Morning everybody. Welcome to another Tom Billu show live. We have got a spicy one for you guys today. CPI inflation has had the biggest drop since COVID, but it's likely bad news. We're going to do that analysis. Very important for any of you investors out there to understand what's actually going on.

Trump just notified Congress that the US is redeclaring war on Iran. There's been another fatal ice shooting. This is where we need the another one. Japan takes the lead on crypto assets by officially categorizing them as financial instruments. The game is going to be changing on that one. I think people have been sleeping on crypto for so long. People have a totally distorted mental model of that. That'll be fun to talk about. A company called Terrairma has secured financing to build next-gen manufacturing equipment for moon and Mars bases. So that's starting to get real. They have not raised a small amount of money. That one's pretty gigantic. So, lot of interesting stuff going on, especially the fact that an Indian company has just smashed China's stranglehold on rare earth magnets by creating an EV battery that runs on software. Wild. And an AI agent made by the makers of Genchin Impact is going viral. Man, I'm telling you, AI agents are going to take over in ways that people do not understand. They're starting to brand them, give them personalities, make them highly individualized, and people are going for it.

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All right, speaking of something that you should be seeing in the news, inflation has dropped like a rock, but it is not the good news that people are expecting. Though, you're going to see a lot of people are interpreting this as a good thing. And boy, does it feel weird as the person who just bangs the drum over and over and over about how bad inflation is to tell you this drop in inflation is not brought to you by anything good. This drop in inflation is brought to you by a deep-seated problem that has been brewing in the economy since about 2024. But here are the facts. Headline CPI just fell in a single month by its largest amount since COVID. That's massive and is exciting in terms of you guys will be paying less for things. Uh but unfortunately the thing that it's tied to is going to end up getting weird and we'll get into that. Uh, wage growth, by the way, right now is actually tied with inflation. So, when you start putting that together, the right question all of you should be asking is, Tom, how in the world is it possible that we've gone from inflation that was eating my real wage growth to now those two things are tied and it's dropping. How could that possibly be bad news?

All right, as with all things economic, it really does come down to the mechanism. You guys know my core focus in life is cause and effect. So, what is the thing that caused this to come down? I started getting into this. Um, we have an interview coming up with a guy named Jeff Snyder who really um I found him maybe eight or 10 months ago. He started introducing me to concepts in terms of how money actually moves around the world that I find really useful in terms of its ability to predict what's going on. And as you start breaking down what's actually happening in the Iran war, it starts giving us a glimpse into a sickness at the core of the global economy that I think will feel right to people. Now, I use the word feel on purpose because for a long time now, people have been saying, "Hold on, I'm getting all these numbers. I'm being told that the stock market's just absolutely crushing it, but I feel terrible. I'm not able to make ends meet, that things are getting harder. So, where in the data am I going to see the reality of what I'm living on the ground?" The one of the biggest red flags that everybody should be queuing off of that happened recently is the labor force participation is getting terrifying. That's both people that can't find a job, but it's also people that just are no longer even looking for a job. So, there's all this softness. We're seeing um the number of jobs added in a year roughly matching sorry the yeah the number of jobs added in a year roughly matching what we used to add in a month and so when you look at all of that the alarm bell should be going off in people's heads now if the CPI were coming down because of deregulation or innovation then we could, you know, say all right, this is a very good thing. If we were riding on the back of some breakthrough in productivity, we would definitely say that this is a very good thing. But unfortunately, that isn't what's happening. And so all eyes on the Iran war to understand precisely what's going on.

So at the beginning of the war, we saw everybody rightly freaked out, right? Everyone was looking at oil prices. I have said many people have said because it's true that oil, the price of oil acts effectively like inflation itself because everything rides on the back of energy. No matter what you want to do, it's going to take energy. You want to ship a bushel of uh bananas, you're going to be putting that on a truck. That truck, by the way, not only is using diesel, but it's probably refrigerated. And so, you just see like there's a thousand ways that energy is finding its way into a system, no matter what you're shipping. Uh so, or no matter what you're trying to do, all of that stuff, when you raise the cost of energy, they go up as well. And so, that's why when people get nervous about the cost of energy going up, they really get paranoid. The thing is, as with all things in the economy, it comes down to supply and demand. So, the 50-year call it myth has been that energy supplies or energy demand, excuse me, is inelastic. And the thing that people would point to is the 1973 Arab oil embargo. So, 1973, we get into a kerfuffle and all of a sudden we're not able to get the oil that we want. As you would expect, that causes the prices to go up. Nobody is surprised by that. The prices end up going up a lot. But instead of the people pulling back from demand, what ends up happening is it it becomes one of the key factors that puts us into the biggest at the time the biggest recession since the Great Depression. So imagine how inelastic the demand for energy has to be where you basically your entire economy gets nuked, but people just because people are paying so much more for energy and it acts as inflation. So everybody's like, "Oh my god, I just can't buy all the other stuff I would normally buy because I have to spend all this money on energy." And so that locks into people's minds that you can jack prices way up. You're not going to hurt demand. You'll hurt every other area of the economy, but you're not going to hurt demand. People are still going to go for that oil. Everything has to be shipped. Planes have to move. The things that people are manufacturing, all those lines are going to keep running. Okay? So, that dominates the economic conversation for 50 years. The Iran war comes along. All the pundits look at this and go, "Uh, yes, oil prices are going to spike up and they do. They they go up very rapidly and everybody looks at that and goes, "Yep, this is the drill." And so, people were saying, "You know what? You're going to see by the end of this if the strait continues to be closed, you're going to see first prices will hit 150 and we got with landed physical oil, we did hit those prices. So, at the beginning of this back in March, we were seeing things I can't remember if it's March or April, but we were seeing prices landed oil prices at $150 a barrel. They were saying this is going to go all the way to $200 a barrel. Now, for anybody fact-checking, that's different than the paper bets. So, if you look at the paper bets, it was slightly different. And I think the number there was like $126, maybe just above. But anyway, ask questions in chat if you want deeper um on that. But that's what we're seeing in the price action. Everybody's like, "Yep, this is so known. 1973 oil embargo. Why would you expect anything different?" Then with the deal, the prices came just crashing back down.

Now, when it first happened, people were looking at China and they wanted to see what China was going to do. China had built up this massive stockpile over a billion barrels of oil in their strategic reserve. Looks super brilliant, like yeah, great play. Then when the price dropped back down, people started asking questions because China didn't start buying again. Also, China wasn't able it's a weird way to say it, but you can understand why wasn't able to even draw down their reserves very much. I think they ended up a total drawdown of like 20 million barrels. Okay. So they lose uh what 20% of the world supply is going through uh the Strait of Hormuz. The pullback on demand, which remember everybody thought was inelastic, but the pullback on that demand ended up being massive. 74% of the pullback is from China. So everybody's like, okay, China's an authoritarian dictatorship, so of course they can just tell people you guys have to pull back. But you would expect there to be some sort of pushback from people. If the US, when we went through this, we pushed ourselves into a recession, a massive recession, rather than pull back on demand. We'd rather pay more. China doesn't do that. But there's no social upheaval. They just account for 74% of the global pullback and everybody's chill. So people are like, "Hold on, wait a second. What's really going on here?" As you start to uncover the actual layers, what is most likely happening is that China, whose actual demand for oil has been going down since 2024, this is all tied to what they've got going on in their housing crisis. Remember, China's been trying to hide the fact that they're in the middle of a massive economic downturn. If you guys know the history of Japan, so 1989, the real estate bubble in Japan pops. They lose an entire decade. Some will say they've really lost 30 years. That's a separate thing we can get into, but there's this massive um destruction of wealth in Japan based on real estate. It has the most catastrophic economic consequences. China goes through something similar. So, China just obliterated $18 trillion in home wealth. But all the economists are looking at the way that uh China's buying oil as a signal of the health of their economy because oil is a proxy for economic activity for the reasons that we were talking about with the bananas and all that. Okay. So you've got China just keeps buying, buying, buying, buying, buying and everybody thinks, oh, well, I guess they've managed to engineer some sort of soft landing. Not sure what they did. Everybody's sort of shrugging, but hey, they managed to pull it off. Now, instead of this being, oh, look at China's amazing. They're able to pull demand back on a whim, what we're realizing is, no, that almost certainly isn't true. Because if that were true, then we would have seen them burning through their reserve. But instead, at the beginning of all of this, when it first kicked off and their supply got shut off from the Middle East, they were actually still building their reserve, which tells you that their demand is weakening. And the fact that when the price dropped back down when the deal was signed, their purchasing didn't go back up. So, these are people that were originally saying, "Hey, we just cut off all of this because why would we buy oil at a higher price?" But then you would expect them to start buying when the price comes back down and they don't. So that paints a far more distressing picture that what we're seeing in China, and I'll get to the US in a second, but what we're seeing in China is actually just an absolute crush of demand. So if you interrupt supply and the price doesn't go up, because we're we're back in the full thick of the war, prices have gone up a little bit, but not a lot. And the most important part of this is the long tail of the curve. And so when you look out at the long tail of the curve, what you start seeing is that so think of oil. The near-term trade is like, okay, there's a supply disruption right now, so I'm going to pay a little bit more for oil right now. But the long tail tells you at least what traders believe is going to happen to the supply and demand mismatch. And those prices have been locked basically in the 60s this whole time. So the sharps, as they call them, the people that pay attention to all of this, all the global macro movements, they're like, "No, no, no. There is a thing happening you guys don't understand, and there is going to be a deflation. There is a deflationary pressure that people don't yet recognize that makes the long tail of oil stay low." So that's where you start going, okay, well, what is that deflationary pressure? And the answer that I'm putting forward and uh we're going to hear more from Jeff Snyder later today. But what I'm saying is that this is really you've got a housing crisis going on in China that's now spreading across their economy which is making the average person pull back which means refiners don't need to keep refining which they have stopped doing. And that the oh this is all coinciding with the war because you've got China trying to hide the fact that they are in economic distress right now. So much like people used AI as a way to say, oh, I'm laying all these people off because we have all these increased efficiencies. It wasn't that we overhired during COVID, which would be sort of a black mark on their stock price. They don't want to say that. So they wait till AI comes along. They're like, hey, we got a perfect cover story. China's doing the same thing. The war in Iran gives them the perfect cover story to stop refining, to stop purchasing new oil at basically any price at this point. And so now that gives you a glimpse into, okay, hold on a second. They're not behaving like somebody who's just looking for a better price. They're behaving like somebody who doesn't have the demand. And if they don't have the demand, that is a sign of deflation, right? Coming because there's lack of demand, which is not what you want if you want to be excited about a drop in inflation.

Same thing in the US. Okay, people can feel it. There's something wrong with the economy. What's going on? Our problem, so we don't have the same problem that China has, but we have a problem. And our problem is that we're basically we had a massive break in terms of real wages going up. We had this step-up in price basis essentially caused by COVID and it's now just continuing to work its way through the system and I think everybody just sort of thought, oh, we got on the other side of COVID, everything is fine, but the reality is we got on the other side of COVID with this bump-up and everything is just more expensive and so real wages have been chasing it, they've been trying to get back up, they've never been able to quite catch up and we certainly haven't gone back to historically matching the prices before COVID. So now everything is just more expensive. Welcome to the new world. That's how it is. People tried to sort of keep the party going by spending their savings down, which we saw massive drawdowns of personal wealth in the US and racking up credit card debt. And now basically all of that is coming to an end. You can only do that for so long before people start realizing I'm getting poorer and poorer by the day, so I'm going to pull back. So now the US also has decreased demand and so you see inflation coming down here in the US. So you have just people buying less stuff. So you can think of in that way the energy is sort of the last thing. By the time that this pullback has reached energy, you've already stopped buying things at the, you know, the store that you otherwise would have purchased, whether that's a new stereo or whatever, just all kinds of stuff. Everybody's starting to pull back. And so looking at this sort of weird break of like, hold on a second, since when are energy demands elastic? We we've known for 50 years people will push themselves into a recession before they'll give up on their energy. And now that has broken and that has broken because of this underlying and growing softness in the two biggest economies in the world. Now I very much doubt that it is just the US and China. But once you have the US and China, which account for some ungodly percentage of global GDP in this economically rough spot, now all of a sudden looking at inflation coming down and being like, "Oh my god, yes, finally you're looking at a sign of overall poor health in the global economy." And so it's brutal because I want to cheer for the fact that prices have come down, but they've come down for a reason that is going to increase in its problematic nature over time. Boo.

>> It's one of those things though cuz I just seen a report that China has then pivoted to coal. They bought 30% more coal in June than they did the year before. We all know that they are leading in EVs and nuclear power. They have a dam that slowed the earth's rotation. So was it just I understand that oil has a very specific use. But at the beginning of the war, there were places there were different Asian countries, Singapore, Thailand, that was telling people work from home. Don't drive to work. Don't commute anymore. It's cool. Like in China being top-down, can't they just control their populace to say, "Okay guys, we're not using oil anymore."

