Is Trump Like Hitler? Best AI opportunities? + Special Segment w/ WhatifAltHist | Tom Bilyeu Show PT 2

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast Summary

Episode Overview
Title: Is Trump Like Hitler? Best AI opportunities? + Special Segment w/ WhatifAltHist | Tom Bilyeu Show PT 2
Date: December 25, 2024
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Guests: Merrick, Rudyard, Special Segment with WhatifAltHist
Main Theme:
The episode delves into some of today’s most divisive questions—how to maintain integrity and independence in a polarized world, practical personal finance for those feeling locked out of the system, unpacking Trump-Hitler comparisons, and drawing boundaries between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. The special segment features a vigorous historical and political analysis led by internet historians.

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1. Mindset and Division in Society [01:05–04:40]

Key Discussion Points:

• Building Personal Belief Systems:
  • Tom underscores the need for a “North Star” for personal values—his is “human flourishing.”
  • Reiterates the difference between values (“how the world ought to be”) and beliefs (“how the world is”), and the importance of continual testing against reality.
  • Changing beliefs in light of better utility is crucial:

    “If you come at me and like, ‘that belief is stupid,’… I’m like, damn, I’ve gotten this far with a belief that’s broken. Please tell me what the thing is that will allow me to move towards my goal with more efficiency.” —Tom Bilyeu [03:38]

• Resilience Against Division:
  • Tom advocates for open-mindedness and adaptability, emphasizing learning from failure and criticism.

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2. Investing with Limited Means [04:40–09:37]

Key Insights:

• The Two Levers:
  • Tom emphasizes: “You either need to reduce your expenses or make more money. Period. Full stop. End of story.” [05:26]
• Skill Acquisition:
  • Urges listeners not to consider a minimum wage job as a permanent lifestyle and to focus obsessively on skill-building.
• Practical Frugality:
  • Shares advice on downscaling lifestyle (roommates, moving back with parents, living with less) to create a savings-investment gap.
• Investment Approach:
  • Suggests a diversified, “all weather” approach (inspired by Ray Dalio), and cautions that all investing carries risk—even in assets like Bitcoin:

    “Investing is gambling. There are no sure bets… On a long enough time period, you want to make sure that you hedge your fucking bets.” —Tom Bilyeu [07:08]

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3. Overcoming Fear and Taking Action | The Power of Failure [09:37–14:45]

Key Moments & Quotes:

• Fear as the Dream Killer:

  “The thing that kills dreams is fear and boredom. You are going to fail. But failing does not make you a failure. Failure is the most information-rich data stream on planet Earth.” —Tom Bilyeu [10:03]

• Iterative Learning:
  • Tom shares his personal story of putting out projects that initially got ridiculed, only to eventually improve.

  “My real superpower is I can be laughed at longer than the next person.” [10:51]

• Identity as a Learner:
  • Urges the questioner to reframe limitations and focus on learning and skill stacking, not immediate validation.

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4. Leadership Systems: Ray Dalio’s Dots [14:45–17:03]

Core Points:

• Ray Dalio’s System:
  • Tom explains Dots: a cultural feedback system based on radical transparency and peer evaluation.
  • The goal: avoid personal blindness by giving and receiving direct feedback, rating traits (e.g., work ethic, skill) from 1-10, and looking for performance patterns.
  • Candid feedback is hard, but crucial for group and personal growth.

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5. Special Segment — Is Trump Like Hitler? History, Rhetoric & Political Analysis [17:59–68:24]

Framing the Question [18:21–19:07]

• Tom sets up why the Trump-Hitler comparison is being dissected—were the parallels with “early” Hitler justified?

Defining “Being Like Hitler” [19:07–23:19]

Merrick’s Definition:

• Core is a vision to structure society around ethno-nationalism.
• Key features include centralizing power, expansionism, use of force, media manipulation, and creating a common enemy.

Rudyard’s Perspective:

• Points out the misuse of “fascist” and emphasizes that in global context, Trump is not especially racist or totalitarian.
• Explains Western hypersensitivity to “racism” outstrips global standards.

Notable Quotation:

“Trump is very, very unracist by the standards of 99% of humanity… our racism sensors are so finely tuned that we’re just completely hysterical.” —Rudyard [21:21]

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Historical Comparison & Slippery Slopes [23:19–36:35]

• Both guests and Tom agree that central components of Hitler’s ideology—racial totalitarianism and destructive expansionism—do not fit Trump.

• Discussion distinguishes between authoritarian (seeking to exert power) and totalitarian (seeking to control all aspects of life).

• Tom: “If you’re not saying the use of force to get what you want, you’re not getting close to Hitler first.” [25:06]

• Use of the system to undermine democracy (e.g., election fraud claims) is acknowledged as concerning, but still not a match for Hitler’s methods.

Memorable Exchange:

“What you said is just the argument equivalent of saying you’ve been raped for being kissed.” —Rudyard [36:30]
(Tom laughs: “Rudyard, are you saying Trump is kissing us unsolicited?” [36:57])

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Authoritarian vs. Totalitarian; Application Today [39:59–45:58]

• Rudyard differentiates:

  • Authoritarian: Direct power over others without intervening in personal life.
  • Totalitarian: Government controls all major personal and social life, supplanting all institutions with party ideology.

• Argues modern left and “woke” movements are more totalitarian than modern American right-wing politics.

Rudyard’s Global Perspective:

“You could say FDR is authoritarian… but to be totalitarian is very historically rare… totalitarian societies are the only societies in history where the government destroys every social institution of the society and then supplants it with the ruling ideology.” [40:00]

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Comparative Rhetoric and Consistency [46:00–52:47]

• Tracing “Hitlerian traits” to other leaders (Churchill, Alexander the Great, etc.), showing that many traits are common among powerful figures and do not define Hitler uniquely.
• Tom and guests discuss the moral relativism of racism—Trump’s rhetoric seen as relatively mild compared to past leaders.
• Tom: “Morals have to be grounded in something… so Trump either is or is not racist in my book.” [52:12]

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Rhetoric, Policy, and the Slippery Slope [52:47–57:50]

• Host and guests highlight the difference between rhetoric/actions that are unsavory and actual movement toward genocide or totalitarianism.
• Key concern: Is Trump simply a brash leader, or on a dangerous “slippery slope”?
• Tom stresses that “bully” does not equate to “dictator” or “totalitarian.”

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Institutional Differences: Modern America vs. 1920s Germany [57:50–60:33]

• Rudyard emphasizes structural protection in America:
  • Modern deep state is left-leaning and would never allow a Trump-style power grab akin to Hitler.
  • In 1920s-’30s Germany, the state apparatus was right-wing and abetted Hitler’s rise.

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Loyalty in Leadership [60:33–65:44]

• Debate over Trump’s demand for loyalty:
  • Rudyard: “If being bellicose and obsessed with loyalty are Hitler traits, then the entire nation of Italy is Hitler.” [61:14]
  • Merrick: Value logical consistency—if you condemn it in Trump, condemn it in all leaders.

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Final Analysis: For Moderates and the Concerned [65:44–68:24]

Rudyard:

“Making the jump from Maduro to Hitler is such an enormous jump… It’s just hysteria.” [66:20]

Merrick:

• The left dominates rhetoric; Trump is disliked for not playing by those rules. Urges moderates to look at issues on both sides and avoid hysteria.

Tom’s Closing:

• The future is unknown; don’t preemptively judge based on speculative fears.

