. So write down the things that are the metrics by which you are going to judge success and failure. And then if you see things moving in the wrong direction, now it's like, "Okay, that fear is valid and you can start to lean into it." But when people just let it be this amorphous blob of I have a bad feeling and you said a bad thing and my friends are reacting, people can get themselves caught up in a stream of emotion that causes them to be completely blind to what's actually happening. And I'll give you an example. The thing that I worry about for people that are in the never Trump category is my two Pomeranians. Now, when we had one Pomeranian, it would bark, you would show it there's no problem, it would calm back down. When we decided we were going to get a second Pomeranian, I was like to my wife, "Hey, just so you know, what's going to happen is the first one's going to bark, the second one is then going to bark, and the first one's going to be like, 'Oh my god, there must really be a problem.'" But wait, the first one was the one that was like, "Is there a problem?" Then the second one chimed in, which convinced the first one, who no one would have barked in the first place had the first one not spoken up, to now think there's really a problem. This is what people mean when they say echo chamber. So, you get in there and you're just in this loop of like, "Is there a problem? There might be a problem. There is a problem cuz you just said something." And now it goes back and forth, back and forth. If you have a document that says these are the things that I'm actually worried about, and then it's like, "Okay, if we're moving towards that, now you can keep it about the facts, you can keep it about the data." This is how you don't blind yourself in a company where it's like, "There's a KPI associated with all of the big things we're trying to achieve, and we either are or are not moving towards them." If people can anchor themselves like that, we'll navigate this time well. If they can't, it's just pure emotion, it's going to be a nightmare. 100% well said. What do you think is next for the economy? Um I mean, we talked about the five different forces that are playing on it. Yeah, so I think Ray Dalio is just absolutely correct. And if you want to understand what's going on with society, you need to understand the big debt cycle. And so, if you look at the last 500 years, the rise and fall of these different empires is hyper predictable. You can map it out on a graph. And when you simplify the graphs, it's absurd how they just repeat and repeat and repeat. So, what's next for the economy is if you cannot get the debt under control, literally nothing else matters. And I don't know how to say that more directly. If we do not get the debt under control, this country is on a one-way path to destruction. We will lose our ability to have the reserve currency, that will become something else, almost certainly born out of BRICS, but we will lose that privilege. And as we lose that privilege, we will not be able to pay it for the things that right now we can just make money up out of thin air. We can um essentially socialize the costs for our own spending across all of the people that hold debt, including foreign nations. And so, it's an extremely privileged position. The problem is every single reserve currency throughout history has lost that privilege because of what we're doing right now. And if you look at the graph, the amount of debt that we have skyrockets into the sky, and it overlays almost perfectly with the amount of money printing that we're doing. And if we don't tame that beast, we're in trouble. So, this is why I think this is why for sure I'm excited about Elon Musk coming in, and the whole idea of the Department of Government Efficiency is you even though it will be very disruptive to anybody in the government that gets let go, you must, for the health of the entire organism that is the United States, you must get the debt under control. You must get an efficient return on your capital. And this is why mapping out what you actually want to see happen becomes critical. So, as we reduce expenses in the government, are we actually increasing GDP as one example? Because the hypothesis goes that as you free talent from the government where it is only able to spend other people's money, and it's not actually able to directly generate revenue, there are complications there about good uh government regulations, light regulations create the environment in which companies can thrive, but I want to remind everybody it's still you need companies to thrive. So, the way that the government sets things up is incredibly important and it matters a lot, but they don't directly generate revenue. They simply create the soil in which the economy of the the business generators in the world are able to thrive. So, as we back off expenses there and done well and Elon's thrown out ideas that I think are really they have potential. They're just ideas right now. Um as they do that, are we actually making things better for the middle class? And the more that we can simplify it and look at very simple things like are real wages going up? This is where you have to understand the difference between nominal and real, which gets me into a whole thing that people make this stuff sound more complicated than it is, which is exactly how people get bamboozled. Anyway, that's going to be important. What's the metric? I will simplify it as uh can the middle class save? Okay, that's very important. This is where we get into Bitcoin. Can the average person save their way to security or must they gamble their way to security in the stock market, which is what they're being forced to do right now? This is not anti-stock market. I love it the most. Got a ton of