← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
New York’s Spending Crisis, Housing Unaffordability, & Conspiracy Corner: 9/11, Epstein, TV Producer Of Tehran Woes | Tom Bilyeu Show Live
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- [00:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Nine out of the 10 largest banks get it. They get that. VantageScore, the modern credit score, is the leader in predictive power, improving mortgage default predictions and saving lenders billions. Better predictions, better for your business with VantageScore. With the American Express Platinum card, you can access over $3,500 in annual value with benefits and eligible purchases across travel, entertainment and more. There's nothing like Platinum. Learn more@americanexpress.com Explore Platinum enrollment requirements, monthly and other limits in terms of Apply Good morning everybody. Welcome to another Tom Bilyeu show live. We are all gathered here today because the world continues to be in a very strange place.
- [00:41]
Drew
Mamdani had a rude awakening over in NYC.
- [00:44]
Tom Bilyeu
It took Zoran Mamdani exactly 47 days to propose a tax increase on the very people he promised to protect. 47 days from freeze the rent as a chant to a 9.5% property tax hike on 3 million homes. Now, to understand just how absurd this is, you've got to understand the specifics. New York City's Budget in the year 2000 this is just 26 years ago. In the year 2000, New York City's budget was $36.5 billion. Okay, it's a lot of money, but understandable. That covered all 8 million people living in the city at the time. That's roughly $4,500 per person. Yesterday, Mamdani unveiled a $127 billion preliminary budget for all of the people that now live in New York. And how many extra people have they added in the last 26 years? Did it go up by the same roughly 3.5x that the budget went up by? No. There are currently roughly 8.5 million people living in New York. That's an increase of roughly half a million people, which is a population growth of only about 6.5%. The budget, however, grew by a staggering 248%. That is a ludicrous $14,941 per person. Spending per person didn't keep pace with inflation. It tripled. So everything must be three times better, right? In 2017, 51% of New Yorkers rated their quality of life as excellent or good. Today that number is 34%. Only 12% think the city spends its money wisely. Only 22% feel safe on the subway at night, and felony assaults hit a 24 year high. In 2024, the city spends over $40,000 per student just on education, which is the highest in the country. And yet, more than half of New York City kids can't read at Grade level. Their own school's chancellor admitted that that's true. They tripled the spending, and everything got worse. To put this in perspective, Houston only spends $2,900 per person versus $14,000 and change in New York and Houston. They don't have state income tax, nor do they have city income tax. And their population is growing. New York spends five times more, and 66% of residents say life is getting worse. So where did the extra money go? Pension costs are up 115%. Outsourced contracts ballooned by $7 billion. A brand new $5 billion asylum seeker expense materialized out of thin air. It literally didn't exist just three years ago. Social services spending has doubled. The city employs over 300,000 people. And. And the debt keeps ballooning. Now, none of that is Mamdani's fault. Let's be very clear. He wasn't in office. But it does show that more money is not going to solve the problem. But apparently, Mamdani is not getting that message. He does not look at all of this and say, we need to spend our money more wisely. Instead, he looks at that cavalcade of failures, and he says, we need to spend more and tax more. He laid out his plan to close what is currently a $5.4 billion budget gap. Now, he said to be consistent with his campaigning, his preferred method is to get a 2% income tax hike on anyone making over a million dollars. That would push the combined state and city rate to roughly 16.8%, which would be the highest in the entire United States by a lot. California, the other catastrophe, Their top rate, at least, tops out at 13.3%, which is already ridiculous. Add federal taxes on top, and you're looking at over 53 cents of every dollar going to the government. And that's before sales tax and stuff like that. Now, Governor Hochul has repeatedly said to Mamdani and anybody else who would listen, she's not going to to do an income tax hike. She won't sign it. She's up for reelection, okay? There's no way she's got an appetite for more taxes. So what is Mamdani's backup plan? It's a 9.5% property tax increase. It's the first one since 2003. It's going to hit over 3 million residential units and 100,000 commercial buildings. And this is the same guy who won the election by promising to freeze rents. It was his signature campaign promise. The thing he chanted at rallies. Freeze, duh. Rent, remember? And now less Than two months into office. The very first major fiscal lever that he reaches for is one that will almost certainly raise rents for the majority of New York city's renters. Now, because roughly 56% of apartments aren't rent stabilized and those landlords will pass the cost straight through to tenants, this is going to be a problem for the 44% that are stabilized. Landlords obviously can't raise rent, so they'll cut maintenance, delay repairs, and let buildings just deteriorate. I did a deep dive on this. If you look at what happened to New York in the 70s and 80s, it was insane. It inspired movies like escape from new york. In the Bronx, there was some ungodly number of buildings that were burned down because they realized that it was cheaper to burn the building and collect the insurance money than it was to try to upkeep the building. You do not want to put people in that situation. First of all, they become real slumlords because they don't have the money for the repairs. Now, the small property owners of New York said it very plainly. Raising property taxes while freezing rents would be crushing, Driving small owners into foreclosure and bankruptcy. I know everybody thinks that all of these buildings are owned by megacorps, but they're not. Mamdani himself admitted that this problem is real. He said this would effectively be a tax on working and middle class New yorkers. Those are his own words. The man who ran an affordability is now proposing a regressive tax that his own comptroller called, Something that's going to hit communities of color harder than wealthy neighborhoods. And he's doing that instead of what? Instead of making budget cuts. All right, there's an even deeper problem. His supporters are going to chant stuff like tax the rich at rallies. But the top 1% of filers already pay 40% of the city's income taxes. And. And they're leaving now. New York city's share of the nation's millionaires has dropped. They used to be, what, 6.5%? They're now 4.2%. That's a drop of 35% just over a decade. More than 125,000 New Yorkers have fled to Florida in the last few years, taking nearly $14 billion in income with them. These people have accountants, boys and girls. They have options. They've got Florida. You know who can't leave, though? Normal people. People that own a house, people that own a small business. They are stuck, left there to deal with more taxes.
- [08:17]
Drew
Nobody owns houses and businesses. Tom Drew, if Actually, if that were
- [08:24]
Tom Bilyeu
true, that would be a catastrophe. But alas, they do.
- [08:27]
Drew
Mom, Daddy's voters.
- [08:28]
Tom Bilyeu
This is fundamental math that ultimately democratic socialists are going to have to deal with. So Margaret Thatcher said it best when she said the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of people, other people's money. So we'll see how this plays out. But when you've got Mamdani's entire agenda. Free buses at 800 million a year, city owned grocery stores, universal child care, a four year rent freeze. All of it was predicated on his ability to tax the rich to pay for it. But the rich are leaving. The governor won't authorize a tax. And the budget still, by law, has to be balanced. So who pays? The middle class, the working class, the exact people that he promised to protect. This is the game of socialism, boys and girls. So you can call it democratic socialism if you want. It is the same idea. New York does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. And until some mayor somewhere has the courage to say that out loud, to actually cut the waste, reform pensions, renegotiate contracts and stop treating taxpayers like they are an infinite atm, no amount of taxing will ever be enough. This is why the federal government has deficits of trillions of dollars. There's no point at which your spending can be out of control and you're able to tax people enough. It just doesn't work. You first have to get your spending under control. You have to cut things. And I get that people don't want to do it, but it is the only way forward. You will forever run into the realities of math.
- [09:53]
Drew
This is a tough one. Because the largest driver of the budget is pensions, healthcare costs.
- [10:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Yep. Guess what?
- [10:00]
Drew
You have to cut pensions and health care. There you go, man. So you worked at the city, but sorry, the city can't afford you anymore. Goodbye and good luck.
