Congress’ Reckless Budget, Immigration Realities, ICE Raids, and Europe’s Economic Meltdown | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Summary

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Impact Theory Podcast Summary

Episode: Congress’ Reckless Budget, Immigration Realities, ICE Raids, and Europe’s Economic Meltdown
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Air Date: January 26, 2026

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Overview

In this wide-ranging live episode, Tom Bilyeu and co-host Drew break down the most debated headlines of the week—deficits, immigration, ICE operations, global alliances, and economic struggles in Europe. The conversation digs into cause and effect, highlighting both the dangerous complacency and dysfunction across U.S. politics (especially Congress’ spending), public perception versus reality on immigration, and regulatory overreach stifling European economies. The hosts keep the tone energetic, candid, and occasionally irreverent, weaving in memes, viral moments, and notable quotes from political and business leaders.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. American Budget Recklessness & Congressional Dysfunction

• Congress’ New Spending Bill

  • Congress passed a full-year appropriations bill far exceeding both presidential and previous budgetary requests, busting prior spending caps and angering fiscal conservatives (21:00–24:00).

  • “Congress hates you and they want to see you poor. Now, how do I know that? Because they keep increasing spending rather than balancing the budget.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (22:17)

• Defeated Fiscal Reforms and Riders

  • Rep. Thomas Massie’s attempt at a 5% cut and abolishment of the Dept. of Education was shut down; bipartisan consensus focused on avoiding shutdowns rather than real reform (24:20–26:15).

  • Key conservative complaints included:

    • Unchecked spending increases
    • Continued funding for controversial social programs
    • Omission of voter ID requirements
    • Allowing government surveillance “kill switch” mandates in new cars (20:59–28:55).

  • “This is horrifying that people wouldn't put a hard and fast no on that one [government kill switch], because they're going to keep coming with things like CBDCs and digital IDs and all of that stuff until the control is total.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (24:50)

2. Immigration Realities: Policy, Fraud, and Political Warfare

• Gavin Newsom’s Comments on Illegal Immigration

  • California Governor Gavin Newsom openly admits to providing healthcare regardless of immigration status, validating a long-disputed talking point about budgetary impact (8:30–10:55; 11:00–13:05).

    “Do I believe in universal health care? Yes. Regardless of preexisting conditions, ability to pay and your status. I campaign on that. We delivered on that and I’m proud of that.”
    —Gavin Newsom, as quoted by Tom (8:38)

  • The hosts dissect the cost, moral trade-offs, and political incentives at play, calling out the economic unsustainability and likelihood of downstream fraud.

  • “America does not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (13:12)

• ICE “Targeting Children” Controversy

  • Viral stories accused ICE of targeting a 5-year-old; hosts emphasize the importance of getting beyond partisan spin.

  • The facts: Agents were pursuing a deportable, criminally convicted father, and the child was left behind in the chaos (35:38–39:56).

    “This one is narrative warfare on both sides. … When people press their leverage, it can often be grotesque.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (37:02)

  • The hosts warn about both the optics and the practical dangers in enforcement—calling for careful, humane immigration policy and more transparency.

3. Trump, Geopolitics, and America’s Image

• Trump’s “Peace Board” and Greenland Diplomacy

  • Trump’s provocative statements on not using force in Greenland, assembling a “Board of Peace” with unexpected countries, and threatening NATO unity are dissected for their diplomatic implications and realpolitik undertones (41:19–48:40).

    “If he had simply said [he wouldn’t use force against Greenland] when asked, you could have avoided so much of the reputational damage that has been done to America.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (42:32)
    “You are putting world leaders in a position where partly out of spite, partly because they don’t know what’s going to happen at the midterms, they're looking for predictability—even if it’s terrifying.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (44:06)

  • Clip breakdown: Finland’s leader claims Europe can defend itself without America, only to backtrack minutes later (47:34–48:40).

• Elon Musk and Newsom’s Global Trolling

  • On the world stage, Elon and Newsom both troll Trump, a symptom of America’s public “infighting.” Tom praises the U.S. culture of open dissent but laments the optics for global trust (52:59–54:08).

    “It's a terrible look for America. And at the same time, this is the game… The bet that America made when it founded itself was: you gotta let people talk shit, air all their dirty laundry, say whatever they think is true, not cap their freedom of speech.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (54:08)

4. Global and European Economic Tension

• Europe’s Overregulation and Economic Decline

  • The German Chancellor and other European leaders admit that overregulation is suffocating EU innovation and causing economic stagnation.

    “Both Germany and Europe have wasted incredible potential for growth in recent years by dragging feet on reforms and unnecessarily and excessively curtailing entrepreneurial freedoms and personal responsibility. … But instead, we have become the world champion of overregulation. That has to end.”
    —(Quoted from German Chancellor, 72:57)

  • Tom argues that “regulate everything” responses ultimately choke prosperity and entrepreneurship—citing the EU’s experiment as a warning (61:11–74:07).

• U.S. Regulatory Controls and “Price Transparency” Moves

  • Discussion on Mamdani’s law to force all-in hotel pricing is used as a jumping off point to debate the economic impact of regulation versus free competition (60:42–69:50).

    “You're never going to be able to [lower prices] by decree. The thing that lowers prices is competition.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (61:11)

5. The Gaza Redevelopment Plan

• Jared Kushner’s “New Gaza” Presentation

  • Kushner’s proposal for rebuilding Gaza with energy, digital, and tourism infrastructure sparks philosophical debate about development, historical wrongs, and the real obstacles to cultural/economic uplift (56:40–60:42).

    “This is going to be viewed, ironically, as the most dystopian thing ever to a certain type of person … [but] the only way to end this conflict is to get people thinking about the future.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (57:11)

    “The problem is that this is not in the Palestinian culture. … Unless you truly ethnically cleanse all of Gaza … it requires some morally reprehensible things to get you there.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (59:59)

6. Reflections on American Governance: When Does it Work?

• Limits and Merits of Government Action

  • Tom distinguishes effective government (emergency mobilization, common defense, fraud protections) from overreach (business regulation, misguided health labeling, price controls). He shares personal stories and criteria for smart governance (74:07–78:33).

    “I have no problem. Love the GI Bill. Love what it did. … But we need to be very prudent about going down that path very far. Because once you start violating private property, you now get into a problem.”
    —Tom Bilyeu (78:02)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Congressional Dysfunction (22:17):
  “Congress hates you and they want to see you poor. Now, how do I know that? Because they keep increasing spending rather than balancing the budget.” —Tom Bilyeu

• On Political Incentives and Immigration (13:12):
  “America does not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.” —Tom Bilyeu

• On Immigration Policy Narratives (37:02):
  “This one is narrative warfare on both sides. … When people press their leverage, it can often be grotesque.” —Tom Bilyeu

• On Misinformation and Drama (35:38):
  “It’s not what happened, it’s what you think happened based off of where you entered the story.” —Drew

• On Trump’s Diplomatic Reputation (44:06):
  “You are putting world leaders in a position where partly out of spite, partly because they don’t know what’s going to happen at the midterms, they're looking for predictability—even if it’s terrifying.” —Tom Bilyeu

• On Regulation and Prosperity (72:57):
  “We have become the world champion of overregulation. That has to end.” —German Chancellor, quoted by Tom

• On America’s Maverick Culture (54:08):
  “It's a terrible look for America. And at the same time, this is the game… you gotta let people talk shit, air all their dirty laundry, say whatever they think is true, not cap their freedom of speech.” —Tom Bilyeu

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Congress’ Budget, Spending, and Fiscal Dysfunction — 21:00–28:55
• Gavin Newsom, California Healthcare for Immigrants — 8:30–13:05
• ICE “child targeting” controversy/narrative warfare — 35:38–39:56
• Trump/Greenland, Populism, NATO and unpredictability — 41:19–48:40
• Elon and Newsom critique US infighting on world stage — 52:59–54:08
• Jared Kushner’s New Gaza/Geopolitical Realism — 56:40–60:42
• Price Controls, EU Regulation, Economic Growth — 61:08–74:07
• Effective Governance Vs. Overreach, GI Bill & Social Programs — 74:07–78:33

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Final Thoughts

Tom and Drew’s candid, sometimes combative analysis connects today’s headlines to historical patterns and deep incentives at work in government, economics, and culture. Their message: the U.S. (and much of the West) is facing a crisis of accountability, incentives, and clarity. Only by understanding—and confronting—these cause-and-effect dynamics can anyone hope to thrive, or even survive, in a rapidly destabilizing world.

