Cultural Suicide or Progress: The West’s Struggle with Immigration, Identity, and Radicalism

Summary

Episode Overview

Title: Cultural Suicide or Progress: The West’s Struggle with Immigration, Identity, and Radicalism
Host: Tom Bilyeu (with co-host Drew)
Date: July 27, 2026

Main Theme:
Tom Bilyeu and Drew critically examine recent Western cultural and political crises through a lens shaped by immigration, ideological conflict, radicalism, and shifting values. Anchored by the recent Islamist terror attack in Germany, the episode addresses the root causes and socio-political consequences of identity clashes, the survival of Western values, and the rising influence of both radical Islam and the radical Left. Issues of narrative, historical cycles, and policy failures are debated with urgency, skepticism, and intense candor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Berlin Attack: Values Collide

Timestamps: 00:59–11:26, 21:16–27:22

• Narrative Summary:
  • Tom opens with a detailed recount of an Islamist terror attack at a gay pride parade in Berlin, exploring the attacker’s background and the controversy over Germany’s decision to repatriate, rather than expel or imprison, a known radical.
  • The underlying concern is not just terrorism, but a deep, unresolved “collision of values” between Western, secular liberalism and imported radical ideologies.

Notable Quotes:

• “This gets into this whole idea that the West is committing civilizational suicide.” (Tom, 04:00)
• “This is a collision of values.… People act in accordance with their beliefs and values.” (Tom, 05:36)
• “Watching this driver slam into a gay pride festival… it is completely consistent with radical Islamists’ value system… yet the left can’t see past their narrative.” (Tom, 10:23)
• “They can see the sin of the other side, but cannot see the plank in their own eye… we all do it.” (Tom quoting the Bible, 11:31)

Segment Highlights:

• Tom anchors his analysis in “the oppressed-oppressor narrative,” claiming the Western left reflexively defends radicals due to anti-Western guilt.
• Examination of the social media era’s impact: proliferation of competing and incompatible narratives, diminishing any shared consensus.

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2. Western Guilt and Policy Paralysis

Timestamps: 21:16–27:22, 27:22–29:39

• Tom expands on how Western, especially European, policy increasingly justifies self-punishment—a “deranging” dynamic born of the perception that the West is uniquely guilty for global ills.
• Case studies: Germany’s release of the Berlin attacker; Poland/Hungary's refusal to accept EU-mandated quotas of migrants, even at great financial penalty.

Notable Quotes:

• “People have been taught in the West to hate the founding story of the West ... actively trying to punish themselves.” (Tom, 22:45)
• “Poland is being charged like a million dollars a day … they’ll keep paying because some things are more important than money.” (Tom, 29:38)

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3. National Identity, Collective Cohesion, and the Lessons of History

Timestamps: 29:39–39:49

• Tom and Drew explore the importance of unified national identity for survival, invoking Ukraine's response to Russian aggression as a contrast to the West’s internal division.
• Cites historical cycles (e.g., Muslims in Spain, Poland after the Cold War), emphasizing that strong, cohesive belief systems enable resilience.

Notable Quotes:

• “Whoever is stronger is going to win ... We live in the law of the jungle.” (Tom, 27:43)
• “Are there enough people that believe in the West and what we’ve built ... to defend it?” (Tom, 35:44)

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4. Philosophical Foundations: Christianity, Tolerance, and the Risk of Exploitation

Timestamps: 39:49–47:22

• Tom draws a sharp distinction between modern tolerant Christianity and theocratic Islam, using Lebanon’s shift from majority-Christian to majority-Muslim as a warning of cultural transformation turning bloody when values clash.
• A memorable discussion emerges from Tom’s recounting of an event where everyday Muslims affirm adherence to Quranic punishments, revealing the spectrum from secular to theocratic mindsets.

Notable Quotes:

• “Christianity’s tolerance can be exploited … radical Islamists do not believe in your liberal policies.” (Tom, 40:31)
• “When the thing you want doesn't align with what the government wants…violence is inevitable.” (Tom, 45:10)

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5. Clarifying the Debate: Radical Islamists vs. Everyday Muslims

Timestamps: 47:22–54:15

• Tom insists repeatedly on the need to distinguish radical Islamists from the general Muslim population, warning of narrative “derangement” if this is ignored.
• Drew voices the populist concern: after attacks, calls for “get them out” target all Muslims, not just radicals.

Memorable Moment:

• “With a religion that has [over a] billion people in it, boy, do you have to be careful... you invite a derangement if you don't take care to separate those two things.” (Tom, 48:03)

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6. Cultural Assimilation and Identity Fragmentation

Timestamps: 54:15–59:16

• Tom uses personal and historical examples (Dutch and German immigrants assimilating into American culture) to warn that today, many migrants retain strong separate identities, changing the melting pot dynamic.
• He argues the assimilation model is fraying, and with it, cohesion and predictability.

Notable Quotes:

• “America historically turned migrants into Americans... Now, people stay cloistered in these little groups.” (Tom, 52:50)

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7. Historical Conflict, Human Petty Tribalism, and the Limits of Shared Values

Timestamps: 59:16–62:17

• Addressing criticisms about why shared values didn’t prevent European wars, Tom reminds listeners that human tribalism and petty rivalries trump abstract unity, whether Christian or Muslim.
• The danger: interpretation (not ground truth) drives most behavior.

Notable Quotes:

• “Rarely do humans make contact with ground facts. We're normally making contact with interpretation.” (Tom, 60:35)

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8. The Radical Left (DSA) and Its Agenda

Timestamps: 62:17–75:27
(DSA segment main: 67:13–75:27)

• Tom and Drew dissect a recent viral Fox News interview with a DSA co-chair openly advocating: abolishing the Senate, ICE, and borders; amnesty for all, government ownership of major corporations, and abolishing prisons.
• Tom characterizes this program as “straight up communism,” dangerous both for its authoritarian streak and its ability to credibly erode prosperity.