money in the stock market. Yay! I love the way that the capital markets work. It's unbelievable. However, it should be optional and right now it is not optional. Right now in America, if you want to retire, you have to gamble. It's insane. It's insane. So, if they don't take huge strides into reigning the debt in, we're we're really in trouble. Inflation, obviously hugely important. And even if we're only at 2.5 instead of 2%, that's already bad. And by the because if you run the math on that, it's what 25% over. It's not some small amount, even though when you go two 2.5, it's a really big deal. It's 25% over. Uh so, be thoughtful about that. And I should say I should never do math publicly, cuz I'm terrible. So, if it isn't exactly 25%, you guys will forgive me. Um that's going to be really important, getting that down. And making sure that the things that people interact with, cost of energy, cost of food, cost of education, that stuff is huge. Return on a home prices, good lord. Um what are just the normal basket of goods that people interact with? Stop manipulating the CPI. Okay? Stop manipulating the CPI, which is more sinister than people realize. Check out my boy Eric Weinstein for a breakdown on that. Uh manipulating the CPI is legitimately evil. They need to stop doing it, so that people can see what inflation really is. And then, if we can get that in line, start freeing up some of the talent from the government, get them back out into the public sector, lighten regulations on the public on the um companies, so the companies can grow and thrive, that they can get bigger and do better things. Um those are going to be the key. There are some international policy stuff that I think is going to matter a lot, but I'll I'll put a period on this part. You You took the baton, cuz that's exactly where I was going next. He did talk about ending the Ukraine war in his first 30 days, like while he was still president-elect. He did talk about how I feel like his Israel-Palestine take, that he was going to bring peace to the Middle East, wasn't necessarily committal. Um I know that he is team Israel. Um and that's a whole 'nother can of worms I do not want to open. Uh so, do you think that he will see we will get out of these wars, or at least be less war friendly than we have been recently? I think we'll be less war friendly, but I will be very curious to see what he's able to move. So, this is where now I put my tinfoil hat back on and go, "Remember, everybody, Trump has to survive 4 years." So, I have a very bad feeling that we have not seen the last attempt on President Trump's life. Um that that I hate a lot. I hate that that is a true statement. Um Now, we'll see. Hopefully, the temperature settles down because he won the popular vote. Hopefully, that just sort of dissipates a lot of this energy. Um but when you've got Iran trying to kill President Trump, now you're in a position where you've got foreign actors that want to see your president taken down. Um if you read Oh man, I forget the exact title of the book right now, but JFK and the Unspeakable, I think, which is all about what got JFK assassinated. Uh I worry that Trump is stepping on similar things as he goes up against the uh military-industrial complex. So, that scares me a little bit. Uh but we'll see. So, I think he's going to have a harder time ending the Ukrainian war uh than he thinks, but hey, he made a bold claim, and now we get to see whether he's able to pull it off or not. Lord knows, I hope he can. Just like he said, I want people to stop dying. Uh when it comes to Israel-Palestine, that is I'll be very curious to see how he plays that as he made such tremendous progress with the Abraham Accords uh before he went out of office. Will he be able to get that going again? I don't know. Uh but if he can, it'll be very interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of black bad blood there, so his work is cut out for him. Internally or externally? In mid- in the Middle East, like Oh oh, bad blood between the two sides. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah. the two sides cuz now it's spread to Yemen, it spread to Jordan, it spread to Syria. Like it's it's no longer just this country versus this At least it was a Gaza conflict a couple years ago a couple months ago. Yeah. I don't think it ever was just Israel-Palestine. and I just hear Dave Smith correcting me in my back of my mind, so you know. We we like to over-index on October 7th as being the first domino when there were a couple other dominos before that that tipped that one over. A couple. There I mean, this is now going back thousands of years, but um honestly, I don't think any of that matters, and I will say the thought experiment in terms of actually being able to get to the other side of this, I think it's a thought experiment that no one will run, and and what I'm about to say is sort of in that naive camp, but it's always important to me to anchor myself in how the human mind works. So, if you look at all of that is simply you came into existence right now, Mhm. and you're a flesh-based AI, and the matrix is real, and all you all that historical context is simply to generate the emotion that you need to move through the world, um I think people would be able to think through this a lot better, because here's what I want people to understand about emotions. Humans are a very complicated animal, and you you will never be able to perceive the world the way that it actually is, and so the only way to navigate that world is to have an emotional reaction based on the context you're in so that you can take very rapid action. Otherwise, you would constantly be paralyzed by indecision, because the world is too complicated It It is quite literally impossible for you to take in all