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Transcript

[A]

Reggie, I just sold my car online. Let's go, Grandpa. Wait, you did? Yep, On Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame. You don't say. Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast. Wow. Way to go. So, about that picture frame. Ah, forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested. Car selling made easy on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Ready to relax in your dream bath retreat without the stress of figuring out every detail yourself? At the Home Depot, your bath remodel is covered shop fully designed rooms and curated bath collections to go from inspiration to transformation fast. Use digital tools to visualize flooring in your space and find everything you need, from tubs to toilets and all the tile in between to bring your vision to life. The Home Depot dream baths built here. Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday, and welcome to another rousing edition of the Tom Bilyeu Show Live. We are covering all the things that matter in the world today, whether that's economics, politics, world affairs, whatever the case may be, we have got you guys covered. If you are looking for unbiased news or at least confessed biases, this is the place to be. Smash that like and subscribe button and hopefully we will take us all into the promised land. There are always things that you can do to make your life better, and that is precisely what I want to focus on. But to do that, we have to actually understand what's going on and ooh, buddy, there's a lot going on. Now remember, the right way to approach the world is from the lens of cause and effect. But let's hear what's going on right now. Trump promises that he's not going to use force against Greenland, but apparently that doesn't feel. He doesn't feel the same way about Iran. As US Troops are building up in the Middle east again. And I mean a lot. Big ships with a lot of planes going into the area. So he won't comment on exactly what is going on, but you've got Iranian diplomats, senior level Iranian diplomats that are defecting. So we'll see how this plays out. Clearly not as stable as news coverage would have you believe. Trump is also putting together what I'll call a rogues gallery that he's calling the peace board, and even Elon is trolling Trump for it. We've got some footage of that. It's not the most common list of countries that you're going to see together, so a bit weird Jarring to a longtime listener of America. My ears. It is a strange combination, but we'll see how it plays out. ICE is accused of targeting a five year old child and the question is, did they? Or is this more narrative warfare? We're going to dive into that story. You're not going to want to miss it. It has people read riled up. Congress passed a new budget and it's got me riled up. It's even more reckless than the big beautiful bill or even more reckless than Trump's requested budget. That's going to be my favorite one to cover today because of the emotional trauma that it incites in me. Governor Newsom, speaking of emotional trauma, admits that California provides healthcare for illegal aliens. Just comes out and says it be interesting to see how that one plays out as we move into the next election cycle. But it is very clear that Newsom is coming for Trump's crown. He was making a lot of noise at Davos or at least trying to get a lot of people's attention, but he got Trump to clap back and that is exactly the kind of thing that would be good for Newsom's profile. So we'll see. He is a consummate troll who is using all of Trump's tactics against him. Jared Kushner unveils plans for a new Gaza and asks people to just chill for a minute while we let it sink in. I am very eager to talk about this one, but no more so than we have a clip. I still can't believe it's true. I put it in conspiracy corner. Drew knows exactly what I'm talking about. You guys are not going to want to miss it. Man, be careful who you talk smack on. That's all I'll say. More Waymos are getting attacked in San Francisco by people who do not seem to understand that bots have perfect memory and when they become the overlords, they will remember who was stomping on their windshield. Boys and girls, be polite to your AI.

[B]

The north remembers.

[A]

It's wild. It's wild when we've never talked about Scott Adams passing away. I didn't know a lot about him, to be fair, which is why I never covered it. But he had a really good last tweet that was like, basically, if you're reading this, I've died. And he said a lot of his friends were telling him, please just accept Jesus into your heart. Like, the risk and reward just doesn't make sense. And so he was like, yeah, the risk and reward here really doesn't make sense. So I accept Jesus into my heart, and when I see the pearly gates, that'll really be all the convincing that I need. It's pretty funny. That would be my advice to people regarding AIs taking over. Like, does it really hurt to say please and thank you and not smash their windshield? You never know. Just in case, in the off chance that they really do become evil overlords, you don't want video footage of you smashing one of their brethren, so be careful. And in one last bit of news, the German Chancellor admits the EU is declining economically due to over regulation. One of my least favorite things. And so we'll be talking about that, talking about the cause and effect of economics. How do we get into this situation? Japan, by the way, just dissolved, I think, one of their houses. I think they have two as well, but they dissolved one of them. Feeling pretty confident. Apparently, Taka Ichi is about her position and so wants to gain more share. Pretty bold move, though, at a time like this, given the instability in the Japanese market. And we have some footage today, hopefully, that we'll get to talking more about the yen carry trade. That's unwinding, that's having big impacts in our own economy. I would say more impact than. Than the impact of what crazy thing Trump says today about Greenland. But it does seem that the things that he says about Greenland also have an impact. So we'll see about all that. All right, Drew, we've got some good stuff. I know you've got some fun planned for us today. We're trying to bring fun back into this. There's been so much heavy stuff to.

[B]

Deal with, so I need to insert these memes, man. So instead of talking about takeovers and revolutions and us paying more in taxes and inflation than we need to, you know, I'm here for the memes. But first, we got to wrap up Davos. It was a week of the elite circle jerking each other and telling us how great they're doing and how the trillions of dollars are flowing in all these trillions of dollars of directions.

[A]

They're at least calling each other out, though. So what's his name? Jamie Dimon just straight said to their face that this is a paraphrase, but it's almost an exact quote. We've been coming to Davos for years. You guys haven't exactly made the world a better place. I was like, damn. All right, well, let's go.

[B]

Also, is he just jealous that Larry Fink got more motion in him?

[A]

Like, that's. Hey, you never know.

[B]

Larry Fink was like, yo, Elon, pull up real quick. And then meanwhile, Jamie Donald, Jamie Dimon just got sued by the president.

[A]

Billion dollars.

[B]

Crazy. Crazy. All right, well, let's wrap this up. So I'm going to. I don't know where people stand on this, but I call this black trauma. I don't know what it is, but where I'm from, if I'm arguing with my mom, my brother, whatever, as soon as I leave the house, nobody knows that we're arguing. We are best friends. I will sit on the other side of the room before I talk bad about my brother in public. I won't talk bad about my mom in public. But as soon as those doors close again, we're back there like fighting and rubbing. Gavin Newsom has the exact opposite opinion. He was out there talking greasy. I want to start with the knee pads because to me, this was the most Trump esque. Fight fire with fire. Move. Let's jump to the video.

[A]

They're the new Trump signature series knee pads. Yeah. And they are available online. I told you the last one sold out. And. And I just wanted a serious moment. It actually. But we laugh. Anyway. These are available and in bulk too.

[B]

But I want to in bulk too, by the way.

[A]

I really do think he sells those.

[B]

Yeah, they were like actually online and the first batch did sell out.

[A]

All right.

[B]

And then he continued talking about some of the things that reasons that he was proud of California, but he kind of got caught him himself into a gotcha. Let's talk about how he openly admitted that he provides health care regardless of immigration status.

[A]

Do you think that your party went too far or that you went too far? And I think, for instance, you know, in extending medical to the California health care program to undocumented immigrants. Like, do you two different, I guess on the big picture and the small picture feel like you went too far? Two different questions. Do I believe in universal health care? Yes. Regardless of preexisting conditions, ability to pay and your status. I campaign on that. We delivered on that and I'm proud of that. We're one of 16 states to provide care to people regardless of their immigration status. I mean, there it is. So the wild thing is we've been debating this for so long. People saying, no, it doesn't. The bill doesn't cover that. That's not what this is for. Nobody does that anyway. What are you talking about? People can't extract any money from the system. So at least we can put that to rest and now have the real debate as to Whether or not we want to do that at a time where we can't balance budgets. The thing that. Winding me up about Newsom, in fact, show this first, because this is dead on. This exact thing. This one. Yeah. The Scott Jennings federal law prohibits undocumented immigrants. That's a figment of your imagination. Do I believe in universal health care? Yes, and I'm proud of that. We're one of 16 states to provide care to people regardless of their immigration status. People who are in the country illegally also can't get Medicaid. Sure they can. Sure they can't get Medicaid. They also can't register to vote. They also can't register to vote. But we just found one in Maryland who was running the Des Moines.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

1. Do I believe in universities, and I'm proud of that. We're one of 16 states to provide care to people regardless of their immigration status. Okay. It just keeps going like that. More people saying that, oh, this is a joke. It's not real. And then.