Notable Quotes:

• “This is the DSA without their mask off telling you exactly what world they're trying to build.” (Tom, 69:07)
• “You cannot understand radical leftists … without understanding this is an ideology based in resentment and they want power.” (Tom, 73:07)
• “47% of the US government right now goes to entitlements … In the last ten years the US budget has nearly doubled.” (Tom, 74:09)
• "Radical leftist ideology... this is not something that people should be taking lightly. It's been growing for decades." (Tom, 77:50)

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9. The Iran War and U.S. Military Readiness

Timestamps: 78:35–91:21

• Tom analyzes the U.S. pause of strikes on Iran, suggesting three possible reasons: gearing up for heavier action, negotiating peace, or worrying that the U.S. is running out of munitions due to deindustrialization.
• Drew counters that American money and willpower can ramp up manufacturing in a crisis. Tom admits this is the hope, but worries about lost manufacturing capability and lack of patriotic buy-in among top tech talent.

Notable Quotes:

• “We gutted this country's ability to be the manufacturing country we were … those policy decisions have consequences.” (Tom, 78:56)
• “We're not growing, not fast enough, nowhere near fast enough [to escape the debt trap]… Now your only shot…AI.” (Tom, 101:58)

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10. Fed Critique: Central Banking as a Hedge Fund

Timestamps: 91:33–103:39

• Viral clip by a former World Bank president asserts the Federal Reserve is acting like a giant hedge fund, “borrowing at 5.4% from banks and dumping it into government bonds—it's a gigantic loss.”
• Tom breaks down the complicated mechanics of Fed bond purchases and how central banking, once a tool for productive growth, now risks accelerating inflation and systemic crisis unless a new growth engine is found.

Memorable Explanation:

• “It’s like giving someone money and then borrowing it back off of them. That shit is wild, but that’s exactly what happens.” (Tom, 95:04)
• "We are playing the most vicious game of chicken … just pour everything into AI. Fingers crossed. Hope, pray… If [AI] doesn’t work, we’re fucked anyway.” (Tom, 102:19)

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Memorable Moments & Quotes (With Timestamps)

• “This is a collision of values… people have a belief system that works, that leads them to act in a certain way.” (Tom, 05:36)
• “They can see the sin of the other side, but they cannot see the plank in their own eye, which I think is an actual biblical statement.” (Tom, 11:26)
• “Germany actually went and got him [the attacker] because they didn’t think he was being treated well and wanted to de-radicalize him. If that ends up being true, that would be insane.” (Tom, 03:20)
• “Are there enough people that believe in the West and what we’ve built and the incredible prosperity that we have brought to the entire globe?” (Tom, 35:44)
• “You must separate Muslims from radical Islamists. Otherwise it will be completely deranged.” (Tom, 48:03)
• “47% of the US government right now goes to entitlements… we're bringing in people from all around the world… experiencing the largest workforce reduction in American history.” (Tom, 74:09)
• “We are playing the most vicious game of chicken… just pour everything into AI. Fingers crossed. Hope, pray.” (Tom, 102:19)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:59] - [11:26]: The Berlin Islamist terror attack, foundational values at stake
• [21:16] - [27:22]: Western policy failures and internal guilt
• [27:22] - [29:39]: National identity, unity versus division, historical lessons
• [39:49] - [47:22]: Christianity’s tolerance, exploitation, and the Lebanon cautionary tale
• [62:17] - [75:27]: DSA’s “unmasked” radical agenda, primary wins, threat assessment
• [78:35] - [91:21]: Iran war update, U.S. strategic vulnerabilities
• [91:33] - [103:39]: Viral Fed critique, central banking explained, debt, and the “AI or bust” crossroads

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Conclusion

This episode of Impact Theory provides a multi-faceted, hard-hitting examination of Western sociopolitical fragility, exposing the ideological rifts caused by mass immigration, radical activism (both Islamist and far-left), and the erosion of collective identity. Tom Bilyeu’s stance is informed by history, economic realities, and cautionary tales, demanding clearer distinctions, honest debate, and policy reforms to avoid what he sees as looming cultural and economic catastrophe—all with frankness and skepticism emblematic of Impact Theory’s tone.

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For listeners seeking clarity on current events, ideological trends, and hardwired socio-political dynamics in Western societies, this is one of the most candid and consequential episodes in the series.

Transcript

[Shannon Maldonado]

Evening.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car.

[Drew]

I'll be moving in.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Let's get started.

[Shannon Maldonado]

Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.

[Guest or Interviewee]

You what?

[Shannon Maldonado]

Yeah. Great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it.

[Drew]

So there's no.

[Shannon Maldonado]

No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice.

[Drew]

I guess I'll let myself out.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Congratulations. I mean it.

[Shannon Maldonado]

Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our 7 day return [e-mail] My name is Shannon Maldonado. I' founder of Yaoi, a gift shop. From the lens of artists and handmade objects, I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms, it was definitely one of the most user friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you, it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on shopify.com.

[Tom Bilyeu]