the data of the world that the world is presenting you. It's It's not possible. And so, the only way that we're able to move is through emotions. The problem is emotions are taking incredible amounts of data and condensing them down to this incredibly small throughput to get you to take action. And so, people believe that their emotions represent an objective view of the world, and it simply isn't true. There's a really great Thomas Soul quote about this that I'm going to paraphrase. The problem isn't that Johnny doesn't know how to think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is. He confuses feeling for thinking. That's all of us. All of us think, oh, I feel a thing, and therefore, this is accurate, and this is true, and I'm just going to march forward, and this is why I always encourage people to have KPIs so that you don't get blinded by, oh, this feels right, and so I'm I'm to keep doing this. So, what you're seeing in the Middle East is nobody's able to let go of anything. It's like a gang war. It's well, you killed my brother and all I can think about is that and so I'm going to kill your brother and your father and it's just this ever escalating thing. So, I really think that again, just to stay on I actually believe this is true even though I know how horribly naive this is once rubber meets the road because people are in the grips of their emotions. But, the only way is to switch the emotion that they're in the grips of. What we have to do in the Middle East is get people to focus on I want my child's life to be better than mine is and I believe that's possible. And once you get people to believe that in the here and now and I trust me, I get it the martyrdom and the belief that actually dying for a cause is is a part of this equation. But, nonetheless, it doesn't change. If you can get people to believe that I can make my child's life better here on Earth, now all of a sudden that will realign all of their behaviors and that I think is why the Abraham Accords were successful in the beginning was you just got everybody focused on economics. And if there's a real economic opportunity here and we really could make this a better place to be and that life on Earth could itself be amazing and this is why I think Dave Smith is so right when he says, "Look, as long as they feel like they live in an open-air prison, it doesn't matter what Israel's take is on it. They're that doesn't feel good and they don't believe that their children's lives will be better than theirs. So, then it it really does become about those you did this to me and so I'm going to do that back to you. We've been on X all night retweeting sending like memes and things like that back and forth. But, there are there is a a little bit of a sentiment on there that this might be the end of democracy. So, what do you say to those people? Okay, so I think that even Elon was probably overstating it. I have fears about people shipping people in to change the demographics of a given area. However, if you can actually make people's lives better through better policy, then they suddenly don't need or necessarily even want the handouts. So, I don't think this is going to be the end of democracy. I don't believe that that was true whether Kamala Harris won or Donald Trump won. This is really about identifying what are the problems that we have. How do we recognize none of us see the whole picture? And this is the thing that scares me. I know we have a a clip from Oprah as just one example of people who believe this. But, going back to what I was saying about emotions, people are in the grips of an emotional read on a situation. They trust that emotion to mean that they are correct. They don't distrust themselves, which I think is one of the most important things anybody can do. Um my election message to everybody before the election was, "Look, no matter who wins, I'm sending you all love. I want good things for you. And PS, by the way, even though I have a take, I don't have a monopoly on truth. Nobody does. And so, anybody that's making those kind of bombastic statements, I hope they mean them sincerely, right? Cuz you want to say what you believe. I'm never going to be afraid to say what I believe. But, I want everybody to always understand me in the larger context of I simply want to give you a string of logic that you can follow from my base assumptions, my value system to the outcome that I want. Okay? I'm traveling from the things I believe that are true about the world to the things that I want to be true and believe ought to be true about the world. And then saying, "I'm going to look at these KPIs on the way to see if we actually get there." And I know the North Star of where I'm trying to end up, and I can articulate everything through the process from my values to what I believe to be true to where I'm trying to get to to the KPIs that I'm going to judge to whether or not we're actually making progress. Okay? I'm just trying to give people that line. Now, if you look at everybody is trying to give you that line, you're suddenly going to notice that a lot of people their line is just pure emotion. There is no ability to articulate the um values that they have. They might be able to articulate their beliefs, but they don't recognize that their beliefs aren't true. None of our beliefs are {quote} {unquote} true. We don't even understand ground level physics yet. So, this isn't ground level truth that people are giving you when they say that they have a belief. It's just what they've chosen, often blindly with no sense of it being a choice, what they've chosen to believe, followed by they don't know what their actual value system is. So, they they're just giving you a string of emotion and their outcome is either what they want, what they're hoping