>> They certainly can. Uh, China can. China has shown a willingness to shoot people in the face if they get out of pocket.

>> Um, at the same time, China is also very paranoid about doing things that causes those kinds of uprisings. So, they're always trying to smooth those things out.

>> And what you would expect to see because that's like one of the for so I I ended up doing a deep dive about this. One of the formal arguments that I cover in the deep dive is that it's the replacement theory. So, it's like, well, hold on Tom, why are you worried about this? Because China is moving over to electric vehicles. Um, they're bringing on solar faster than any nation, way faster than the US. Um, so what what's the problem? They're just switching over. Now that would make sense if China were playing this out over a four or five or maybe even 10-year period because you when you're making a transition of energy sources, you don't bring on a bunch of solar panels and call it a day. You have to transition your entire fleet over to the new style. And so if you look at the diesel expenditures on the Chinese side, you'll see that diesel is not being it's not like backhoes all of a sudden are electric. So that whole industrial fleet hasn't been moved over at all. Diesel was one of the earliest signs that something was going wrong in China. Now that makes sense. All that industrial grade equipment, all that diesel pullback, when you go, oh, you're in the middle of a housing crisis. Oh, that's going to have a huge impact on the construction industry. The construction industry is largely what drives and their infrastructure uh play is largely what drives the use of diesel. And so that started dropping earlier. That started dropping back in 2024 as well. So it's like uh-oh, like they're not shifting that over to electric yet. Let's assume that they will, but they're not doing it yet. And then also what we're talking about in the um war in Iran is a four-month period. Nobody is transitioning one energy source to another in four months. It just doesn't happen like that. There's too many um new cars, backhoes, cranes, all of that that has to be moved away from um oil onto electric. And so that hasn't played out. So it's like yes, China is doing that and yes, China deserves a lot of credit for the innovations that they're doing there. And boy oh boy do I wish that you could look at the numbers and see that that's the reason for this like super sharp four-month decline. It track and look in the final analysis of course we're going to get a fuller picture. It isn't going to be exactly the way that I have mentally mapped it now. Things never are. You need more information. But when you switch the map over to, oh, China was trying to hide what's really going on. China is notorious for lying about their data. And so you've got, okay, China is likely to lie about their data. China is like anybody likely to look for that cover story. And so when you map that to this rapid sudden decrease in need for oil to a four-month change, it's like it doesn't make sense. If you switch it over to, oh, they've been trying to obfuscate with the one number that they know everybody pays attention to, which is how much oil are they purchasing? Then you go, "Oh my god, this gigantic reserve that they built up is really about that. It's about the fact that, oh, I can keep showing you guys that we're importing just as much oil as ever. Stock it away in my reserve and wait to see if an opportunity presents itself for me to go, okay, cool. Here's why we're going to stop buying." It's nothing wrong with the economy. I don't know what you guys are talking about. It's the insert Iran war. So now whether they did that on purpose or whether it was just like, guys, we can't just keep filling these stockpiles. This is getting crazy and the timing just happened to overlap, you don't have to assume even the manipulation of the data to just be like, nonetheless, stopping now tied to the Iranian war does also give them the cover story. So whether or not it was a strategic plan, it's being leveraged in that way. So now you've got another sort of uh proof point that that's what's going on. If China really built this gigantic reserve because they're like, that's what we need. Then when this first happened and you had a shut-off of the supply, then their strategic reserve should have dropped, but it they were growing their strategic reserve even after the cutoff. And through all of this, they've only burned through about 20 million barrels, which for an economy of their size is very, very small. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't also levers of like, hey, we want everybody to chill because we don't know where this is going to go. We don't know how long this is going to last. So, it's like if you think of China as they also love their countrymen. They want their country to do well. And so, if they're like, you know what, we're going to stop um exporting things, which they did. So some things that they were normally selling, they stopped because there's so many question marks for them as well. So I think it would be a mis-map to say the only move here is that they're just trying to obfuscate this from the world. It's not just that, but that's a key part of this. And then another thing that shows you that that probably isn't the play is that when prices return to normal, they didn't restock their strategic reserve, which tells me they know their strategic reserve is bigger than they need. Um, and so they're just like, me, nice convenient time to let that draw down a little. Um, also they're not even turning their refineries back on. So you can imagine you've got this massive stockpile of oil. If you had the demand, just keep refining your stockpile because the the stockpile is like it's like putting the future gas in the freezer, right? You leave it as oil, you don't refine it. But they're like they've drawn their refining down to record lows. I don't know if it's all-time lows like last 50 years or whatever, but it's like certainly regional record lows of refining. So, it's like that's a demand story. That's not a, oh, we have a supply problem. If they had a supply problem, they go back to they probably would have just kept refining and they certainly would have started purchasing again once prices normalized, but they didn't.

>> Yeah, we got into this talking about the CPI. So what are some of the blowbacks that the average person can expect? Cuz from my standpoint, we're going full ham into the war. We're going to cover that next. So energy prices are going to rise back up. So the CPI dropped that.

>> That's the trippy part. So right now, if you look at the discrepancy, so we are from a number of bombs dropped. If we're not farther ahead than where we were when we first started the war, we've got to be pretty close. So all hell has broken loose. Uh Iran has said we we are no longer operating under the deal. Trump has gone to Congress and said we are now again at war. So this is like we're back to the status we were when in March when prices like skyrocketed. They're going up, but they're not skyrocketing. But again, the thing to pay attention to is the tail end of the curve, which is saying that uh there's going to be a deflationary pressure, not an inflationary pressure. So the smartest people in the world from a trading perspective that are looking at this are saying, "You guys are misreading the economy. The economy is going to be cheaper down the road than it is now." And if they were betting on innovation, I'd be thrilled. Now, maybe some of them are. Uh Kevin Walsh is going to ask you to believe all this deflation that people are projecting, it's all AI, bro. But where the [ __ ] do you see that happening? Like AI for sure will be deflationary, but anybody betting on that in an aggressive way right now. Whoa. Like that would we're not seeing that realized yet. I believe in it massively, but I believe in it in like a five to 10-year time horizon. I certainly don't believe in it in a six to 18-month time horizon. You're not going to feel it at that scale. So that's where it's like, man, that that's all a very fishy read on what's going on, especially when and I don't appeal to emotion often, but people can feel there's something wrong with the economy, but people have been unable to put their finger on it. In the US, I think it's just people spent through their savings, they racked up their credit cards about as far as they could, and now we're sort of hitting some limit of how far people are willing to overextend themselves. And now you're getting apathy in the job market. People just saying, "I'm not even trying to find a job anymore." You're getting the rise of socialism, which is massive. I think is a massive part of that story. Why are people going towards that? They can't get a [ __ ] job. And so, everybody's telling you you can't get a job because of AI. Like, I think that that will play out in some ways, but that's going to be more of a job transition. So, every technology in human history has always created more jobs than it's destroyed. It's possible that AI doesn't do that, but for AI to have that kind of job destruction, I think you're going to need to be edging towards proper AGI, maybe even ASI before that happens. Like when I start prognosticating, all these jobs are going to be lost. I'm I have a mental model of artificial super intelligence. We've not achieved that yet. So, it's like without saying that whole thing isn't going to play out, that isn't what's playing out now. It's the same way I feel about the, oh, this is just China switching over to solar. It's like China will switch over to solar and they are moving towards that, but that doesn't explain this level of drop right now. So, it's like yes, that's true. That's going to become part of the story, but that's not the story that's playing out right now. So, what can people expect? This is one of those hopefully it will play out much slower and it'll be more chill. I'm not trying to get people um overly afraid. I think we have been in a stealth recession for probably two years. And I think that we're now about to realize it's just going to be a full-blown recession. And so you're going to see deflation, but crisis-led deflation, not the kind of deflation that I've always tried to champion, which is innovation-led deflation. That would be the AI side of things. So I think you're in crisis-led deflation now. And that drop is that another thing to point to that is what did the Fed do to create the deflation?

>> The answer is nothing.

>> The Fed has been sitting back watching.

>> Their last report was,

>> yeah, we're uh if anything, we're going to raise rates.

>> And we're not going to lower them.

>> And you got deflation from that. You're supposed to get deflation from them tightening rates, but they haven't. We've also I know people don't like to see 4.5 or whatever, but that's historically low. So, we're still in historically low territory. It's not a regional low. No, no, no. Uh rates.

>> Interest rates.

>> So, we're in historically low interest rates and >> it all of a sudden we're getting the biggest drop in uh inflation since COVID with the Fed doing nothing. So then the next argument will be, well, Tom, Trump is coming to office. He's doing all this um he's deregulating. It's like, yeah, hopefully that will play out, but it hasn't played out yet. So, it's like point to the thing that got cheaper because of deflation. You won't be able to. You might be able to in a little while because you're starting to see people build. But if I were seeing the jobs numbers going up, if I were seeing real wages going up, then I'd be like, "All right, [ __ ] we're re-empowering the middle class. [ __ ] yeah, let's go." But that's not what's driving this. What's driving this? As far as I can map, what's driving this is crisis-led deflation in the two biggest economies in the world. China housing crisis, US uh you had a step-up basis that real wages couldn't keep up with at COVID and you've just never been able to rectify that ship. People were in like a euphoric mood partly because of the stock market and so they've just kept spending as if tomorrow will take care of itself somehow and tomorrow hasn't taken care of itself yet and so things are going to slow down now. It doesn't mean catastrophe. It doesn't mean that people need to start crying in their milk, but if you want to know how I'm like from an investor standpoint, I am getting more into cash and cash equivalents. I'm extending my paranoia period. Um, I'm measuring things in years, not months. So, you know, nothing dramatic, but I am certainly going, okay, things are less stable and less optimistic for probably the next couple of years.

>> And people should be thoughtful about that.

>> Yeah, let's jump into the actual uh notification that Trump gave to Congress. Um, so he has notified the US Congress that the US is at war with Iran per Politico. Details include one, the move gives Trump another 60 days to military in the region without congressional approval. Two, Trump says strikes that began on July 7th represent military action consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and US interests both at home and abroad. Three, Trump also said that he will hit Iran hard tonight amid mounting tensions. The Iran war appears to be back again.

>> Yeah.

>> And um some reports are this is the most strikes that we have done since the start of the war has happened over the last.

>> It's got to be, man. He's going day and night. Uh they were talking about a daytime strike that was happening uh which is very unusual. I think that the mental model that I have of Trump now goes like this. Uh I tried negotiating. They don't negotiate. All the things that people said previously are true. That they will use every delay tactic they can. They will tell you the right things to try to get you back to the table only to then go blow something up an hour later. Also, here's something I don't hear this talked about a lot. Um, so when we killed the Supreme Leader Khamenei, you got rid of a center of gravity. So the way that at least my understanding of the region prior to the strikes was that the IRGC was reporting to the religious leader. You decapitate the religious leader, you um wound his son badly enough that he is so far not appearing in public. And so if he is as disfigured as people would have you believe, then basically the IRGC is in control. Now you've killed layer 1, layer 2 of IRGC. So now you're layer 3 IRGC. They probably have internal conflicts as well. So if you put that together with a destabilized government, love or hate a theocratic regime, uh it's a change. And so now you have a military government running the country and they may have some infighting amongst themselves. And so there and I talked about at the um funeral for Khamenei and I know I'm mispronouncing his name, forgive me, but uh the um at his funeral, Arabachi, I think is the guy's name, the one that we see out front all the time, he had rocks thrown at him because the hardliners think he's an appeaser by even going to the table and having conversations with the US. Now I don't know if that represents a large number of people, a very small number of people, but it represents a number of people. So now you've got heightened tensions amongst the IRGC. So you can imagine you have a group that their strategy is to drag things out coupled with the fact that now they can't get on the same page anyway. And the mental model again, mental model that I have of Trump and I could be wrong, we'll see how this plays out, is that all right, I just have to bomb the [ __ ] out of them until they legitimately have no ability to sustain. Now, we'll see if he can get it done in 60 days because he started his 60-day clock again. So, I'm expecting him to sustain the combat for much longer than he did previously to be far less um willing to come back to the table. I think that he's in a punitive phase at this point. I think he plans to use um he's said words like this. Will it ever be an official doctrine? I don't know. But I think he's going to be using a doctrine of disproportionate response. He may call it proportional. Uh but at one point I heard him say something along the lines of forgive me, this is me paraphrasing and from memory, but it was something like for every um thing they blow up, we're going to blow up 20. So it's like obviously he's not trying to be proportional even though he's going to use that word. Um, he's trying to be wildly disproportionate so that he can break their back economically and just from a will to fight. They are also now just they killed more IRGC troops in a single strike and I think the number was 80 um in a uh than they have at any time in the war. So clearly he has and the way that I um think about this is originally it was like very surgical strikes was clearly military targets. Then we widened out into sort of gray zone stuff where it's bridges maybe they're dual use and he's talking about just straight going after infrastructure. Now whether he'll uh call it civilian and infrastructure, dual-use infrastructure, that we'll have to see play out in time. But we're now widening the war to something far more aggressive, something far more disproportionate where he is trying to um dial up the aggression and punitive nature. Uh so that Iran doesn't want to be in a tit-for-tat game. So that's what we're going to see play out. And that's why, again, I'll point people back to, okay, if we're really going into something more aggressive, wider, more sustained, then why aren't we seeing energy prices actually hit the $200 level that people were prognosticating? The only thing that makes that make sense is you just don't have the demand.