- [10:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes. People have got to understand you cannot make everything free. You can't. There are going to be some places that are expensive to live. It just is the way that it is. And if you want a cheaper life, you have to go to a cheaper place. And if then that place finds, oh, like we're losing people, then they will stop doing moronic policies. And if they really want workers, like if you're a really wealthy person in New York and you are like, whoa, what do I do? There's nobody here to help me do my laundry, walk my dog, whatever your thing is, well then you better build more housing. But they're not doing that. They're taking this ridiculous, completely moronic approach, and they're paying the consequences. So people have done. There are physics to this stuff. Like, you may want to. Let's say that you, you make race cars and you're trying to win. And you may want a particular design that looks cool to be the fastest, but aerodynamics are real, and you have to adhere to the realities of physics. Your tires have to be a certain way because road conditions are a certain way. Aerodynamics work a certain way, drivers work a certain way. And if you want to build against a theory, that theory is going to make contact with reality at some point. And that's why I say all of this stuff comes back to having a Federal Reserve. When people can print money, when they can do things at a deficit, they don't have to be responsible. At some point, we have to admit, you cannot pay for everything. And so if you're going to do a new thing, great. Like, I actually don't. If, if New York says we want to offer free housing to everybody who makes less than $75,000, I don't have a philosophical problem with it. Just show me what you're not going to do to pay for that. And if taxpayers are like, yeah, I'm cool with that, great, what the fuck is the problem? You're saying, hey, my tax base doesn't mind this, so they're happy to fork over. They're not leaving. Cool. This is a thing we all agree as New Yorkers, we want to spend our taxpayer dollars on. Great. It's when you want to do something that is not popular with the people that pay 40% of your tax base. And this is not a communist country. We're not under a dictatorship, so people can and will leave. And by the way, the states compete for population through tax policies. And I do. Are they just blind to that? So it's like you basically compete on whether safety, education and tax. And that's as a state, you're like, hey, we want to be friendly to business.
- [12:31]
Drew
Cool.
- [12:32]
Tom Bilyeu
Hey, we want to be the best place for education so we attract parents. Hey, we want lower taxes, whatever. But, like, you're competing on something that people really care about. And it's a very small number of things that people care about enough to pick up their whole family and move. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.
- [12:51]
Drew
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- [13:21]
Grainger Announcer
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 can always gets the win. Call 1-800-granger. Visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [13:52]
Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.
- [13:56]
Drew
It seems like this is a common theme with politicians where they get into office promising cuts and benefits for the little guy and the little guy ends up getting screwed out of the transaction. To your point, rich people could just get up and leave and go somewhere else, or they get tax cuts if you're part of the big beautiful bill. But with New York specifically, if somebody did pay into a pension and pension calls are ballooning to then say, sorry, we have to cut pensions. That is a slap in the face of the person that paid into it voluntarily. They didn't have it. Same thing with Social Security. You guys took it out of my check this entire time. You told me I'll get it later. And now the later it comes and you're saying, sorry, we don't got it no more.
- [14:33]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes, and that makes you a unless you're just the one cleaning up the mess. You're a dick. Like you're the asshole that voted for this stuff, that either was economically illiterate and you thusly had no business whatsoever voting for this shit. Get out of office. Train these people. We talk about like how do we not teach kids about self esteem and balancing a checkbook and all that stuff in grade school and yet we let our lawmakers be economically. It is so crazy, man. It is so crazy. If you want me to vote for you, explain economics to me. If you cannot explain economics, get the out it. It is so wild, man. It is so wild. We do not hold people to the same account that I get held to in a deep dive on YouTube. Like people will come at me for not understanding an economic principle. Hey, God bless you each and every one. Make me sharper. Hold me to A higher standard, but you'll fucking elect a democratic socialist who is, is so economically illiterate. It is, it is the version of somebody. This is a real fucking thing that happened. There was a guy who wanted to invent what is now a parachute and he was like, hey, I've invented this thing, it works. And I'm going to go up on the Eiffel Tower and I'm going to jump off and I'm going to show you that it works. And so he goes up and he's got his like fucking sort of wingy suit, parachute thing, he jumps off and fucking dies. And when he hits the ground, okay, that's what these guys do. But they're not the ones that hit the fucking ground. They're the ones going, hey, New Yorkers, as I live in a lavish palace with guards and fucking fences and shit, I've got a cool idea. I'm going to put you up on the Eiffel Tower or up on the Empire State Building since we're in New York. Don't worry, it'll catch you on the way down. Jump. And they just fucking die. One after another, one after another, one after another. And nobody wants to go, hey, dip shit, it doesn't work. There are physics and I just, it is, it is absolutely maddening that we cannot get people to go, I need to sit down, I need to map out these physics, because there's like a real thing at play here. But they don't, they are politically minded people and they are. And listen, I made a big mistake when I got into game development and I said, I'm going to deliver a AAA game and I'm going to do it in pieces so that the community can be with me. And I'm going to be this genius marketer who uses the building of his game as a way to get players invested in this thing. So by the time it's ready, it's going to be amazing. And what are all these fools doing that, like, go underground for seven years and then, fingers crossed, hope and pray. And then I was met with the physics of game development and I realized, oh, the art is the most expensive part of the game. A lot of your ideas are going to be terrible and you won't know that until you put them in the game. So you actually want to do the exact opposite of what I'm doing. You want to wireframe shit, make it ugly, just get it in lightweight, see if it's actually fun to play. And then you can make things pretty at the very end. Physics So I encountered the raw reality of how many pixels can be pushed by a designer, how many pixels can be rendered by a gpu, And I had to adjust. These guys don't fucking adjust. They have so much history. Looking back to say this doesn't work and yet they do it anyway. It's maddening.
- [17:59]
Drew
A lot of people are saying that the reason why the young people are swinging to socialism, I joked around about it earlier, is they think that it's othering of economy. I don't care that you're taxing billionaires. I'm not a billionaire. It's not going to impact me. I don't care that you're increasing property taxes. I rent. That's not going to affect me.
- [18:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
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Drew
So there's this othering of the economy. And Kalashi just announced that the US housing market has reached its most unaffordable level in history ever.
- [18:23]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. So on the othering of the economy, people really have to watch how things are playing out in New York right now, Watch how they've played out historically. It doesn't work because the people are mobile or you just disincentivize them. And I don't think people are being honest about what it takes to get the smartest and best among us, to build things, to innovate, to create things, to actually drive GDP forward if you want. Just like the most shocking history lesson, look at China. Finally, after decades and decades of murdering his own people, starving them to death, Mao finally died. And then Deng Xiaoping takes over. And what was his solution? Literally, let people get rich. And I quote, Deng Xiaoping, the successor to Mao, said, to get rich is glorious. So the way out of this stuff is to understand that humans have a drive to get better. They have a drive to get ahead. They have a drive to compete and to win. And for a lot of the brightest minds in the world, the competition is in the realm of business. And the way that you make the most money in business is to create something that people want. So you innovate and you build something that's better, cheaper, faster. And it works out well when you have light touch. Regulation to avoid things like monopolies, and a regulatory capture is very important to avoid. But when you do that well, like China did, you pull hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, I mean, and rapidly. So it's absolutely extraordinary. However, once you stop understanding that mechanism, that you're allowing those people to get rich precisely so they will pull everybody up with them. But you want those workhorses, the people that are Excited. They're smart, they're driven. They just want to win. And you get to harness that as a society. But you have to let them run. You have to let them get as far ahead to as they're able to get. You have to do it. And as soon as you start disincentivizing them, you get less rich. Now you have to protect the middle class. Hopefully, you guys know that is like, the core of my focus is making sure the middle class can thrive. But you're never going to have a middle class if you don't have that top whatever, 0.01% that is just psychotic about giving up their entire life to build something extraordinary. So let us all be thankful that they exist. But you have to let them run. And so when you're just like, fuck those kids, and you want to tax them into oblivion, they just stop being incentivized. And then, as I've said many times, you start clamping down on them, putting restrictions, and then they can't even if they want to. And then you run into Russia, China, where else? Vietnam, Cambodia, all the places that have run these experiments, and none of them become heavy hitters in the world of progress. So be careful what you wish for. Now, speaking on home prices and what's going on there, to Drew's point, home prices are completely out of control, and it is damaging this country massively. In the 1990s, the median American home cost about three times the median household income today. Today, it costs five times. Okay, that is the highest ratio in recorded American history. It's higher than the peak of the 2006 housing bubble, which I hope we can all agree was a catastrophe. But unlike 2006, nobody's calling this a bubble. They're calling it normal. They're not thinking about it. They're, everything's okay. It's not normal. Home prices are going up, like, 60% just since 2019. The median home now costs $417,000. To qualify for a mortgage on that, you'd need to earn roughly $127,000 a year. And the bad news is the median household only makes 83,000, which means the average American family is now mathematically locked out of the average American home. It's so simple, you can see it in the math when you can see it in a spreadsheet. Make more homes. A study tracking 95 major housing markets, which they did across eight countries for 21 years, just published its latest findings. For the first time in the study's history, not a single market was Rated as affordable, not one zero. And we are now short just under 5 million homes in the US alone, which is an all time high. According to Zillow, 8.1 million families are doubling up and sharing homes with people they're not related to, not because they want roommates, but because they can't afford a place of their own. Now, I hope you guys are all asking, how on earth did we get here? And the honest answer is that our policies are designed to make housing go up, not come down. In a world where deficit spending is eroding the value of every dollar you save, people have piled into real estate as a hedge. You have to. You have to go into some asset. And real estate is the one that people actually understand intuitively. Homeowners right now sit on $35.8 trillion in aggregate equity. They are a massive political constituency. And no politician wants to tell their whole group the biggest asset that they own is going to lose value. Trump has said out loud that that's the case. In December, he admitted the two goals are in conflict. In fact, we have a clip. Let. Let the man say it for himself.