good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Bilyeu Show Live. This has become like a real thing, man. We actually crossed 200 episodes, if you guys could believe that. And I thank you all for being a part of it. Now, in the middle of all that, a radical Islamist driver drove into a pride parade in Germany and the reactions are impossible to believe. We're going to see a lot of that strange behavior in the war in Iran is going on. We're going to dissect what it likely means. There are a lot of conflicting stories the DSA told on itself on live television. You guys are going to want to hear it for yourself. Trump and Mamdani are on a collision course. I knew that somebody's finger was going to be on that button. Trump, Mandani are on a collision course as Tom Homan and ICE have announced plans to massively ramp up their presence in New York City. That one's going to get nice and spicy. A former World bank president has suddenly gone viral for his scathing indictment of the Fed. I'm going to explain why, but you guys are not going to like it. AI dogs with guns mounted on them are being tested alongside soldiers in China. So that's startling if you guys were worried about that Black Mirror episode coming to life. Well, it has. And Chinese fishermen are doing weird things off the coast of Taiwan. And we are going to need to finally admit that there Is something going on there that isn't about catching fish? And when you tie it all into everything that's going in Iran, things start to get weird. But that is not where I want to start. Where I want to start is, is the collision between the west and Islam. I hate to say it, but that's just where this is. Saturday night, just before 10pm, a white van drove into a crowd in Berlin's Tiergarten park during a gay pride parade. It's one of Europe's largest pride events. The van hit an absolute gaggle of people. Then when the car slammed into a tree, the driver hopped out with a machete and just kept going. One woman is dead, 29 injured, three have life threatening injuries. The police end up shooting the guy dead. He ends up charging at people, charging at the officers with the machete. And so that ended that. The German interior minister said everything points to this being an Islamist terror attack. Police named the suspect as Abdul balout. He's a 21 year old. He was born in Germany, but he has Lebanese roots. He's known to Berlin police as part of the city's Islamist scene. In 2025, he was tied or he tried to join ISIS via Syria. Lebanese authorities ended up catching him. A military court gave him three months. But then he returned to Germany in November and was arrested at the airport. Now there's unclear rumors going around about why Germany brought him back. Some people say that he never planned to return to Europe and that Germany actually went and got him because they didn't think that he was being treated well and they wanted to give him a chance to basically de radicalize. And so people were saying like, this is atrocious the way that this guy is being treated. We've got to bring him back, we've got to give him a chance. And so that if that ends up being true, and at this point I would say that should not be read as fact, but if that ends up being true, that would be completely insane. This gets into this whole idea that the west is committing civilizational suicide. As I try to really map what's going on in the mentality of people in the west, it. It really gets dark. And I'll say at this point, maybe a little bit confusing. I have hypotheses about what's going on inside of people's minds that will lead you back to the traditional marriage of the left and radical. It's not Islam, it's radical revolutionary ideology. And so whether that comes in the form of Marxist Leninists who also teamed up with the left, whether that comes in the flavor of Mao and him teaming up with the left, whether that comes in the flavor of what's going on right now with Islam teaming up in the west, you certainly saw that again in the revolution in the late 70s in Iran, them teaming up with the left and then they immediately murder the left as a way of finally unmasking and showing that this is really a power play. Now whenever you talk about this stuff, you have to be very careful to tease out the difference between someone who simply practices, who is a practicing Muslim. But I'll call this is very much my wording. I don't know that anybody will like this, but sort of reformed Islam in the same way that you get a reformation in Christianity. So it's a very real thing. People really do get on the other side of this. And if people make this about race, which again, Islam is not a race, so teasing that out is going to be very important. This is a collision of values. This is people have a belief system that works, that leads them to act in a certain way. People act in accordance with their beliefs and their values. And the where this gets so weird is you see from the left all of this, what will seem pro radicalism, but I actually think is simply the oppressed oppressor narrative painted over everything. And when you look at the entire world through that lens, you, especially in the west, for reasons that are born out of France, and we can get into this, but you have an intellectual tradition that's been running across the west for a very long time now. A very long time. Call it 80 years, ish, maybe more, as it really its earliest, earliest sparks were before that. But you've had this running for a long time. So the oppressed oppressor narrative becomes very specifically anti Western in that it looks at the West, Europe very specifically, and all of Europe's descendants, namely America, as a colonizing force that has gone the world over and basically taking advantage of all of these countries. Now when you look at the west like there was one woman, I think we have the link, she's saying it in German so we can play it. But the punchline is that what's coming out of Germany already, keep in mind this just happened. But what's coming out of Germany already from the left, that is not the one though maybe she's speaking the one that I'm going for now. The one that I'm going for is a woman speaking German. And she says, I wish that this had been a Christian, a white Christian. I think she May have said specifically because we don't want this to become a political. They don't use the word stunt, but we don't want this to become political messaging where people are using this to be anti Muslim, to be anti Islam, because this ends up breaking their narrative. And man, I'm going to try to tie this to something that I've been talking to you guys for now. 200 episodes. This is one of the earliest things we talked about. That's her. And when I was reading the book, the Machiavellians, Defenders of Freedom, he talks a lot about historically, that we could control the narrative and so not the whole world, but the vast majority of people saw the world the same way. It was a very controlled narrative, so it was a lie, to be sure, but at least it was a shared narrative. And so the west would tell itself a story of we are the good, we are the righteous, all of that. And of course, everybody's telling themselves that story. And as I was reading the book and I thought, ooh, in the age of social media where you have massive velocity of information and just sheer volume of information, now all of these different narratives are going to come out at once. Now the problem is that one, it can be used obviously to radicalize more people. We're certainly seeing that. But it's now bringing forward the left. The way that the left pairs up through the victim, victimizer narrative with extremists, and it allows everybody to see exactly the collision of those two things. So when you see queers for Palestine, for instance, but then a radical jihadist, again, do yourself a favor, do not derange, do not get captured in a frame of reference that says all Muslims are bad. That would be, it would be inaccurate. So even just from that standpoint, it's unwise, but also just getting to value system, understanding their value system is the only way that you're going to understand their behaviors. Okay, so it. When you have queers for Palestine, but then a jihadist rams into a gay pride festival and you can find a nearly endless string of radical Islamists talking about how Allah hates the gays. And so it is jarring to say the least, but it becomes this very frustrating, bordering on deranging collision watching these two things play out in real time. So watching this driver slam into a gay pride festival, that it is completely consistent with radical Islamists value system in terms of that going against God. And so we're not going to stand for it, we're not going to tolerate it. And yet the victim, victimizer narrative of the left is so strong, they can't see past it. And the human. Because I see all of us as caught up in this, the human propensity to, regardless of what the facts tell you, to be unable to parse the world in any way that violates your narrative. And they've done studies on this where you can present people with facts that show that their own side is perfectly violating their own stated principles and lying. And they will do all kinds of mental gymnastics to show why their side is actually perfectly consistent and perfectly right. But. But when they're looking across the political aisle at the other side doing it, they see it perfectly. And so they can see the sin of the other side, but they cannot see the plank in their own eye, which I think is an actual biblical statement. Drew, if I can. Yeah. So what is it you use?