  “My only ask… tell the world what you believe is true, and distrust yourself enough to know that you nor I cannot see the future. And a preemptive strike against somebody would be the only mistake to make.” [68:24]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “My real superpower is I can be laughed at longer than the next person.” —Tom Bilyeu [10:51]
• “Investing is gambling. There are no sure bets.” —Tom Bilyeu [07:08]
• “Trump is very, very unracist by the standards of 99% of humanity.” —Rudyard [21:21]
• “You’ve been raped for being kissed.” —Rudyard [36:35]

---

Timestamps of Key Segments

• [01:05] How to build a personal belief system and remain independent in a divided world
• [05:23] Practical advice for investing on a low income
• [09:56] Conquering fear, identity, and the power of failure
• [14:57] Ray Dalio’s Dots system and radical feedback in organizations
• [18:21] Introducing the Trump-Hitler comparison segment
• [19:07] What defines “being like Hitler”?
• [39:59] Authoritarian vs. totalitarian societies
• [46:00] Comparing historical leaders and the relativity of “dangerous” traits
• [60:33] The loyalty discussion and its limits
• [65:44] Final thoughts for moderates and the concerned

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Summary Takeaways

• Anchoring yourself with deeply rooted, examined values is the antidote to social division.
• Advancing financially requires both ruthlessly minimizing expenses and focusing on skill acquisition.
• Failure is essential—being open to public embarrassment is a superpower.
• Direct feedback systems modeled after Ray Dalio’s “Dots” foster essential growth within organizations.
• Comparing Trump to Hitler falls short of historical nuance: while there are surface similarities in style or rhetoric, the crucial ingredients (totalitarian vision, mass violence, institutional support) are missing.
• Authoritarian and totalitarian are not synonyms—understanding the distinction reframes much popular panic.
• Hysteria, rather than reasoned fear, dominates much of the comparison, and the American system is built to resist such concentrations of power.

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For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode offers a robust, clear-eyed view on how to navigate divisive discourse, differentiate political labels, and maintain both personal and collective perspective in chaotic times.

Transcript

[Tom Bilyeu]

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[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is Impact Theory. Let's dive right back in to part two.

[Moderator]

All right, we got a couple of mindset questions. This is from leonsthejr4636. The world is entirely divided right now. And for someone who doesn't resonate with any of the groups formed by the De zip fish vision, it can feel real isolated. How can you be yourself not giving in the pressures of conformity I hate today? How can you be yourself and not give in to the precious unconformity by both major sides, but still remain connected with the outside world? And what can we do as individuals to try and diminish the division of our society?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so this is where people have to build a belief system and a value system. The only way to not be swayed just by what other people are saying or by the pressure is to understand what you believe and to have an anchoring mechanism. So here's how I built my belief system and value system. Okay, so first of all, you need to have a North Star. My North Star is human flourishing. I would highly encourage people to have an honorable North Star, Meaning it isn't just good for you, it's good for those around you as well. For for the largest group possible. Okay? Once you have that North Star, now it becomes a question of how do you move towards that North Star. So for me, utility in service of moving towards an honorable goal is the way that I build up my belief system. So my values are how I believe the world ought to be. My beliefs are how I believe the world is. Remember, we're not good at identifying truth, so beliefs are actually decisions because you're going to decide what through testing you realize has the highest predictive Validity and then how the world ought to be is a moral quandary for the ages that historically has been determined by religion. I believe religion is just a way of encapsulating all the things that have worked, worked over a very long period of time. So beliefs and values, once you have those mapped out, like you know what you believe, you can articulate it, you can tell somebody else. I have literally written mine down for a long time. If you just search Tom Bily belief system, it will pop up. I haven't tried it in a while, so I don't know if it still works. But I have literally published my belief system. And then what I'm constantly doing is checking my belief system against the real world. And so I will try a thing and see does this work. And as it does, I refine and refine and refine my belief system. So there's a reason that my belief system, one, I have changed over time and two, really didn't begin to solidify until I was in my mid-30s. I just, by that point tried so many things and seen things be successful and seen things fail, that now if somebody challenges something that I believe, one, I'm super open minded because I care about utility. So if you come at me and like, that belief is stupid. I'm like, oh, damn, I've gotten this far with a belief that's broken. I please tell me what the thing is that will allow me to move towards my goal with more efficiency. So what is the thing? If I believed it would better predict the outcome of my actions.

[Merrick]

Cool.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's all I'm looking for. And so when something comes along, like when we went through what was a very disorienting moment for me, where it was like, men and women are the same. This is all a cultural construct, I was like, what the fuck? Like, that has no predictive validity in my life whatsoever. And so from looking at toddlers to looking at adults, when you assume that the boys and girls are gonna act the same, there's literally no predictive validity. It's super fucking bizarre. Everything will be very confusing to you the second you go, men and women are different and they're different in these ways, then it was like, oh my God, this is all so predictable. So, yeah, you're looking for predictive validity and, and hopefully you're using your value system to move you towards building a world that would be better not just for you, but others.

[Moderator]

I love it. All right, the next three questions are kind of the same question X in different ways. This is from Joshua Ishmael.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Just lump them together. We're. Do you want to ask each one?

[Moderator]

I just want to shout out their names. Josh Ishmael, 9312, Paula Gutierrez, 4615 and Reyna Martinez, 13. Thank you, guys. Basically, how do you invest in the stock market when you don't have enough to pay bills? How can I own equities If I make $19 an hour in California? Drew and Tom both agree the game is rigged, but I'm too broke to get into it. So if somebody's feeling this way that they want to get into it, but they're struggling to make ends meet, they feel like they don't have enough to get ahead, they don't feel like they have enough to invest in the stock market. What's your advice to them?

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, there. There are two levers before us and that is it. Don't spend any time lamenting this. This is how the world is. You either need to reduce your expenses or make more money. Period. Full stop. End of story. I want to break people of this belief that a minimum wage job is meant to set you up for life. Get more fucking skills. Get out from under that minimum wage job. If you are not capable of getting out from under that minimum wage job, then you have to find a way to reduce, reduce, reduce your expenses. There is no other answer. That's the bad news. The only shot you've got is AI drives the cost of energy so low that everything becomes cheap as fuck. And we're post capitalist and you don't have to worry about it. In which case you're pro innovation and you're not pro government. You need innovation to get to that point. Let's be very clear about that, okay? Now assuming that you can reduce costs or make more money, then we're going to siphon some of that. Even if it's $19, we're going to siphon some of that off and start slowly investing in whatever you think is safest. What would I do? And people should be very careful. This is not financial advice, but this is what I would do right now. The sort of lowest risk, highest volatility, there's still risk where to be very clear, you could lose everything. But the lowest risk, highest volatility thing is bitcoin, okay? It's not a pro bitcoin pitch. That is a pro bitcoin pitch. It's what I would do just to be clear. But look, man, I, I want to be very clear. Investing is gambling. Investing is gambling. There are no sure Bets. Anyway, it's because it's now been around for roughly 15 years. Because over the course of that 15 years, it's gone up by 60% annual rate of return, year after year after year. Any one moment you could look at and it could be a fucking disaster for a couple of years. But when you stretch it out to the 15 year time horizon, it averages out to 60% average rate of return, annual rate of return. Excuse me. So that is unbelievable. But this is not a pitch for that. This is a pitch for creating a differential between how much you make and how much you need to live. So if I'm making $19 an hour, I'm racing to build my skill set up as fast as humanly possible because I don't want to be making $19 an hour forever. And again, if you can make somebody else money or you can solve a problem for somebody, you're going to get paid. So focus on skill acquisition like crazy. And if you have to live with a bunch of other people, then do it. I used to have roommates for a lot of years. I used to manage apartment complexes for a lot of years. Nightmarish. But it kept my rent really low. So there are all kinds of ways. If you're willing to do a ton of research, ask around, there are ways that you can like. And of course very few people are ever going to manage apartment complexes. So don't take that as like, go do that. I'm just saying there are many things like that that you can do. So find ways to reduce your expenses. Move back in with your parents, get a ton of roommates, get a job that's near where you live so that you don't need a. Need insurance, you can walk to work. I mean, just if this were really the situation that I was in, I would be thinking of everything I could do to make sure that my lifestyle was a $12 an hour lifestyle and I was making $19 an hour. I'm going to take, let's say $2 to play and then the rest of it I'm going to be socking away in something that I think is going to return. I'm a big believer. As much fun. There's a fucking meme about me sitting on multiple chairs. Listen, everybody that thinks it's fucking stupid to sit on multiple chairs, you do you, baby. Because I'm telling you, over a long enough time period, you want to make sure that you hedge your fucking bets. Unless you believe you somehow are uniquely capable of seeing the future. Whoa, that is just a crazy strategy. I don't have that risk appetite and I have an appetite for risk. Now look, if people bet on one thing and that one thing pays off, yeah, then they make gargantuan wins. I'm happy for them. I don't get mad. I don't do schadenfreude. I want to see them win. Go get your bag, baby. But I'm not going to fucking do that. And people can laugh at me all they fucking want. I have a strategy based on my beliefs and my value system and I'm going to stick with it. So I highly encourage people to take a similar all weather strategy as Ray Dalio would call it. And that's what I would do.