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Drew
Housing. You talked in your address last night about housing.
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Donald Trump
Yeah.
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Drew
Are you still considering a national emergency over housing?
- [24:07]
Donald Trump
I'm looking at it.
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Tom Bilyeu
What would that.
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Drew
What would that.
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Donald Trump
You know, I have to. There's two thoughts on housing. You have a lot of people have housing that. Because we have such a strong time and such a strong market, their houses are very valuable. It's a big part of their. It's called inflation net worth. Their house. I don't want to knock those numbers down because.
- [24:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Because they'll stop.
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Donald Trump
I want them to continue to have a big value for their house. At the same time, I want to make it possible for young people out there and other people to buy housing. In a way, they're at conflict.
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Tom Bilyeu
In a way, you create a lot
- [24:43]
Donald Trump
of housing all of a sudden and it drives the housing prices down. So I want to take care of the people that have houses that have a value to, you know, to the house that they never thought possible, that have sort of made them wealthy and happy and, you know, especially in their later years.
- [25:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Listen, man, there are weird ways that you might be able to get both, but the reality is that you've just got to give up on trying to balance these two things and just say, we are going to focus on housing affordability. So his promise to make housing affordable and his promise to protect home values can't be true. At the same time, he told his Cabinet, I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own them. Don't we all? I get it. But the solution has been to focus on lowering mortgage rates. He directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds. But here's the math. Even if rates drop to an impossibly low 1%, the typical monthly payment would still be higher than it was in 2019. Kate, let that one sit with you for a minute. Rates are not the problem. Supply. Supply. That's the problem. And the biggest obstacle to supply is, you guessed it, regulation. The national association of Home Builders found that regulatory costs. This one made me sick to my stomach. Regulatory costs, permits, impact fees, zoning delays, code mandates. They account for nearly 25% of the price of every new single family home and over 40% of the cost of a typical apartment. That's $93,870 per house. Complying with regulations adds an average of six and a half months to every project. And Goldman Sachs found that 60% of residential land in the 240 largest US metro areas is capped at two or three stories by height restrictions alone. This is the part that should drive people nuts. Goldman modeled what happens if you reduce land use regulations in major metros to match the 25% of cities with the fewest restrictions. The result is 2.5 million additional homes in the next decade, eliminating half of the shortage a little more. We don't need a miracle. We need to get out of the way, let the market do its thing. Trump's National Economic Council director, Kevin Hassett hinted at this, saying that the administration could reward states that make it easier for people to build. That would be good, but it needs to be way more than a hint. It needs to be the centerpiece of their policy around housing. Because what everybody is dancing around but not saying is you can't make housing affordable without housing prices coming down. It's just supply and demand, or at least like flattening the increase for long enough for wages to catch up. You're not going to get there by protecting the bubble while tinkering around the edges with interest rates. You get there by flooding the market with supply. You deregulate, cut the permitting timelines, you kill the zoning restrictions that exist for no reason other than to protect incumbents from competition. And you let builders build. Yes, some houses, they are going to flatten out. They may even lose value. That's not a crisis. You're just correcting things. You're getting back to where they should be the historical norm. The alternative, which is we've already locked an entire generation out. You're working on your second. That is far worse. Housing should not be the core speculation vehicle for those who got in early. It should be a place to live. Houses are a place to live. Let people build. Let people build. And then what happens in the market happens in the market.
- [28:38]
Drew
Yeah. Only generation that wants people under them to do worse. It's just boomers took the ladder up.
- [28:45]
Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting, man. I never know how much of that is culture because I don't know that they even think about it. I think people are very myopic and they don't understand the economy. And they just say, I did what I was told. I bought a house. This is like my retirement fund. And for me to retire, I need this to go up in value. And then they get together in neighborhood groups and they're like, what will help us go up in value? We've got to keep apartments out this, that or the other. And so they go and lobby because they're old enough and they have a thing to protect. And so they've got an agenda. And they go and they lobby. I don't think they're thinking, fuck my kids. I don't want to see my kids do well. I don't think that's what they're thinking at all.
- [29:22]
Drew
Yeah, they're telling their kids, stop eating avocado toast. And then they'll be able to afford houses.
- [29:25]
Tom Bilyeu
That I'm sure. And the bad news is they probably, probably mean it. Like, even I think about how much my thinking of the economy has changed. It's dramatic. And I've put a ton of time into actually researching and understanding the data and all of that. If you're the average person trying to make ends meet and just, please, God, let my house go up enough that I can retire by 65. You're just not thinking about it. And that's why we need a government class that does the right thing and not just the expedient thing. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned.
- [30:02]
Grainger Announcer
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.
- [30:33]
Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for staying tuned. Now, let's get back to it.
- [30:36]
Drew
There was a tweet. I didn't pull it up, but it was something along the lines of, everybody, nobody's trying to address the problems that are happening in America. Everybody's just trying to get rich enough so that way the problems don't impact them anymore.
- [30:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Ooh, that's good. And that's really good.
- [30:50]
Drew
And I feel like that's where we are as a society right now. Yeah. I just got to.
- [30:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Unless you're Japan. Japan really does. Like, they fuck with honor and things like that, but that's. And that's tough to bake into a culture.
- [31:01]
Drew
Yeah.
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Tom Bilyeu
And it apparently also has some weird quirks of its own that that creates. The Japanese are bizarre. I love them. I am a Japan of Phil.
- [31:10]
Drew
I will say I have mixed feelings because how you describe the Japanese is different than, like the anime Pikachu, like, fantasy I have in my head right now. Like, which.
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Tom Bilyeu
Which is more jarring to you, your depiction.
- [31:23]
Drew
Because I go out there and I feel like it's going to be like that, that movie with the funny white dude.
- [31:31]
Donald Trump
So curious.
- [31:32]
Drew
Who's in Japan with my. Not Maya Rudolph.
- [31:35]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, yep. So Lost in Translation.
- [31:39]
Drew
Bill Murray. Thank you.
- [31:40]
Tom Bilyeu
Funny white guy. Okay.