>> And they're not just doing military attacks. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said the US Treasury is committed to disturbing and degrading Iranian illicit financial activities, including its abuse of digital assets. Today, Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control sanctioned multiple wallets tied to the Central Bank of Iran, resulting in the freeze of over 130 million dollars in digital assets.

>> 130 million.

>> Million.

>> It's pretty low.

>> So, yeah, I mean, that's not going to be a big deal for them.

>> Let me hold something. 130 million is pretty low. That's That's significant.

>> That's low, low. I'm surprised he's even bringing that up. Just to give you an idea, Iran, I can't remember if this was um recent or at the beginning of the war. Or I was hearing some I I can't remember if it was old or not, but anyway, Iran was saying, hey, just if you want to get us to the table, give us the 24 billion. It's nothing to the US. That's a paraphrase, but it's very, very close to direct.

>> So, and by the way, that's true. So when you're like, 24 billion, bro, it's a rounding error for you. Why are you even tripping over this? Just give us the 24 billion back. It'll matter to us. It doesn't matter to you. We'll come to the negotiating table. Everything's going to be great. We'll give you what you want. And so 130 million is nothing. Yeah, what do you really going to be able to do? Like buy new socks for the military? It's like you're you're not going to do a lot. I mean, you can get a nice basket of drones.

>> Fill in the blanks is because 130 million is a sneeze in a bucket.

>> For real. So that's unfortunately that's why I mean, we can really fractal into my absolute um hatred of the more we tax, the more we tax. The more we tax, the more we tax. It's like people just look at look at that number go up. It's never solving a problem, but just give us more the next the next round of tax elevations. That's going to be the one that finally we tax our way to prosperity. It's like it that's not how this game is played. So, these guys throw around so much money uh that it just gets stupid. Nobody's worried about efficiency anyway. I'm going to totally fractal on something that doesn't matter right now, but 130 mil is whatever. I'm surprised they brought it up. In fact, I'm so surprised they brought it up. It triggers in me they're trying to uh reach inside my mind and control what I think because that's a very weird number to throw out.

>> Got you. That's very interesting. Um, Trump also backed away on his claim of charging a proposal, a proposed 20% fee on cargo moving through the strait. Some people are calling it a toll. Iran is saying.

>> [ __ ] that kid. Let's really for for everybody that wants me to get animated about when Trump does something stupid on that. [ __ ] that kid. In all capital letters. That is the dumbest [ __ ] of all [ __ ] time. I when I heard that I was like, what the actual [ __ ] This is so crazy. You're bombing them because they're saying, "Yes, I know the whole nuclear thing, but let's be honest, a big part of this is that they're trying to control the Strait of Hormuz." And everybody, Trump, Rubio, they've all said it. You can't do that. That's [ __ ] crazy. No one gets to charge uh a toll that is totally off the table. We'd never allow it. We're gonna fight over it. Oh, PS, by the way, we're gonna do it. What the [ __ ] That was the craziest [ __ ] I've ever heard. I was Yeah. Okay, that one is uh completely ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. And I am certainly glad that he backed off it. I though don't think that intellectually he actually has a problem with it. That's so crazy. That one is absurd.

>> Absurd. So when it comes to the thing that you brought up, how we got here again, CPI, the oil demand, if oil isn't as big of a draw as we might have thought it was, does that change the dynamics at all of the war or now we're just in the.

>> I mean, so the crazy thing is that if you really don't if China's really like, nah, whatever.

>> And they're not back channel like sweating you like, bro, we're about to really make this a problem. And China now is thinking, oh, I don't need the oil. And you guys are now mired in a fight with uh Iran. Yeah. Now I got my eyes on Taiwan. Like you guys keep doing your thing. So now some of the pressure that I thought was going to be coming from China or was already coming from China may not be coming from China. Uh, if other allies are like, "Yeah, our economies are soft." This is the one I feel the most out over my skis because I don't have reporting on other nations. Like, is Japan like, "Oh yeah, we don't really have much need." Cuz for a while Japan was like, holy [ __ ] like we got to have our oil. Now I haven't heard a peep. Have I not heard a peep because and we know that Japan is in economic distress? So is China like, or uh Japan like, yeah, we also aren't really sweating the oil. That would give Trump a much longer runway from that perspective. And if there is a gap, and there will be a gap, I just don't know if that gap is like 30 days, 90 days, six months. I don't know what the gap will be, but there will be a gap where at first it's like, oh, prices are falling. Thank God. And it just feels better. And so people will be like, "Oh my god, this is a huge win." And then all of a sudden it's like, "Huh, we're not growing anymore as a country. Uh-oh, wait. Our GDP is contracting." Okay, hold on. This is bad. So if that period, like imagine for a second, I don't know this is going to happen. This will require more research. But imagine for a second if inflation keeps dropping. What if next month we have another drop? And now Trump is going to be like, "I told you. I told you I had this under control. You guys didn't believe me. Just in time for the midterms. Hey, this is cheap. This is cheap. This is cheap. This is going to run down the list."

>> We got you. I got the new Fed chair in cuz people won't know. Fed hasn't done [ __ ]

>> Even though Kevin War has said, "We didn't do this." He He's literally admitting for us this is not job done.

>> But he knows people are already saying, "Oh man, great job. You guys [ __ ] brought it down." So he'll be able to spin for some duration the story if it keeps dropping that we solved inflation. Not a problem. Told you we would deregulate. We're bringing jobs back. This is all fantastic. And if that buys him time to get past the midterms while he's kicking the [ __ ] out of Iran, choking off that supply, people that aren't in the weeds of the economy, they just know the headline that they hear, inflation bad, and inflation down. So, that's got to be a good thing. And uh Trump's at the wheel. Trump's beating up Iran. [ __ ] Beating up Iran caused inflation to go down. Holy man, this guy's amazing.

So, if there's a gap between feeling the increase of the softening economy and prices coming back down, that will be a rejoinder that looks positively on Trump.

Yeah. You wrote of Japan, so I want to throw this article out there. Japan is set to receive their first Mexican crude shipment since war on Iran began. So I know we talked about it at the beginning of the war how US has now become a net exporter of oil and energy. Um, Mexico is getting into this, and Canada. So it seems like Asia, led by Japan, is starting to see some alternative sources. So to your point of strangling out Iran, you know, they were responsible for 80% of the shipment to all these countries, and what if that drops down to 50%? Now they're feeling it in their economy with Secretary Bessett on the backside manipulating their currency. They can then feel an economic pressure that might make them lose the appetite for war. Even though this is ideological and some other things, but when their gas prices start going up, and when they start having layoffs, and their housing market explodes, it'll be interesting to see if they're, um, the people of their economy are still willing to go fight America versus trying to fix home and become Iran first, or something like that.

Yeah, I mean, that is a big part of the plan. Uh, to make things so untenable. This is exactly what Ukraine is doing to Russia. We're going to make your inflation spike by destroying your ability to refine your own oil or to produce your own oil, uh, and refine and distribute it. And so now you've got in Russia, you've got them importing oil for the first time in, I don't know, ever. I don't know that it's ever, but it's certainly the first time in a long time. People are very shocked that they are no longer a net exporter. Um, and so that is certainly very interesting. If that same thing happens in Iran, obviously that would be a very different game that we'd be playing.

Now, the fact that, um, Japan is importing from Mexico is very interesting. I want to know more about that. I hadn't heard that. So, the reason that's fascinating to me is that the US is trying to position itself as like, hey, we're the gas station of the world now. Forget those kids in the Middle East. They're a mess. We got you. Send your people to us. Japan is one of our closest allies. They have to be because of their beef with China. So, it's like now you've got somebody that's beholden to us. So, they've got every incentive to, if they're going to import from somewhere other than the Middle East, they would want to make Trump happy by saying, "We're going to buy oil from you." And they're buying it from Mexico. So, I need to look at that at a headline level. That one is jarring. So, I don't yet know what to make of that. Um, it's a weird signal. And so it's either a signal that, oh, Mexico just has better prices, in which case people are going to go to Mexico before they come to us until their supply runs out, and then we become spillover, or we're not ready yet to export even to some of our closest allies. And so what does that mean about us really being the gas station of the world? Is that just propaganda, or are we really moving in that direction? So that headline hits me in the same way that the 130 million. It's like something here does not match my worldview. And so either my worldview needs to be updated. Fair enough. Or I'm someone's trying to, um, what do they call that when you're like trying to plant seeds in somebody's mind? Oh god, they're getting you.

Yes. But no, there's a phrase that people use all the time. This is so common. Um, anyway, they're trying to, the way I think of it is they're trying to terraform my mind to get me to see something in a particular way. There is a name for it, and I'm forgetting.

Um, but I mean, we are in the thick of negotiating a new NAFTA deal between us, um, Mexico, and Canada. So I feel like that's leverage that Trump can use when he goes to the table with them, like, hey, now you guys are selling oil to people. This wasn't, but like, you might hate my war. You might hate how I did it, but you guys are doing better. Mexico was thriving in that way.

That's kind of the crazy thing that Trump might throw out. So yes, I could see him saying that. But unless Mexico is fully [ __ ] they know that that's really stupid because the underlying statement there is, hey, I create so much chaos in the world, you guys can take advantage of it. That's really dumb. But I will say it is fascinating to see how many plans are being put in place to work around. Some people will clock it to work around the Middle East. Most people will clock it to work around the Strait of Hormuz so that we can get around these choke points. Now, I still haven't figured out how they plan to do oil pipelines, unless you bury that [ __ ] bunker buster deep, uh, it's you just [ __ ] bomb it. So, um, if I'm Iran, and you're, let's say, Saudi Arabia, or you're the UAE, and you're trying to run a pipeline around the Strait of Hormuz, I just go, "Nope." And I strike it. And they're clearly letting people know that, um, we can touch you. So, there was a military base, I believe in Qatar, the US military base. US is talking not at all about it. But if you look at satellite images, it's been hit. So it's like the Iranians are reminding people, we got, you know, them drones that you see in, uh, Ukraine and Russia. Yeah, we got those too. And so they'll just keep sending them out, sending them out, sending them out until we get to the point that you were saying, unless Trump can break their their will to fight and become Iran first.

Yeah. They're just going to keep hitting [ __ ] and [ __ ] with their neighbors. All right, let's stay in, uh, the Senate for a little bit. Um, Lindsey Graham's sister, Darlene Graham, has now officially been sworn in to take her brother's place as a US senator from South Carolina. And I just need all the people that are in my comments talking about DEI to tell me who voted for Darlene Graham, what her notifications is, what her qualifications are, and what she's bringing to the Senate. Um, I think this is interesting.

I got you, [ __ ]. Before me and you were talking about this, I was like, I didn't know you could do this. Like this, I didn't know this was like a thing. Um, I thought everybody who's a representative had to get voted for. Apparently not.

This is wild. Both of you and I were like, "Say what?" Uh, yeah. I didn't know this was a thing. I didn't know that you could just, uh, appoint a stand-in. I thought if you weren't at like a certain distance from the election period, that you had to do a special election because the people had to have somebody in there.

Um, and that you just, like on a soccer field, you got a red card, you're playing with 10 men. So, if you're the Senate, and one of your senators just died, and you haven't done the next election, well, you're playing with one less senator. And so, whatever votes are, they are what they are. And so, sorry, tough break. Uh, I didn't realize you could be like, "Hey, you're gonna vote just like Lindsey Graham, right?" Yep. Cool. You're in. Uh, that's wild because let me tell you, for whatever people say, like, "Oh, yeah. I know exactly how we'd vote on this side or the other." It that's not how it works.