[Moderator]

Angela Marshall 4179 said, I created a reading program for pre readers about 20 years ago. It's 100% done and ready to go. But I got scared and I just stopped. It's been in my attic for 20 years. As a 61 year old limping woman with no money, what is my next step in this day and age?

[Tom Bilyeu]

This question breaks my heart. Okay. But they're giving me a chance. So I want to reach inside their soul and see if I can invigorate them. The thing that kills dreams is fear and boredom. You are going to fail. But failing does not make you a failure. Failure is the most information rich data stream on planet earth. The only mistake that you can make in life is standing still. If she had put that out into the market and it had failed, fine. She's going to learn. So I put my video game out into the market and the first round was trash. And everybody told me it's trash. I was cool. In what way is it trash? Awesome. I'm going to make it better. Put it out again. Still trash. Awesome. Put it out again. Ooh, this is starting to get fun. But it's still too small. I can only play for a couple of hours. Then I start getting bored. Okay, cool. Like all this feedback is great. I have long believed, Drew, that my real superpower is I can be laughed at longer than the next person. And I understand that this is a game of skill acquisition. I just have to get better and better and better and better. And on a long enough timeline, I can get a hundred times better at anything. And when you start thinking about being 100 times better at making money, 100 times better at software development, whatever it is that you're trying to do, you could get a hundred times better at it. Now it's like pour yourself into getting good at that thing iterate quickly, be absolutely fearless, put it into the market, see what happens, come up with the next thing. When that one fails, you are going to fail a lot. A lot, a lot. This is why that Michael Jordan commercial from so many years ago was so brilliant. He goes through all of the things that he fucked up. I've missed this many game winning shots, I've missed this many shots from the free throw line. Ah, I've lost this many games. And then he was like, and that's why I win. Because you're willing to take the shot, you're willing to push yourself, to put yourself out there to get better. And that is the only path forward. So success is a game of attrition. What I mean by that is a big part of the reason that I've won in my life is just most people that are smarter than me, more talented than me, they're more emotionally fragile than me. And so they quit. They don't like the way it feels. They've built their self esteem around being better, faster, stronger, smarter. Now if instead you build your self esteem around learning, around being willing to stare nakedly at your inadequacies. In fact, let me share an embarrassing stat. In the interview that I did with Saylor, I asked, is it Riot Games? Because he kept mentioning riot, riot, Riot this, that and the other has bitcoin on the balance sheet. And I was like, riot Games? Is that what you're talking about? And there was collective laughter in the bitcoin community and somebody put in the comments, dude, that's so embarrassing, you should go delete that moment. I was like, why the would I delete that? I didn't know the answer. So I asked the question. Now if you're a and you want to say stay stupid by all means be so afraid of embarrassing yourself that you don't ask a question. If you want to grow powerful, ask the question. Let people laugh at you. And now you have the answer. And remember, skills have utility. So when I get that piece of information, I can now do something. Maybe not that exact one, but when you stack this stuff up, you can outdo things that other people can't do. That's how you end up outperforming. But if you're afraid to do it, then you're never going to make progress. Now first of all, 61 is young baby. It's young. She's got a lot of good years. So I'm really hopeful that one she ditches the identity of limping. If I've got to tell myself I shattered my femur. I walk with swagger, dude. Reframe it, man. I get it's a lie. I get it's total. But letting that you limp be a part of your identity. You're a woman that was able to code this thing or build this thing, whatever it was, and that could help people. Just tell yourself, I'm the type of person that's willing to learn. I've got the guts to put this out there, get feedback, make it better, iterate. And now your identity is that of the learner. It's antifragile. The more people attack you, the stronger you get when you have the fear of like, I need people's validation. Now you're stuck because people will be able to shut you down just by laughing at you. They'll be able to shut you down by pointing out that you don't know something. It's an awesome quote. Awesome quote. As the island of my knowledge grows, so grows the shore of my ignorance. Meaning the more you learn, the more you realize, oh my God, there's so much to learn. I'm never going to learn all this stuff. So I know I'm never going to know everything, obviously. So again, I'm trying to stack skills that have utility that will move me towards my goal. But you have to know what your goal is. You've got to define it. Say, I'm going to get there by this date and then I'm just going to run a bunch of experiments to get there. I am not going to hide in the closet. I'm not going to worry about people that make fun of me. I'm not going to worry about embarrassing myself in public, which I am undoubtedly going to do. I'm just going to fucking learn. And failure is the most information rich data stream on planet Earth, meaning failure is the fastest way to learn.

[Moderator]

Jorhan Johan, 7309 said, I would love to know more about how you use the DOT system with your employees. How do you influence adaption by your team, and what are some issues you had when you implemented the system?

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, so dots is a feedback system created by Ray Dalio. Ray Dalio is the largest hedge fund manager of all time. So nobody's been more successful betting on the market than Ray Dalio. Absolutely insane. Okay, so he creates a saying where he knows I'm blind to something. So Ray is a classic example of somebody who thought he was right about something, went all in and lost everything. So Tom does not play that game. Ray realizes I don't know Everything. And as much as I do know, I'm going to get blindsided by something. So I want to surround myself with very smart people and put them in a cultural situation where they are compelled to tell me what they think. So if I'm doing something stupid or they think that I'm blind to something, they are culturally compelled. Meaning if you want to stay in this company culture, you are going to say what you think is true. Even if you're worried that that's going to upset me or hurt my feelings or make me mad or put you at risk of getting fire. If you believe it to be true, you are going to say it. And so we implemented that system here. I would say, look, it is not perfect. It is very hard to get people to say hard things. I also tend to attract people that have an easy time hearing hard things but have a hard time saying hard things. So we are constantly, I'm constantly reminding all of us, hey, give that critical feedback. The reason that I do it is because I know I'm blind to things and I need smart people to tell me what the things are that I'm blind to. And that just makes me better, gives me more skills, allows me to do more in the real world. So that's why we do it. That's what the system is. It's a, it's, it is a system of giving dots on a whole host of traits that somebody might have. Could be work ethic, could be demonstrated mastery, things like that. You give them a rating from 1 to 10. One being your absolute garbage, 10 being oh my God, this is unbelievable. And now none of us take any one dot seriously. But we all look for patterns and so it helps us get a sense of what we're actually good at, what we're not good at. And so that's really, really useful when you can get people to do it. Hold tight, we're going to take a quick break. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday.

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If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is Your trusted partner offering the products you need, all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And we're back.