- [31:41]
Drew
You know, exactly. He's the funniest.
- [31:42]
Tom Bilyeu
Yep.
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Drew
It's like him and Steve Martin. I feel like they. If you said funny white dude, those are the two you would pop up.
- [31:48]
Tom Bilyeu
Not Seth Rogen.
- [31:50]
Drew
He's a stoner, like, white dude. Okay. All right.
- [31:53]
Tom Bilyeu
Categories matter, I guess.
- [31:56]
Drew
Okay. So it's one of these things where locally, I think America is having an economic problem, where we are looking at policies and trying to swing the pendulum one way or the another. And then we get into like this Germany story. And it seems like this is why there's other problems just in. In bigger context. So I don't know if this is something that can go culture. I don't know if you can set us up, but just reading the headline is just like, I have to missing something. Like, right. Like this.
- [32:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Can't wish you were missing something in Germany. They have literally decided that they are not going to pursue criminals if they look like they might escalate. So this all started on a train when the way that Germany works. They've been a high trust society for so long Post World War II, as you can imagine, their culture had a major shakeup post Hitler where you had. You want to talk truth and reconciliation. So on the other side of that they become this ultra high trust society with a real skeptical eye looking back at themselves. So they settle down immediately, they get into industry, they turn all of that negative energy into building something wonderful, and they end up becoming Europe's strongest economy. It's an absolutely incredible turnaround story. Now, however, they are also caught up in immigration madness. And they have this sense that obviously we have a lot of sins to atone for. Our culture is not necessarily better than anybody else's. And so we're going to let anybody come in that wants to come in. And the way that their train system used to work is for the most part, you didn't even really have to buy a ticket. You'd get caught if somebody came by and said, let me check your ticket, but you didn't, like, put it anywhere. So if you wanted to lie, you could get on the train. But Germans didn't lie for the most part. And so this was like a really simple thing. Now it's become a way bigger deal because you get people coming from other countries where they don't act like that. That's not part of their culture. And so there was an immigrant on the train, and forgive me, I do not remember where the immigrant was from. I don't remember. So that immigrant ends up beating the train conductor to death for asking for his ticket. Now, instead of going, oh, we obviously can't have that. We've got to like hammer these people into shape so that everybody knows this is the law and you're going to follow it. They said to train instructors, if they look like they're going to escalate, then don't engage them. Think that through. Take that two or three leaps of cause and effect down the road. And what ends up happening, you get grandma who is going to buy her ticket, and if she doesn't, she's going to get in trouble because the conductor is going to go straight to her and say, show me your ticket. She doesn't have it.
- [34:38]
Drew
Cool.
- [34:38]
Tom Bilyeu
We're going to press charges, we're going to file something against her. But if you've got a guy in his 20s who looks like he might throw a punch, you're going to leave him be, which means you're just going to let him go. You're not going to file a report. There's not going to be any sense that an incident even happened. So what you are saying is, I'm going to punish the people that are the most weak and I'm going to go after or I'm going to leave alone the Strongest. That is how a society falls. Because now there's no consequence to the bully. And so what are they going to do? They're going to make sure that they act threatening, that they look like the kind of person that's going to escalate or just actually escalate, because there aren't consequences for those people. This. This is a level of stupidity that I find intolerable. So here's where I'm just like, weakness is not a virtue, boys and girls. Weakness is not a virtue. Jordan Peterson said something. It's an interpretation of the Bible that I cannot tell you if it's true. But I love this interpretation because it is accurate to the world if Jordan is right. And the real ancient Greek interpretation of meek was somebody who is an absolute monster with their sword but keeps their sword sheathed. That is the person who inherits the earth because they have the skills to defend themselves. They are capable of great violence, but they become capable of all that. Precisely. So they don't have to use it, so that they don't have to be nervous, aggressive, so they don't have to bluff or posture. They can just be calm in a situation because they know if it escalates, they're going to be able to handle themselves. When you do the reverse and you say weak people were coming for you, and strong people, don't worry, we're going to leave you alone, you create tyrannical monsters. So you have a problem. Germany and anybody that follows down this path. If you are not prepared to be strong yourself, to eschew weakness yourself, to say, these are the rules, they apply equally to everybody. Germany has a culture. It isn't Nazism. It's whatever we're going to define it as today. We have laws, we have rules. If you violate those, regardless of your country of origin, including Germany, there will be consequences. Those consequences will be metered out equally. If you don't do that, your society will tear itself apart. History is ripe with examples.
- [37:24]
Drew
Yeah, suicidal empathy, man. Gadsdad had a banger when he came up with that theory, man.
- [37:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Suicidal empathy is definitely part of this chain, that's for sure. But that's not what's happening at the level of the train conductor getting beaten to death. That's fear. That's weakness. That's people who are afraid to stand up for what they believe in. They're afraid to say, this is right and this is wrong. I don't give a shit if you were raised in poverty. I don't give a shit if you're dumb. As a box of rocks. I don't even care if you're mentally ill. Hard pass. These are the laws. And you get thrown in the back of a squad car like everybody else. Whether you're mentally ill or not, whether you're a foreigner or not, it doesn't matter. And seeing some of the stuff coming out of the UK where it's like, people that call out a rapist on social media end up getting longer sentences. This is real. Look it up. Get longer sentences than the rapist. That. That is a level of a. Of absurdity that I cannot tolerate. Where you have judges that say, well, listen, yes, he raped, but he was stressed out and drinking alcohol because he's an immigrant. And, you know, it's hard to make that adjustment. I don't give a. Like, that's crazy. That's crazy I've ever heard in my life. So those people have to be put away. And it's sad that people find themselves in a hard position. It's sad some people feel pushed to drink. It's sad that some people felt that they had to flee their country. I don't give a shit. These are the rules, and you abide by them, period.
- [38:54]
Drew
Yeah, crazy. It's so facto to that. All right, another things that is making the Internet mad. Let's talk about Joan of Arc.
- [39:05]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [39:06]
Drew
This is hilarious to me. This is full outrage at 100, but I'll let you go first.
- [39:12]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, so zoom in. I don't know her name well, so there was a recent announcement made about an upcoming movie about Joan of Arc and Mandeepa Cabana, who's a young African American woman. Or she may be British. I don't know.
- [39:25]
Drew
I don't think she's American.
- [39:26]
Tom Bilyeu
So a young black woman is cast as Joan of Arc. And it's. To be honest, I've never had, like, beef with race swapping, but I am, admittedly, when you're talking about a historical figure. So, like James Bond. When I first heard that it might be Idris Elba, I was excited. He's fucking cool as shit. I buy him as somebody that is tough and can fight and yet is good with women. Like, I'm all for that. But when it's a historical figure being accurate, it's probably a good idea. But my real beef with this is, what are they thinking? Like, that moment from a. It will make people come watch your movie. That moment is dead. I'm not even sure it ever existed, but it is as dead as disco now. And I don't know how People did not learn their lesson after Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as like the wildest shit ever. So I actually believe in representation. Like I dig that. I remember. So our comic book Neon Future, one of the lead characters is Egyptian. And this woman brought her mixed race daughter up and she was like, oh my God, my daughter sees herself in this character. This is so cool. Thank you so much. And legitimately, the little girl was standing there and she was so excited. I was like, that's dope. I didn't even think about that when we made the character. It was just dope. So I get why people want to see themselves reflected back. However, when you focus on anything other than just telling an awesome story, when the agenda ends up eclipsing the narrative that hopefully you're trying to tell. Like not to make everything about One Piece, but if you watch One Piece, my favorite character is. And I mean listen, he's very light skinned, I'll be the first to admit. But is Usopp, who is black. I don't give a. That he doesn't share my skin color. That is, whatever. To me it's. What does that character represent? What is the moral of the story? What is the emotional journey that they take me on? And so the film industry is in so much trouble right now. I do not know what they're thinking doing something like this at this point. They're just trying to like intentionally poke the bear. I don't know. I'm not sure what the game plan is.