[Drew]

Don't try to remove the block out of somebody else's eye without the speck out of your brother's eye, without moving the block out of your eye. Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So, like, you see a mote of dust in somebody else's eye, but you can't see the plank in your own. And that is, we all do it. And so that's the part, as I watch all of this unfold that I'm just reminding myself of constantly. I am just as in danger of getting caught up in a frame of reference as anybody else, so I have to be very, very careful. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. Let's talk about why you're sweating. Summer is when bad fabric becomes too hot to ignore. That tea that felt fine in April is suddenly stiff, clingy, and practically suffocating you. Most guys just suffer through the hot months, but you don't have to. Quince fixes that. I've got their Pima cotton tees, and I am very impressed. The fabric, the fit, the construction, you can feel it just by touching it. That's what happens when a brand actually cares about quality materials. 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The thing that I fear about this show is the deeper I go down this stuff, the more I am just absolutely frustrated to my core with far left ideology again, to separate from people who are liberal or democratic. Like you've gotta. Yeah, you have to be so careful with this stuff. So anyway, I recognize that now my own beliefs, my own frustrations are beginning to form into a narrative that I'm telling myself. And I run the risk of getting trapped inside of that. Okay, so I'm gonna try to keep parsing this stuff as simply and clearly as I can, but I am not going to ignore that we have a massive coming collision between the west writ large and the influence of the left on the west writ large. Because the very far leftist ideology has been marching through the institutions for a very long time. So kids are being raised inside of this frame of reference. And because what humans do is they will justify their own belief system no matter what information is presented with them. Even as we look at a moment like this where you have the German authorities who, given their political tensions, are not exactly excited to announce that this is pointing in the direction of Islamist terrorism, but nonetheless are already saying, yes, this is where this is pointing. And the left going, oh man, I really had hoped that this was a white Christian so that it would. They don't say this part, but so that it wouldn't break their narrative. Making this about my side right, your side wrong, I think would be it won't stop us from heading down this path and watching the value system that has given us the west self destruct. We'll talk about that more. I don't want to die trip on that. You can ask follow ups, we can get into that. What I mean by that very specifically, how it will become policy, how that policy will make things economically worse. The economics are ultimately then what lead to the misery that we have seen play out in Russia, we've seen play out in China, we've seen play out in Cambodia. We've seen play out just in so many places over time. But right now the thing that we have to look at is the behavior of the left is so deranging that you get a guy who, his original sentence was 1 year and 10 months, but it was suspended and the court ended up saying, well, you know, he confessed his time in pretrial detention has already been served. He stated that he's really backing off of isis, like he's not going down that sort of radical path anymore. And so we should just be understanding and more forgiving. And obviously the prosecutors appealed that and they wanted to see this guy actually serve time, but they lost. And so two months later, this guy rents a van, grabs a machete and fucking slams in to these people, killing one, injuring 29, hacking people with a machete. I mean, this. This shit is just so wild. And because you have a desire, because you have a belief. I won't even say a desire. It starts as a belief because you have a belief. People have been taught in the west to hate the founding story of the west, if you will. They have come to believe that the west is uniquely bad, that we must decolonize everything about the West. You create this situation where people are actively trying to punish themselves in the West. And because of that, you're going to see more and more of this kind of violent extremism because it is a belief system and a value system that is fundamentally different than what we have in the West. And to know that there's a huge contingent of people in the west that actually want to see this play out this way. And their concern isn't for the lives that are lost. Their concern is for the upholding of the narrative and not wanting the other side to be able to weaponize this. And stepping back, knowing how likely I am to get trapped by my own frame of reference and looking at it through that lens of I'm looking at a bunch of people that are trapped and the fact that they do not try to come up with a cause and effect to look at, okay, we're running this belief system, meaning we should import people into the country. We have no right to have borders. We have stolen from these people. We have destabilized their region. And so, yes, there should be no borders. We're going to get to this. When we get to the dsa, they are just straight saying it out loud. And I can't believe how hard I have to bang the drum about this, because it should be self evident the DSA is not hiding. The DSA as a very good representative, representative of the far left. They're not hiding that they want to get rid of borders. They're not hiding that they want to bring in literally infinity migrants. They are not hiding the fact that they want to give them citizenship. Like they.

[Drew]

She's.

[Tom Bilyeu]

We'll show you the clip. She just out and out says it. And so now we're in this position where we're watching these things collide, but people just want to defend their narrative instead of going, okay, I see the problem that this is going to create, and this is why this thing keeps happening over and over and over. And by the way, this is going to continue to bring out violence on the other side. And so you. I don't know if you guys have been paying attention to this, but Elon had an interview maybe last week sometime, and the woman was like, really coming after him and saying, you keep saying that Europe is violent. It's not violent, like you're crazy. And he was trying to point out when you bring in people, because he said civil war is inevitable in the uk and she was like, that's bullshit. That's not true. And he said, if you bring in a group that has fundamentally different beliefs than the group that's already there, they will eventually have enough and they will begin fighting back. And so there's video footage coming out now. And so much of this stuff, you never know if it's anecdotal or if it's widespread. And so for now, assume it's anecdotal, but that it gives you directional signals. You've got people in Ireland where the lads, as they call them, are walking around in groups at night, they say, because they want women to feel safe walking around town, I'll say these are people that are getting angry because they realize that they're in a collision of values. And when they get angry enough, they are going to fight back. And so it'll start as skirmishes on the street. And my hope is that the actual volume and velocity of information due to the social media age actually causes this to dissipate early because people end up seeing, like, how absurd this is. And so it's not able to just fester in these cloistered, hidden areas, that it all comes to the forefront and we all see, like, what is happening. We all see the direction of travel, and hopefully we can begin to ease off of the ratcheting up tensions and start to have very sensible immigration policies, put policy in place to make sure that people integrate, that radical extremism is treated as radical extremism, that we begin, much like the countries in the Middle east that don't tolerate things like the Muslim Brotherhood, that we also start putting in very strict policies about what we tolerate, who's considered a terrorist group, how we defang them and de energize them, all of that stuff is going to be incredibly important. But when you have people like this, if you're looking at your screen that are saying, oh, man, I just wish that this had been a white Christian, you realize that they've got an end goal that they want to get to, which is the west has committed these crimes throughout history, and they're never going to say we need to be punished for this. But that is certainly the vibe that is what I think is in their heart. I'll just state it very plainly. I think they need. They believe that the west needs to be punished. I think they see themselves as sort of sitting outside of that, which is deeply problematic because they're going to be beholden. Remember, the playbook goes like this. Whoever has the most belief and is willing to kill the most people will go into power. This has just happened everywhere where the left and the revolutionary extremists have gotten together. The left is not willing to kill people at the rate that the revolutionaries are. And so they will kill more people. They will get into power. One of the first groups of people that they end up killing are the people on the left. And so it's like. Like this playbook runs time and time again. This is where the concept of the useful idiot comes up. So watching this, my takeaway is it should be very easy to say, okay, we have a problem right now with Islamic extremism, not to be confused with Muslims. We have an Islamic extremist problem. It needs to be identified for what it is. We have a culture, whether that's the us, the uk, Europe writ large. We have a culture. We are going to protect that culture, ideally peacefully, through policy. And if everybody puts it up on the table and we walk through what are the cause and effects of the different choices that we can make, then you can reach something sensible. I don't put a lot of stock in that being the way that humans play out normally. And I really don't think that's how it plays out in a populist moment where everybody is reasoning by emotion and not by logic. So what I'm expecting is to see a continued rise of internal violence within these different countries where the left and the revolutionaries, which in this case in Europe happen to be radical Islamists. And so that violence is going to collide with, like in Germany, groups like the AfD, in England with groups like Restore. And it's going to end up, if we can't do it through sensible dialogue and policy, it is going to end up being settled through violence. And history is awash in this exact playbook, as we've seen, literally the left and radical Islamists link up together in Iran, being a very easy example to point to. Yeah, we could do a total fractal on Islamists versus Christians and other parts of the Middle east and Africa. We'll leave that aside for now. So, yeah, this is one where if you're having the dialogue at the level of racism, at the level of West Bad, at the level of decolonize, that's all intellectual derangement, narrative capture being totally consumed by your own frame of reference and just being able to. You're completely blinded to the path out of this. And man, does history scream into the void with a warning that if we keep going down that only bloodshed awaits? Man, this is wild.