[Moderator]

Last thing, we have a special comment. This has happened since we first started Tom's show, the Tom Bilyeu Show. Officially, when we were celebrating Trump's victory, there was a lot of comments talking about the comparisons between Trump, Hitler, fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism. So we asked a friend of ours to kind of jump on. I want you to kind of cue up this next segment that we're going to.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. So listen, you guys, when I said that, I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that people were comparing Trump to Hitler. People were like, ah, but you can't compare Hitler at the end when he's doing the concentration camps and the Holocaust. You can't compare that to Trump. Now, Trump is on a slippery slope to becoming that. So you've got to compare early Hitler to current Trump. So we brought on what if alt hist and another historian that he knows named Marek to answer the question, is early Hitler like current Trump? And I'll let them take it away and answer it. Here it is. Enjoy. Remember, you guys asked, I want to, I want to go back and really take a second to define something very clearly. What does it mean to be Hitler?

[Merrick]

Like, what it means to be Hitler? Like, I would say, is to have a vision to structure society in a way that benefits the. The core of some ethno nationalist vision. Right. And I think there are a bunch of traits that we sort of add on to that to, you know, make it look more like Hitler in particular. But I think when people, right. There's the peripheral end of somebody who's loud, obnoxious, and racist. Right. And I think that's mostly what people see. Right. And if that's, if that's the only vector through which you're measuring this, then sure, maybe Trump is loud and obnoxious and racist. Right. But if you dig a little deeper, that doesn't line up anymore. Right. Trump is not envisioning a society where he concentrates power in his hands and develops an ethno nationalist state. He's not taking any steps in that direction. Project 2025, if you look at it, is really about decentralizing the government as possible. Somebody who's trying to become a dictator is not trying to decentralize power.

[Rudyard]

Right.

[Merrick]

That just wouldn't be the case.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so we've got loud, obnoxious, racist, and this is Hitler and centralizing power. Rudyard, would you add anything to that list of what it means to be Hitler?

[Rudyard]

Like, I'm going to just rephrase what Merrick said where people don't use the word fascist correctly. And this is something that really gets under my skin because there was this big psychological survey called the authoritarian personality about 1947. And this book has had incredible historic influence because the thesis of the book is that socially conservative values and traditional family structures are the cause of fascism. This is a huge origin of how our modern society conceptualize politics and culture in a way that's just completely incorrect because you have communist societies that are the most bloody authoritarians, totalitarians ever. There's loads of leftist totalitarianism. And then you have lots of socially conservative free societies. In fact, you do need a certain degree of social conservatism in order to maintain a free society. And when people think about Trump, they're thinking, this guy is a racist. And being a racist makes you like a Nazi. What the people fail to realize is travel the world. Almost every country in the world is racist by their definition. You go to Africa, go to China, go to Poland, go to Mexico or Cuba, and you'll see stuff that, if you're a leftist, you'll see as horrifying racism on a completely casual basis. And Trump is very, very unracist by the standards of 99% of humanity. I mean, there are some statements you've made that can be kind of constrained, kind of portrayed as it. But if you go to, like some non western country, if you go to Mexico, if you go to. If you go to Turkey, even, I don't know, like Hungary, people are going to that. That sounds completely innocuous. Our racism sensors are so finely tuned that we're just completely hysterical. And what I would say separates Hitler from Trump is Hitler, as Merrick said, has this very coherent sense of this is the German race and everything is structured around it. Where your work, your religion, your social life, how your children are raised is all controlled by the totalitarian state which serves the German race. And it's this massive vision of the colonization of all Eastern Europe and the genocide of that area for the German Lebens realm. Trump has none of that stuff. Trump is not a totalitarian who has this vast ideological scheme. If Trump was truly Hitler, he would have a map in the White House of America conquering all of North America and the settlement of Central America with American settlers. That's what Nazism stands for.

[Moderator]

Right?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now, what do you say, though, when he's now started talking about Mexico and Canada becoming the 51st and 52nd states?

[Rudyard]

That's just a joke. That's never going to happen. Everyone's. Everyone who's not insane perceives that as a joke.

[Merrick]

Right. Well, and the thing is, is of course these people want to take it seriously because it helps their argument. Right. But, yeah, I mean, there's no way you can see that as anything other than a joke realistically. Right. Though it would not be practical. Nobody would support that kind of a move.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And Trump is a troll really fast. Merrick, One thing I want to make sure that we don't do is we don't want to say he'll be stopped. We, at the end, we'll get to. Even if we think that he is a fascist and he's authoritarian and everybody's right to be worried, will American democracy hold? I think that's a very fair argument to keep in your back pocket. But first, I just want to go through some of the things that we've already put on the table. So to be Hitler, like, is to be loud, obnoxious, racist, centralizing in wanting to centralize governmental power. Expansionist by nature. That expansionist by nature was definitely on my list in terms of what was Hitler. I, for better or worse, I wrote a screenplay about cult leaders. And so I researched Hitler and I read mine Kampf. So I've seen firsthand, it's absolute insanity for people that haven't read it. And he was very hell bent on expansionism. You know, this is all coming after World War I. The Treaty of Versailles was so brutal to Japan or to Japan was so brutal to Germany that he was like, we're not paying these people back. I'm gonna rise you all back up. We're gonna, you know, get our economy running again. And basically understood that he had to eat up a bunch of Europe and going into Russia to create for him what was basically the, the west of the United States where you could just expand, expand, expand, and people could find their fortunes and have property and build homes. He was like, that's going to be Russia. And so we're going to be able to go into Russia and just take it all over and, and people will be able to push into the vast, untamed territory there. So to your point, it's a very clear vision, it's very expansion in its orientation. But I would say if you're not saying the use of force to get what you want. You're not getting close to Hitler first. He comes out of the military, is wounded in World War I, is certainly no stranger to violence. He has the Brown shirts. Like, this is somebody who is going to get what he wants. And I can't remember. Hopefully you guys will remember. But it was Hitler that burned down the building. I don't know if it was Parliament, but they. They go and they burn it down. They say that the Jews were the ones that did it. And if I'm not mistaken, that's what leads to crystal knocked, which is the whole night where they go and smash everything that the Jews own. But using it as this excuse, which is another thing that I would say is that the. The just fiendish control manipulation of the media, which I will say is one thing you guys are going to have to combat, because Trump may not have control of the mainstream media, but he's done a phenomenal job of using alternative media. So has he been truthful? I think you guys are gonna have your hands full with that one. But I think that's also an extremely important thing to be Hitler. Like, creating a common enemy. This is another thing that I see Trump doing that I think is very Hitler. Like, when you read Mein Kampf and he's like, you know, we need to give people an enemy. It gives people something to rally around. Maybe I'll make it the Jews. I mean, it was like just somebody going through this, like, well, we're going to need to do this. They've always made a good enemy, historically. I'm probably going to use them like it's absolutely bananas. The cold and calculating way that he laid it out. Cries of election fraud. So trying to use the democratic system against itself to abolish democracy is another thing that I would say makes you Hitler. Like, Hitler wanted dictatorial power, so he wanted to centralize. You've already covered that. So those would be the things that I would put on the table as making you Hitler. Like, do you guys think I've missed anything? In addition to what you guys have already said?