for, and hope is not a strategy, or what they are fearing. Okay? And fear does not mean that it is true. So, I want always and forever, my whatever I put out into the world, no matter how aggressively I put it out into the world, I want people to interpret it as that. I'm just going from beliefs, values, a string of KPIs, and then this is the outcome I'm trying to get to, and so we know whether we're going there or not. And then you guys need to internalize that, triangulate on truth using a bunch of other people, not just any one person, using a bunch of people who are giving you their unique individual frame of reference, and then you go, "Okay, that's interesting. I think they're wrong on 98% but 2% of that's interesting. That really helps me get a better sense of this." And the analogy that I will always use is when you were trying to figure out how to navigate life well, that path is an object inside of a hidden black bag. And what you have to do is you have to grope around on this thing to figure out exactly what it is. And once you know the exact shape and what the item is, then you can move well through life. The problem is you're wearing mittens and you can't see into the bag. And so it's like, "Oh god." And so you want seven or eight other people to come in and do the same thing, feel around, "Okay, I think it's this. I think it's that." And then, once you hear everybody's take and your own, you can get a better sense of how to move. But if this was all certain, then everybody would win. It's the very fact that it is by nature uncertain. And that you need other smart, savvy, sincere people to tell you what they think that right path forward is. Don't take anyone's word for it. Do not over index on your own sense of this. Try to read from a lot of people. And that's why this clip from Oprah makes me tense. If we don't show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again. It's It's interesting cuz I was talking to a friend of mine last night and she was going through all the emotions. And the one thing that I think we over index on is at that rally that people Oprah was talking to, they all showed up and they all went to probably voted for Kamala. But that wasn't the swath of people that they needed to talk to and I felt like just similar to Hillary who didn't go to Wisconsin, maybe it did bite Kamala in the in the butt that she didn't go on Joe Rogan. She didn't do any long form podcast. Staying in that echo chamber kind of reinforces your idea and gives you that false sense of security. Yeah, so there's a lot in that statement. So first of all, um what I really, really want people to take away from this is that all right, you're now still plugged into America. You put out a hypothesis, Oprah, and that it's unanswered. We don't know. It It's not like I now know because Trump won that we're not going to have a problem with democracy. We may still. So it's like, okay, cool. You put out a hypothesis. Mhm. What though I need to see is what are the What's the end state that you want? Protected democracy. Please define democracy because all the words that were coming out of the Democratic camp and this is why I associate them with authoritarian rule. All of the things that they're saying were very undemocratic. It's like, bro, like you should want this friction. You should want to know what the other side thinks. Two, what is your North Star that makes you want to protect democracy? I'll round it to human thriving. Okay, what is a metric that I can look at for human thriving? A middle class where they're getting to enjoy the benefits of a strong and growing economy, which we can get into whether the economy is actually growing or not at another time, but that becomes very important. Okay, now if your key metric is people only say the things that I think will lead to uh democracy, which I fear from fear emotion. I recognize that's why I don't want anybody to just trust me implicitly, but I fear they have a distorted notion. They think some people are too dumb to think for themselves. We have to have control of the narrative. I forget it was a Hillary Clinton said we can't lose total control of the narrative. I mean it's crazy. But that reveals the way that they view the world. That there there is a right way to think through this, which I just think is automatically false. There there is only a bunch of ways to look at this that will help you land on things that have high predictive validity. Uh and they want to control the narrative. They want to make sure some people are silenced. They want to make sure that nobody's feelings are hurt, etc. etc. And so these are not KPIs that I think have ever throughout human history proven to go anywhere other than absolute horror, death, mayhem, destruction. And so it's like you have data points to know where these hypotheses lead. Don't treat every hypothesis like it's new. You want to go has somebody done this before? Has somebody already run this experiment? So anyway, you're going to have to come back in, re-engage with America. And now if you're just leaning into this fear and you don't have anything clearly defined KPIs in terms of is this happening or not happening. Um you give people a nice simple narrative that they can lean into emotionally. The emotions will ratchet up and you'll continue this divide between America, which I really hope is not where we spend the next four years. Yeah, we need to wrap this up. I feel like it happened. That's why I said at the top, I'm just glad it's over now. The election was clear and concise. Even Mark Cuban conceded. He was great. Yeah. He was great. He and I I think a lot of people have beef with how he comported himself cuz they thought, "Oh man, he's just a shill for the Democrats." I looked at him and thought, "He is giving the best