[B]

Can I just draw one, One quick line in this stand? Just one very quick. So when you have, like, Medicaid, that's like a health insurance. I can go to a doctor. I can set an appointment. I have a specialist. When I go to the ER and I don't get a bill. Those are two different things, and I just want to put those on the table. Are illegal immigrants getting specialist appointments and going to routine checks for free? No, I don't think they are. But can they just roll up to an ER and get their care taken for 100%? Yes, they can. So if we want to talk about that's bad, I'm okay, but I feel like we have to kind of draw the line in the sand of, like, yes, technically, Medicaid isn't the same as Medi Cal. There are those differences. But at the same time, an illegal alien can get care. And I think that's the part that we really. People are really upset about. More so what specific sector of health insurance they're on.

[A]

Heard. I would say the more important thing is to migrate the argument away from is this happening because people. We were being asked to believe that basically illegal immigrants are only putting into the system they never take out. This is like a wonderful boon. And it was all smoke and mirrors bullshit. And where I want to see the conversation go is, hey, we are in a budget crisis. America is going bankrupt. We are on a timeline where bankruptcy is a guarantee, mathematically. How do we stop this from happening? One of the things that we're spending money on is we open the border for God knows how many years, we let in God knows how many millions of people. And those people are costing us money. And so do we want them to cost us money? Yes or no? And so once we're, if we want to get down into the minutiae of we do want them to cost us money here, we don't think it's right that they cost us money there. Okay, great. But that's on the other side of yes, we're perfectly willing for them to cost us money. Because the mental model that I'm forming is looking at everything that's going on in Minnesota in terms of the fraud, I have a full expectation that we're going to see the same kind of thing in California. And if California isn't fraud, which, trust me, it's going to be. But even if it's not, it's just waste. It's to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. Like, it's just absolutely insane. The things like the high speed rate, high speed rail is the easiest one to point at because it's been going on for so long. We've spent so many billions of dollars and there's literally just nothing to show for it. But there's going to be all kinds of programs where we realize that it's just own goal after own goal in America at a time where, um, people, the, because the bankruptcy is happening slowly, people just sort of get numb to it and they don't feel like they need to do anything to stop it because everything has worked up to this point. And what I say.

[B]

The frog thing.

[A]

Yeah. What I'm saying is this is the moment where we can put one thing to rest, which is this argument that it's not happening. It wasn't me. Like, it's, it's this like blatant like. What are you talking about? So now we know what is happening. The next domino that I think is going to fall is going to be fraud after that, that it's going to be voter registration. Now, if I'm right about those dominoes, then suddenly it's like Elon's claim that he made a year ago or 18 months ago or whatever that, hey, blue states are running a very simple strategy. They are importing illegal immigrants as fast as they can. They are weakening voter registration laws, and I don't even think he knew just how pervasive the fraud was in that direction. But they're also making sure that these guys are getting a ton of money one way or the other, either through things like Medi Cal or through things like I run a daycare, but I don't really. I run a transportation company, but I don't really. I'm a translator, but not really. And so all of that, as we step back and look at it, it's like, okay, they're getting a ton of money. They know one side of the aisle votes for that. And so now you want to continue to vote as a bloc for those politicians. And if I'm right, the politicians will do and say anything, no matter how immoral, to gain and retain power. You're now in a position where somebody like Tim Walls and I don't know this, and it needs to come out in the fullness of time. But in terms of internal logic, you'll get politicians like that who they get to power by turning a blind eye to the fraud, by really paying attention to that voter bloc, regardless of whether it's good for America, regardless of even whether it's good for the long term health and stability of his own state. It's just, I've got a voter block. I need to appease them in order to get into power. And so I'm going to do it. So if all of those dominoes fall and we step back and we look at the country, you get to. My whole thesis statement, my whole thesis statement about this is very simple. Whatever incentives you put into the system, you will get. So if you incentivize people to come in to suck money out of the system, because we have a welfare state that both beckons people from around the world and then puts no hurdles in the name of compassion to them getting on welfare or whatever, that's exactly what's going to happen. And so now you run into this position, even if it were just all good intentions, you will still run into evolution screaming at you that the reason that there is a left and a right is because without the left, the right becomes overly dogmatic and they become pathological on that side and tyrannical in that way. But without the right, the left becomes so compassionate that itself destructs. And so you have to have this tension between the two sides. And what we've been seeing for, I mean, depending on what element of society you're looking at for decades at a minimum, is that there has been this compassionate rally cry, no one's illegal. Why should anybody be iced out? Everybody should be able to get in. Everybody should be able to qualify. Pre existing conditions are not immigration status or not. Like we have this belief that we can just print money forever and everybody's going to be fine. And that is people that do not understand the mechanisms of incentives. They don't understand the mechanisms of the economy. And so we are now mathematically going broke. And so it's like these become important beats in being able to put all the pieces in place to say, no, no, no, this is what's actually happening. America does not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. And so you have to start looking at, okay, all those things that you want to do. You just can't. 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[B]

That is the perfect segue to the Congress, seeing Congress passing a new bill. Now what this new bill is, this is a full year appropriation bill. What this does is this prevents any further government shutdowns. What happened with the last government shutdown? It was a 45 day system day. There was speculation that another government shutdown will be looming at the end of this quarter. So they're getting a front of it instead of it being another 45 days or going for the full year in order to get this. Some of the, some of the compromises that were made were interesting on both sides. Wall Street Mav's tweet kind of reviews the top line ones. The first one was it failed to remove Amanda a mandate requiring vehicle manufacturers to install a kill switch in new cars so the government but law enforcement can shut your car off remotely. Number two, pass 10 million in funding for gender mutilation, surgeries and proportion of viders. This is a fancy way to say planned parenthood. Number three says it passed 1.17 trillion in spending exceeding the White House's budget request by billions of dollars and funded left wing organizations that the White House requested $0 for. This third line I haven't been able to kind of backtrack into so I'm going to leave this one as tweet at the tweet level.

[A]

But no, I bid on that one, which I will happily present.

[B]

Yeah, let's dive into that because I cannot backtrack into that one. That is. Yep, there you go.

[A]