[Rudyard]

I think that about covers it. The way I'm going to triangulate this is I'm going to throw in a third variable. Let's pick a random, crappy third world dictator. Let's look at Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe, who made their currency so worthless it was valued in the trillions. And when I look at Mugabe, what I fundamentally see is someone who you would never compare to Hitler. Just because Hitler was so much more vastly effective. When you look at, again, I can't overdid the totalitarianism. In Nazi Germany, the state was literally everything. And in McGave, it was a bunch of thugs with AK47s who barely held on to power and just predated from the population. And so a lot of these things that I'm hearing are Hitler. Like I'll compare either to some third world dictator or to the Democratic Party today. How many of the things you described have been things the Democrats have been doing where interfering in the media. The Democrats are legitimate or the left is legitimately totalitarian today, which is something that the difference in totalitarianism and authoritarianism is that authoritarianism is you're in charge and you give out orders to people, but you don't really care. Totalitarianism is you control every single element of someone's life between school, between romantic relationships, between work, between how the streets are maintained, and total authoritarianism is super common over history. Totalitarianism is pretty rare over history, where wokeness is legitimately totalitarian in a way that Nazism is that Trump clearly is not. And I see this incredibly strong totalitarian, totalitarian desire on the left, which is the biggest disconnect I see between Trump and between Hitler, where the left does want to dominate every single element of someone's life, like what I just said. And when I look at Trump, there is no cohesive cultural force that is maga. MAGA is not. It's not a ideology. MAGA is like a bunch of strung together merit Murica themes. But there's no MAGA ideology. There is no MAGA thought. There is no maga. When you look at the left, leftism is a religion that consumes every single aspect of your life. And there's no parallel to that for maga. There aren't MAGA colleges in the same way. There's progressive religious colleges to kind of

[Merrick]

piggyback off that idea. I also think that people run the risk of attributing things to Hitler that are true of a lot of dictators, right? Where like the. The idea of having a common enemy, that's not like something Hitler invented. He thought it was a really good idea and he spent a lot of, you know, he spends a lot of time talking about that. But, like, you can go to any point in history and find a leader who's like, okay, let me rally the people behind this. I mean, the Pope did that in the Crusades, right? This isn't like a uniquely Hitlerian trait, you know, So I don't think it's fair to attribute that specifically as well. Trump is like Hitler because he finds a common enemy. Like, yeah, anybody who's trying to motivate a group of people will find a common enemy. That's. That's a really easy psychological tactic to try to use for a group.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right.

[Merrick]

I wouldn't, you know, people see that and they're like, oh, well, it's Hitler. And it's like, it's not really Hitler. People did that way before Hitler was on the scene. Right. And again. Right. I'm totally in agreement about the totalitarianism. Right. The left, if you look at the Democratic Party and the Fascist party in Italy, they have a lot of the same ideas in terms of, you know, supplanting corporate interests to government interests and pretending to care about the workers, but really just sort of fitting them into this scheme on our behalf and going through and breaking through every single institution in society to make sure it conforms with our worldview, because our worldview is morally correct.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right.

[Merrick]

Trump's not doing that, and he's not promoting a worldview that looks like that. Certainly he's authoritarian in some sense. Right. But he's not totalitarian. He doesn't cross that threshold.

[Rudyard]

More to come.

[Tom Bilyeu]

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[Rudyard]

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go to sleepnumber.com sleep number to a good life sleep. And we're back. Okay, and so when you guys say that he is authoritarian, you're saying this is a strong man who uses very aggressive language. He wants to be the best. He wants to win against the rest of the world. He's going to tell China, don't tread on me. He's going to tell North Korea will fucking bomb you into the Stone Age or what? He didn't say that, but he said some crazy shit. So is that what you mean when you say authoritarian?

[Merrick]

Yeah, he's, he's, he'll tell you, right? He's a fighter. He likes to throw his weight around. And he's, he's, he likes attention, Right? So he does this inflammatory rhetoric on purpose to draw attention to him. Certainly, I think that he's also authoritarian in that he likes to exert authority. Right. He likes to get things done.

[Rudyard]

Right.

[Merrick]

He's a doer. And I'm sure that, you know, he likes the idea of being dictator on a day. You know, he doesn't. I don't think if you said, hey, let's make you king of America, he'd be like, oh, that's a great idea. Right. I think he'd kind of be like, what are you talking about? But I'm sure he has days in office, and I'm sure every president has days in office where they're trying to push some policy through. And they're like, man, I wish I didn't have to negotiate with Congress. Right. Like, that's. I think that's a pretty clear frustration that anybody in power has. Right. If I have an agenda that I think is going to help people, well, of course, I don't want to have to go through all these legal processes to make it happen. I just want to make it happen. Right. And I'm sure that he. He definitely has a temperament that, that feeds into that, but he doesn't have this plan or desire to break down society to, you know, fit his image. Right. It's. It might be a fleeting desire that hits, but it's not a plan, and it's not something he's actively working towards in office.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right. That feels like a very succinct summation of certainly Merrick's take on this. Rudyard, does that idea sum up exactly where you're coming from as well, or do you think there's something more? Because I. What I hear from Merrick is he basically checks, let's call it eight of the 10 boxes, but the ninth and 10th box are the only boxes that really matter.

[Rudyard]

From Merrick's argument, you'd get two out of ten, not eight.

[Tom Bilyeu]

We'll see. I'm going to go through them here, and I think that. I think I can get Merrick to sign off on most of these that Trump is. These, but maybe to a lesser degree, but the ones that really matter. In fact, let me just go through them. So here, Merrick, this is what I heard you say. So going back to our list, we've got to be Hitler, like, is to be loud, obnoxious, racist, to have a centralizing impulse, to be expansionist, to. And then I added, and I think you guys agree with these. To use force and manipulate the media and using the democratic system against itself. So you said that he is loud, obnoxious. I think you'll even say racist. Obviously, Rudyard, you want to temper that and say, yeah, but it's. By international standards, it's not super racist. Nobody is going to sound the alarm too hard, or they certainly shouldn't. You do not think that he wants to centralize government, that he does not have that impulse, that he is not expansionist. But in terms of using the media, I think we'll all agree that he certainly does, that he has said he wants to be dictator for a day.

[Moderator]

For a day.

[Tom Bilyeu]

For a day. And. But at the same time, Merrick, you said that you would be surprised if he didn't at times want to be dictator. And the only thing that's going to break that down is he doesn't have this overarching narrative that says, this is exactly the world that I want to create. And because he lacks that, he's never going to actually go down the path of being a dictator. And while that may not be exactly 8 or 10, that's got to be 6 or 7. Am I misunderstanding your take?

[Rudyard]

What you said is just the argument equivalent of saying you've been raped for being kissed.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, man, can I not wait to hear how people respond to this. Rudyard, are you saying that Trump is kissing us unsolicited? It's not rape, but he is kissing us unsolicited. Is. Is that a reasonable way to characterize your view of him without connecting to Hitler?

[Rudyard]

You make him sound hot. I mean, you make it like a romance character. I don't know what that statement means. And it also, like, what do you mean?

[Tom Bilyeu]

You're the one that said it.

[Rudyard]

You said so.

[Tom Bilyeu]

When I said that, there were seven or eight things. I will cut you off here.

[Rudyard]

I understand. Okay, so the point I was trying to convey is that getting kissed on the cheek isn't that bad. It happens in loads of countries around the world. You're not going to die. If it happens to you once or twice in your life, you'll be fine. And what I'd say, furthermore, is let's compare the people who say this to the thing it is being said to, because one of the points I'd like to convey is that we are assessing the global condition through a 1% of the global population who are deranged, schizophrenic Karens who are completely removed from the other 99%. Where you look over human history and there's a certain expectation about things you're allowed to say, there's a certain expectation about social values. There's a certain expectation about just how the world works. And one of those expectations is that you prioritize that your nation and the dominant ethnic group of your nation, just out of practicality's sake, you have to take care of the majority population, the deranged. Karen's say that being against immigration is racist and even suggesting stuff about like certain nations obviously being at a higher level of development than others is also racist. That's not a moral code. The rest of us agreed to saying that making because most of them complain about Trump, they complain about his rhetoric. No one else in history would care. You are just schizophrenic and deranged. And the things they say about Hitler are things. If you took 99% of leaders in history and we are so obsessed with studying people in recent Western history who are so domesticated. Like our entire media frame in the Western world is so ridiculously domesticated. And it's removing from the harshness and just the savagery most people experience in life, where if you're a peasant, you're not going to care about this sort of thing. It's such a differentiation in scale. And I didn't agree to those as the Hitler terms either, where it's such a differentiation of scale that it's ridiculous. I beg you to ghost out south of the border into Latin America. Every single Latin American politician, even the most ethical and the most democratic will fit into the things you just said. And none of them are Hitler. There's never been a Latin American Hitler. So you get to have like. I like to stress the authoritarian totalitarian distinction because it's a very important distinction. Where 95% of leaders in human history are authoritarian. Where you could say FDR is authoritarian,

[Tom Bilyeu]

you could say, can you one more time define authoritarian? I got totalitarian.