So, you need somebody who's elected by the people. I mean, we have a rule for it. I just didn't realize the rule was a rule, but that [ __ ] cray. Uh, now jumping to the other, the other, uh, house of Congress, the House of Representatives, they have officially bundled the NDAA, that's the military and is the miser, the military US and Israel merger bill, um, with the act, and it is now set to, it got approved through the House, and it's now being sent to the, um, Senate to vote on it. So, just like how earlier at the top of the year, they had the housing act separate. Trump said, "I'm not signing anything until the Save Act gets passed." This new bill that has been floating around, the NDAA, is now being bundled with the SAVE Act. So, you are not getting voter ID without a US-Israel military merger.

I got to look into this US-Israel military merger. Uh, it's one of those, I have an intuition that it is not at all what, um, people who are mapping the world as Israel controls everything. It's not going to be like they think. But anyway, I'll do until then. Nobody should listen to my sense on that. I've not done the research. Um, okay. In terms of tying this to another bill, I hate it when people do this. Um, but it is what people do. This happens all the time. So, the thing for me is we must have voter ID. We must have voter ID. I'm perfectly willing to accept that, um, there's not widespread voter fraud in terms of, um, somebody is pretending to be somebody else. Fine. But when you look at California and you see the incentive structure, it it all comes down to like making things legal so that there are no checks and balances. There's no way to stop, first of all, uh, fraud from happening. There's certainly no way to stop the probably far more problematic ballot harvesting from happening. And so that's where I'm just like, wait, what, what are we doing? First of all, we have a census that counts anybody regardless of, uh, whether you're legal or not. That influences your voting power in Congress. So that's already crazy. You already have an incentive to get as many people in your, um, state as you can from that perspective. And then we are already in a period where people are becoming more socialist and communist, which, just to disclose my mental map, I believe that is the single most destructive thing that you can do to workers. Go look at China. Go look at Russia. I am not making this up. This has played out over and over and over and over. The elite class will still [ __ ] win. The elite class will rule your dumbass from for time immemorial. So all the people that you're trying to get rid of, you will just entrench their power, and they will abuse the [ __ ] out of everybody else, up to and including starving them to death. It is a terrible [ __ ] idea. So now you've got all of that playing out as well. So it's like in a period where that's happening, we are just going down a very stupid path.

Yeah. Um, speaking of like voter fraud, like Thomas Massie said something interesting, um, that kind of caught my eye on the timeline, and I wanted to just kind of talk about, um, the first kind of year and a half that Trump has been in office after this. But let's cue up this clip first.

I think it's ironic that we control the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the White House, and we're yelling election fraud. I mean, we won all the damn elections, and we're in charge, and what are we doing with it? We're bankrupting the country. We're starting new wars. We're violating the Constitution. We're not cracking down on the fraud. The problem is not the elections. We won the damn elections. The problem is we're wasting our opportunity that the voters gave us. And and the Republicans are going to pay for that in November. It'll be an absolute shellacking if they don't wake up. I think.

So. He's simultaneously, um, right about the things that he's pointing to, and he is absolutely out of his mind to say that you don't need to, uh, protect your system of voting. Like that's crazy. But to his point about the wasted opportunity,

Yeah. That that gets, um, into what makes politics so ridiculous and offensive on its face is what, what do you want them to do, Mr. Massie? Do you want Republicans to vote in a block more like the Democrats? Because you're the one that votes against the, uh, Republican party at a rate that I think is, um, much higher than anybody except maybe Rand Paul. So you have the guy who I think has the sharpest mind in terms of he is he is mapping the world accurately. We need to be focusing on fraud. We need to make sure that, um, we stop bankrupting the economy, like full stop. And he has been extraordinarily good on that side. But when you talk about wasting the opportunity, the only way that electing all of those people isn't a waste is if they all get together and vote as a block and start moving the country in a singular direction. I think that's a terrible idea. I think you actually want people to go in and battle the ideas. So the fact that the, um, Republicans were unable to get momentum going in a direction is because they're [ __ ] [ __ ] and they're focused on the wrong [ __ ]. So it's like he's conflating two things that are don't conflate because they are both incredibly large problems.

So here is my overarching thesis on why voter, um, restrictions, voter, um, identification becomes so incredibly important. We have created an incentive structure that incentivizes people to come from all over the world and just get in the country. Illegally is fine. Just get in the country. After that, there is a party that if you vote for, they are going to give you more free [ __ ]. And by the way, both sides of the equation are going to make sure that there's just a ton of inflated dollars sloshing around the system. So get to America at all costs. Running that experiment will destroy the country through a mechanism that's very easy to walk people through. We will rise the debt until the debt becomes so problematic that the interest payments that we're making are, um, so large and so catastrophic that you have to force yourself into austerity or defaulting. If you default, you're just like somebody with a 400 credit score. Nobody's going to give you money. Right now, money pours into the US. That will stop. So you raise your debt to the point where you can't raise debt anymore, and austerity is forced upon you in the worst possible way. So it's like I'm not just appealing to like vibes and feelings. I'll walk you through the [ __ ] mechanism that I'm saying is a problem. So we, we have created that problem where people are incentivized to get here and find some way, amnesty or otherwise, to vote for those policies. And so I'm like, [ __ ], stop. You've got to figure out who is a citizen because I'm already under attack from birthright citizenship, um, from people in my opinion, getting completely ideologically captured through the education system and becoming unhinged lunatics that actually think socialism will be better for the working class. It is so crazy, dude. Honestly, this is going to be controversial, and forgive me if you've got kids, send them out, but like, I really believe this. When I hear the DSA talk about socialism being good for workers, it is like somebody saying, uh, raping women is good for women. It's like, what the [ __ ] are you talking about? And I do mean it at that level. When those policies are carried out over time, people end up starving to death. I know it sounds like a cliche, and I know it sounds like I'm being hyperbolic. I am simply representing history. So, it's like Jesus Christ. So, that whole thing is is such a big concern to me. And so when I hear Massie, who I think is fantastic on virtually everything else, say like, "Ah, it doesn't matter. Don't don't worry about that." It's like, "Bro, just look at the incentive structure." Even if you're going to say, "Hey, look, we won all the elections. Tom, calm down. Everything's going to be fine." It's like, dude, we are in a populist moment. Can you not see lawfare is skyrocketing? A willingness to, um, again, I'll just go to amnesty. Even if you don't want to think fraud, that we're pushing towards amnesty policies. Can we agree that things that California are doing are making sure that fraud could happen, even if it's not happening? Can we agree that ballot harvesting should be illegal, even if it's not illegal? These are all things that make following the incentive structure that is self-destructive can be followed like in a greased shoot. So, uh, that one's weird. Thomas, I love you. I love you. I hope that you find a way back into, uh, Senate. Boy, that would be great. But goddamn, uh, to brush off that making sure your elections have integrity, that's crazy town. Even if you're like, this part of the timeline, we're fine. Bro, project out five, 10 years. Like, what's happening? Populism will drive you into a completely deranged area. You've got to do things to secure your elections. I agree with that. But I think the five-year timeline, half of these politicians are going to be dead. Um, respectfully.

Median age is like 60, 67, or 67.

To no, but to Matthew's point, like Trump came through. He got the big beautiful bill across the finish line. Shout out to Trump. He closed the borders. Cool. You, you, you two for two. And then for the last year, he just been fumbling the bag one after another after another. And it's one of those things. If you did do something that addressed housing, if you did do something that addresses, um, if you did do something that you, you slashed, he's getting the wins that from Project 2025 that they said they wanted. The Department of Education is now getting, um, like removed.

You, um, cool. Uh, you got your tax break for the rich. You, um, no tax on tips to the 2%. Um, so there, there's all these different things that he can then like put this up and say this was an absolute win. If you would have kept in that stance, I think he would have made a lot more progress into the socialism and stuff that we fear. If you would have gotten housing down, and you've reduced my taxes, and you've increased jobs, and the economy is booming, and AI bubble, and the AI like push has actually like materialized into something. We're building more power plants. We just tripled construction jobs over the last year. Now, when I say, "Hey guys, look how good we're doing it. Let's keep this going. Let's make sure our election." Now, I'm a bit more apt to say, "Okay, I can sit down to the table and have that conversation." But I, I, I come back to this point a lot when we have this conversation. We keep talking about something that's going to happen in 10 years, but meanwhile things are crumbling today. So that's why a lot of people that aren't scared of the 10-year thing is because the house is crumbling today. So the young people who want to be socialist, they can't afford a house today. So why the hell do I care about 10 years from now? So let's blow it up now. But once they, as soon as they get a house, as soon as they're, it's now a contract, they now have the shackle on their on their ankle. They're not going anywhere. They're built into capitalism. That socialism stuff is going to immediately disappear. So it's like we can cure some of these things, and if California wants to fry itself by letting all the illegals come, then let California fry itself. That's why states are some states are good, some states are bad, and everybody would like loot. Everybody would just move and leave California. So I, I think we, we can't overindex on what's happening in three places and say this is why we need to do this thing for the whole country, and we're going to have take the whole country hostage until we like solve this issue. And I think there's different things that we should focus on.

Median age is like 60, 67, or 67.

That's giving genius if I'm channel. Uh, so listen, I don't disagree with any of that. I think all of that is bang on. You're being, um, less offensive than Thomas Massie, uh, in that you're not saying, "Hey, it's not a big deal." You're just saying that there are other things that we need to focus on. I would say this one is, uh, you need to focus on debt. You need to focus on housing. You've got to secure your elections. I think I don't think people understand that 47% of the US budget goes to entitlements. Uh, that we, for every new dollar of tax we bring in, we spend $1.58 at the government level. The government is completely deranged and unhinged. And we've got to get to the point where we don't make it legislatively accelerated, which is exactly what we're doing right now. And so, um, that, that to me is just, you, you can't ignore that one. Now, if, if that is, um, because in literally everything you said, other than I think you're downplaying the importance of election integrity, everything you said is so bang on, and I so wish Trump had done that. Wouldn't that have been incredible? Uh, and that's why I say like, to hear Thomas Massie, the guy that like is really, really trying to get people to focus on the importance of debt, the importance of fraud, the importance of waste. Like, oh my god, it's incredible. So, I would much rather him say something along the lines of, listen, I get it. We've got to secure our elections, but Jesus Christ, we're not even going to have a country if we don't solve the, and then insert debt, fraud, all that. Would love it. But honestly, and I get it, he's just been abused by the political system. So, he just had, uh, APAC work to get him out. Trump work to get him out. And so, that's going to make you feel some type of way about your ex-girlfriend. So, I get why he feels the way that he feels, but it's now getting into like, okay, be a little bit more thoughtful about what you're saying because I'm starting to just see some of the like frustration and bitterness seep through. Um, we are in a populist moment. People will reason from emotion. They will do things that they otherwise wouldn't do. And that, that's not a left or right thing. That's a human thing. That's just what humans do. And so I'm trying to do anything that stops that from escalating. Everything that you laid out would work absolute massive wonders to that. In the meantime, much like you need to close your border, you've got to secure the way that your democracy actually runs. Uh, and we're not doing a good job of that. Like, I'll throw one more thing out just to be nice and controversial. When you look at Manni, Manni got elected by people that are foreign-born. He didn't get elected by, um, native New Yorkers. So, the fact that you can graph how different people that were born and raised in New York vote versus a mayor who also was not born and raised here, and voters who were not born and raised here, they vote very, very differently. This is the culture clash coming to roost. You've got people that that were just raised in a place where it's like, oh, this is how we do things. They come here and it's like all this prosperity, and they're like, yeah, you guys are doing things wrong, so let's do it the right way, but with the prosperity. And that's how they view it. Or you can take a very cynical view, cuz I know some of them are more just like, "No, you guys plundered the world. [ __ ] you. We're taking it all back," which is 10 times crazier. But it's like both of those must be stopped. Not at like all costs. I'm not that guy. But it's like it's serious. We need to really be careful to protect our institutions. It's like I say here at Impact Theory, you can challenge any idea at Impact Theory except our the principal system where it's like anybody should be able to say what they believe to be true, even if that means challenging me.

And I mean, listen,

No one will believe you if you say it now, but it's like you challenge me openly on camera.

Now, I have acknowledged you a thousand times for also being a good producer. You'll throw your punches and then you let the show be the show. I respect that. I've told you that a thousand times. Um, but never once have I been angry with you or upset. Even though I say if you can prove me wrong live on camera, [ __ ] go do your thing. Like, I've got no beef. Same with Ryan. I don't think even if these guys left in anger and hatred, they may say, "Tom's a dick. He's an [ __ ]. I [ __ ] hate him. He's a right-wing lunatic." They may say all of that, but they're never going to be able to say, "I told them to shut the [ __ ] up and not say what they believe to be true." Literally, no universe. I would put them in a lie detector test because it's not my personality. So, um, period. I'll stop there.