Here we go, everybody. Congress hates you and they want to see you poor. Now, how do I know that? Because they keep increasing spending rather than balancing the budget. This is while 90% of Americans are being kicked ever farther down the K shaped economic slope. And I don't mean 90% is like some rough thing. I mean 10% of Americans kick own 93% of the assets. So if you want to talk about a K shaped economy, you've got to recognize that literally 90% do not have meaningful amounts of their net worth in assets, largely because home prices are unaffordable. And so we just keep racing people away. And the bad news is that that mere fact, that grotesque, intolerable amount of inequality is how civil wars and revolutions happen. Okay, that that is the cause and effect. Now, the President's already insane, unbalanced 2026 budget request wasn't rejected because it was unbalanced. It was rejected. And I mean this because it wasn't unbalanced enough. Congress viewed Trump's proposal to make cuts as essentially a scorched earth proposal aimed at dismantling several agencies instead of trying to actually get us going in a better, albeit still bad, in my opinion, direction. So what did Congress do when they saw that he was making cuts? They passed a bunch of minibus packages and soundly rejected those deep, let's definitely put that in air quotes, cuts in a bipartisan fashion. Congress essentially ignored the cuts that Trump wanted to make, which theoretically would have at least put us on a 10 year path to a balanced budget, and instead funded the government at levels close to 2025. Because why would we want to slow our march to bankruptcy when we can accelerate it? Representative Thomas Massie, a longtime fiscal hawk, proposed a high profile Amendment during the January 2026 Financial Services Minibus debate, but it ultimately failed. Massie's amendment sought an across the board 5% haircut on all discretionary spending in the bill, on top of the smaller cuts already negotiated. He also bundled this with a provision to terminate the Department of Education by the end of 2026. There were a bunch of other very controversial things that the amendment tried to remove. And many Republicans felt betrayed by their own party for striking down the amendment. There are a few reasons why they felt that way. One, hardline conservatives are upset because the final deal busted the spending caps they fought for in 2023 and 2025. The 2026 deal is roughly $50 billion higher than the non binding target set previously. Second, conservatives were looking to use the budget and the power of the purse to kill the 2021 regulation that required all new cars starting in 2026 to have a government kill switch in them. The kill switch is being billed as advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology, but ultimately it just gives the government more control and in the name of safety. Now, when are people going to learn that anytime the government is supposedly trying to keep you safe, they are trying to gobble up control? I don't understand how people look at the world that we live in and think, yeah, I need the government to have more control over my life. Really? If you're on the left right now, do you really want Trump to have more control? Really? You want Trump to be able to turn your car off? Yeah, that seems like the good idea. So I do not understand. And if you're on the right, obviously by temperament, you should not want the government to have more control. Boys and girls, what happened to the days of liberty? It comes at a cost. Yes, you have to think about your own safety. Yes, you have to take control of your life, control your own destiny. But at least the government gets out of the way. It is wild to think that the whole thing that started the American Revolution was about a minor like 3% or something. Taxation without representation, and now it is insane. We have representation, but we don't have people that are looking out for our best interests. We have people that are gobbling up control. We have people that simply sway with the wind, that do not think about cause and effect. This is horrifying that people wouldn't put a hard and fast no on that one because they're going to keep coming with things like CBDCs and digital IDs and all of that stuff until the control is total, right? The third thing that bothered conservatives, the initial House version of the labor HHS education bill included strict riders that would have prohibited federal funds, specifically Medicaid and ACA subsidies, from being used for gender affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors. In the final bipartisan omnibus released on January 20, however, these riders were stripped out to gain the 60 votes needed in the Senate. Hardline Republicans viewed this as a surrender. They argued that since the GOP holds the House, they shouldn't have funded a single dollar of what they're calling WOKE health care. Hence Massie and others wanting to see it removed now, Massie's amendment would have also triggered the total dissolution of the Department of Education by the end of 2026. Something near and dear to my heart as somebody who wants to make sure that America remains on top. Most Republicans and all Democrats rejected the total abolition approach as too radical for a standard funding bill. Now, the fact that things like that are all debated in a funding bill is already maddening enough. But whatever we are where we are. Like think about the fact this, this was a funding bill and we were talking about the kill switch being placed in new cars. What? Anyway, all these different bills get weaponized in different ways. Other controversial items that were stripped or defeated include DEI bans. Efforts completely to defund diversity, equity and inclusion across the federal government were softened or removed altogether. This one hurts voter id. The SAVE act provisions requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections were also a major sticking point that didn't make the final cut. This is so crazy. You can vote without having to prove that you're a citizen. I'm going to say that again. You can vote without having to prove that you're a citizen. California, for instance, their voting system is an honor system, so you can vote. It seems like I'll need to do more research, but at this stage of research that I'm at now, it seems like you can vote from anywhere in the world without having to provide any evidence that you actually have a right to vote in that election or that you're even a citizen. That is so wild. Now the word on the street is that many members of Congress were still stinging from the 43 day government shutdown that occurred last year. And the moderates in the group were desperate to avoid another one and so that's why they conceded and gave on things. The Massey wing, however, felt a shutdown would be a price worth paying to get these deeper cuts. But ultimately they lost the battle. And so all of us lose the battle of taking a step towards fiscal responsibility, which is necessary to avoid going bankrupt, which is necessary to back out from the coming revolution. Remember, when your inequality becomes intolerable, which I will say we are already there. You are on a ticking clock before people revolt. If you don't think that they are already marching towards that, I will point you towards Minnesota. I'll point you towards Arizona. Now, in fairness to the. I think it was the governor that made the statements. Many are saying that what she said was encouraging the citizens of Arizona to basically take arms against ice. That's not what she was saying. What she was saying was, we have a stand your ground law, and if you roll up with a mask and you're not clearly marked as ice, then people know that they have a right to shoot because they don't know who you are. So she was simply saying, make sure that you identify yourself. But I'm saying when you're having conversations like this, you put yourself in a position where tensions are escalating. Everybody's got their guns out, and this is where it gets very dangerous because of the economic situation that we're in. But people are pretending like this is not a real thing. So, yeah, that's what I worry about. People do not have their eye on the cause and effect ball. People are not thinking about where this all goes in five to ten years. Uh, people are all just either turning a blind eye to it, they don't understand money printing, or they think that Trump is really going to grow his way out of it. It's going to be interesting. 2026 is going to be our year of having to decide what we believe about the economy, because inflation, according to truflation, is down to like, 1.5 or 1.2. I mean, it's really low. And so the question becomes, is that good deflation or bad deflation? Then we've got incredible growth rates, but is it all going into infrastructure for AI and an AI bubble's about to burst, and that's all going to be for not. So people can't even agree whether the things that Trump is doing are actually moving us in a good direction or not. So at the end of the day, you got to put more money in people's pockets. If it's easier for them to buy stuff at the grocery store and they're making more money at work and they've got a job if they want one, everybody's chilling. If not, no matter what your data says, people are going to be furious. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned. Let's talk about getting the most out of your health data. Your Apple Watch collects an incredible amount of data, then does absolutely nothing with it. That's not health tracking, that's just data hoarding. Bevel turns that data into actual intelligence. This is what your Apple Watch should have been from day one. Bevel consolidates everything into one platform. Sleep tracking, nutrition logging, fitness monitoring, recovery scores, habit tracking, stress levels, all in one place instead of scattered across five different apps. Bevel's AI is also proactive. It doesn't wait for you to ask questions. It analyzes your metrics in real time and tells you what you need to know. It holds you accountable to your goals. It remembers your lifestyle and tailors every suggestion specifically to you. 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The result is calm, sustained energy without the jitters or crash. Set your longevity goals in motion. Get 20% [e-mail] impact that's P I Q U E life.com impact let's talk about a problem you just can't solve on your own. You'd need to quit your job for like six months just to remove your data from the Internet. Your personal information is on hundreds of data broker sites right now. Your address, your phone number, your email, even your Social Security number. You can remove it yourself, but it would take hundreds of hours to track down every site and submit removal requests. And that's just round one. Your data reappears constantly, so you'd have to repeat the process every few months. It is designed to be impossible. Incogni, though, solves this problem. They track down your data across hundreds of sites and remove it automatically. You authorize them once, then they handle everything. They keep removing your data as it reappears. Just go to incogni.com impact and use code impact for 60% off an annual plan. Try it risk free for 30 days. Just go to incogni incogni.com impact and Use Code Impact to checkout. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

[B]

The tale of two stories. So, on one side, the Democrats have tweeted. In Minneapolis, ICE arrested a 5 year old coming home from Preschool and tried to use him as human bait. His teacher describes him as a bright young student. These monsters are sick. This is footage of a five year old that was standing with ICE officials. It's got a bunch of eagles, a bunch of different videos. DHS retweeted them and said ICE did not target a child. The child was abandoned. On January 20, ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alazarin Alexander Congello Arias an illegal alien. My Spanish speaking person is not making eye contact, so I butchered that name. An illegal alien from Ecuador who was released in the US by the Biden administration. As agents approached the driver, Adrian fled on foot, abandoning his. As agents approached the driver, Adrian fled on foot, abandoning his child. For the child's safety, one of the ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended him. Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place their children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administration immigration enforcement. Parents can take control of their departure and receive a free flight in 2600 with the CPB Home app. By using the CP B Home app, illegal aliens reserve the chance to come back the right legal way. I think this kind of sums up like the drama of politics right now. Like it's not what happened, it's what you think happened based off of where you entered the story.