[Rudyard]

Authoritarian is that you exert power over others directly. So an example of this is that in medieval Europe people would have feudal lords and the feudal lord is basically your landlord who you would pay tax rent to. Your landlord wasn't involved in your life in almost any way except for taking some tithes. He was completely not involved in your family life, your church life, that stuff. So having a government is in some ways always somewhat authoritarian. And having a government that's not democratic is always definitionally authoritarian. So you have states in human history that are authoritarian but are generally nice places to live. Like I've been in Egypt or Thailand or loads of countries where in some ways they're freer than America. Some ways. But at the same time it's A military dictatorship. And totalitarian societies are very historically rare. It's the Nazis, the Soviets and like a handful of ancient Chinese places. And so it's very rare to get an actually totalitarian society. And the effect on daily life in a totalitarian society is vastly different from anything else because totalitarian societies are the only societies in history where the government destroys every social institution of the society and then supplants it into the ruling ideology. The irony though is the modern left is actually authoritarian. They are actually totalitarian. You look at the modern woke world and it's funny and funnily enough that Britain is a totalitarian democratic society, it's a democracy. But the totalitarian ruling government does not allow any institutions that go against its agenda. And you need a lot to make the jump to a totalitarian society. Because authoritarian societies also very rarely commit large genocides, genocides because they just don't have the political will to do so. And most totalitarian societies do commit genocides. And so unless you're dealing with a totalitarian society, you're probably not, you're just not going to get Hitler like traits. And Hitler manifests literally zero of the traits of a totalitarian leader.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, the obvious question that begs is over the last and still currently while we're recording this, we have a, I would say aggressively left leaning government, but there are no genocides in sight.

[Rudyard]

So I said most genocide. Most totalitarian governments have genocides. I didn't say they definitionally go together. You can have a totalitarian society without a genocide.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you think that we're at risk? Just to calibrate my sense of how concerned you are about the left in

[Rudyard]

America, we're not going to have a genocide. I don't think any side is going to do a genocide in America because I just don't see why they would. So you can remove the genocide comment. I don't see that as a thing. But secondarily, what I would say here is let's remove Hitler from the table. Let's compare Trump to some boring Latin American dictator. I think that would be. Of course, I do not support said comparison. I think that would be a fairer comparison. And every single trait you just said Trump could be tried at the dictator of Argentina or Colombia or whatever. And my question from that is, okay, most humans have lived in crappy dictatorships over history. There's no genocide, there's no control of the press, or there is control of the press, but it's, you can do a lot. In most dictatorships over history, the government doesn't really interfere in the regime. There are definitely dictatorships. And of course, I love democracy and love freedom and all these things. Of course, there are dictatorships that have more personal freedoms than totalitarian democratic societies. Today, I would much rather live in Vietnam today than live in Britain. I would rather live in Turkey than live in Germany.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why is that?

[Rudyard]

Oh, because. So there's a solid enough chance Britain or Germany literally send me to jail for my views. And there. And Turkey and Thailand would never do that. It's also the cost of living is prohibitively high in those countries, and I live a much better life. But the thing about a lot of second, because I've lived in six countries, and the thing that a lot of second and third world countries is that you, in your personal life, you actually have significantly more freedom than a first world country. You can drink in public, you can say ethnic slurs. No one will ever give you crap for a word you say. The cops are a lot less difficult on you. Your HOA will never give you crap for anything. On your daily functional life, you often have significantly more freedom outside the first world than inside it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now, what is it about the structure of those societies? Because obviously those are all anecdotal. So what is the structure, the structural nature of those societies that leads to more freedom?

[Rudyard]

Oh, it's the structure nature of our society. It's that we're controlled by deranged Karens, where just the deranged Karen ruling class has destroyed any degree of social flexibility in the West. In Mexico, they have a wonderful street life. You could never have that here because Karens would call the cops. And the deranged Karenism has destroyed most of the west, where I'm a Canadian citizen, and Canada has gone completely crazy. Same thing with a lot of Western Europe. According to some stats, Britain sends more people to prison for political crimes every year than Russia does. I don't trust those stats. But at the same time, the fact that they could exist at all is insane.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right, Yeah, I will give you that.

[Merrick]

And I want to kind of piggyback off a point Rudyard made as well about like, okay, so Trump's a more apt comparison to, say, a. A Latin American dictator. Right. But let's Also. Right, let's. Let's say you have 10 things on your list there. Sure. Maybe six or seven of them line up between Trump and Hitler. Right. But let's even take somebody that we know. Right? Let's take Alexander the Great. How much of that also lines up for Alexander the Great? How much of that would also line up for, like, Winston Churchill. Right. The rhetoric Winston Churchill uses is significantly more racist than anything Trump has ever said.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right.

[Merrick]

But nobody sees him as a threat to democracy because the time passed and he didn't threaten democracy. But certainly there was a lot of people in England who had concerns about Winston Churchill and his egotistical nature and him being in charge of Britain. Right. And of course, he got them through World War II. So he's a hero now. But at the time, there was a lot of grumblings about, do we really want this guy, the guy who failed in Gallipoli, to. To come over here and lead the country. Right. So, sure, yeah. Maybe six or seven line up between Hitler and Trump. But I think you can also line up six or seven or seven or eight between Trump and Alexander the Great or Trump and Caesar or Trump and, you know, Churchill. Right. So these. The idea that these certain traits are, you know, Hitlerian is kind of ridiculous when you look at other people, right, and say, well, a lot of these also. Right. Am I going to call Winston Churchill Hitlerian because he thought that, you know, Indians were less civilized than the English? Well, no. Right, like that. That seems a little ridiculous. Right. I wouldn't call Alexander the Great Hitlerian because he saw the Iranians as, you know, which he conquered as, you know, less. Less civilized than the Macedonians. Right. And again, Trump's rhetoric compared to these people is league. Not even in the same league. Right. Like, he's way less racist than these people. And so, yeah, sure, again, maybe six or seven of them check out, but I think you can check off six or seven boxes for a good chunk of world leaders at any point.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, there's a couple of things I want to touch on here. This is getting so fascinating. It is going to be very, very interesting to see people's response to this. Okay, so one, the. There is a massive movement to dethrone Hitler in the historical context to say he really was evil, he was sinister. And the fact that all of these things apply to him is exactly why he's trash and we should not venerate him. Okay. I certainly am not in that camp. I'm blown away by what Churchill was able to do during World War II. Character flaws and all obvious character flaws. Taking someone like Alexander the Great, I think there's a very easy case to be made that he was a complete and utter sociopath that was just hell bent on conquering and destroying. And so I would not use him as my justification for Trump.