- [41:34]
Drew
Let's start. In 1956, the Ten Commandments was played by Charleston Health, Charlton Heston. No disrespect to Charleston Helston, amazing actor. Nobody in this room can tell me that this guy is from Egypt. Recently in 2014, Exodus, gods and kings. I love Christian Bale best Batman. Fight me in the comments. Nobody can tell me this guy's Egyptian. And I'll go even further back. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Nobody could tell me that guy was born in Jerusalem and everybody knows the picture. I'm not bringing it up because I'm not going to perpetuate that stereotype.
- [42:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Wait, which one? I don't understand this drama.
- [42:13]
Drew
The Jesus picture is made after Caesar Borcha and not actually Jesus.
- [42:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, oh, oh. I'm seeing like the classic depiction of
- [42:20]
Drew
people think that this blonde blue haired guy was born in Jerusalem. I don't think that. I don't think that's true either. So it seems that that's one thing. We've been race switching since the beginning of time. Literally the beginning of time since 00. We've been race switching as soon as we can. Now it's a problem. But I think that this is something that's even more interesting, is the juxtaposition of historical figures. Everybody loves Martin Luther King now, but when Martin Luther King was around, the CIA killed him or it was the FBI. I don't know. Either way, the government took him out. The people that are revolutionaries in this time wouldn't look like what we think they would look like. A great example I would put right, I have this real really weird script idea that if I were to reboot Batman, I would make like Batman beyond, like high school version of Batman. And I would make Joker a school shooter because that is the worst type of criminal that would impact us in a way that would make us uncomfortable.
- [43:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Those are the types you make the Joker trans.
- [43:18]
Drew
You're trolling. I would make him Jaden Smith. I feel like he would be a perfect Joker.
- [43:21]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting.
- [43:22]
Drew
Okay.
- [43:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Feels like a story there.
- [43:23]
Drew
But yes, like, with green hair and everything. Like, I feel like that would be what he would look like and he would be a school shooter. That's uncomfortable. That's a bad guy. That's somebody that we can't get along with for some reason. We want these revolutionary figures. If they were to be reimagined today, Joan of Arc wouldn't be a lily white woman, because lily white women can do what they want in American society. Naturally, it would have to be somebody that is from a different culture to make that juxtaposition that what Joan of Arc had back then was now. Back then, there was what Peter Zehan was talking about. There was the Italians versus the Germans versus the British, so that she was the marginalized figure in that society, even though all their skin colors were the same. But now if we were to reboot it and use this new Western lens of racism and things like that, it would have to be somebody that's a bit different, actually.
- [44:10]
Tom Bilyeu
That is very insightful. I like that a lot. Where you get into trouble is when you call her Joan of Arc. If you were making like a spiritual successor and you were showing that, listen, the reason that worked is women were so outside of this that for her to come into this was like pure madness. And that's why it worked. We want to capture that. We want something that a modern audience. The much despised phrase, but we want something that a modern audience would look at this and feel the same kind of discomfort of like, whoa, what is that person trying to do? Getting into this group that's really interesting telling it as a historical tale. I think you're begging for pain and suffering.
- [44:50]
Drew
Yeah. But of course, people just. Was it black fatigue? So every time somebody sees something and they just need an excuse to be mad, they just take it. So God bless you. You're right, Elon. Don't cast her. Don't watch the movie. It's going to tank. Probably because Hollywood's running out of ideas anyway, so it's one of those things. But, yeah, that's. That's all I. That's how I feel about Joan of Arc.
- [45:09]
Tom Bilyeu
That was good. That's actually really insightful about what she would have meant as an archetype. The very thing that made her sticky isn't going to be on the surface, not going to be the same thing today. It's interesting nonetheless. My advice, dear Hollywood, is get rid of the agenda. Take a note from the Japanese playbook. If you want to understand how to tell stories, well, pay attention to what the Japanese are doing. It is absolutely extraordinary. It's all about a glimpse into the human condition. The reason that what I like about Drew's pitch is it's getting to the insight that made her sticky in the first place. Somebody who was probably schizophrenic, but they were called by God and were willing to step so far outside of the normal setup of society as to be remembered. And then I don't know the story super well, but she must have done something well enough to get people to allow her to do that. And so talking about that, like, what does it mean to. To all of us as humans, what is the moral that you want us to take away from? Not, like the surface bullshit. The Japanese are extraordinarily good at that. I just had a tweet blow up on X where I said that one piece is. I'm 400 episodes into one piece, and it is extraordinary, on par with Harry Potter. If you have kids of appropriate age, this is a must. And it blew up. And that's because the storytelling is unbelievably good. All of the characters represent an archetype that will remind you of an element of yourself. You will see yourself in, like, all these different moments and beats, things that you want to make sure you never do, things that you aspire to be. It's really, really incredible. But the message is like, this really timeless sense of, if my child were going to simply adopt all of the morality in this story, would they be better for it? Would society be better for it? And right now, certainly with One Piece the answer is yes. There are plenty stories like that. Harry Potter is another one. Which is why I drew the parallel another one where I'm like, yeah, you can just look at how complex those kids are. They don't always get things right. But in terms of what the story venerates, it is things that you would want your kids to imbue. So, yeah, check it out. The Japanese are like, s Tier.
- [47:32]
Drew
Somebody said it should be Joan of Arc, Kansas. Like, Arkansas art, Kansas.
- [47:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Nice.
- [47:37]
Drew
Did y' all see that video? Why is this not AR, Kansas? The immigrant lady who was looking at the map. Oh, it's the funniest. I'll put it up.
- [47:44]
Tom Bilyeu
That's real.
- [47:45]
Drew
I'll bring it up for Friday.
- [47:46]
Tom Bilyeu
That's hilarious.
- [47:46]
Drew
I'll bring it up for Friday. It was good. Okay, tinfoil hats, everybody.
- [47:50]
Tom Bilyeu
Let's go. Put them on. Straight up in.
- [47:52]
Drew
Okay, so we're gonna go. Baby. Stepping in. You know, we're gonna talk about the files, but I wanna start somewhere else. Cause we talked about this story on Monday, and it's been gaining steam ever since. 13 workers left Palantir and issued this statement. Palantir is increasingly complicit, normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a revolution led by oligarchs. We must resist this trend. And this is on the back of Anthropic being labeled as a security threat because they wouldn't let. They were complaining that Palantir wanted to use their tech to do everything and they wanted some safety guards there.
- [48:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. And they didn't. So basically you have Anthropic saying, there are some things I don't want you to weaponize using our tech. And then the Pentagon saying, no, no, no, we don't want limits on this.
- [48:37]
Drew
Yeah. So.
- [48:38]
Tom Bilyeu
And in fact, the Department of War going to these companies and saying, we want more control. Yeah, that one made me nervous.
- [48:45]
Drew
No, but there's a very specific language that they're using it call it. They're trying to call it a supply chain risk, which would tank the company because then any other government contractor wouldn't be able to have a contract with Claude.