argument, even if I interpret Mark Cuban as a defense attorney who believes that their client is guilty, he's at least articulating the the best argument for that side." And I think that's really important. This is why I think the idea of steel manning someone's argument and really saying, "Okay, robustly, I want to step into your shoes. I want to understand why you're afraid. I want to understand where you're going." Um and really go to bat for them. And And he may also have just actually believed it. But it was really good. He was very good at articulating the best case to make for Kamala Harris. Uh there were very few voices. Him and Destiny I thought were really really good at giving a compelling side. And I don't want anybody coming to a conclusion without looking at the most like high-performing people that disagree with them and say, "What's their thought on this?" It's going to sharpen your own thinking. But the problem is people want to be right instead of identifying the right answer. And the easiest way to do that is to lean into emotion to get people to clap for you, even though history may judge you as a villain. And I would much rather be on the side of I'm actually trying to get where I want to go. I don't trust my emotions. I don't trust your emotions. So, I want to follow that string of logic to a defined end goal through a bunch of KPIs. And I'll repeat this literally until the end of time because it is first principles thinking. Um but I I was very impressed with Cuban. Including his like, "Hey, Trump won fair and square. Great Great job. Godspeed." I thought that was super honorable. Yeah. High-class individual right there. As we look at some of the exit polling, there was some interesting mixes across the demographics. I think we have a clip from Joy Reid. Let's bring that up. Yeah, this is interesting. And I think we have to be blunt about why. Um black voters came through for Kamala Harris. White women voters did not. I think she nailed it cuz we made a big fuss about Obama's speech at the rally talking about black men need to show up for Kamala. And according to this exit polling, it shows that, you know, black men did. But, to Joy Reid's point, the white women that maybe would have went to Biden in 2020, definitely went to Trump in 2024. Yeah, that's interesting. So, here's here is something that I have an emotional reaction to. Again, I always distrust my emotions, but I really, really am saddened by the fact that you can so clearly see breaks along racial lines. What that tells me is that they are um having a very different experience. Mhm. At a minimum, they have very different narratives about the experience that they're having. They certainly have very different assumptions about what's going to take them to where they want to go. And so, this is one of the things that tells me we we just do not all see the whole picture. And so, whether it's that it really is just a wildly different experience, and so we can't understand why they would have such a different take on this, or that it's such a wildly different narrative that we are not We may be looking at the same thing, but we're not seeing the same thing. I am distressed that when you look at the black vote combined, it 86% Democrat, 12% Republican. That that is just a huge difference. And if that were uh anything that that breaks along racial lines like that, I find very um sad that it it is that kind of um clear delineation. So, the problem that I have with the way that Joy Reid is taking this is that "Hey, we were looking for you, white women. You guys are to blame for this. And now you're just leaning back into making that view the the lens that she's taking on this is a lens of race." Now, until I saw this like I wasn't even thinking about that, which means I was blind to something. So, I I am very fascinated by the way that you really can see the difference Hispanics, uh especially Hispanic males, ended up voting for Trump. Like, when you break out the Hispanic vote into males versus females, suddenly a pattern emerges that is very interesting. And that whole narrative that was being spun up that there were going to be a lot of women that are afraid to vote against their husbands. Apparently not, cuz when you Can we go to the next slide? Yeah. It's like it was pretty different. Like, men and women to a very large degree, in fact, do we have um So, take out race. Do we have just how did women vote versus how men voted? That would be really fascinating. All right. So, seeing the breakdown here between men and women is also fascinating. That is the exact inverse. Men 44% for Harris, 54% for Trump. Women 54% for Harris and 44% for Trump. Uh it's again going back to that idea of we are having different experiences. And so, understanding how to really step inside the shoes of the other person and see the world the way that they do is super advantageous. I know that my wife definitely is not seeing things the same way that I am from an abortion perspective. And I'm way more like I was perfectly happy with Roe versus Wade. Like, I that was not something even on my radar. Uh a woman's right to choose within, you know, reasonable confines, I'll say, is I'm perfectly happy. Uh but saw the issue around this election being way more about freedom of speech, the economy, and my wife was just like not even concerned about any of that, yeah, which is really, really interesting. And so, again, going back to that dynamic friction, I was like, I'm not trying to convince my wife, "Hey, hey, hey, all that matters is the economy. This is just that." I was like, "I'm glad that you're giving me a different perspective. I want you to think in the way that you think. I want you to voice be as loud with your voice as you can so again the people can triangulate on what is