[Rudyard]

Let's compare the Biden administration to these Hitlerian traits to Trump because Trump has the rhetoric and the Democrats are always very passive on their rhetoric. They are always very guarded with their words. But then you'll hear leftist journos say completely racist stuff. You'll oh yeah, Biden said complete. Biden has said stuff that's basically racist. He is there. The left has done vastly more to control the media and to manipulate, manipulate that with really easy examples being the collusion with Facebook or Twitter with the FBI. And what I see with the Hitler appointing is the left in its attempt to be a mirror image of the Nazis and then the. Not the left in their attempt to completely reject the Nazis in many ways to give them a mirror image of them in ways where they are closer to each other than most societies in human history. The left and the Nazis are both incredibly totalitarian. They both support control of the media. They both support the establishment of a racial caste system. They support collusion between the state and the private enterprise, creating caps on prices and probably wages in the future. They a Nash, a public sector focused economic system, redistributing income based off race. You could go through all of these and the great irony is that in their attempt to be the opposite of the Nazis, the left became their mirror image because they only stared at the Nazis when they built their moral code.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That makes a lot of sense. So the way that you just broke that down, Rudyard, I will assume is you had earlier said, I don't necessarily agree with what I had outlined as being the Hitler like characteristics. So I assume what you just went through comparing the left to Nazism are the traits that you're saying would count. Is that accurate?

[Rudyard]

Yeah, I agree with that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so certainly as it manifested as policy, which is I would say the side of things that you just went through and those are extremely meaningful things to get into. My take on this and, and we'll see if we can tie this up with a bow here is that I think Merrick, you are correct that there are elements of Trump that do line up with what we'll call Hitler like tendencies in, in the more grounded being. Well, let's see the exact words here again being loud, obnoxious, the racist side, I don't know that one. I'm, I'm less convinced by as evidenced by the reaction from Hispanics, finally a swing in black male voters. So I'm less inclined.

[Merrick]

Well, that's my point. Right. That's mine and Rudyard's point. Right. It's like we're not really sold on the whole racist thing because, yeah, sure, in the context of our. Our current society and the way leftists frame race, he's a racist. But if you compare him to all societies across the world, at any given point, he. He's scores significantly less racist than any of these people. Right. I think Trump, if anything, has a sort of. Go ahead. Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This to me, is like morals. Morals have to be grounded on something. So to me, being racist needs a grounding. And I would say if you believe that one's worth is tied to their race, you are racist. So Trump either is or is not racist in my book. I suppose you could be more hatefully racist, you could be more aggressively racist. But anyway, I'm not a Trump scholar, but I certainly have not seen, like, my alarm bells do not go off around Trump based on his take on race.

[Merrick]

Agreed.

[Tom Bilyeu]

My. My alarm bells on Trump go off with the. They're poisoning the blood of the country, pitting people against immigrants. Like, there are things that he does that I think are worthy of concern. And to me, the only question is, is this a slippery slope or is this just somebody that I disagree with their stance or their approach on certain things? So I think chant. Getting excited when people chant, lock her up regarding Hillary, bad move. Not pursuing her when you're in office, good move. If he is with his account, if, with his cabinet nominations, if he is trying to put a cabinet of people that will go in after his political enemies, bad fucking move. And I will be really bothered by that. If, on the other hand, he is simply trying to make things transparent, streamline government, reduce the amount that we are spending foolishly, and my cost for that is I have somebody who is very uncareful with his speech, who thinks out loud sort of through these ridiculous ideas. To me, the perfect example of what he's doing is when he talked about, like, could we inject bleach into people? I watched that live and live. I wasn't like, oh, my God, this is insane. I was like, this is like a writer would run through ideas for a story where you're like, hey, look, no bad ideas. Like, let's just throw this out and see, like, what it triggers. And maybe it takes you in a better path. And writers will say all the time, bad idea, dirty pitch, whatever, just so that they can throw the idea out. So I'm watching it going, yeah, like, I do that in business all the time. Like, no bs. What would it take? You throw out crazy ideas. You sort of, you know, go through the wheat for the Chaff. And that is. It comes with a price because it's easy to make him look crazy. And I think that he does bluff, and I think that he is aggressive, and I think that he does bully. And I think all of those things are a mixed bag. And it's the same way I feel whenever I read about Churchill. This is a mixed bag. Like this guy Churchill almost certainly really was racist. So that is like a whole thing. But as the only guy that would actually stand up against Hitler, you have to say, God damn, those are testicles of steel. Like this kid literally said, this is. Churchill said, I want to be known for my physical courage. I want that to define my character. And when he up in Gallipoli, he says, put me on the front lines of World War I. On the front lines, in the trenches, man. And so is he a wildly flawed character? Yes. But would he make the other soldiers nervous because he was so unafraid of being killed? Yes. And is that the kind of person that says, I up put me on the front lines and whatever happens, happens, and I'm going to lead with courage. And then that person says, and I think I know how to run the government. And then that person is the only one that says stands up. It's like, yeah, all of these people are mixed bags, man. So now I'm just trying to get to dear people on the left who I love and want to meet you in the middle. I just want to understand, do you. Should you actually be concerned that Trump, he is flawed, but should you be concerned that he is on a slippery slope to actually being a scorpion and stinging people and doing the kinds of things that Hitler actually did? And I, that's where I'm like, I, even after this discussion, come Back to the 3, 4, 5, whatever the number of things is that he does not line up with. Those ones matter a lot. And so I think, Rudyard, one of the most important things that you've said today is that the difference between authoritarian. So I'll just say Trump's a bully, okay? And as he has said, I'm your bully, but he's a bully. And that's going to rub some people the wrong way. He doesn't have a totalitarian impulse that I have seen. So when I look at that, when I look at him, when I look at all the things that people say he has said and go watch them for myself, I walk away with somebody who he's going to play the bully. He's going to tell you to back the offer. He's going to bomb you into the previous century. But then he governs as a moderate. Now I look at everybody with a suspicious eye, so I will judge him by his actions when he comes into the White House again. But I don't think he has a desire for total control over people's lives. I think he wants to fix the economy. I think he wants to see people thrive and make money and. Yeah, so in the final analysis, for me, yeah, there, there are things that you can say this, man, does that rhyme with Hitler, but on the important ones, not so much. And man, if people have actually read about Hitler, like, for real, for real, dude, it's. It's insane. And you don't see from my perspective any of that in Trump.

[Rudyard]

There's two points I want. There's two points I want to interject here. The first is, why do Anglos treat being a buzzkill as a moral virtue, where the more you look at, like, Latin American politics, the more you realize Trump's rhetoric is so tame. Look at the stuff Silvio Berlusconi says. Look at the stuff they say in, like, Brazilian politics or Mexican politics. It's hilarious. Or in French politics, the constant mistresses and the constant sex scandals. Anglozer. Anglos get so worked up about, like, dialogue and stuff. And then in Latin America or mid of the Middle east, they'll say the Sunnis are demons publicly on tv. So I just throw dialogue out because I know how ridiculous the rest of the world gets. And then secondly, there's a really, really huge difference between right now and 1920s Germany. And that's something that, going into this, I wanted to really bring up, because I think it's one of the most important variables, that being that Germany's deep state was conservative and they were looking for someone like Hitler to take power. So in our current society, the elite is all leftists. You see it between the media, academia, a lot of major corporations, parts of the military, the Catholic Church, every single institution is dominated by the left and often politically very radical ones. Well, in Germany, due to their unified empire that they got through a series of bloody wars, their leadership were all very conservative, not even moderate conservatives. These are hardcore nationalists or the old nobility. And the reason Hitler got into power and is able to become a totalitarian leader is that he was the shared coalition leader for the industrialists, parts of the trade unionists, the imperial bureaucracy, and the military. So all of those were socially conservative. And Trump was a nationalist leader who they could pick who they would agree. We want this nationalist in charge. Hitler got off really lightly due to, for his attempted coup because the judiciary were all the hardcore right wing nationalists who gave him three months for launching a couple, which is ridiculous today. Our entire deep state, and the deep state's a contentious word. Our entire ruling class are leftists. So Trump would be physical, physically incapable of doing what Hitler did because there's just not the institutional backing for it at all.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, that's definitely the hey, he might be Hitler, but he's never going to be able to pull it off argument, which I think is, is reasonable. So regardless of whether he is, he's not going to be able to do it because of the American system. But one thing, I'm trying to channel the comments right now. Let's see if we can preempt some of this. So one thing we haven't talked about is his obsession with loyalty. What do you guys think about that?