[Drew]

I want to start at the beginning because I'm reminded of that great quote. A great civilization is not conquered from without until as it's dried itself within. So when we say that the west is under attack, do you think that it started inside or are these people bandits at the gates that we need to fortify before they take over?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, okay, so that, that is a statement that is there's enough truth in it that it's going to continue to be a thing that's repeated. But the honest answer is whoever is stronger is going to win. And so even if you have a society that is really cohesive and really believes in what they're doing and is willing to fight, they may be harder. They will be significantly harder to conquer. I plant that flag only. So when later I say, listen, we live in the law of the jungle and whoever's strong is going to win that people don't think I'm being inconsistent. This moment is going to be brought to you by if you are trying to like take Poland as a. As an example. I don't think many people know Poland's history. So people understand it, I think leading up to World War II, but they don't understand it after World War II. So after World War II, Poland gets basically taken over by the Russian side of things and it's miserable and people are dying and starving and all the usual things that you would expect when the left actually win and you get a communist country. And so when they were able to regain their independence, they had suffered so much that they were just like, I don't care if people call us racist. We are not letting foreigners that we don't think share our value system to come to our country. And so I'm pretty sure it's either Poland or Hungary. And I'm almost certain it's Poland that is being charged like a million dollars a day or something like that by the European Union because they are viol the European standards for accepting immigrants and refugees. And so they're like, we'll just keep paying the money. And the reason we'll keep paying the money is we understand that there are some things more important than money because of what we went through during the Cold War is Hungary.

[Drew]

It was hungry for Asylum and migration laws. And Poland has faced a similar thing in the past.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, am I right? About $1 million a day?

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay. So extraordinary amounts of money that the countries that take this stance are willing to stand ten toes down on. So when you look at the countries that are staying firm, they're going to give us a really great natural experiment of are they going to be able to hold out longer? Certainly I have higher hopes for Poland than I have for, say, Germany, which is really struggling, or the UK which is really struggling, because there was a British actress. God, Ryan, if you can find this one fast, I'll be very impressed. This is one of those. Again, I did not expect it to stick to my ribs in this way, so I didn't pull the clip. But there was a British actress who's in she Hulk, and she said, basically, England's like the worst. England are. Did she say evil? She may not have used the word evil, but she went hard in the paint to be like, yo, England's the worst. Look at all these things that we've done historically. Gone into these countries, colonized them, et cetera, et cetera. And so when you have that sense of my own country is the bad guy, then you can imagine that you want to see people come in. But the problem is that you're saying it in the period where things are still good and people have not taken the time to create a mental map of what does it look like when somebody whose values are not mine forced me to adhere to their values and what that feels like. It is not a good thing. And this is how you get the. Like. If anybody knows what happened in Spain, where Muslims come in, they conquer the country, they slaughter most of the Spaniards, But a small group goes up into the mountains and for like 400 years, they have kids and they get stronger and they come back and they reconquer Spain. And it's like that is the kind of violent back and forth that you end up getting when people believe that their value system is the thing that's under assault. So, okay, to put a final bow on the question. When you have that kind of disagreement inside your own country, you are incredibly weak because you can't mount a defense. You can't do what Ukraine is doing right now, which is we now have. And again, you have to know their history to understand why they become what they become. And when you read Red Famine and you hear how many millions of them were starved to death intentionally during that period where Stalin has taken control, I can never remember if that's right after Stalin takes control or right at the end of Lenin, I think it's Stalin. But anyway, Lenin, Stalin, sort of six and one half dozen of the other, they starve all these Ukrainians to death. So part of the reason they were doing that is they did not want the Ukrainians to have a national identity. So now imagine, you know that. Now imagine you get out from under the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War and you start telling that history over and over and over like, we are a nation, we are a people, we have an identity. It is us. And when Russia now invades, you're like, nope, fuck that noise. And you get Zelensky saying, I don't need transport out, I need bullets. The most gangster statement of all time, love or hate him. That's a very hardcore response of somebody who's like, no, I'm going to fight for what's mine. Full respect to anybody on my team, not on my team. Full respect to anybody that's like, no, I believe what I believe and I'm willing to fight and die for it. And so when you have that, you see how strong of a resistance can be mounted. Look at the U.S. same idea. We start developing a national identity before we become America and we're able to take on the most successful empire ever and defeat them. So when you are strongly united, you really can do something extraordinary. Now, if England had had the will to crush us down and defeat us, they. They almost certainly could have. But we broke their will to fight, just as Afghanistan broke our will to fight in Afghanistan. And so it you see this kind of. They did the same thing to Russia. You see this kind of thing play out. When you are strong and you have more belief, more intensity, more passion, more willingness to fight, more willingness to suffer, then you really can win. And so the very question that we're being asked right now as the west is, are there enough people that believe in the west and what we've built and the incredible prosperity that we have brought to the entire globe? When you look at this moment in time, which the left will tell you this moment in time is brought to you by colonialism. Okay, that's what they'll say, okay, great. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever in all of human history have we pulled more people out of poverty. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever in history have we had a higher standard of living, lower birth mortality rates, longer life expectancy. And this moment brought to you by colonialism. Now, I don't think that's true. I don't think it's brought to you by colonialism. I think it's brought to you by Western values. And the great thing about Western values is that it has this directional bent away from the, obviously the enslavement, from the taking advantage of people towards a. To use American language, towards a more perfect union. It has that corrective mechanism brought to you by, in my opinion, Christianity. And so Christianity brings you this bent towards uplifting people, taking care of the poor, not being an oppressor, an idea that, and I don't think he was Christian, but an idea that you hear echoed from Nelson Mandela, where if you simply become the oppressor, you give up your humanity. Being the oppressor is to lose your own humanity. And so whether the only way for that to find its way to the forefront is Christianity or not is irrelevant. The fact that it is so embedded in Christianity that you see that rise to the fore. So I think the west has shown us that you can have this long trajectory towards making life better for the vast majority of humanity. Now, the country that's brought more people out of poverty than anybody else in human history, certainly from a nominal perspective, is China. But I will remind everybody, China is communist in name only. And they opened up to the free markets to stop starving their people to death when they were truly communist. And so looking at that transition when Mao dies into Deng Xiaoping and his reformation and all of that, that I think is extraordinarily telling about the power of Western ideology. Now, I'm not saying that China has Western ideology. They actively do not, but they looked at the west and said, oh, you guys figured something out, and we want to import that into our nation. And so looking at the value systems that drive people, that a change in value system will change the country dramatically for the better or the worse becomes incredibly important. And so when you are divided and you're divided by an ideology that will allow you to be strong, be protected, strong borders, strong military, law and order internally, safety internally, economic prosperity internally, that's going to be far more able to fight for itself than something that is ideologically driven, does not survive contact with reality. Violence is necessary to maintain a lid on all of the pushback that you inevitably get from it. That's obviously going to be a far weaker state. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. Let's talk about leverage. Effort doesn't grow a business, at least not a loan. 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[Drew]