- [48:56]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you see how smooth like these guys are? It's crazy, bro. There are really smart people in power that will come up with the most clever, insane stuff if ever. I want to be tempted to lose hope. I think about how smart and evil some people are, and they'll find a way to shut almost anything down. It is crazy when people were like, trump might run for a third term. We've got our lawyers on it. I Was like, wait, the Constitution says very clearly. And they're like, but what do they mean by term? And you're like, hold the fucking phone. Like, at some point we've got to admit that words have meaning, that there is a shared sense of what it means to say they can only serve two fucking terms. I don't care what kind of weird, twisted, no hard pass. So, yeah, you got really smart people. God bless them. I am very glad that they are on our side. And at the same time, man, ooh, do they need checks and balances. Remember, I'm the guy who's glad that there are checks and balances on me. I'm the guy who, at a company where I could be just a psychotic dictator, I'm like, hey, I want people to tell me what I'm doing wrong. Like, don't climb up. Don't be afraid. I want to know. Please tell me. Because I know I'm blind to something and I don't know what it is. I'm blind to it. So I need other people to tell me, okay, So I put my money where my mouth is on this one. And when you get people who are so convinced of their rightness, their intelligence, all that, that they don't want a check and balance on them, now, remember, the thing I know is that I will. I need a check and balance when I'm at my most convinced, when I'm like, no, this is right. This is just. I'm glad I exist in a system with checks and balances because, man, history is replete with people who are just so sure they were right and they drove their entire nation off a cliff. So, yeah, even though, like, take voter id, it is self evident to me that we need voter ID in a way that makes me want to jump up, bang tables, yell, scream, and maybe I'll do all of that. But what I won't do is say, get rid of the filibuster. Because not only do I not want the other side to have checks against them, I want to make sure I have checks against me. So if I can't win people over with the argumentation, we have a problem. So, yeah, people are. They are not thinking clearly if they think they actually see the world as it is. They do not.
- [51:29]
Drew
If you want to hear Tom's take about voter id, please check out the deep dive that came out on Tuesday.
- [51:32]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes, for it is good.
- [51:35]
Drew
Okay? But I know Age of Abundance, Peter Diamantis is going to give everybody a million dollars and we're all going to be happy But AI does have safety implications, and we do have to have an honest conversation on the government, man. Like, I don't. We don't trust the government with our money. We don't trust the government with regulations. I don't really want to trust the government with AI.
- [51:56]
Donald Trump
Yep.
- [51:56]
Tom Bilyeu
Too bad. You have to.
- [51:58]
Drew
Too bad you.
- [51:58]
Tom Bilyeu
I mean, not that you have to trust the government because they're going to try to.
- [52:01]
Drew
But think about, like, anthropic. If you're Dario, like, in this situation, it's a shitty situation to be in, and it sucks that you have to have this conversation, but there is, like, no government. You shouldn't have this versus let me bend the knee, because at least it's
- [52:13]
Tom Bilyeu
America, you know, they'll also find the one that's going to let them do it. So this is why I don't want to go down that road, because the realities are always different than the ideology. And so, listen, would we respect Dario and then immediately forget him if he refused to bend the knee? And then his company poof doesn't exist anymore. We'd all be like, yo, that guy. Like, you know, people don't talk about Dario enough, but he'd be gone, come to be gone, all the money be lost, and they would just move on to the next person that's going to do it. And I don't want to be in that position, so I'll stay well the hell away from all of that. But yeah, the. The. Here's the reality. Dear boys and girls, remember, you're mad at God. And for whatever reason, God has seen fit to make game theory real. And game theory says any technology that promises an advantage will get developed. Even if we believe that we're going to ignite the entire atmosphere and kill everything on Earth, we've already proven it. We did it. We knew that there was a non zero chance that we lit the entire atmosphere on fire and killed everything, every living thing, plants, everything, when we did the first atomic bomb test. But we still did it. And so that's one where I'm just not going to waste any energy on saying we need to stop or slow down. It won't work. Because if you tell me that you're the country that's slowing down, then I become the country that speeds up, because that's how I'm going to get an advantage. That's how I'm going to pull past you. And so it doesn't need to be China. It could be North Korea, right? And there's somebody out there that's very Smart and evil or just a sociopath. And so they don't care about anybody else. And North Korea is promising them, you know, a billion dollars or whatever, or all the sex slaves that they can enjoy if they come to North Korea and help them develop a bomb. And someone will do it. So in this case, obviously, I'm talking about AI, not bombs, but they already have bombs. So it. That just is what it is. And so now it's like, okay, how do we put guardrails around this stuff? How do we try to make it as safe as possible without slowing ourselves down? That's the only play. And I know I'm super defeatist on that. And there are people in my life that hate that. That's how I parse the world. But remember, I'm trying to make contact with reality and spend as little time as possible wasting time on something that just isn't. It's not real. It's not in alignment with the way the human mind works. That's one of them. We need safeguards. But if your attempt to put safeguards is just to slow us down, it won't work because my slowest down here in the U.S. yeah.
- [54:48]
Drew
But other countries will keep going, because
- [54:49]
Tom Bilyeu
keep in mind, right now, China, Russia are sending boats to Iran and saying, hey, we want to be a player on the international field. We want to also patrol the seas. And so we're going to do things our way. These are not countries that are like, oh, we're perfectly happy for America to be in pole position. They hear, oh, America's going to regulate themselves. Like, the dumb asses in Europe say, less, fam. We got you. And they just go, ham.
- [55:19]
Drew
Yeah. All right, next. So remember, that was the tinfoil hat. Now I got like a tinfoil scully. Like, I got one of those, like Shiesty's. Israeli producer Dana Eden was found dead on Monday, February 16, in her hotel room in Athens.
- [55:35]
Tom Bilyeu
I've taken my tinfoil hat off.
- [55:38]
Drew
It's off right now.
- [55:39]
Tom Bilyeu
It's off. The second I read this, I was like, oh, Iran had her killed. I was like, I don't have to be convinced.
- [55:45]
Drew
I don't need a tinfoil hat hat.
- [55:46]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't need a tinfoil hat for this one. I was like, oh, yeah. Like, damn. Going to Greece was not the play. So, yep, that's wild. Now, obviously, I don't know that I'm right, but on this one, my mental model updated instantly. I was like, iran got her. Got her.
- [56:04]
Drew
Yeah. I feel like it's one of those things that Just kind of. I'm looking around like, yeah, yeah, dude,
- [56:12]
Tom Bilyeu
international countries, they, they just kill. America kills. We kill. China kills.
- [56:18]
Drew
Yeah.
- [56:18]
Tom Bilyeu
Iran kills.
- [56:19]
Drew
We just do it over the kill over there. We don't do it here.
- [56:21]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, and since she was saying the FBI killed.
- [56:25]
Drew
Oh, yeah, that's true.
- [56:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Martin Luther King. We kill every witch wearer.
- [56:28]
Drew
Yeah, we do kill.
- [56:29]
Tom Bilyeu
So bad news for everybody. Bad news. So, yeah, I'm not saying I want this to happen. It's terrible, terrible. But will I be surprised if that one comes true? No, this is seeing. This was how I felt when it came out that George Michael was gay. I was like, people thought he was straight. I was so, like, I was what? I had no idea. He was closeted legitimately. So when it comes out, news story. Oh, my God, George Michael's gay. I was like, obviously, I literally had no idea. It was meant to be a secret. So this is how I feel about. Did Iran do it? Yes, yes.
- [57:11]
Drew
Now obviously, obviously, obviously, you can't do
- [57:14]
Tom Bilyeu
a show called Tehran about Iran being bad. Can't do it. Sorry. I mean, if it tanks in the ratings, maybe.
- [57:22]
Drew
No, you can just make sure you stay in Israel when you do it. All right, next, New Mexico unanimously approves a comprehensive probe of Epstein's Zorro Ranch. They start tomorrow morning with a budget of $2 million. The truth will come out. I like this, but the announcement makes me feel very iffy because like a magician, I feel like they're like, hey, everybody, tomorrow, $2 million, we're gonna spend it and it's gonna take two weeks of approvals in government green tape, and there's gonna be a whole bunch of mismatch colored grass in the backyard when they get. Finally get there. So.