Uh, I wanted to throw this up there, too. Uh, these are political ads in the age of AI. Uh, Thomas Massie shared these after the, uh, primary like went Ari. But it's very interesting how they, he's in a throppple. They got him holding hands with AOC and Ilhan Omar. And this is the ads that they were running. And all they had to do at the bottom was saying this shatter ad was created with artificial intelligence. But that's on grayscale at the bottom for 2 seconds at the end of the ad. There's some old lady in Kentucky that was like, "What? He's he's in a throppple." Oh, man. The liberals got him, too.

Yeah. Um, I'm okay with this.

You for really?

Yeah. Here's that surprised me.

Yeah. I, I'm a little surprised myself. The the reality is that we are all going to have to learn that we live in an AI world. And what I want to see, and I'm still like, I can't get my head around, um, how the blockchain is not being used to certify this thing came from this account.

Mhm.

And what should happen in my opinion is everyone should assume that what they're seeing isn't real. And that the biggest problem we have is people. We're in this weird liminal space where people still trust their eyes. You can't trust your eyes. And it is going to get worse. So now we have to live in a world where people are trained not to assume that they only see real things. They need to be trained to assume, I have to fact check who this is coming from, who posted this. And then people will earn their reputations over time of like, I can or can't trust that person. That to me is the only sane way forward because even if what what will end up happening is people will go, "We've got to protect against this AI misinformation. Like this is crazy. We can't live in this landscape." And then I'm going to create a video that accurately represents the truth, but like, I changed the sky color to make it pop a little more to grab people's attention. And so now it is like modified by AI. And people are like, "See, that's all [ __ ] fake. This guy used AI." And it's like they will, the platforms will shut that content down. They'll say, "Nope, sorry. We detect AI. This is shut down." And they won't be able to get into like, "Oh, this is, we check the facts and this is factual." [ __ ] you. Anybody that didn't learn from COVID, literally [ __ ] off. I, if you went through COVID and you didn't realize that the government, with or without good intentions, is prepared to decide for you what's true and what you can and can't see. I'm not, no way. I'm not living in that world. Bro, that is either you eject the [ __ ] out and you find somewhere where they allow freedom of speech, or you, like, second amendment that [ __ ]. But you sure as hell do not just go, "Oh, this is fine." Like that one is the line in the sand for me. That is crazy town. It has already been weaponized against us. I will not tolerate that again. No [ __ ] way. And so what I don't want is a world where we vote for [ __ ] where we're like, protect me from AI. No, no, no. You want to put in solves for this from an innovate like, come up. How do we show that this is, uh, AI? Oh, cool. There's like a little, um, thing in the corner and it marks that this is AI, and I just learned to check. I just watched the video. Hm, that seems weird. Is this AI? No [ __ ], it's real. Holy cow, this is AI. Let me click it. What was AI? Oh, this is like, uh, they modified the saturation just to be overly simplistic. Or no, no, no, these aren't even the real people. Cool. Now it's like I've got a breakdown and, oh, let me check the reputation of the person who posted this. It this is a new account. They posted three times. Get the [ __ ] out of here. It's like, "Oh, this is account. They posted 500,000 times. Holy [ __ ], they've got a 98% rating. Okay, yeah, I can trust these guys." Like, we, we need to build the world that way. It is the only way that we will be able to make sense of the world without saying, "I trust the government to tell me what's okay." Jesus, man. People that want that do not have the same mental map of the government that I have.

It took me 45 minutes to create a ChatGPT account for my mom through the phone on FaceTime. I feel like we're asking way too much for the senior citizens who vote the most in America to verify AI by going through accounts and stuff.

I reject the premise of a nanny state on its face.

So in the meantime, I'm going to take advantage of all these old and senior citizens catch up.

And then we'll figure it out. But like you said, this is, this is manipulation. So we can say that it's cool, we reject a nanny state, but we can also say that this was a line. This was manipulation.

Word choice is a manipulation, literally. And we do it all the time.

Okay, this is like blatant lying. Like America is a very uneducated country. I feel like we are in a situation where when you create these political ads that is just bold-faced lying. It's like the Telerico one where they put him in a dress and had him say random stuff. Like, it, it does get to a point where it's like, we're lying to old people who aren't going to be able to fact-check this stuff. Like my parents, who aren't even that like old, still can't tell what the difference between real footage and AI is. And they're very.

Question, Ryan.

Yeah.

Should South Park be allowed to exist?

That's different. That's parody. That's not AI.

People are going to say this is parody. So who gets to decide?

Elections. Uh, don't elections. We talked. We just had a conversation about election. You.

Mean elections?

We just had a conversation about election integrity. So you can't parody elections.

Okay. So you want no satire in elections whatsoever. Yes. So the Babylon Bee gets shut down.

They're not running ads and they're not endorsing campaigns. They're not endorsing candidates.

They'll put all kinds of crazy, hilarious [ __ ] out there.

They're not running ads and they're not endorsing candidates.

Okay. So you want the line to be it's a political ad. Now, who gets to decide? Was Spencer Pratt's, um, posts, were they political ads?

He's a, he's a political candidate running, and yes.

What if I, who am not running, created that exact ad and put it out?

And endorse Spencer Pratt. That would not be, that would not be.

What if I don't endorse anybody, but I put out clearly my videos have a slant, but it's me. I'm not a political guy. I'm not taking a stance. I'm not telling you Fox News.

But I'm just painting the picture, and that's good.

Then you are a news organization. But when it comes to political ads, I feel like we can draw this line.

Okay. And so as long as it isn't coming from a stated political advocacy group, it's.

Endorsing a candidate. Yep.

Uh, define endorsing a candidate.

At the end of this ad, it was, uh, Ed Mirin waving with Trump at the end. That was endorsing a candidate. You showed the opponent with a illegal throppple that's not even illegal in in America with two people that are married, and then now you're saying that, but this guy stands with Trump and fights for you. So on on mass, you're endorsing this candidate.

Okay. And is it that you don't want AI use full stop, or you don't want AI to create a fake scenario?

Um, fake scenarios is a great place to start. But if this.

And who's going to adjudicate.

What is real and what's fake? Then let's get AI out of political ads.

Yeah. So I can actually get down with some, um, if you put tight enough constraints on it, like this can't come from a political organization. Uh, they can't use anything that, um, artificially places a candidate into a false scenario, something like that. Like, okay, like we can make it tight enough that there's some sensible restrictions there. Obviously, I, as a default, just do not trust the government, but I don't think that's crazy. I think that you could probably drill down to something that's tight enough. But what I am saying is that is not going to solve your guys' problems. Both of you went straight to the real problem, which is there are people that are not going to understand that there is a difference between the hyperviral ad that Spencer Pratt wouldn't come from him in the future, would come from somebody else. It's working on his team. They publish it. It's a non-political account that does not do the thing that you called making it officially a political ad, but it gets 30 million views, 50 million views, and it spreads like wildfire. And neither of our, none of our parents realize it's fake because they don't realize AI is AI.

Well, even what worries me is not even 2 months ago, the three of us were sitting here talking about is Benjamin Netanyahu dead because of a coffee shop video, and we can tell what's AI and not, and we were still stumbling on that. I think the problem is just we're creating false realities visually versus, oh, I'm just going to lie about a candidate on a podium, right? Like that is something that you can easily be like, oh, Trump said this, it's just not true. But when you start incorporating like political ads that are fully AI generated and share like maybe based on tweets someone once said, you're you're just lying to people like outright.

I, I would even take it back. Trump had to do a press conference to America because his base is not chronically online. Everything he said was on his True Social feed. But the people who don't, who aren't on Twitter, who aren't on YouTube, who aren't chronically online, that just watch traditional TV, that still have a cable subscription, those people, they're seeing these ads. And that is my beef. If it, it's if that's my, the entirety of my beef. I'm not saying AI is bad. I'm not trying to blow up a data center. All I'm saying is they ran a political ad on network like cable TV that was 100% false. And to me, that us struggling like, well, you know, I don't trust the government, so let's, I'll let anybody lie to me now, is like, I feel like we should have at least some better standards than that.

Uh, well, so you believe that these guys were saying this is actually what happened, not this is satire. You think they were putting it forward this actually happened. They are actually in a throppple.

I think they put it forward knowing that it could be misconstrued as reality.

Of course, so does the Babylon Bee. That's what makes the difference. Online satire. It's online. And again, it's online. It's on Twitter. You have to go to X so that we don't death loop. Yeah.

Uh, let's establish what we've decided as as our little throppple here. So one, I think we're all on board. Hey, there's a certain set of really tight restrictions that we could do that would get rid of this particular thing. It's an official campaign ad. Uh, it's generated entirely with AI. Like, cool. So we'll set that aside. Where I'm trying to get you guys because my whole hypothesis is you do not want the government deciding, um, satire outside of what we already do. So you can obviously sue somebody and say this is defamation. It, you know, you've lied about who I am for this reason, that reason. So we have legal definitions around that stuff. What I'm trying to get to is you will very rapidly have a world where somebody goes, "Well, hold on. You can't do that episode of, um, South Park because they put words in Saddam Hussein's mouth." That's not what he actually said. And so then it becomes, they'll say, but it's obviously not real. Now we're going to, what's obvious is a reasonable person. And now I'm saying we already have those laws. So we have laws that say a reasonable person would or would not think that this is real. Now I will say a reasonable person will see this and realize in the age of AI, this obviously is not real. And so now it's like we have legislation around that. And so you guys are saying we need tighter regulation. So now to just avoid the death loop, what we want to, I think it would still be fruitful to discuss is, okay, at what stage do we say dumb people must be protected.

I think tighter is the wrong word because like we've always said with new, with new innovations, with new technology, we need to figure out how they fit into our society. And I think we're hitting a point with AI where we need to comprehend that. Like maybe it's not protecting stupid people, but it's being real and saying this stuff can manipulate in a stronger way than our words can.

It can and will. So now what do you do?

We regulate it.

Yeah. That's a death knell because it will be abused as all regulations are, and there will always be people that can get around it, up to and including, let's say, Iran. Iran posts fake videos all the time to show we're not, uh, losing. You guys are crazy.

TV.

That's that's the line.

To avoid the death loop, we have already accepted the, okay, this kind of stuff on network TV is not going to exist.

Everything else on online is all, is all fair game.

Okay. So you and I are now on the same side against Ryan. We're saying that, hey, it's wild, wild west. People need to be educated and figure out their own thing. But the thing I'm trying to focus a conversation on right now is do we or do we not use regulation to protect dumb people. I think, with the caveat of it's not on network TV, are saying yes, dumb people got to figure it out for themselves. I think there should be a technological solution that just shows people what it is. You believe.

Um, which are you asking more about?

Protecting dumb people. Yay or nay?

Uh, you know, I think it's a situation by situation case. I don't think framing is.

Spin up a new regulatory body that's going to review all the material.

I'm not even saying that, but it's like we have regulations on, let's just say, remember they just passed the thing about generating porn with real people with AI. I don't see why there's any world where we couldn't start exploring putting those types of regulations on AI political ads. We already regulate political ads.

Political ads or political satire?

Well, so which, it depends which video you're talking about. So, if we're talking the Telerico video, which is the one that I always go to for the AI conversation, that was a political ad. These right here.

We, the three of us have already said no political ads.

Okay.

In a very narrow definition.

So, then we're on the same page.

AI should stay out of political ads, especially on network TV. If an ex account wants to tweet whatever they want to tweet, God bless.

Exactly. Yeah.

Cool. Now, just so you know, things that look distressingly close to a political ad are going to be created, and the world is going to be a wash in them. They're just going to be created by accounts that have their own agenda but aren't actually political bodies, and they're going to get tens of millions of views, 50 million views, and in aggregate, Jesus, they'll have billions of views. So what I'm saying is at some point that needs to be addressed. I think that has to be addressed with a technological solution that people can opt into so that people can build a trust score, essentially, and then you know who you listen to and who you don't. That would be my solution rather than a government regulating that. Okay, that one looks so real that it can't go out would be my take. All right.

Cool. We got super chats. Cover all the charges.

Let's go.

Before we go into super chats, I'll correct something I said earlier. I said 67 was the average, 67. I said it like the meme. Uh, is the average age. Senate, it is 64. House, it's 59. So that's the average age of our politicians.

The house is like babies.

Yeah. Which is, I mean, I guess babies for politics. But, um, yeah. All right, let's go into super chats. First up from Marushia Dark. Mushed dark says, "Free food, free housing, free clothes, free healthcare, outdoor time, safe spaces, free TVs, books and consoles, little to no work, only police having guns, and perfect security. Give socialists what they really want, jail."

He cooked with that one.

What just happened? Is he saying that's what the world should be?

No, he's saying that's what socialists want.

Yeah, he's saying, "Yeah,

But give them what they really want. Jail."

Because all those things he listed are like.