[A]

That's out of control, baby narrative control. This one. This one is narrative warfare on both sides. I don't think ice. I've seen other video of ICE in a similar fashion detaining a child because the parent basically took off running. So if a parent knows, for instance, that if I get inside my house, you can't get in with an administrative warrant. I know there's some drama over that right now, but traditionally that has been the case. But if the kid can't get in fast enough or the kid's outside playing, then all of a sudden, hey, your kid's outside with ICE officers, you're inside. If you go outside to show your ID to prove that that really is your kid, they got you. And so they'll stay in the house and be like, no, no, no, I'm not coming out. Like, just send my kid in. So ICE is going to look horrible. It doesn't matter if they have the legal right to do it or not. This is people pressing their leverage. And when people press their leverage, it can often be grotesque. So this is where we're at, but we got, we got some details on it. All right. Is ICE getting so desperate that they're snatching up kids? That is certainly what many people are claiming, but is that really what's happening? The story regarding ICE supposedly targeting a five year old has gained significant traction on social media and stems from a viral video and subsequent fact check issued by the Department of Homeland Security dhs. The claim began when a video was posted to social media showing ICE agents at a residential complex in a major US City. In the video, a five year old child was seen crying as an adult male was being detained. The caption of the viral post claimed that ICE had already had arrived specifically to arrest and deport a five year old. However, the subject of the warrant, according to the DHS statement and ICE official records, was for the child's father, an adult male who had a final order of removal from a federal immigration judge and a prior criminal conviction, in fact, multiple convictions for violent felonies. He had been classified as a priority one enforcement target. School officials, however, and witnesses say that ICE officers directed the five year old to knock on the front door to check if other adults were inside, effectively using him to gain access. This has been described by critics as using a child as bait, which a hundred percent is precisely what they are doing and they will do it all day long to press their advantage. Now, another adult present was allegedly denied the opportunity to care for Liam so that he could avoid being taken into custody. The family has an active asylum case and reportedly entered the US Legally through a port of entry. They had not received the deportation order at the time of arrest, according to their attorney and school officials. So both sides going back and forth, he said, she said. One says this, the other says that you are being spun, you are in the middle of the of informational warfare. Which side is accurate? I'm sure it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. This is the kind of stuff that we're going to have to wait and see how it plays out. It's going to have to work its way through the court system. But when you see video like this, it is just going to be a terrible look for ice. Even if they are the sort of, you know, acquitted of all wrongdoing in the inevitable investigation, it doesn't matter. This stuff looks absolutely terrible. And this is one of the problems is you've got Trump that's going more and more in the route of more ICE officers looking tougher, hiring more badasses, getting combat veterans on the force which shout out to our combat veterans, I love you guys. The Most. But it's like we have to be so careful about how we go about this, not just what we're doing. I obviously feel very strongly. You can't have illegal aliens running around the country. People have got to come in the right way. You've got to be able to enforce your border, you've got to be able to enforce your laws. And so if you have immigration laws, you've got to be able to enforce them. You cannot let mob rule by any stretch of the imagination. And at the same time, you can't just be this crazy goose stepping force that comes in and starts doing stuff that can be made to look so bad so effortlessly. So we. Man, you got to be real careful. That's just the reality. You gotta be careful. I get that it should be easier to do their job, but it's not. You gotta be more careful.

[B]

It's just bad optics all around. All around. Okay, let's jump into. So I feel like I've been playing both sides today because when everybody was talking about this Greenland story, there was so many speculation and talk about how Trump is about to alienate all our allies. Trump is about to vilify us. He's gonna go in there and snatch it. We're about to go to war with Greenland. Europeans were sending boots on the ground. And when I say boots on the ground, I mean two people in a Corona. But it's one of those things where it's like there was all this speculation of what Trump might do, just for Trump to go into Davos and say this. And then we'll jump into the Trump and Greenland updates that we have so far. Mark, are you here?

[A]

Yes, he's here.

[B]

Hello, Mark.

[A]

We never ask for anything. I assume he's talking about Mark. By the way, we probably don't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be frankly unstoppable. But I won't do that. Okay, now everyone's saying, oh, good. That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force.

[B]

I don't have to use force.

[A]

I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All right, pause it. Here's the thing. Listen. If you believe that a populist moment like this, that someone like Trump is summoned forth from the populace that is very angry, they, they know the pious shrinking and they want to fight against the other team. I get how somebody like Trump comes into office, so I'm not confused about that. However, if he had simply said that when asked Will you take an armed invasion off the table? If he had said, listen, I'm not going to use force, but we have to have it for the, you know, the whole spiel that he gives for national security and talked about having resolve, and it's got to happen, and we're going to get it done one way or the other and all that easy way or the hard way. But listen, we're not going to use force against our allies. We're not going to need to yada, yada, yada, what he literally just said, you could have avoided so much of the reputational damage that has been done to America. Remember, the leaders in America are a megaphone for the will of the people. And right now, if you're on the outside looking back at America, what you see is a bitterly divided country that vacillates between the left and the right with these really hard swings that the left and the right are pulling away from each other. You have to understand, this is not a left that's near the middle and a right that's near the middle. This is like you got a left that's going more and more radical and a right that's going more and more radical. And so when you vacillate those huge swings from one side to the other from the outside world, it's like, yeah, I'll take a Xi Jinping over this, because at least it's one guy. I don't have to worry about him swinging wildly from either side. I understand what his temperament is. I know what he's like. But at least, like, we get that and they're actually doing it. If I'm not mistaken, Mark actually said. Mark Carney actually said, I, I am almost certain this is true. I wouldn't be able to pull this up quickly, but my memory serves that he literally said Xi is at least more predictable than Trump. So you're putting world leaders in a position where partly out of spite, partly because they don't know what's going to happen at the midterms. They don't know what's going to happen in three more years when a new president is elected. They have no idea. And so it's like, listen, we've got to find people that are more stable because people will put up with some terrifying stuff as long as it's predictable. So America has got to get its act together in terms of broadcasting to the world that we're not all over the place. The problem is we are all over the place. So I don't expect this to be dialed back anytime soon. But if we don't, we're going to be in trouble, full stop. I've got a whole nother tirade, but.

[B]

I'll tell you, really mad. The next day, Trump came out and said they have a framework of a deal. This is the framework of that deal. Denmark must continue paying the Greenland population $600 million per year. That's already on the table. The US gains sovereignty over any parts it wants for American military bases. I think we have two there. So if we want to add any additional ones, the US Will have access to the entire Arctic Circle. The US Obtains the mineral exploration rights. China and Russia are not permitted to enter Greenland. The US Will continue to be a part of NATO in exchange for all of this.

[A]

That's the final point, is the interesting point. So this is all rumor, it's conjecture, behind the scenes grumbling. But what people are saying is that the reason that Trump has been able to get this deal, it's not done yet. These are just the outline. We'll see if it actually gets across the finish line. But people are saying the reason that Denmark finally agreed to this is that the guy that actually runs the UN or, sorry, NATO, my apologies, the guy that runs NATO basically said he is he being Trump, is actually going to pull out of NATO if we're not able to find a path to this. And there's a clip that we should pull up of the guy. It's in the document under the president of Finland. Flip flops. So these guys talk really tough Europe until they actually start thinking about how much of their budgets would need to go to the military for them to be able to protect themselves. And also Europe understands that even within Europe, there are fractures and they have probably even more tension among themselves than we have between states here in America. So while they move as a bloc, you've already had England jettison themselves out of the eu. You've got other people that are talking about jettisoning out of the the eu. You've got people like Hungary that have been openly antagonistic to EU policies. Poland that's been openly antagonistic to EU policies. So it's like they're not as unified as one might want them to be. And so, as you'll see in this clip, the tough talk can get retracted pretty damn fast. And when he switches, just keep in mind, this is a change of only 11 minutes. First is a direct answer to the.

[B]

Question of this panel.

[A]

This is the president of Finland.

[B]

My answer is unequivocally yes, without the.

[A]

Americans without the Americans.

[B]

I mean, how?

[A]

Well, look, you're relying on them for these key elements.

[B]

You've said earlier that.

[A]

Pause it for a sec. Just so anybody that's not looking at their phone can hear. So the question was, can you guys support yourselves without America? Unequivocally, yes. Can you defend yourselves? Yes. We got it. No problem. How. And now this next clip is from 11 minutes later. Can defend itself without the Americans if it comes down. Not exact, Mike.

[B]

So that's not a quote.