[Rudyard]

Oh, I'm obsessed with loyalty. It's a relatively, it's a very normal trait. Like I reward loyalty tremendously. I mean, if, if we say like being bellicose and obsessed with loyalty are like Hitler like traits, then like the entire nation of Italy is Hitler.

[Merrick]

Right. The thing is, is if you look at any leader, any leader ever at all, of course they put a premium on loyalty. They might not announce it all the time, but yeah, when you're in positions of power and you're in politics, it's a very backstabbing game. You want people around you that you can trust to some degree. Right. And only in a world where they're like, well, you. The only people you should trust is experts. You know that that's the only society where they're like, well, he shouldn't want loyalists around him.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why?

[Merrick]

Because I disagree with those loyalists and I don't think they're experts on fields and the are really just people who fall within my ideological line. Right. What I look for, and my real final point for all this is I look for logical consistency. Are you mad that Trump is a philanderer? Well, then you should also be mad that Bill Clinton is a philanderer. Are you mad that Trump is trying to, you know, bust through his, you know, plans for the economy and stuff? Well, you should be equally mad that FDR did that. Right. So whenever the leftists are mad about something Trump is doing, right. And it tends to come down to rhetoric. And I'm like, look, man, if rhetoric's your big problem, I don't know what to tell you. I feel like there's worse things going on right now. When you when you have a problem with Trump, if that problem exists on your side, on the left with one of the characters there, and you're unwilling to condemn them for that just because they're on your side, you are not making a logically consistent argument. You're just mad because someone who's not on your side is potentially in power. Right. That's what I dislike from a lot of the rhetoric around this, is it just sounds like people are like, well, he's not on my team, so therefore he is bad. Right. I'm. I'm with you, Tom. Where it's like, yeah, if he was trying to be dictatorial and overthrow American democracy, I wouldn't like that. I wouldn't be a huge fan of that. I wouldn't be a huge fan if anybody did that, because it's against American values to do that in the first place.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right.

[Merrick]

That is the problem, not who's doing it. And I think some people on the left don't always aren't introspective enough to consider that point when they make these accusations.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, what do you guys think about Lincoln? So when you were saying that I like loyalty, I reward loyalty, made me think of Lincoln and the idea of a team of rivals. Now, maybe those team of rivals existed at a different time, and there was just a sense of. Of shared fraternity for the government that maybe doesn't exist now. I don't know. But I. I've always resonated with that idea. I build my companies around that idea that I want people who think differently than me. I want people that challenge me now. They need to share my values so that I know that we're trying to reach a shared outcome. But I do worry that Trump will blind himself intentionally, because what he means by loyalty is you echo back what I say.

[Rudyard]

Yeah, I think that's fundamentally true, but also doesn't make him Hitler. You are a CEO. I am a CEO. I understand how difficult leadership is. And so I often don't blame other leaders for doing different strategies than me, because I know leadership has to echo the leader and their personality and then the people they're working with. And then there's the situation there. And if it's 1700s warfare and we got to charge muskets, blind loyalty is the best trait to have. And then there are other traits where you want different kinds of leadership. But, I mean, I can accept a dozen different personality flaws in Trump, and then you still have to make the decision, is he a worthwhile leader against the competitors? And the conclusion I came to Was. Yes, yes.

[Merrick]

Yeah. And on the point with Lincoln, I think that Lincoln in most of those instances is an exception to the rule. Right. He basically spent his entire career as a wartime president where the Democratic Party, which was in control of the south, broke away almost as a party. And so he was trying to make this, you know, coalition with his rivals in order to show that that party should not break away from him, that they should put their trust in him and keep the nation together. That was an incredibly extrane a circumstance that I, I think there's a good lesson in there, you know, and I like your style, Tom, with I want people to have different ideas, but same values. Right. And I think that's how, that's how Lincoln would have seen it too. Right. Our value is we want to keep the nation together.

[Rudyard]

Right.

[Merrick]

Even though the Democrats have different ideas about how to do that. But certainly I'd say that he was in an extraneous circumstance and that was an exception to the rule.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Very fair. All right, gentlemen, how do you want to take us out? What do you. Do you think we've covered all of this or do you have any final messages to people that are losing sleep over the fact that he is Hitler in the making?

[Rudyard]

So my problem is that that kind of person would lack enough rationality so that anything I could say up to this point would not affect them.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What about any. Anything for the moderates in the crowd who they, they respond positively to a new angle on your sense of what's true.

[Rudyard]

My attitude here is, I'll state this. I do not believe Trump would like to take authoritarian power. I do not believe he is a dictator. However, making the jump from he is Maduro to he is Hitler is such an enormous jump that it just seems ridiculous. I mean, I would saying because he has some bellicose tendencies, Trump is one of the worst dictators in human history is just hysteria. It's just this pre established emotional attachment that they're addicted to.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's very concise. Merrick, what about you? Right.

[Merrick]

I think that again, the left largely dominates the rhetoric in our country. And so as such, when they're not, but when Trump isn't playing by their rules, they get really mad, right. Because his rhetoric doesn't match what, what we want to see. And so he's Hitler because one, he's not playing by our rules and two, I think the elites feel threatened. Right. He is threatening our interests and then trying to mobilize the, the working class, poor people on their behalf to protect their interests. But I would Say I'm from Boston, I know a lot of leftists, and I would say if you look around, the left is not working in your interest right now either. And I'm not going to guarantee you that Trump will. I think he will. I think that's his plan, right? Whether or not he's able to execute in the way that he wants, that's his plan. He wants to help Americans out. But certainly the left is not making any moves to help you out right now. And in fact, they've intentionally taken steps to make things worse for you.

[Moderator]

You.

[Merrick]

So for the moderates, I would say whatever your problems are with Trump, just make sure that you're also looking at whatever problems you have on the left and not falling prey to the. The media panic over this guy and being more clear on, you know, what is actually going on in totality.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well said. All right, I will leave you out there. I assume if you're watching this, that, like me, you believe that the center is a destination and you hope to meet. Meet a whole bunch of lovely people there with intention. And I will just say this. The future is unknown. And anybody that tells you for sure, they know what Trump is going to be, no one can know that now, we've had four years with him. So I hope that people keep their heads cool and remember the following, that the preemptive strike is comes from somebody who believes that they can see the future. There is a movie about this very thing where people are com convicted of crimes that they have not yet committed because supposedly they have these pre cogs that can see the future. It's called Minority Report. It is well worth seeing. My only ask of people is that tell the world what you believe is true and distrust yourself enough to know that you nor I cannot see the future. And a preemptive strike against somebody would be the only mistake to make. That's it for our annual extravaganza of info. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you guys enjoyed the comparison between Trump and Hitler. Make up your own minds. As always, thank you guys so much for being a part of this community. It has been a tremendous joy to switch from thinking of this as an audience to really engaging with you guys in the community. So please leave a comment, let us know what you thought about this episode, any episode. We are in there. I am in there reading and responding, and I hope to see you in the comments. All right, until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Foreign.

[Moderator]

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[Tom Bilyeu]

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