Things you get in jail.

Yeah.

Got it. Uh, that is Marushia. I love you to death. You know that. But the thing that I think you're mismapping is that socialism is really about resentment. Socialism is about punishment. In cross-cultural studies, they have shown that as long as people can, um, punish the other person, they'll accept less themselves. So it is a case of people hate the rich. They're not trying to help the poor. That, that is the unfortunate reality. People hate the rich. They are not trying to help the poor. They are perfectly happy to see everybody else in poverty. They, of course, will still be in the elites, and they'll still rule over you, but they'll rule over a way less wealthy country. So they will ultimately be hurting themselves. There's no way to understand socialism, communism without making resentment one of the absolute core ingredients.

And you can find more Marius takes if you jump into the Discord, which I just linked in the chat. Next up, Big Digglers says, "Awesome. You got Jeff on. He along with Brent Johnson is a good counterbalance to Lyn Alden. Tom, you should join Snyder. Uh, Snyder, me, Brent Johnson, Hugh Hendry, and all the cool Euro dollar kids in St. Barts next month."

Oh, [ __ ]. Uh, well, so you just said a name that I don't know. So, Brent Johnson, can you slack that to me? Yes.

We'll need to look into him because, uh, Jeff was a dope find. We just had him on the show. Episode comes out Thursday, tomorrow. Uh, holy [ __ ], this guy is dope. I don't, I guess the reason he's not bigger is because he's so technical, but damn, this guy feels like somebody that everything he puts out should be 250K, easy. Um, he's incredible. So, I don't know if this is going to be like the era where he just starts, um, getting that kind of fame, but I think he's been around for a while. So, anyway, he is a fantastic macro thinker. Um, I'm very impressed. So, if Brent Johnson is in that same universe, I got to, I got to get to know him.

Work hard, hold BTC.

says, "Thanks for continuing the hard work, guys. Always a pleasure to listen to the show, dude. I will never cease to have immeasurable gratitude for people that pay to say a nice thing. That's crazy. Thank you so much. Extremely generous."

Brutus Lugo in all caps. Tom, you say these incentive structures will lead to voter fraud, but it never has. I think it's time to update your mental models here. The perceived incentive structure I see doesn't necessarily lead to fraud. I think it will.

So, that I think is a very um clean critique, Brutus. I appreciate that. And by the way, continue to appreciate your um thoughtful critiques even when they're in all caps. Um and I really mean that sincerely. Uh so on that point that does get into the fraud side of it does get into it feels right but I don't have the data to back it up. So I think that's a really reasonable criticism of me that I also apply to myself. But when I look at the um incentive structure and I look at the data so look at the um focus on California and focus on ballot harvesting. That's where my most sort of grounded concern comes from. So, and by the way, if none of this is a concern and we only care about people that vote that should, I can't understand people's push back on it. You wouldn't let somebody on an airplane without showing their ID. You can't even go into Obama's presidential library without showing ID. It's like we get it everywhere other than voting. It's just so strange to me. But um anyway to finish that point. So I am looking at those things and when you see that somehow the mail-in voting preferences the third um candidate in the stack in the exact amount that they need to cross over the second one who happens to be a Republican. It's just could be coincidence, man. But wow, does that feel impossible to believe, especially when you see similar things at the national level. It's just like if people are, and again, more data is necessary. Totally understand that. Uh but when you look at all the ways that a California um makes it possible for bad things to happen and then makes it legal for something I consider just absolutely unhinged to happen. That's where I and I'm speaking of ballot harvesting specifically. That's where I'm just like, yo, this is insane. So, um yeah, that's why I'm gung-ho about that. it voting matters 10x in a populist moment uh in in terms of the integrity and so we just can't given the consequential nature of this we just can't be like yeah whatever it it's the same way I felt about the border it's like immigration's great but unchecked anybody can come in catch and release uh come in the country and 10 years from now we'll adjudicate it like all of that is just crazy it's it's nonsensical the way certainly that California treats voting is just legitimately nonsensical. Um, so I I will grant you the feeling about fraud, but that's why I check myself and say I'll just assume for now that my feeling is wrong. It's certainly irrelevant because only data matters, but in terms of all the things that California makes possible, when you align it with the incentive structure, it it is um stupid at a minimum, dangerous in my read and there's no reason not to curb it and just say you have to register and you have to prove that you're a citizen. Full stop.

Chaos Ballad says, "Seriously, Tom, you're not wrong about socialism."

The Imperial Order from the Sword of Truth series says, "Oh word, bet. Wait, what? That seemed to Did that It made sense right until the end. Did I miss something? I don't understand the last part to be honest. Let me let me let me triple check. Just came through. Um, sword of truth is uh Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series deeply entrenched in strict dogmatic and often brutal philosophies. The phrase, "O word bet isn't a direct line from the vocabulary, but does make for a hilariously accurate modern summary." Got it. Yes. When you see it. I see. I see. Oh, yeah. It was in quotes. Sorry. That's hilarious. This is the second time I think it's Chaos Ballads that's brought up uh this series. I'm getting a little bit sad. I've never read it. I can send it to you. Yeah. The Imperial Order seems to be the the like bad guy group for this. Interesting. Yeah, it's uh you don't even have to go to fiction. Like this has played out over and over and over in real life. It's wild. I I still don't understand how people can champion uh Mal Stalin Lenin. Like dude, I if you're if you pick up um Minecom and you read it, which I have done, and you walk away going, you know that Adolf guy, he had some good ideas. I'm like, what the [ __ ] Uh we watch them play out. We know where they go and it is horrifying. So same with Marxists, Lenin, Stalin, Mal. Like we saw it play out. We know what it actually does in real life and it is murderous in all capital letters. I don't know what the [ __ ] I don't know how our education system has failed us so badly that we don't have this screaming sense of like I can't even like bring up any affinity for a Mau a Stalin a Marx uh that that's crazy that that should feel as taboo as saying like yo that Hitler guy he was pretty cool it it should just be the most taboo [ __ ] ever and it's not and that is wild."

And that's it for super chats.

ICE temporarily suspends most vehicle stops after two fatal shootings, one in Houston and one in Maine recently. Um the one that just happened in Maine, all three officers involved didn't have body cameras.

"Hey, look at that. What a shock. Uh that's crazy. That is just like the very convenient nature that when Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, uh that all those cameras broke. Isn't that weird? So, yeah. Listen, again, could be a coincidence, but Jesus. Um, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. Dear ICE, you've got to chill on this [ __ ] As somebody who really does want to see our border secure, people that are here illegally be deported. I love it the most. But godamn, man, you can't go around shooting people. So, if you guys don't know the story, another person was shot and killed in an altercation with ICE. This is the fourth killed by federal immigration agents this year. and it's a second in under a week. So, we officially have a problem. There is a way to do policing well and there is a way to do policing poorly. So, I understand the desire to stand in front of somebody's car to make sure that they comply. Unfortunately, that is not working out well. So, we've immediately got to adjust our tactics. I don't know if that's they carry those strip spikes around and they put them in front of the wheel before they start talking to the person or if we just say we've got to let them go and we've got to track it. I don't know if these guys carry a pocket full of tracking devices and they put it on the car. Whatever. But it clearly isn't standing in front of the vehicle with your gun drawn. I'm not even saying that these guys aren't using their cars as a weapon. They are. But god damn, man. like being in a situation where we're shooting people uh with that degree of frequency is it's not sustainable. First of all, it's going to make the country turn against you. And I understand in a populist moment, the whole vibe is just, well, [ __ ] the left and these guys are getting upy about nothing. No, no, no. They are your fellow citizens. And so, we want to be in a position where we have rule of law. We find solutions to these problems. But just like I thought it was very wise for Tom Hman to say, "We're going to get rid of the guy that looks like he took Minecom way too seriously and we're going to put somebody else in that's going to be more sane. We're going to do this in a humane way." I really want to see America get back to um leading with their value system, saying, "Hey, some things are right, some things are wrong." And understanding that yes, like we may have to come up with new tactics because I am for one not saying, "Oh, you just let them go." Nope, definitely not. But clearly, when you have a strategy that is creating too many deaths, you have a bad strategy. So, we have to understand the moment that we're in. By the way, the person that was killed wasn't even the person they were looking for. So, the person that was killed had a work permit. As far as I understand, it was a Colombian man. I believe he's 26 years old and had a right to work in the country.

"Social security number."

So, listen, we've got we've got a couple things going on. One is why the [ __ ] is this guy running? So he's panicking, he's acting a fool. So for sure either we had a cop going unhinged, you trigger this guy's fight orflight response. And so now all bets are off. Remember, humans are animals and they will start acting stupid if you put them in panic mode. And so if you've got a cop in panic mode, you've got a guy in a car in panic mode. What's that?

"ICE is not cop. Like I don't want to conflate though. They're law enforcement."

They don't have uh red and blue whistles. They don't have marked cars. They're in mass with guns. perfect is very different than LAPD. So e even more likely that you're going to cause somebody to go into panic mode. So we've got to figure that out. Got to dial that [ __ ] down, whatever that looks like. Uh if that means that ICE officers are just all labeled head to toe and you've got to put the hammer down on the neighborhood for blowing the whistles and all that [ __ ] great. Fine. You've got to be able to do your job. You've got to be able to get people out. But if we're just causing mass panic, we're causing stampedes and people are getting shot, it's like, okay, it's time to come up with a new strategy. Again, I'm pretty um straightforward on my immigration policy. Keep the borders ultra secure, and if you're here illegally, you got to go. So, I'm yay. But again, you have to do this in a way that's actually high functioning, that is not causing just a bigger and bigger rift between the two sides. Um, plus you're just giving ammunition for people who are going to say, um, yeah, this is why we need to abolish ICE, which is one of the dumbest [ __ ] things I've ever heard in my life. You have to have immigration enforcement when you have such an insane incentive for people to come to your country and get in no matter what. You're going to have to have a nice, sane way to deal with all of this stuff. Um, but by the rate of killing people, you just have to be above it. And look to something like what happened in the civil rights era where it was like, "All right, guys, listen. They're going to stick dogs on you. They're going to be spraying you in the face with water. And you give them all the ammunition you need if you become violent. Even though you would I don't think anybody would be confused as to why you might want to get violent in that situation, but it is not going to serve your purpose. And so, because this is a populist moment, if people don't feel like they need to understand the other side or um draw everybody back into one big group, they're just like, "Fuck them. we're going to be as um authoritarian stormtrooper-l like as we want to be and just [ __ ] it. It is what it is. Now listen, Tom Hman has been better than that. But nonetheless, we're flirting with that line. Again, we've got to find a new strategy. There is a new strategy. I'm telling you, the way the guys are doing it is not the only way to do this. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but I'm saying that we do need to find it.

"To give insight into why the guy ran, um just speaking from a Texan perspective, my last year in college,"

"I thought Texans never run. Well, depends because you know, Alamo, we stood tall, but we don't always stand tall like that. But, uh, my last year college, Greg Abbott allowed ICE agents to wander our campus daily. And a lot of my friends are Latinos legally here. And what happens is ICE will stop everyone and racially profile them. And so, a lot of my friends had to begin carrying their passports around. And what would happen in classes if you didn't have any form of identification and ICE happened to walk in and see you'd get questioned, you'd get taken out of the class. And and I can see why being a person of color, being an immigrant in a country that is actively making laws to push against you, I can see why your instinct is to to run away because it's scary. And so"

"Crazy. I I can't see that. I'll be very honest with you."

"The runaway part or the"

"The runaway part."

"I guess, to each their own. Cuz I mean, at the end of the day, I'm a white dude. I'm never going to experience, you know, any questioning from ICE. Um, and so it's just a very interesting thing to look at in the grand scheme of how ICE implementation has occurred over the last, uh, you know, term compared to presidents prior."

"I I will say I understand why people don't like seeing a military force wandering around. There is something that just makes you a little bit uneasy when you see a bunch of people carrying guns"

"with masks on."

"Uh, the masking,"

"they did wear masks on campus."

"Obama deported three times as many people. None of his ICE agents had masks. He made the cages. Obama."

"So, we've done this before. Well, and better. Why do you want them to be masked? Why is that okay?"

"Well, so there's an answer to that question. I agree with you."