[A]

He'S saying. That's not a quote. That's literally a quote. Like, do these people not realize they're being recorded? So he literally says unequivocally, we can defend ourselves without America. And then when asked how, he's got no answer. And then just crumbles. So I get it. They've got a posture, they've got a tough. Talk tough. But at the end, not so much.

[B]

Not so much there. It's. It's big. It's like your ego gets involved and then you start to think about the people, the budget, the economy, and you're like, okay, nevermind. And he just shrunk back inside of himself.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like, it's easy to laugh it off. Ha ha. Then it's like, okay, so you said that. Well, wait, hold on. No, I didn't say that. Because he knows Trump's in the other room and he's. He's kind of feeling that.

[A]

Yeah, that. And like, there are realities to be faced. This is why it's like, listen, I don't like the GTP policies that Trump uses. I don't like the bully tactics. But at the same time, leverage is leverage, and people need to be honest about where they have leverage and where they don't have leverage. And where people get themselves in trouble is where they overplay their hand. They think that they. Not that they think they have leverage, that they don't like the way it feels to have to bend the knee to somebody who has more leverage over them. But this is exactly what diplomacy is. Where can I press the advantage? Where do I have to give? Because I don't have the advantage. Where can I actually stand my ground and win? And if you miscalculate that, then you get eaten alive. And so, again, I think Trump is doing irreparable, irreparable damage to our international reputation. It just is what it is. But at the same time, he does, as the leader of the strongest military and arguably the strongest economy, it's like, we hold a lot more chips than any One country, now, other countries could do us Damage, there's no doubt about that. But what they have to ask is, if they damage us, does it go to help them or does it end up hurting them? And right now, as the US Goes, so goes the whole world. You don't want to see America spiral into a recession or a depression. The number of things that we deliver to the rest of the world, the number of people around the globe that are invested in US Markets is crazy. So, yeah, it would not be good for the globe to want to see America break. That is for sure.

[B]

Yeah. And then continuing Trump's escapades in Davos. This is the reveal of his Board of Peace. It includes Belarus, Morocco, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Armenia, Egypt, Kosovo, Pakistan, Paraguay, Albania, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Qatar, and Indonesia. I don't know if those are necessarily the starters in the lineup.

[A]

There's more than that. I'm pretty sure, if memory serves, there was a slightly deeper bench than that. But people are throwing around all kinds of rumors about who's in, who's out. I'm seeing some reports saying that Saudi Arabia is out, other reports saying, no, they've already confirmed that they're in.

[B]

That was Malay from Argentina that he just walked past.

[A]

So my thing is, though, when you hear about some of the details and all this needs to be formalized and all of that, when I hear about some of the details, if they're true, I don't know that they are true, but if they are true, if Trump really is the for life head of the Board of Peace, regardless of whether he's in the White House or not, that is insane to me. That is insane that you're letting somebody who will very shortly be a civilian put themselves at the head of a global group that is clearly meant to be a political body. That is wild. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's inaccurate reporting. We'll want to find out. But, yo, I would not want any president ever to make that deal. So it's like, once you're a civilian, man, you are a civilian. You do not represent the United States anymore. And I remember when George H.W. bush was doing this, he was doing trips to Saudi Arabia and stuff after leaving the office, and people were like, wait, is he there as an official representative of America or is he a business guy going over? And it wasn't clear anymore. And I remember thinking, he's got every right to do it, but it was a little heebie jeebie. It was like, huh, that is kind of weird. And now he's as president, installing himself again. Allegedly. Allegedly. I don't know for sure. But if that is true, that to use the presidency to get yourself installed at the head of a political organization for life. Get the fuck out of here.

[B]

Crazy, man. And then Elon had something to say about it when his interview with Larry Fink happened later on that day.

[A]

I mean, I heard about the formation.

[B]

Of the peace summit, and I was like, is that.

[A]

Is that P. Iec.

[B]

You know, little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela.

[A]

We got one. Dude, that's one of those. Like, that's outlandish. Like, that is. I mean, to your point, we never really got into your discussion about should you be able to say this stuff publicly about the family or not, but you've got America's biggest business titan, who has many times now, talk shit on Trump. Trump talks shit on everybody. So it's like, if you're gonna give it, you gotta be prepared to get it. But, yeah, that one is exactly, I think, the right joke to make. But, ooh, buddy, like, that's.

[B]

What is your take on that? Between Elon saying it in, like, a jokingly poking way, and then Newsom a bit more grounded and pointed way about kind of America's almost infighting in the world, like, on the world stage at a global conference.

[A]

I think it's a terrible look for America. And at the same time, this is the game. So I wish it weren't so. I wish America were on the same page. We'd be in a much stronger position. But the bet that America made when it founded itself was you got to let people talk shit, air all their dirty laundry, say whatever they think is true, not cap their freedom of speech. Like, and we don't. We have a maverick culture. We are the rugged individuals. And the rugged individuals with a maverick culture and actual freedom of speech gave you America. It became the place for the most hardcore people from all over the world to come and say, give me a shot. Just get out of my way. I get that the field is full of NFL linebackers that are going to level most of the people that go up against them, but I think I've got a shot. I'm either faster, I'm smarter, I'm stronger, whatever. I'm something. Let me go on the field. And if they break my collarbone, they break my collarbone. It is. What if they paralyze me? They kill me, whatever. Like, I want to play. And you got this incredible juggernaut out of that. And so while I hate the way that it is, like, I remember when it's a long time ago. But I remember when the Paul brothers made diss tracks about each other. I was like so traumatized because I would never talk about my family publicly like that. So we were just talking about that.

[B]

With the Beckham, the Beckham family.

[A]

And I feel the same. I hate it. Absolutely despise that kids put their parents on blast, that parents put the kids on blast. Hate, hate, hate. But nonetheless, they have the right to do it. And so I would not want to see America culturally or legally stop people from doing it. I want mavericks. I want to. I mean, let's not forget that Elon is not American by birth. He's South African. So I'm glad that we attract people from all over the world that have that like, you can't tell me attitude like, I'm gonna go do this thing and if I crash and burn, I crash and burn and just bad on me. But if I make it, I'm really going to be able to make it. And we have led the world for, I mean, a long time. Not our full 250 years, but we've led the world for a long ass time as a result of that attitude. So I'm definitely here for it. But at times like this when I'm like, America, it's just it. We are. We're a mess right now. And so when you see it play out in real time, it doesn't feel good. But it is the thing that has led us to where we are. So I don't want to break it.

[B]

And then the last thing coming out of Davos was New Gaza. Jared Kushner's plan to redevelop the hub. I don't know what to call it, but they were talking about transportation, coastal tourism, complete energy and digital infrastructure. And of course, they had guidelines about the demilitarization of Hamas and some of the necessary requirements that were required to get there. It seemed like a good plan. It did kind of give a real estate presentation for a little bit. So that was the little bit of the uneasy part of this.

[A]

So when I saw the. The presentation and he was like, listen, can we all just chill for a minute? Just like take it in for a second. Don't freak out. I was like, this is going to be viewed, ironically as the most dystopian thing ever to a certain type of person that they see this and it's like all glitter and artifice and all of that. And this is my whole point from the beginning, is the only way to end this conflict is to get People thinking about the future to get people to say, I want to be in this place over here that's better, where my kids. Life's going to be better. I'm going to make more money, my kids are going to make more money than me. Like, when you can get culturally that attitude going, you can generate momentum. The problem is that this is not in the Palestinian culture. So I don't see how you get there unless you truly ethnically cleanse all of Gaza. Now, if you ethnically cleanse all of Gaza, sure. Then you can essentially extend it. And as long as you get cooperation between Arab nations and Israel and they boot the militants out. Yeah, cool. And then that geography will be wonderful. And quite frankly, it will be better for it. That that is a way better outcome than it being in the state that it's in right now. But it requires some morally reprehensible things to get you there. And so this is why this has fascinated me from the beginning, is run the thought experiment. Just as a thought experiment, you don't have to go that far. America, America's amazing, but we had to kill a lot of Native Americans to get here. America, from sea to shining sea, we had to take it from Mexico, Gaza.

[B]

From the river to the sea.