- [57:59]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, well, so there's a lot of problems with this because they didn't investigate it immediately, which means they've had a ton of time to see all the pressure building up. And if you know that there are literal bones, you start going, we gotta get rid of this. Now, if you're really smart, you do something like, you go, you get rid of all the evidence, you then bring in cadaver dogs and you have them go around and see if they alert anywhere. And then the only remaining thing would be, can you, using this technology, see that I've dug a given area up and then what do I have to do to like blend that in to the rest? Like, you'd have to go like, pretty ham. But if you've been burying kids, you're going to go pretty far if you're like this ultra evil, wealthy cabal, bro. You spare no expense. So keep in mind that a Hollywood studio can make something look worn. Like, these are not. Like, you're not going to roll up and be like, well, it's freshly done, so obviously we have a problem. You could make it look like it's been there forever. So, yeah, that one, I would say I'll keep my tinfoil hat on because it's one of those where I don't know. Now, if you could show me any data that I would believe that. Oh, I guess there really nothing happened. You could show me data that made me go, there's nothing there now, but I'm building a mental model that's just like Epstein was. And then it's like a mad lib. No matter what, you fill in that blank, I'm like, yep, Ollie, probably. So, yeah, I just. I don't know what you would say at this point.
- [59:36]
Drew
Shout out to Yellow Nine. I missed this. When we were talking about the Tehran producer. He said she should have stayed in Tel Aviv and played Fortnite with Epstein.
- [59:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Damn. Damn.
- [59:47]
Drew
She would have been safer. Well done, Yellow Knight. Well done. Okay, this one is how you felt about Tayron. Is how I feel about this next one. Oh, I missed it. I missed it. Here we go. Really, it's just a complete coincidence that I got all the files from 95 to 99, none of the files until 2001, and then all the files by the end of, like, 22 to, like, oh, five.
- [60:15]
Tom Bilyeu
This one is.
- [60:15]
Drew
That's a convenient game.
- [60:18]
Tom Bilyeu
The number of times I've seen something like this where you can tell a story that seems very damning, and then you get into the details and it's not. But I will say, when you see Building 7 fall, you're like, why'd that one fall? I don't get it. Like, it was already weird that the towers fell, but okay, like, I mean, you really, like, the tops are going to be pretty damn heavy. And so. Fine, I accept that, but why did seven fall again? Now, listen, there might be people that know structure and they're like, oh, God, these idiots. Like, how many times do I have to explain this? This is like so self evident. But that one was never hit by a plane. Was never hit by a plane. And then just to Yesterday. Today or yesterday, Brett. Oh, there we go. There it is, boys and girls. This is crazy. So look at your screens.
- [61:08]
Drew
What we are witnessing is the wearing off of the blue pill. The matrix is becoming visible. It will soon be common knowledge the default Assumption. Unfortunately, that alone does not destroy its control. We will have to do that. Welcome to the Nebuchadnezzar and I hope
- [61:21]
Tom Bilyeu
people get that reference. Okay. And then he put out another tweet that basically said, okay, let's lay out a hypothesis here that, and he obviously doesn't know this to be true. Oh, literally. Here we go.
- [61:34]
Drew
Hypothesis. World Trade Center 7 was supposed to be hit by UA Flight 93, the
- [61:39]
Tom Bilyeu
one that was taken over by people on the plane and they then crashed it into a field.
- [61:44]
Drew
And its collapse was intended to destroy evidence of many elite crimes, including 911 itself. The destruction of Flight 93 instead rendered the collapse of World Trade Center 7 the smoking gun of 9 11.
- [61:56]
Tom Bilyeu
Now Brett is very careful when he uses the word hypothesis. He's the one that taught me the difference between a hypothesis and a thesis. So a hypothesis is your best guess. You don't know that it's true. You haven't scrutinized it enough. And so that is, I think he, he uses those words extremely intentionally. So he is saying this is a guess. I don't know that this is true. But there's something here worth exploring.
- [62:23]
Drew
UA93 was the one where the passengers revolted and ended up crashing in the field, right? Okay.
- [62:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Such a cool story. I remember, dude, for at least a year after 9 11, I refused to sleep on planes. And when I say, I was like, I, I'll die obviously if people have hijacked the plane, but I'm gonna die with a fist full of eyeballs. Like, there's no way I'm going quietly. I will come scratch faces, gouge out eyes, rip your nuts, literally, whatever. And I just sat on planes like constantly. Like, who's the. On this plane?
- [62:58]
Drew
You're patting down everybody. Hey, did you go through the skater? I don't know. I was like, excuse me, sister, you
- [63:03]
Tom Bilyeu
can, you can double full screen me, you can empty my bed, I don't give a. Like, I, I am here to get somebody on this plane. I was a literal psychopath. Nobody was above reproach. You're a 92 year old woman. Ah, doesn't matter.
- [63:18]
Drew
I'm on you.
- [63:19]
Tom Bilyeu
Like I was waiting for somebody to make a move because I was so inspired by these guys. Now obviously give me exactly zero credit for tough talk in my own mind, but these guys really did it.
- [63:31]
Drew
Yeah.
- [63:32]
Tom Bilyeu
That is like when you hear, hey, other planes have crashed in and you know, okay, that's what's going on. And they have the balls to walk up and take those guys on that's my kind of person. I aspire to be that kind of person who's like, yeah, I'm not going quietly.
- [63:48]
Drew
So where was World Trade Center 7? In New York, too?
- [63:51]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, it's right by. I mean, they're very close.
- [63:53]
Drew
Oh, got it, Got it.
- [63:55]
Tom Bilyeu
It's far enough that when you look on a map, you're like, what? Like, if somebody were just telling you, hey, this building was hit, hit by a plane. This building was hit by a plane. Which buildings collapsed? You wouldn't go, well, that one's probably at the highest risk. You'd never say that, so. Or at least not a layperson. Again. Somebody who knows structures and all that stuff may have been like, no, no, no, that really. Because this thing hit it, whatever. But it's always seemed super weird. But honestly, I just couldn't allow myself to believe that people planted bombs inside of the World Trade. Like, it just seemed like, no, no, no. There's no way. The government can't coordinate like that. I don't buy it. So we'll see, man. It's worth exploring.
- [64:38]
Drew
Thank you for everybody who participated in the poll. We did. Are you surprised that AI is being used to normalize authoritarianism? 86 said no. 14 said yes. So thank you to the naive 14%. It's people like you we need that still believe in sunshine and rainbows. Next poll. Was it an inside job? Allegedly. And I don't know what it is. I'm talking about the clown that lives in the sewer.
- [65:03]
Tom Bilyeu
Huh.
- [65:04]
Drew
I'm not suicidal.
- [65:06]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [65:06]
Drew
I have a daughter. Please, guys.
- [65:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Man, it'll be interesting to see if we ever get anything, like even 20 years from now, if we get, like, real insights into 9, 11.
- [65:16]
Drew
The.
- [65:16]
Tom Bilyeu
The thing that I think about that should cause criminals to lose sleep is AI is going to be able to, like, sort through things and find patterns that have just been able to evade people for so long because it's just so much data, and it's not so much data for AI, so they're going to be able to put that stuff together.
- [65:36]
Drew
Hey, man, AI already didn't let you look through the Epstein files? I think they're already a 911 filter. They didn't put on that thing.
- [65:42]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes. However, I think if you give it another, like, six months, I think some of the stuff that's going to come out right now there is a kid deep in autism who is just combing through those files using AI, writing scripts, all that stuff you've got the people that are making it so that you can See, through the redactions, I didn't know if I wanted to talk about this, but if there was a guy who posted saying if you change the file extension from PDF to MP4, that you can see, like all these crazy videos that got released. So I think you're going to see more and more and more of that as people draw webs of connections.
- [66:19]
Drew
Yeah, there was one. That was ridiculous. When I tell you it's literally the worst of the worst videos. Yes.
- [66:27]
Tom Bilyeu
I can't see. That's why I.
- [66:28]
Drew
That's what I'm saying. It was like. It was a screenshot and they redacted it. But it was bad. It was bad. And that's why I was just like, okay, I'm gonna get mad all over again. Nope.