"FBI is a mass. CIA is like, there's so many other law enforcement agents that are doing things twice, three times, four times as legal. And these guys have 60 days training. Like, hair stylists have more training than them. And they're the ones that are messed up. That's why they're shooting with impunity cuz they have in an enemy. It doesn't matter. Uh, so I'll take a slightly different stance and and um push back as you see fit. So here's how I would look at that. Um, we are in a time where you've got people going to ICE facilities and attempting to kill ICE agents. You have times where there are people that are rioting outside of ICE facilities and saying, "I've seen your face. Now I'm coming after your whole family." Um, so there are reasons given the unpopularity of ICE on the left. there are reasons why they would not want to be doxed. So, I certainly understand that. Um, I don't think it outweighs the downside of them being masked and how weird uh that feels and the level of danger that it creates, all of that stuff. Um, and so all of that, I get the the fear and frustration. There is a reason why they're doing it. Again, I don't think it outweighs it. Let's stop doing it immediately. let's solve the other problems uh that are associated with that. But going back to okay, we've got the people that are running and hey, you've got a mass guy coming up with a gun. Is it sensible to run? Um if somebody is going to fake being an ICE agent and they're going to fake it to your detriment, they'll fake being a cop, they'll fake the badge, all of that. like the um Hortman I believe is her name in um Minnesota who was murdered by the guy pretending to be a cop. I mean, he went to the extreme of getting the cop outfit and doing all that [ __ ] So, it's like that isn't going to stop it. That's motivation. And if people are motivated to go in and harass people, you need to immediately arrest them and make sure that's just abundantly clear, [ __ ] You do that, you're going to jail. And so, if you start putting people like that, forget jail. You start putting people like that in prison and people don't start [ __ ] around imitating ICE officers. Unfortunately to uh the people in ICE, you've got to demask. You've got to do your thing. And then if somebody actually does something, then if one, if you know that there's a credible threat against them, protect them, protect their families. And if it's just, well, there could become a credible threat, then if somebody makes a move or whatever, you've got to go after them. But you can't just create the draconian police force. it isn't working. So, I'll even say, "Hey, we ran the experiment. Doesn't work. It just too many people get shot. So, cool. You tried it. Non-starter. It's um doing something to the psychology of people in the country. It's it was a failed experiment. Now, let's find that next thing that we're going to do." But running is definitely not the play. Like, that's crazy. And I see more and more footage of people um running from ICE, cops, whatever. That's just crazy town. Chill. Assess the situation. what's going on and then move forward. Now, does that create a very very narrow possibility that this actually isn't an ICE agent? This is somebody pretending to be. Yes, it does. Um, but like I said, you have the same problem with the cops. And to abolish the cops would be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life. Uh, same thing with ICE. You don't abolish it, but you do have to. There's going to be risk on both sides. And right now, it feels like everybody's trying to get rid of all the risk ever that could be anywhere. And it's like, that's not how this works. Um, so, yeah.

"I found the case you were talking about. It was I'm assuming you were talking about uh Melissa Hortman and her husband and then Senator John Hoffman and his wife."

"Correct."

"Okay, there you go."

"There it is."

"Let's jump over to Japan."

"Let's go."

"Uh, where they announced their own Clarity Act, break it down to us and how it impacts my crypto holdings cuz they looking kind of weak right now."

"Yeah. Well, we're certainly in a moment uh with crypto in terms of it chopping sideways, but Japan really has done something what Washington hasn't yet been able to do. We've been talking about having a Clarity Act here in the US, but this morning, Japan's upper house passed a landmark amendment reclassifying crypto as a financial instrument. So, that's a very big move. This is exactly the kind of thing that we're trying to do with the Clarity Act. Um this is the same for Japan. It's the same legal category as stocks and bonds and final passage through both chambers is now done. So that's really exciting and I want to see the US do the same thing. It the value of these things is going to go up and down but we already have stocks and bonds. They go up and down. So if people want to say listen give me the regulation and I will adhere to the regulation great. I don't understand how we've been doing all of this through litigation. So remember, the SEC has just been like, "No, no, no. Do whatever you think is best and then we'll sue you if you get it wrong." That is [ __ ] crazy town. That is the dumbest [ __ ] ever. The government does stuff like that all the time. It is an absolute dereliction of duty. They should say, "Here is your guidance." Now, they can put guidance in the beginning and then update it over time and say, "Okay, we've amended it in this way." But as long as you were doing it according to that, great. And by the way, if they come to you as Coinbase did and say, "Hey, we want to sit down with you guys. We want to get clarity." and they still tell them, "Just go do what you think is best, and we're not we're not going to comment on it here, but if we see that you do something we don't like, then we're going to go after you. We're going to pursue you legally." That is the craziest [ __ ] ever. And that's what they were doing. We need something like this. I am shocked that America has not been able to get this across the finish line. You've got to tell people what is what they can and can't do. You can't just sue them because you have invisible rules in the back of your mind that you're unwilling to put down. So crazy. Either have the regulation or don't, but don't have it invisibly stored inside your own mind. All right. Now, what is this going to do to uh crypto? So, crypto moves out of Japan's payment services act, a framework that was built after the 2014 Mount Gaus collapse. That's a whole thing. Uh and that was treating Bitcoin just like a payment tool only. And it takes it into the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, the law governing Japan's security markets. So that single migration is going to trigger everything that comes after it. So insider trading on crypto is now banned. Let's go. That is fantastic. That is fantastic. We want to get that here in the US, man. So like crypto gets such a bad name, which it shouldn't, but it gets such a bad name because so much stuff is able to happen on the margins outside of the normal regulatory framework. Issuers will face mandatory annual disclosures. Great. so we can see what's actually going on because what we should want to see more of and we are starting to see this with Circle here in the US now. Um I don't know all the finer details of this yet but Circle now um I think it's a an actual regulated bank. Uh Ryan, that would definitely be one to fact check me on, but I think that's true that Circle is now a regulated bank that they built from scratch. And so now they have certain regulations that they're going to have to follow in terms of backing their um stable coins with actual assets. I imagine there's going to be reporting requirements so you know what assets are backing it. This is the kind of stuff that we should want. Now back to Japan penalties for unregister unregistered operators jumps from 3 years in prison to 10 and fines more than triple. So this is fantastic. There are going to be trade-offs for sure. You're going to get increased regulation, but you get legitimacy out of it. And the reclassification creates the legal architecture for spot crypto ETFs on this the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which are supposedly going to be coming in 27 or 28. Th this is all good news. Now, normally I am against regulation, but the reality is when it comes to finances, man, the consequences get so wild. We have a regulatory framework. It's working well enough. Let's just invite crypto into that regulatory framework. As always, I'm a light touch regulation guy. There needs to be some. I'm not a zero regulation guy. And that's largely where crypto has been banished to is out into the hinterlands. But people are so angry and so frustrated with the manipulations of the global economy that they still were able to create something even with all the attacks that it came under and build it up from effectively nothing to being something that really is meaningful. and I think we'll keep getting more meaningful into the future. And so I'm very excited to see Japan do something very sensible that will help them move into the modern era of banking by allowing what is obviously a superior technology to come on board. Now the question is going to become can we pull this off in the US? Boy, I would like to see it come to fruition.

Circle N National Trust is uh approved by the OC in July 2026 that provides custody for digital assets backing its USDC stable coin but cannot take deposits or make loans like a commercial bank.

"Okay, word. Thank you for that. No problem."

"Um so yeah, that is a phenomenal first step. Now the problem right now is that the um US banking sector is fighting against crypto being able to pay out interest that you should be offended by that. You should be up in arms over that figuratively. That is one of those things that is so crazy to me that that is just banks saying we want to be the only ones that can create money and then two we want to be the only ones that can pay people for storing their money with them. That's crazy. Anybody within the regulatory framework should be able to do that. We used to create new banks all the time. People were constantly running experiments to see what worked. What does the future of banking look like? And then that just got killed. We have regulated that out of existence. I forget how many new banks are created, but it's something like zero in in some astronomically long period of time. We went from God, I'm making these numbers up, but these are directionally correct. We went from hundreds of new banks every year to literally zero, one, two, something like that. I mean, it's just absolutely crushed down into nothingness. And so obviously the bank industry is going to push back on this. But as customers, we should want the competition. The the very thing that hurts the end consumer is when there's monopolies. And right now the banking industry has a cartel if not a true monopoly. And they are making it impossible for people to innovate. And crypto came along and just refused to be banished. And so now they're having to contend with it. But if I'm going to give my money to somebody like Coinbase, yes, I expect that that is going to act like a savings account and that you're paying me a return. Now, if you end up going out of business because you don't know how to run your [ __ ] bank, then shame on me for banking with you and I should lose the money that I put into that bank. That's how this should work. But you can't just, again, going back to nanny state, we got to protect everybody because we think everybody's dumb and so we're going to bail out every bank ever and nobody's going to take any risk. That is absolutely [ __ ] stupid. It is precisely why we are in the economic situation that we're in right now. Let people innovate. Let new banks come online and let people take risk. It's their money. They've got to be adult enough to say, "I'm going to make a choice for myself." And yes, that choice may bite them in the ass. And yes, that choice may have consequences. It is what it is. And every time life has slapped me with consequences, I have been distressed that I made a stupid decision. But it is what it is. And I'm not reaching out to the government to save my ass. It's like, man, I am where I am because I made a series of choices and boy oh boy have some of the choices that I've made bitten me in the ass. But it's like you learn and you move forward. But when you're constantly looking for somebody else to bail you out, you get this [ __ ] insane gigantic government that is just making it impossible for the working class to thrive. Therein lies your problem.

"Also, since 2008, we get about a handful to a dozen banks a year. And then in terms of crypto, we've seen a rise from 2025 to now with Circle, Bitco, Ripple, Paxos, Fidelity, Coinbase, Crypto.com, and a ton others."

"But they are not able to do things that banks can do. That's the problem."

"Like they can't pay interest."

"Yeah. And so, um, you've got basically the banking industry saying, "You can create things that sort of look like us, but they can't do the things that make us cool." So, for instance, they can't create money and they can't, um, pay interest. It's like, that's crazy. I get they can't create money, but I've got beef with that whole system anyway. Um, but the fact that they can't pay interest is insane. There's no argument for it. None."

"Um, all right. Some quick hits in future tech. First, we have Mi Hoyo. Creators of Genchin Impact just announced Olivia, an AI companion who lives on your desktop, plays piano while you work, and exchanges letters with you. 100K downloads on day one."

"Damn. So, first of all, if you guys haven't played, if you're a gamer uh and you haven't played Genchin Impact, it is pretty dope. I went into a hard loop on uh Genchin. Now, it's a a gotacha game, so it's got mechanics that are very similar to gambling, so I wouldn't let your kids play it. Um, but it is uh yeah, it's a a very interesting genre of game and they've done a very good job of it globally. It is so popular. Um, I have an absolute fetish for in the future, integrating AI inside of Kaizen. We don't have it now. It's just beyond our capabilities today. Uh, but inserting AI like this into the game so you can have a relationship with characters in the game, out of the game. Uh, I want to do it with like a little character on your desk. Anyway, I'll derail on that. But it it is absolutely fascinating that a gaming company is getting into AI. You're going to see characters like this be built up as personalities here. In fact, let me broaden this out to my core thesis on AI. AI will have two paths before it. one is going to be it's going to be commodified. It's going to be treated just like oil. So, you can start thinking in terms of if you've got barrels of oil, you've got bundles of tokens and people are going to buy um those baskets of tokens in the same way that they think about buying oil and so it'll be commodified and so you buy it from whoever's got the best deal and so whoever um puts that out uh in the best way, you're going to go get that. But you're going to have and this was that whole Alex Karp thing that he was trying to get people to understand. you're gonna build an intermediate layer that's going to allow me as impact theory to go, okay, I want to do a whole bunch of proprietary stuff. And so, I'm really trying to move away from the commoditized um intelligence into a very specific almost humanlike intelligence. I don't mean that that it's going to think the way we think. I mean it that it's going to be individualized in the way that we're all individualized. And so all of us as companies are going to interface with this intermediary layer. We're going to change all the dials and knobs, the waiting as they call it in AI, and we're going to make our layer that's proprietary to us act in a way that the other commodified intelligences won't. And so my AI will output something very different than the next person's AI. Dude, when you get to that, oh my god. Now I'm incentivized as a company to be like, yo, I want to tweak all these dials to do something that nobody else is going to be able to do. And now I can scale AI, but in a way that is unique to me. And what you're seeing with this is sort of the marketing spin on top of that. I imagine they're still using a largely commodified basket of intelligence that it's going to be very similar to things that you'll get, but they're doing what they can to give it a real personality both in terms of how it responds with the letterw writing, but also most importantly in your mind because they're branding her. So, they had she was out for like a year or something. Uh they gave her a persona. So, she was like a university student who was majoring in music, I think, or piano. uh yeah, majoring in piano, had a minor in psych if I remember right. And so it was like people built this relationship. She was sending them messages back and forth. And so now you've got that branding effect of, oh, this isn't generic AI. This is that specific AI. Now, I think you guys should be paying attention to the fact this made by a gaming company. I'm trying to scream as loudly as I can about what it's like to actually be a gaming company and how you are basically trying to understand human psychology to the nth degree, understanding dopamine cycles and things like that. You'd be shocked how much of gaming is just about getting the dopamine cycle right. And then the fact that they're understanding AI, character development, and merging those together. Woo buddy. Like the world moving forward is going to get fascinating if what I'm saying is true. and gaming companies remain differentiated because they have made a proprietary AI. The actual creation of the the like code, sure, that part's going to be simple. Everybody's going to be able to do it very easily. But the games that get outputed are still going to be unique to that company. That is a far more exciting future than the one that I think everybody's been imagining where it's like, well, AI is just the same everywhere. Man, if this gets differentiated with that intermediary layer, it's gonna be interesting. So, when I saw this, I was very, very excited. Um, Kaizen's probably a ways out from that, but nonetheless, I was excited to see that this is coming from uh a game company. I think they really get it. Uh, and I think that this is sort of that consumer way to understand what Alex Karp is banging on about."