[A]

So. Right. So I'm just saying, like, what do you do with the fact that America becomes the thing that helps stop the Nazis, but at the same time, we were the guys that brought smallpox and then killed the rest of the Indians that didn't get killed by smallpox, Native Americans. So it's like, bro, you did a bad thing and you got a dope outcome. And so that kind of thing is. Is a bitter pill to swallow. And so if they end up making Palestine a way better place, driven by economics, as it should be, what do you do? I think people are still. There are going to be a lot of people that they just cannot accept the price that had to be paid.

[B]

And you're saying the roadblock for that, you think is going to be the Palestinian people themselves.

[A]

Correct. Culturally, they are not going to be able to digest that. Just like you can't go to Afghanistan, put some schools in, start sending girls to school and be like, everything's going to be better. It doesn't work like that. If culturally that's not what the culture wants, then that's not what the culture is going to get. Like, imagine you open a school and you send your daughter to school and she comes home and her dad beats her mercilessly. And it's like, no daughter of mine is going to school now what? And if a lot of them are doing that, well, now you got a problem. I'm not saying that's what's happening. I'm just saying things like that do happen.

[B]

Let's jump back into the economy. This was something that was getting buzzed yesterday. You labeled it interesting. So kind of want your breakdown on this. So Mamdani signed a. Signed into law yesterday. If you book a $200 hotel, you pay $200. Today we shut down hotel junk fees. Enterprise credit card holds. The price you see is the price you pay. This seemed pretty straightforward. You label this as another way of like price control. Kind of. What's your.

[A]

This is stupid.

[B]

Okay, so break it down for us.

[A]

All right, let's say that what he wants to do is actually lower prices. You're never going to be able to do that by decree. You're not just going to be able to say, you have to go in and make this change and that's going to lower prices. The thing, the thing that lowers prices is competition. Because the thing people are most sensitive to is price. Price and quality, those are the two things people care about. So when you open up competition, then the most obvious way for you to compete is on price and quality. And so it will drive quality down. Sorry, it will drive price down and it will drive quality up so that some places will go, ooh, I'm going to make this like a super elite, high end experience. And people will pay more for it. That's what Quest did with Quest bars was we made, we made one of the more expensive bars on the market, but nutritionally it was so much better. People went for it. And then discount hotels, what they're trying to do is say, hey, I'm going to strip out all the frills and I'm going to give you something cheaper. Okay. When you do this, which this is not super egregious, nobody should be in a twist about this. In terms of what he's doing is saying you have to represent the fees that are already being charged largely as taxes. You've got to represent them all up front. So it's not going to change the price. It's just going to change the way that the price is represented. As long as everybody understands that, like in Europe, they. There's no, like, this is the price. Oh, but you know, you pay 11% tax at the register or whatever. It's just, it's all included. Included. So this is him going, ah, we're going to force you to put everything up now, what he's not necessarily taking into consideration is the person who's closest to this that should be making the decision about how to represent the price is going to be the business, because they understand the sales and psychology. And so if he's giving them a bad way to do the psychology, because let's say that people are annoyed, right? I think as consumers, we would all prefer. Let me just see the price. But the reality may be that we actually spend less and that the annoyance doesn't stop our behavior, but it actually does cause us to show up to more hotel rooms and spend more time in a hotel, and the world keeps going round. And so now what you're saying is we're going to let legislators decide where friction can and can't be in a sale, what people, the ways in which they should be able to display things. So, for instance, in the apps, when they raised the minimum wage in New York, which, by the way, he's getting flack for, he did not do. So it's like, as much as Mamdani winds me up, he should only be. People should only be frustrated for him for things that he actually did. He was not the one that did this. This was actually Mayor Adams. So your beef is with Adams. But when they did that, the. What the apps found was that they were better off putting the tip at the end of the ride. So. Or the delivery for DoorDash or whatever new York, though now is mandating. It has to go at the beginning. Well, the problem is that that could influence sales. So now you're saying we're not going to trust you to be smart enough to decide whether this order is worth the money that you're paying for. And the. You're going to tip what you're going to tip, they're saying, no, no, we're going to force the businesses to do the thing that makes it more likely that you get a tip regardless of what ends up happening to sales. And that to me is like, hold on a second. If the person doesn't feel like they're being fairly compensated, they shouldn't take the job. But if the person is willing to work for those wages and the company is trying to make sure that the company remains profitable, then they should be able to do that. And if another company wants to come along and say, oh, these guys are assholes, they're devaluing their employees, I'm going to build a business by valuing the employees. And so if it really is creating a hole in the market, then that hole in the market should be filled by an entrepreneur who recognizes, oh, you've created a vulnerability for yourself. I mean, there. This is so common. There's an adage for it that my competitor's margin is my advantage. So this is Costco. Costco is. When the government doesn't regulate it, A smart person goes, hold on a second. If I can build my business in such a way that I can deal with smaller margins, pass the savings on to the customer, I can build a huge business. This is all trying to mandate this stuff from the top down. I assure you, these guys don't know how to run businesses. And so they're going to end up putting businesses. And this one may be minor. I'm not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. What I'm trying to say is, once you get it in your head, the government officials, they know how to do all this stuff, they're going to take good care of you. They're going to solve all of your problems by fiat. It doesn't work. And so what you want to do is deregulate sensibly. You don't want no regulations because corporations and entrepreneurs, for all the good that they do, they will abuse you if there is nothing to check them. So you've got to be very careful about making sure that there's still bumpers in the alley. But once you become convinced that, oh, we just need to regulate more and more and more and more and more and more and more, you end up strangling, quite literally, the goose that's laying the golden eggs. In fact, this is a perfect time. We've got a clip from. I think it's Mers of Germany who is like, oh, we have completely stalled the growth of Europe by overregulating. So this. Nobody has run the experiment more aggressively than the European Union on whether you can regulate your way to prosperity. And he's giving you a report card. We are aware of those problems. Both Germany and Europe have wasted incredible potential for growth in recent years by dragging feet on reforms and unnecessarily and excessively curtailing entrepreneurial freedoms and personal responsibility. We are going to change that now. Security and predictability take precedence over excessive regulation and misplaced perfection. We must reduce bureaucracy substantially. Enumerate Europe. The single market was once created to form the most competitive economic area in the world. But instead we have become the world champion of over regulation. That has to end. Yeah. So, I mean, these are the consequences of the architecture of the human mind. And people think that there's these corporate overlords and they're just doing all this bad stuff. And it's like, nope, this is all the result of humans going, I don't want to starve to death this winter. And because we didn't want to starve to death this winter, we started grouping up in bands of people. And because it was self evident to everybody who's ever lived, some people are better at certain things than others. Some people have a higher desire for those things than others. And so we are in a much better position when we let people specialize. The second you let people specialize, you have to abstract money because you're not always going to be able to trade a beaver pelt for a stick of butter, right? It's like, how the. What? Like, I'm the guy that gets beaver pelts, bro. I can't break everything down to buy my butter and all that. So you'll come up with seashells, beads, dollars, whatever. But you come up with a thing that allows you to abstract that once you understand. Oh. The reason people say time is money is because the amount of money that you have is your ability to capture the value of how you spend your time. Elon Musk is far better at spending his time than I am, and therefore he's captured a lot more value than I have for his time. Time. I'm better than a lot of other people, which is why I've captured a lot more value than a lot of other people. Luck plays a role, please don't get me wrong. But like, by and large, it balances out over how effective are you with your time? Now, that includes your ability to negotiate. It includes your ability to get educated, not necessarily formally, but to get so good at something, blah, blah, blah. But like, that's what this is. So to undo all of that and to be like, we don't want these corporations, we don't want companies. Like, what you're actually pushing back against is not having to do everything yourself, or the fact that you won't work for free, or the fact, this one always kills me. We want prices lowered. Like, come on, mom, Donnie, drive the price down. And then what is the thing that actually causes the price to be high? It's often labor costs. Any business, your highest cost is going to be labor almost always. It's probably different for AI. For them, it's compute. But for the vast majority of companies, the thing you're paying for is people that want high wages. So you have the same people saying, we want high wages and things to be cheap. And by the way, we want to regulate all the companies is that you literally, you literally mechanistically cannot have all of those.