true. Now I think this hints at something that's probably well outside the scope of today, but here's one thing I think we need. There is a reason that religion is resurging right now. There is a reason that um I think we have to anchor around moral constraints. Now the question becomes whose moral constraints? And so my wife would tell you this is outrageous. And the moral constraint should be a person's bodily autonomy. Cool. We just need moral constraints. Once you flip a switch and say anything goes, you're not going to end up anywhere good. It's a really interesting idea in filmmaking. I'll be interested to see how angry people get with this analogy, but in filmmaking they say that the constraint makes the creativity. And once you have a limitation, it actually unlocks something cuz it's like okay, we have to work within these confines. I feel the same is true about moral um restriction. Is you can actually navigate the world better. Now I think it is well worth debating what set of morals lead to the most human flourishing, but I do think that if you don't I don't think humans are innately good. I don't think humans are innately bad. I think that we can operate within a system. And if that system yields the positive KPIs that we want, great. Do that. Um but when anything goes, anything goes. And I think that people end up snapping. So um when it comes to this, abortion, what you're seeing is to get the structure that we need. Right now the dominant moral structure in America falls into a Christian lens. And the Christian lens has this pro-life stance. And so you sort of get the the good with the bad, right? Now pushing it back down to the state level seems reasonable to me because boys and girls, at least I'm not saying this is ideal. As somebody who lives in California, the thought of having to leave I absolutely hate, but at least I know, hey, if this gets too crazy, I can always move somewhere else and still be in America. So, it is a a very imperfect structure, but at least it's there. And so, if somebody feels strongly enough this is really problematic. They have the option to leave. I'm not blind to some people just don't have the finances to be able to pull it off, but it is not a mission impossible. Yeah, and it it it felt that way and especially as that being their main campaign point, you would assume that they would have a larger share of the women turnout. But, when it comes to key demographics, I guess it wasn't because 54 to 44% that is the win that they wanted, but it wasn't enough. It didn't just it didn't get her the 270, so it would have been very different if Trump had been beating the drum and saying, I'm going for a national abortion ban, but he's saying the exact opposite. Yeah. I don't want a national abortion ban. And even though they kept saying he's going to do it, he's going to do it, he's going to do it, enough people were either persuaded by Trump's own words or they didn't believe it was as big of an issue. And so, I'm never surprised when this is a hot button issue for people. But, at the end of the day people have to say, okay, this like even if you don't like that change and I'll put myself in that camp. It doesn't mean that I don't think there are way bigger fish to fry. And so, the results speak for themselves in terms of where the country is right now. What you're seeing is the revenge of the working class. Yeah. All right, you ready for the lightning round? Let's do it. All right, were you surprised at the result of the election? Mildly. Yeah, if you'd asked me a week ago, I would have been very surprised by this outcome, but there was something that you could feel happening that, huh, the energy does seem to be shifting. And I was curious to see if there would be a slip-up that would just break the other way. Uh but with uh Trump going for free speech, talking endlessly about the economy, and the people that he had on his super team, Elon Musk, RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek, like there was a real sense of like, "Hey, we understand what we have to get done. We're here to fight for the middle class. We think we can get this done." It just felt like the energy was pushing that way. I I wanted a landslide one way or the other, and this is about as close as you're going to get to that. Um so, as the numbers started pouring in, I found myself surprisingly unshocked. But, I wouldn't bet on this. I had no confidence in in my belief one way or the other. Nice. Bitcoin hit an all-time high high at 74.4. How high do you think Bitcoin goes under a Trump presidency? That's a good question. I think, honestly, if he starts fixing the economy, I don't think it's going to skyrocket. So, at least it like myself, it is very complicated to figure out why everybody's in this, but myself, I look at that and I say, "Okay, this is largely about financial freedom." I believe people should be able to save their way to security. Right now, that isn't Bitcoin. I want to be very clear about that. Right now, Bitcoin is still in the gambling phase because it has this massive volatility. But, I, if my thesis is correct, what will end up happening is Bitcoin will become boring over time. And it will become boring over time because it's effectively replacing gold. It is a place where you can store your wealth that if you save in it, it will be worth roughly the same down the road. Whereas, the US currency is going to be inflated into just absolute oblivion. So, I'm very optimistic that Bitcoin will continue to grow as more people realize this is a great place to store my wealth. But, nobody just cramps their wealth into gold right now. So, you put some in there, but you want to have a balanced portfolio because everybody wants some upside. So, I I just want a place where, again, revenge of the