We're having a little bit of dissent in the chat, so I kind of want to just state it plainly. What is the problem that we're trying to solve when we come to like preserving the West? We're trying to preserve the culture, we're trying to preserve the identity. What is the thing that is at attack right now? Because I think values sometimes get into this ought versus the what is like, what is the problem that's happening? What is the policy? What is the thing that we need to adjust so that way this resulting thing doesn't happen. And I think right now we're in

[Tom Bilyeu]

the philosophical, yeah, let's look at Lebanon. So Lebanon was, I don't remember how many years ago, but Lebanon was a majority Christian country. And the very thing that makes Christianity great also creates a potential exploitable thing, which is that Christians want, they're tolerant by decree. It's like part of the Bible is about being tolerant and loving. And whether you're a prostitute or a leper, it's like you're just as valuable as a human and worthy of love and all of that. And so it becomes very difficult for certainly modern era Christians to put up walls and say, no, no, you can't come in here, you're not welcome here. Feels very unchristian. And so radical Islamists will take advantage of that. They do not believe in your liberal policies, they do not believe that that's what God wants. They believe in Sharia law and they're going to manifest that. And so that's exactly what happened. And Islam ended up taking over Lebanon. Lebanon went from being the, in the 60s, went from being known as the Paris of the Middle east, considered one of the most beautiful places on earth, a place that was safe, prosperous, to now being war torn. I mean, if you want to imagine a brutal place to live, you might conjure up Beirut. I mean that was certainly like the poster child in the 90s for what that looks like to be a war torn nation. So a collision of values is a very bloody thing. And I mean if you want to, if anybody's watched the man in the High Castle, it's an alternate take on history where what if Japan and the Nazis had won? And it's a very different world, it's an oppressive regime. Anytime where you don't allow dissent, your only option is violence. China discovered that. And I mean it really discovered it in the early days of Mao's rule, but it discovered it again during Tiananmen Square where people wanted to push further. They didn't just want free markets, they wanted freedom. And the government rolls tanks in and just kills a bunch of people. I actually know somebody, believe it or not, a Jewish guy, you know, these days that's so weird, but Jewish guy that was, ended up playing a huge role in the, in his one little area. But he brought American finance to China, was funding Chinese companies and wanted to help bring all of the lessons of capitalism to China and help in that phase. He said it was the most incredible thing he was ever a part of. And he was like, I Know that this will forever be the. The most special thing that I've. I've ever been involved in in my life. And he was like. I was in Tiananmen Square when the bullets started flying, and he was like, you watch someone's head explode that's 10ft from you. And he was like, it. You know, it's. It's completely surreal. And so for all the things that they've done to try to hide that, that is what it looks like to have to repress people when you're bringing a new value system on top of what people don't want. I think people have a natural bent to want to be able to say what they believe is true. Again, I'm not saying that people are Western by default, not at all. But I'm saying that we all have that impulse to say, this is what I want. I want to be able to pursue the things that I want. And inevitably, when the thing that you want doesn't line up with what the government wants, then if you don't have an outlet to debate, to vote for somebody to get the guy that you don't like in power, out of power, then you become violent. And then the state has to decide whether it backs off and lets you overtake, or whether they just hammer down and kill, kill, kill, until you fall silent again. So that when you are asked to live in a way and to bring this back to radical Islam versus the west, if you think of it as, okay, what does modern tolerant Christianity look like? It looks like the Pope giving a blessing to the gay community. It looks like the Supreme Court in America passing gay marriage. It looks like a truly tolerant, pluralistic society where people can pursue the things that they want, that they can have religion the way that they want to have it, that even if the dominant culture's God says, we need to do it this way, in the west, we have said, no, you need to strip those two things out. They need to be separate things. And so you've got Christian ethos, but Christianity itself isn't in the government. And so it's deep secularization. It's far more freedoms than you're going to find in other places colliding with. No, no, no, no. God gave us a final revelation. It's written in the book, and you're going to adhere to that. And there was a clip the other day, I think I may have pulled it. So it might not be in this one. It might be in a previous day's live. We never ended up talking about it, but it was A group of. I can't remember if they were in America or if they were in the uk, but if I remember right, they were speaking English. And it's a huge group. But like, imagine in a ballroom, in a hotel, huge group. I mean, these just look like normal fucking people, man. And you've got an imam at the front and he says, okay, everybody's talking about how Muslims are radical. And like, this is all ridiculous. So how many of you guys consider yourself radical Muslims? Not a single hand goes up. And he says, okay, how many of you believe that? But does he say the Quran? I'm going to give you the gist, this is all paraphrased, but boy, I'm not overselling it. This I assure you. And Ryan, even if I have to track this down after the fact and like drop it in discord or something, remind me, because I'm going to represent this neutrally, but I assure you this is what was being said. So are any of you radical? Nope. All the hands down, are we all just normal people living our normal life? Hands down, they all look again, just completely Western, completely normal. And he says, but do we believe that the Quran is the word of God? Yes. Do we believe that the punishments that God puts forth in the Quran are accurate? So whether that's stoning or murder or whatever? And they all raised their hand and I was just like, whoa. So this guy was making the argument that when you believe that the Quran has laid out for you precisely how you should behave, then it's like, there's nothing radical about that. That's just, this is what we believe. These are the values. So when you look at Iran specifically, because they are a theocratic regime, they believe that the state should be run by the word of God. You get a very different country than you get in America. And so the question becomes for people, how will you feel, for instance, when gay marriage is immediately abolished, when gay people go back to getting stoned to death, how will you feel? Because that's what it's like to have a value system that is not yours put on you by force and you have no way out from under it.