- [66:38]
Tom Bilyeu
There are some things you can't unsee. So hard. Pass.
- [66:40]
Drew
Yeah. I'm putting this in conspiracies corner. Cause it's all alleged. And again, I don't have time money, so I can't fight the US Government. So. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. But Ted Lieu is starting his impeachment campaign saying that they did implicate Trump through the Epstein files.
- [67:01]
Ted Lieu
So why are Republicans so interested in Bill and Hillary Clinton? It's because they're trying to distract from the fact that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands and thousands of times. In those files, there's highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children. So I encourage the press to go look at these allegations, and I'm highly disturbed that Deputy Attorney General Ty Blanch just got the law wrong yesterday. He said essentially that it is not a crime to party with Jeffrey Epstein. Well, that's actually not correct. If Jeffrey Epstein was human trafficking minors for these sex parties, and you show up and patronize the establishment at that party. Yes, you're guilty. Because patronizing is part of the law of the federal.
- [68:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Here's what I want to know. How are the. How is the Trump administration and the DOJ going to get around the fact that Congress passed a law and they either have or have not lived up to the letter of the law? And the way that they're acting is like, it wasn't Congress that passed the law. This wasn't an executive order, man. This was Congress passed a law. So I don't know what they're thinking. I'll be surprised if they don't. If Congress doesn't, like, continue to press this, I mean, I guess it's up to all of us. Like, we've got to be sweating the. The Lawmakers enough that they're like, oh, this really isn't going away. Because, bro, if we've. Okay, so first of all, people are saying, bro, it's not six million files, it's a hundred million files. Six million was already like, now these are claims, so who knows? But it's like 6 million was already a ridiculous redaction. 3.5 is slap in the face. So it's like, what? Like, if that's really true, lawmakers should be losing their minds. Because if this is some small fraction, like, if this is really less than 10 or 20% of the files. Oh, buddy. Oh, buddy.
- [69:16]
Drew
Yeah. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is co opting all of us, that's a psyop. She was the one that kind of banged the drum. That was like, patriots were mad that we were getting 3% tax on our taxes and we revolted. We held our parties accountable, we took down our leaders. We need to do the same thing again. It's not a left or a right thing. It's an accountability thing. And we need to start realizing that our vote is important, our participation in society is important. Everybody's calling us consumers because they just think we're just this assumed bug that's gonna just eat the thing that they throw on the floor. But there is individual rights, there is individual sovereignty. We do have rights, and we haven't had our amendments taken away yet. So we do need to realize that we need to hold all of our leaders accountable. So. So if Trump is free, then cool. What about Howard Lutnick? Maybe somebody needs to be held accountable on the administration, people that were there. Again, we're seeing it internationally, we're seeing it in the private sector where people are stepping down left and right. And eventually, like, somebody in the Senate is gonna have to step down. Somebody in the House of Representatives is gonna have to step down. Somebody in the White House is gonna have to step down. Cabin in. Or not.
- [70:21]
Tom Bilyeu
So, yeah, yeah, it's. So I think what you're seeing is some math equation between how connected you are and how obvious your, like, problem in the Epstein files is. So if you have low connection and high, like, visibility in the Epstein files, where you said like, a thing that can be taken, like a really bad way.
- [70:44]
Drew
Uncle Jeff.
- [70:45]
Tom Bilyeu
So Uncle Jeff. That's a good one. So very, very high. Plus she, like, was, I think, in the Epstein files as one of the highest individuals, like, in terms of just raw count, hopefully. I'm not misremembering that. But. So somebody like Peter Attia, where he's Like, I will be surprised if it comes out that he's like hobnobbing at all the parties and stuff like that. But the things that are in the emails are. They just sound God awful. They sound so incriminating. And I imagine he's not as connected as some of these politicians. So low connection. And then your emails just sound terrible. Toast the woman, I forget her name. The one that you're referencing, who was that whatchamacallit? Goldman Sachs, thank you. Very connected. She was Obama's like top lawyer when he was in office. So in Goldman Sachs, obviously super connected. But, ooh, buddy, if you're going to be the number one person in the Epstein files and you're calling him uncle, ah, like, okay, now you've got a law firm that's just like, bro, maybe you're going to be fine in a few years, just lay low. But right now, today, you got to go like, you're bringing way too much heat. And so there's going to be some equation like that. Because is Howard Lutnick going anywhere? I doubt it, man. Yeah, I doubt it.
- [72:05]
Drew
He had a Senate hearing. He sat in front, he answered the questions, said it was lunch, it was his neighbor, that's how they met. He went to the Epstein island one time, but it was with his wife and his kids and it was pg. Letting it go to Epstein.
- [72:18]
Tom Bilyeu
Maybe, maybe that's really true. But he's so connected that it almost doesn't matter, right? It's like, that one's gonna be tough. Trump, you have a question mark on him. If he's out of power and they decide that they're going to go after him because they think he's still influential in the Republican Party, then yes, he might, just because there's going to be so much aggression. Like, that's the thing that scares me is the presidency is existential for him. If a Republican doesn't win in 2028, his only hope is that it's like, well, he's gone now and so we'll leave well enough alone. But I don't know, man, I have a feeling people are going to gun form. So it's like now you're backing somebody into a corner where it's like he needs the protection, he needs to be inside. And so people backed into a corner tend to do dicey stuff.
- [73:13]
Drew
Very, very true. Like here for that. Excavating a New Mexico property before they get there. Thank you for everybody who answered the poll. Was it the clown movie? An inside job? 81 says yes, stay away from the sewers, everybody.
- [73:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh. So hold on a second. Everybody knew the spirit of that was. Was 911 an inside job? And 81 say yes. That is crazy.
- [73:36]
Drew
I'm talking about a clown.
- [73:37]
Tom Bilyeu
I. I'm talking about 9 11. So I come after me, Leave poor Drew alone. But I am. I'm shocked by that. Wow. Okay. I didn't expect that. I'm gonna be honest.
- [73:48]
Drew
The conspiracy, the tinfoil hats. We need to make a merch line for that. Because it started to catch on. It's starting to catch on.
- [73:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Wow, that's wild. I'm really shocked by that. And maybe because I'm like, you would have been pretty young during 911 despite being 53 now, whereas I was like, smack bang in my mid-20s when that happened. So this is like, I remember this well. And for everybody to now flip over to this as an inside job. There was a brief moment when it happened where it. There was like this thing called Pocket Change. So look it up really fast. It's. It was a very interesting, like, micro documentary in the early days of YouTube. And I remember watching it going, whoa, loose change. Loose change. Yeah. And it. I was like, holy cow. Like, this is crazy. But then I was like, there's no way. And so I just sort of let go of it. But it makes a very compelling case that it was not at all what we thought.
- [74:48]
Drew
So anyway, I know we talked about this earlier. If you don't mind, Mason, if we could drop one the Discord chat. Get in the Discord, Drop some links, drop some memes. We're building out that finance channel. Thank you, guys. There's been like an active community giving us quotes and stuff. So thank you for doing that. And then on the other hand, zero to founder AI is eating the world and people need to get on it. So.
- [75:09]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, for real. So we're putting a ton of eggs into the basket of helping upstart entrepreneurs again, moving our assets away from dealing with high end businesses, despite how lucrative it is in terms of the impact that I want to have on the world. I think this generation is going to be really, really big. I know a lot of you listening are going to fall into this camp where either you have job insecurity, you know that the company you're at is going to reduce workforce at some point. So either being the last one standing at your company will be able to help you with that, or just outright wanting to start your own company, even if it's just to do the job you're already doing, but as a solopreneur make sure you sign up for Zero to founder. We'll drop the link in the chat. I really think it's. It's become something pretty extraordinary. So we will help you on that journey. All right, everybody, that's it for today. We will see you again on Friday. Until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Peace.