working class. The guy that's too tired to think about it when they come home. A working mom who's like, "Bro, I do not have time to figure out the stock market. Like, I just want to be able to say I'm going to sock away 10 or 15% of my money so that when I retire, I can be taken care of and then I'll have something to leave for my kids." And they need something that's stable. They need something where their money's not locked up for 20 years, man. That's crazy town. So, that's what I want to see happen with Bitcoin. I think that will naturally drive the price up. I've got I'm largely invested in Bitcoin. And so, do I want to see it go up? Yes, but even more than that, what I want to see is it to become a really stable place where I can save my money and it just doesn't get inflated away. I can't stress that enough. If you just save your money, man, if you just save your money, you should be able to do well. And right now, you just you get clobbered by inflation. Do you think Elon cuts the two trillion that he proposed out of the government if he gets free reign? No. Oh, free reign? If he gets free reign, sure. He's not going to get free reign. and Two trillion, probably not. Do I think that he makes really substantive inroads? Yes. Do I think that there is a better person on planet Earth to do it? Literally, absolutely not. There is nobody because he's got the clout. He's got the ability to point at his record and be like, "Bro, like look at what I've done. It's insane." Any entrepreneur that's ever built a company is looking at him jaw on the floor like, "What is happening?" Drew, it's the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. No no entrepreneur unless you're a total [ __ ] no entrepreneur looks at that guy and is like, "I can do that." It's the most insane. So, anyway, I think that he will be able to identify $2 trillion worth of waste. Will he actually be able to reduce it? Probably not. But I think he'll make very, very meaningful inroads and get us on a good path. And if it yields results to the middle class, they'll vote it in again. And then if we start getting eight years of people who are fiscally responsible, whether Democrat or Republican, I couldn't care less. But if they are fiscally responsible, now you you start doing eight, 12 years of very sensible reduction, getting transparency in the budget. This is what I want people to understand. Boys and girls, when you're running a company, if you dive into your numbers and you look at every line of what credit card expenses are, if you look at every line in every department about where they're spending their money and what the return is on, can I be crude for a second? Absolutely. Like There's a nice way to say it. I'll say it the nice way. Uh Boo. Okay, I'll I'll First I'll give you the nice way and then you can get the kids out of the room. So, uh it goes like this. When you are running a company and you start looking at all that, it's like what um Warren Buffett said, when the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked. Now I'll say it in my crude way. When you're going line by line, it's like little dick here, big dick there. It's like you see who's doing who's efficient with money and who's just absolutely terrible. And there's nowhere to hide. You got no clothes on, baby. Like it is just all exposed. And if we can get the government like that, where we just see who's swanging that thing and who's got the nubbings, like all of a sudden you're like, all right, this is just ridiculous. You can't spend money here. Uh I think then we will be in way better shape. But there is just a culture of I don't want to look at it. It's too complicated. We want to bury all this crazy stuff inside of a gigantic bill that's 10,000 pages long. But now AI is going to be like, bro, this is what the bill says. It'll be able to give you an instant summary of that bill. Uh and if we can have AI do the same thing with this is where all the money's going and it can slice and dice the data 60,000 different ways. If you ask it, how much are we spending on screws? You know, and it gives you like $4 trillion and you're like, what? What's the most common material that the screws are made out of? Diamonds. Now you're like, "Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. What the hell's going on?" So, getting that level of transparency, putting the budget on the blockchain, so you know it's not being manipulated, letting people go through it. Same thing with algorithms on the social media. Make it public. Let Let people see what's going on. Like community notes is completely public. You can see exactly how it's created. And so, that level of trust goes a very long way. So, you get capped in efficiency with transparent budgets on the blockchain. It It could get very very interesting. We shall see. That's all I got. see. All right, everybody. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the middle, everybody. Are we going to get hit by both sides or actually chart a way forward? I'm telling you the center is a destination. You've got to want to be there. Have a little bit of distrust for yourself. Want a lot of other smart hands trying to figure out what this object is that we call the right path forward. All right, congratulations to the middle class. I think this is a big victory for everybody there. May your lives get better in the next 4 years. Uh my honor and love to everybody that voted their conscience. No matter which way you voted, I got love for you. All right, everybody. Until next time, my friends. Make sure you subscribe, speaking of things you should do. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Peace. Take care. If you liked this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. 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