[Drew]

So the objective is a majority Christian nation. So that way our Constitution can be projected. And the fear is that Muslims will come into the US Take over political power, change the constitutions and do all

[Tom Bilyeu]

these things that this is where, where I. For anybody that wades into these waters, it becomes very deranging because I spent three or four minutes at the beginning of this saying, you absolutely must separate radical Islamists from Muslims. But yet in the retelling, and I think you're being very sincere in the retelling of what I just said, you said Muslims, not radical Islamists.

[Drew]

But the difference is there's not a radical Islamist card. It's gonna be blanket statements. So while there's, you have to tease

[Tom Bilyeu]

these out, otherwise it will be completely deranged because. And this is where the Muslim community, the I'll call the secularized or the reformed Muslim community, needs to be the vanguard. The tip of the spear. And that's why we've played it multiple times. I've seen other people.

[Drew]

They're not the tip of the spear though, because I think a lot of times we're the one pushing that point. So while I agree that there is a difference between radical Islam and Muslim, when an attack like this happens, it becomes a get them out. It's not a get, get radicals out.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But that, that's the, that's the populist refrain. And that's why that's the very thing that I'm trying to be careful with.

[Drew]

Got it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And this is, this is me that like my tone right now, like if we were talking about the economy or we were talking about mom Donnie, we can both agree that I'd be very animated and I'd be like practically banging the table. I have, I feel when talking about that that I have to ratchet up, up to really get people to take that seriously. And because the DSA is neither a religion nor a race, it feels very clean. I can just bang my drum and truly, anybody that wants communism, it's so deadly. I just, there's no need. There's no like, no, no, no. Those are the good communists. But with a religion that has whatever 2 billion people in it, boy, do you have to be careful. And I also think that people are going to get very confused if. Take the uae. It's a Muslim majority country, bro. When you're on the ground there, it feels largely secular. I won't say entirely secular, but it feels largely secular. Like you feel good. I get why a bunch of Western minded people go there because they're really trying to play an economic game. They're really trying to make life great for their people. Will I say they're going all the way to religious freedom? No, but like they make caveats for people that don't have the religion. And so they do the things to welcome people, to show a level of tolerance and they feel like they're on a trajectory where it's like this becomes more secular over time and not less secular over time. And I think that that will be a transition that's not going to give anybody heart palpitations. That one feels like, much like Christianity was far more muscular, far more willing to defend itself with swords and cannons and shit back in the day to it doesn't feel like that anymore. And America sort of becomes a crowning achievement of post doctrine led Christianity and becomes a very secular nation where we specifically state that we're going to keep these two separate, even though the founders were very profoundly Christian by culture. So all of that, okay, that to say you invite a derangement if you don't take care to separate those two things, meaning it isn't accurate and you will be very confused and life will be hard to predict because you're going to meet a gazillion Muslims and they're all going to be dope and you're going to be like, what's the problem? It's like, well, let me explain. If you have somebody that is secular and they're like, hey, I want to do my thing. This is what I believe. This is how I'm going to live my life. But I don't want that to be the government. I don't want the government to rule over. And they're being sincere. Obviously there are going to be some people who try to hide behind that, but there are going to be way more people that are like that, that are sincere and just trying to live their life and do their thing and let them do their thing. And again, reminding everybody it's not a fucking race, but that is one thing. So if you were trying to recapture my beliefs and say, okay, so wait a second, you're saying radical Islam is going to come into a country with the goal of taking over, and they list the ways they're going to take over. They take over through the womb, they take over through the sword. Like there's four things anyway. They'll just come out and say it. They're radical, but they'll come out and say it. Not saying that's a belief of every Muslim, but they will come out and just say, these are the ways that we're going to do it. And so given that if you just run the demographic numbers, you end up there, then you have to ask people who are already here how you want to handle that situation. Do you want to let the demographics take over your country? Or do you want to say, yeah, this doesn't make sense. We need to bring in a certain number and pause and Then you need to integrate. You see how well that goes. Do they become American? Like, I heard Jillian Michaels, of all people talking about this and she was like, oh, I didn't find out that I was a third Jewish until I was in my 30s. And she was like, I was raised Gen Xers all day. We were all raised that, like, you were American. So, like, I have a friend who, or had a friend who was Dutch and his parents were told, like, don't teach them Dutch, they're American. Teach them English. And that's the thing. And so you grow up with this weakening identity of where you came from. Like, technically I'm like 60% Dutch, a bunch German and a little bit of smattering of other European stuff. Stuff I have no sense of that. I'm just American. Like when I say I do not have any emotional connection to those countries, none whatsoever. So that created a bunch of Americans. People came here because they wanted their kids to grow up American. And that is shifting. And people are now staying cloistered in these little groups. And so that is going to change the fabric of a country. Now, if your belief system is, oh, I want my kids to grow up the way that I grew up, I want my kids to have, have the same identity of being an American that I have, then it's like, well, you're going to have to do things to ensure that that's true. Because whoever is politically and economically most powerful, they're going to control the culture of your country and then eventually they will control your politics and then everything. Once they have culture and politics, it's game over. So we have to decide as the west, are we willing to defend that? And if we're not, then it goes away way.