"Nice. Next one, we have um Oh, the construction vehicles of the future. They just raised a bunch of money to revolutionize how we built."

"How much did they raise? Go back. It's like uh"

"$100 million in series A."

"So they raised $15 including 100 million of that coming from Kleiner Perkins. So $115 million raise. Was it series A?"

"Yeah, series A."

"Bro, that's for that kind of raise. That's early. This is exciting for for this kind of company. This isn't like just, oh, we're an AI company, which you can get like absurd valuations. So these guys are former SpaceX guys. So they were doing Starlink, SpaceX, all the stuff that um Elon has been working on. So these are real engineers. The reason that this is so interesting is we have spent all the time building software. That's been all America's been doing. Our manufacturing base has been getting gluted forever. And these guys are called Terrairma, I believe. Yeah. Terapirma, Inc."

"These guys have said, "No, no, no, no more of that. We're gonna start building here in the US." This is the same reason that I'm excited about Palmer Lucky and what he's doing at Androl. This is people who are manufacturing in the US that have managed to convince young kids growing up, go be an engineer, go move electrons around the world. It's something that we haven't been doing. It has put us in a globally weak position in a way that should terrify anybody that's paying attention to what's going on with Thucid's trap and our rising tensions with China. it also Jesus what's going on right now actively with Iran you want to be in a position where you can manufacture we want to be in a position purely even just from an economic standpoint where we have a thriving working class because there are things for them to actually work on okay part of the reason that our working class is struggling there's not work to do so this making things in America focusing on innovating with technology that will first be used to build factories and things right here in America America eventually moving out, building bases on Mars, on the moon. They called that out specifically. That's not just me throwing this out into the future. That's really what they're going to be doing. This is so exciting, man. This this kind of shift takes a very long time. You've got to raise kids that look at engineering is something that's incredibly cool. And so, thankfully, this has been brewing behind the scenes for a while, and we're now starting to be able to reap the rewards of it. But if we can make the US a manufacturing powerhouse again, now you're into the world where hey AI becomes this incredibly disruptive technology to be sure. But we end up getting more jobs created on the back of this just jobs that right now we can't think about. But instead of being static like we've been for so long because we've so focused relentlessly on financialization and software now seeing people starting to build real things. Man, this is so [ __ ] exciting and I'm very sad that we're like in this weird place right now with AI in terms of people starting to lose belief. They're confusing. It's going to take longer with it's just never going to happen, which of course is what happens with all these technologies. Remember, you can go find people that were saying, "Bro, the internet's a fad. This isn't going anywhere." That's wild. And you're getting people saying similar things about AI. I think you're going to see companies start coming online that just wouldn't be possible without AI. In fact, we're going to be talking about one here in a second that while I don't know the ins and outs of how much they used AI, I would be absolutely shocked to my core if AI wasn't a core part of what they've done. But, uh, Terrairma, Inc. really got me excited when I saw that th this is like America getting back to form. More and more people at least spreading the message we need to be an engineering powerhouse. And keeping the trend going in future tech, Vigmag Labs secures a patent for a rare earth electric motor platform. This is huge cuz most EVs were like dependent on these rare earth magnets, but this is the first one that is able to build a motor without them at all."

"Boys and girls, you must understand China controls 94% of the world's EV magnets. So, if you want to build an EV car or anything that uses rare earth magnets, you've got to go through China. And we all know that that was a big part of the tariff battle. China was like, "All right, you want to start [ __ ] around with chips and things like that. We're not going to let you have the rare earth magnets, which your entire modern way of life is tied to." Now, a 10-month-old startup in Bangalore just patented a way to not need rare earth magnets at all. This is incredible, man. Shout out to these guys. This is very impressive. The company's called Vmeg Labs. Uh on July 8th, they secured their fifth patent in India, but not that that matters, but their fifth patent something uh for something called a virtual magnet synchronous motor. Now, almost every electric vehicle on the road today runs on a motor with rare earth magnets embedded inside of it. And if you can get around that, one, you've got new innovation. Lord knows where this is going to go. Does it end up making it cheaper? I don't know. But according to the International Energy Agency, China handled roughly 91% of global rare earth refining and 94% of uh the world's permanent magnets in 2024. So these are the things that people need for all the things that China is trying to hamstrung people for. So it is going to be very exciting to see if now India and uh Vmeg specifically are able to create another thriving industry even if it's just exporting this technology to other companies so that around the world so that we're not beholden to China and again like I said this could end up driving cost down or make things possible that weren't possible before. So this is very exciting. I'll need to do more research to find out if AI was used and if so how much. Uh, but if this also leans into that that this is something that wouldn't have been previously possible without AI, now all of a sudden you're starting to see some of those things that we couldn't have predicted. Like nobody, and again, I don't know this is true, but if it's true, it's going to be things like this that will start happening where nobody would have expected that this thing um we'd be able to get around rare earth magnets because of AI. It will be things like that that AI starts making possible, even if this isn't one of them. But I'd be a little bit surprised given how precise the timing of the software has to be um to get the magnets to work because if I understand correctly, it's like you're turning them on and off like at these insane uh rates. And um I'll stop there because I don't understand the technology well enough. But this is very very exciting. I can't wait to see how this plays out."

"Nice. We got a third hour for you guys. We're about to jump into a react. But first, we have some super chats."

"Yes, we do. Hi, my name is Tucker says, "I very rarely get to catch you guys live, so just thought I'd like to donate to the cause. I always appreciate Ryan and Drew's POV and push back, even though I most frequently agree with Tom. Uh, makes for an interesting watch and listen."

"Forget you, too, Tucker. It's like nonplay."

"I love that. That obviously is a big part of the dynamic of the show. Um, I love it."

"So, yeah, I I'm with you."

"Also, go Knights. Vegas Night City."

"Oh, go Damn, that was a deep cut. I don't even know who that is."

"Good hockey team. Yeah, they've been killing it."

"Timothy Marin says to Drew's comments on Monday, "If the examples explicitly said they were primarily for white people when they were created, would that be a racist problem? Would it be okay if someone made explicit primarily white only spaces?"

"what were we talking about? Do you"

"um somebody we were talking about like BET and stuff like that like on stuff like that? Um I responded to him as a comment. Um the Klux Kan and the Aryan Nation are not federally terrorist organizations. So, they still meet regularly. So there are white only spaces for people who just want to be with white people who want a white future and a white utopia. So"

"but feel good or bad"

"or go to Florida."

"Man, you're definitely not talking South Florida. South Florida."

"That's where mommy's at. Um what was the question? I'm sorry."

"Um but how do you feel about those spaces? Cuz I think the bigger question is it the underlying tension is it's fine and encouraged to have a black only space, but it's weird to have a white only space."

"If white people want to go to white only spaces, go to white only."

"But you that wouldn't be weird for you. You'd be like, "No, I get it."

"This is my blessing. If white people want to do white only things, go do it. I don't feel any type of way. I hope you and the white friends have as much whiteness as you would like."

"Clap when the plane lands, find your people,"

"what whatever it is. And then if the Chinese only spaces want to have the Chinese open spaces and the blacks want to have the blacks and the PC's want to mix everybody. Everybody can have whatever spaces they want. It's the policing of other people's spaces that I think we need to let go of. So you could go into your mon your, you know, monolithic viewpoint if you want to, but just don't get mad if other people want to go into a different monolithic."

"I want that to be a word, but it's not"

"monolithic."

"I thought monolithic was a word."

"Monolithic. I don't know if that's what you mean. Megalithic. What was the word?"

"Monolithic."

"This."

"It's because I have a lisp."

"Hey, it's all good. We'll take it. Um, okay. So, interesting. I um while I also think it's perfectly fine if people want to group up by race. I think it is a terrible idea in America right now. So, I simultaneously think people obviously have the right to do it. Um, but we have a division problem. So, I certainly don't love to see it. I don't love to see it being promoted by the government. That would be the one place where I'd be like, um, that strikes me as a terrible idea right now."

"Cool. Let's jump into"

"Someone said country club is a white space."

"That's funny."

"It's interesting. You guys find that funny. I don't know why that's funny. I I can mentally map why it's cheeky. And so, um,"

"is cheeky not funny?"

"Yes. I Here is the bad news. I'm going to be the downer right now. The reason that that isn't um funny to me is what they're saying is only white people are wealthy enough to afford it, which a isn't true and b like would be the last like stereotype we want to keep banging on about."

"But black black people having wealth hasn't become inclusionary. There was somebody that called LeBron a porch monkey and he's a billionaire in the NBA. That's"

"and that's this is going to be the worst TV of all time because I'm just like now a school momm but it's like that to me is so full [ __ ] for somebody to say [ __ ] like that like"

"it that's the kind of thing God I'm really showing my age when I grew up it was just like that guy was not invited back to the barbecue. Nobody wanted to be around the guy that was saying stupid [ __ ] like that."

"Um"

"so yeah the the just like"

"Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm I'm just being a a school mom. Uh what's a school mom?"

"Like the woman who stands uh in the school. Timmy, you're not allowed to do that. That whole kind of [ __ ]"

"So teacher."

"Yeah, exactly. Or supporting everything that we're doing here on the channel. The QR code is on your screen. Go to s.comtomill to get the unbiased truth on the stories that matter. Um that's very important. Making sure that you are not getting uh spinned, that you're not being propagandized. That is hugely important. And if we want to keep this sponsor and keep doing what we're doing here, we are trying to get to 100 app downloads, guys. So, if that speaks to you and you want news that's truly unbiased, go check them out. That would be amazing. It' be a huge way to support the channel. My next AI master class is coming up Wednesday, August 5th at 1 p.m. Pacific for free. I'm going to teach you guys how to launch a company using AI. The link to sign up is in the description. All right. Love you guys. Bunch of YouTubers."

"Oh [ __ ] Can't believe I completely forgot about that. As a heads up though, as a warning, uh we are not going live on Friday. I'm going to be out of town presumably though my wife is injured. I guess I could change things, but as of right now, I don't expect to be live on Friday."

"Ah, this bonus cost y'all. Y'all thought we was just going live just because."

"Ryan Big Digglers says banks want to gatekeep their monopoly to the financial abstraction layer, read currency unit creation, digital assets, blockchain are to banks what Martin Luther and Gutenberg's printing press were to the Catholic Church."

"Yo, okay, I'll check that out. Thank you, big dlers."

"Uh, esoteric dichotomy says the mice in the experiment didn't have prison to remove or quarantine malfunctioning members of society. Also, they didn't have space to split into disperate colonies or explore and build up new locations."

"That's true. It'd be interesting to see if uh mice in the wild would do that. I I don't know. That's very interesting. It's a great insight, certainly about prisons. Uh, which brings us back to the fact that the DSA wants to abolish ICE and some of them uh are very opposed to prisons full stop, which is crazy."

"Uh, Canis Barbatus says, "You handled this show like a rented mule."

"I don't know what that means."

"It's a southern idiom for like you worked really hard. You like powered through."

"Ah, I love that. Thank you. I'm thank god you're here because I was like, "Okay,"

"resident Texan."

"Uh, Big Diggers says, "Tom, yours truly was the first to drop Euro dollar in the chat years ago and super chatted these names before. It's one thing to ask for specific critiques, but when given follow-up falls on you, George Gaiman is another name."

"My man, if you somehow uh were the one that led me to Jeff Snyder, I cannot thank you enough, man. I really love people um crowdsourcing me to a smarter place. So, thank you big diglers. Much appreciated. Um and so, okay, George Gammon. George Gam. I've heard that name, but I couldn't tell you anything about him. Can you slack me George Gammon as well?"

"Yes, I can send you the whole thing."

"Thank you."

"And that's it for the super chat."

"Amazing. All right, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much. Uh forgive our absence on Friday, but we will be back at it on Monday. And uh until then, be legendary. All right, peace."

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Inflation Just Crashed — and That's the Scariest Part

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