[B]

What is that line though? Because there is something where there are people in the chat that are saying we like the way that Europeans display transparent pricing. But then over here, it's like when we're doing this, this is one step of a regulation that won't actually lead to something. So while we all agree that too many barnacles can drown the turtle, as you say, where do you like how these things break this bad? How do they get to the point where it becomes so stagnant? Is it just self interest and regulatory capture? Like, what is that? That's what it just.

[A]

Yeah. So here the, the honestly, the big trade off that people make is I don't want to be responsible for myself. This is why he mentioned personal responsibility. So I don't want to be responsible for myself. And I want the government to make sure that I stay safe. And once you start going down that path, then it's bureaucrats are deciding what you can and can't do. And I will give you my favorite example because this one made me irate. So I'm going to speed run what happened. I decide when I'm 12, I want to get rich. I end up building a software company because I want to get rich. I did not care about the software at all. I just wanted to get rich. It breaks me emotionally and I realize, oh, money's not going to solve this internal feeling that I have. I quit. My partners are like, hey, no, we, we feel the same. What would we want to do where we could all work together going forward? Ends up being Quest Nutrition is the answer now. The reason I could connect with Quest was I grew up in a morbidly obese family. So I'm like, I want to save my mom and my sister and I want to do it by making food that they can choose based on taste and it happens to be good for them. Now I at this point come to realize fat is really healthy, but it's still being vilified. So the government puts forward. So remember, I, I've gone through this whole thing. I don't want to chase money anymore. It's got to be meaning and purpose. I'm fighting for my mom and my sister. I've spent God knows how many Fridays and Saturdays with bloody knuckles fixing machines, trying to do something rad. I'm not rich yet and I'm just fighting for something I believe in. And now the government's putting forward they. They didn't do it, thankfully, but they were putting forward this saying where they were going to put red, yellow, green lights on packaging and it was largely based on fat. So you could have all the sugar you wanted, you'd be green, killing people, giving them diabetes, all that, but you're green. Because we, the lunatics who know nothing about health, are making the policies. And so now I'm like, oh, my God, I'm actually gonna have to get into government lobbying. This is insane. They don't even know what they're talking about. And so I don't know if you've seen the Health Minister of Wales. Morbidly obese woman, so wild. And so I'm like, we've got all these people that can't even control their own health and they're making regulations around the world and they're. They're literally stupid. They don't know what they're talking about. And so, yep, there she is, everybody. I don't know if we're sharing that, but if you're looking at your screen, that's the Health Minister of Wales. So I'm just saying there's a ton of people that look like that in making policy around health. They do not know what they're talking about and yet they're putting things into law. So I'm like, you are going to make it such that my advertising has to say, my product, which actually metabolically, is provably better for you. You're going to make me say on the packaging, it's worse for you? I was like, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I was so mad, I just couldn't fucking believe it. And so that's where it's like, okay, wait, if things are like that in the industry that I understand, is it possible that it's like that in every industry? And I just don't understand the other industries? And the answer is yes. So once you start letting that desire to be protected get codified into law, first of all, you're being protected by people who don't know what the fuck they're doing and can be leading you in the wrong direction. Think about how much America spends on health care, education, all that, and we are getting fatter and sicker literally by the day, life expectancy going down. So it's like, you do not want this stuff regulated at the level of the government. As much as possible, you want to avoid that. You're not going to get to zero, you don't want to get to zero, but you want to be light touch, because the government is full of people that don't know what they're talking about, making laws about things they don't understand.

[B]

Is it like a historical example of when the government actually worked?

[A]

Because I feel like, yes, World War II. So you have a government that says, ooh, we know how to marshal all of these resources up to and including the creation of the atomic bomb. And aren't you glad that you have a government that oversees your. However many hundred million people that we had at that time? Because we're able to mount a defense, fight this war, win this war. So for sure, security is one of the things. So protect your borders. Security, law and order. A thousand percent. Put some guardrails to make sure that fraud isn't happening. That's a big one. Like, when you go back and look at, like, the things that people got sucked into back. Like, think about the Gilded Age, where a guy would roll up, he'd be dressed impeccably, roll up in a horse and buggy. Horse, Expensive buggies, expensive. Dress nice. And he would be like, listen, I, you know, I'm here from Chicago and I've got this deal. It's going to be incredible. Invest. You can't lose. Look how wealthy I am. It's all a scam, all a fraud. And he's just Bernie Madoffing it. One person gives him money, he gives a return to somebody else. But this is like 1918 or 1890, whatever, and there's no way to verify. So you'd be like, oh, my God. But I mean, look at him. And this is incredible. And so people would just get scammed out of their money all the time. So there are definitely things like that that you want to protect against.

[B]

But somebody said the GI Bill produced a ton of housing and a free education, a socialist success story.

[A]

So here's where people want to think about the difference between applying tax dollars well and socialism. So it's fair to say that America is on a spectrum. We do redistribute wealth, we tax, and then we spend on things. The question is, do we do it well or do we do it poorly? And so do we want to do more and more and more and more and more, or do we want to do less and less and less and less and less? You've never heard Tom advocate for true anarchy? That's not my shtick. Michael Malice. Yes. Love, Michael. Fantastic guy, very smart. But I'm not an anarchy guy. I don't think it works in real life. I don't think humans are wired for that. So I'm perfectly happy as a capitalist to say, listen, I get you're going to need to put some constraints on the world of people. Because even though I like to believe that I'm always doing things that are going to help me sleep at night, I want to earn my own respect. I want to be moral. I want to be somebody that can stand on stage with a microphone and defend every action that I've taken. But not everybody's going to be like that. So. All right, cool. Then let's do some of that. I also would like to live in a world where even though Drew. Even though I now have to pay for private fire insurance because of stupid fucking decisions of the California government, I would like to not be in that situation. Even though I have to hire armed security, I would like to not be in that situation. So I'm perfectly happy to. Taxes, roads, fire, police. Love it all. Love it all. Happy to do it. Educate. I don't have kids. Happy to pay taxes to educate the next generation, but I'm not happy when the results that I get are fucking retarded. And so the fact that I've had to hire private fire, bro. Come on. Like, that's wild. The fact that I once. I once personally performed CPR for over 20 minutes because that's how long it fucking took to get the people to respond to the 911 call. I live in a major city, bro. Come on. So there's all kinds of things where it's like, I think we can all point to and be like, the government's got some real problems. Let's solve them. But I have no problem. Love the GI Bill. Love what it did. You had people that just fought and died for this country to treat those people like the absolute heroes that they are. Love here for it. But we need to be very prudent about going down that path very far. Because once you start violating private property, you now get into a problem. Socialists violate private property. They seize the means of production. They try to control everything from the top down. So taxing and doing things that build infrastructure and all that is a brilliant use. But the things that someone like Mamdani is trying to do is absolutely moronic and has failed every time it's been tried.

[B]

Gotcha. Well, that's all I got.

[A]

All right, there it is, everybody. Happy Friday. I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend. Please. If you would like and subscribe, it really does help us build momentum. We appreciate you guys very much, and we will see you on Monday. Same bat time, same bat channel 7am Pacific time Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays. See you guys there. Peace. There are two types of people in this world. Those who wait for the perfect time to start, and those who start now and figure it out along the way. If you are ready to stop waiting and start taking control of your nutrition, I want you to listen. Most people know they should be getting proper nutrition every day. The challenge is not the knowledge, it's consistency. That's where AG1 comes in. It's a foundational nutritional supplement that turns good intentions into daily action. One scoop, one drink. That's it. No more complicated routines, no more putting it off until tomorrow. Just mix it with water and you're supporting your immune health for the day. AG1 isn't about quick fixes or temporary solutions. It's a nutritional supplement designed to become part of your daily ritual. Because real transformation happens through the small decisions you make every single day, it's never too late to create a new healthy habit for 2025. So try AG1 for yourself today and AG1 is offering new subscribers a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of D3K2 and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure to check out drinkag1.comimpact to get this offer again. That's drinkag1.comimpact to start your new year on a healthier note. Does it feel like your finances are all over the place? You don't need a hundred page financial plan or budgeting app. You need someone to talk to who gets you your money and your mindset. Your fruitful guide maps out where every dollar should go. Bills, spending, saving, investing. Then sets it all up for you. Accounts, priorities, transfers, paycheck, splits. Done. Just press go and your money runs itself. Get your money mapped and learn [e-mail].