[Drew]

Okay, I think this is a.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But did that actually address it? Like, what. What's the most, like, venomous. Ideally, the, the strongest, the person who thinks I'm just. Absolutely. And they have a cogent argument so that I can figure out what either belief base assumption they have that guides their thinking, or there's a few.

[Drew]

So some said the rebuttal to the Christian separate certain states, church and state is being forced upon because, like the recent abortion bans, because I don't want to abort a baby, you're killing a living meaning that's a Christian notion that affects actual people. That is now a law that is passed. So yes, it's not Sharia law where people are getting stoned, but we do have Christian laws that are dictating policy.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes. Because we are, by culture a Christian Nation.

[Drew]

But that is the opposite of you saying we need a Christian majority because we're more tolerant and we don't let our, our religion dictate our laws.

[Tom Bilyeu]

No, it doesn't. So here's what people have to understand. There is a big difference between the scripture becomes the laws, and people who believe in the thing have a value system that was created by the scripture. So with or without.

[Drew]

Isn't that the same with the Muslims, though? The scripture becomes a law, but the.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes, yes, yes. This is precisely what I'm saying. You must separate Muslims from radical Islamists.

[Drew]

No, no, but. So then that also applies to Christians. It applies to every religion because it

[Tom Bilyeu]

applies to every belief system. Value system for sure. This is the point I'm trying to make about culture. Everybody is soaked in a culture, whether they are religious or not. If you grew up in the 80s in America, you grew up awash in a Christian culture. Even if you were of like, the, what is it, the Baha' I faith or you were Buddhist or whatever, you still grew up in a country where the laws were being made by people who were culturally Christian. There are just base assumptions that you have because we are all trapped inside of a frame of reference. And you don't even realize all the different ways that that is playing out. So what I'm trying to get to is, yes, your country, the policies are going to be influenced by whatever values the people hold. And so if you invite people into your country that do not hold your values and do not want to assimilate to your values, you're going to have a problem. There is going to be a collision between the new value set and the old value set. It's just that simple. And so what I'm trying to understand from the community is if they're saying, well, I'm already being knocked around by people who have Christian values, and I don't feel good about that. It's like, yeah, the value system in America is already beginning to fracture long before this happened. And so the value system that kept America on a more cohesive path was Christianity. As time goes by, as that weakens, you see the value system beginning to fracture for sure. And so it'll be a question of, okay, does that slowly evolve? Evolve, and we evolve together. And 200 years, everything looks very different, but we're still cohesive. And you have minor skirmishes at the level of abortion debate, because keep in mind, there's 50 states and all the Supreme Court decision said was the states now get to make their decision. And so people are going to get to vote. And yes, you will be beholden to the people that actually vote what their value system is 1000%. That's the way this all works. And so what I'm saying is, do you want to bring in more people that have a different value system than you, or are you like, hey, I have a value system that more closely aligns with Islam. And so I want people with Islamic values to come in. And that's what they're going to fight for, obviously, because they know if their value system can be the majority, then the laws and the policies and the traditions and customs are all going to be aligned with what they want. And so what I'm saying is the very question we have to ask and answer is, do we believe in what we believe enough to say, nope, I'm not bringing people in that don't believe this period. And now I'm with you, it's a period from my side. But you're saying there's dissent in chat. And so far I've not heard anybody that actually has a cogent argument. They're arguing maybe with something in their own head. They're arguing with a version of me that isn't real. That is certainly possible. They misunderstood my argument. That is certainly possible. But it's like doing if that question is going to be answered. And right now the answer is that the thing that animates the left in the west right now is a sense of guilt that we are a war propagating nation and we need to be stopped. That the billionaire class has completely bastardized our entire country, that the ownership class is predatory towards the working class. Like that's what animates the left. And because of that, they want people obviously far out on the left. But the DSA is the life of the Democratic Party right now. For that you want brothers and sisters in revolution. And they are finding that with radical Islam. And again, we've seen this exact pairing play out before.

[Drew]

Zayden, in the chat, why did common values in Europe lead to World War I and World War II?

[Tom Bilyeu]

That I think gets to what is the true nature of human pettiness? Sibling rivalry, because it was cousins that ended up going to war with each other. And so you've got these petty motherfuckers that have now spread out to be the royal families of different countries and they start fighting with each other. Now the specifics of World War I, I'm far more familiar with World War II, but the specifics of World War I, I'll have to defer. To historians. But on the very high level, just because you share Christian values does not mean you feel like you're being treated fairly or you're getting all of your just desserts. And so, of course, people just like you see in Ireland, you have people that are both Christian, but they believe their team is right. And so minor differences in interpretations of the Bible create wars between them because of the way that the human mind goes, I'm on this team, you're on that team. And we're now going to fight over scarce resources, whether that's land, whether that's just who's in charge. I don't want you to be above me. I'm so, you know, we're going to end up colliding. Economics gets in the mix. And so if you feel like they're icing you out of trade or something like that, that you're going to push back against that. You see the same thing in the Muslim world, where there are two major Muslim sects that are fighting against each other. And so you've got the Sunnis and the Shiites, and it's like they're going to war, even though technically they believe in the same book. So it's going to come down to interpretations. People think that humans are making contact with ground facts, when in fact, rarely do humans make contact with ground facts. We're normally making contact with interpretation. And so people become convinced their interpretation is right, is just. It's what God wants, and they're willing to go to war with the other side, Ireland, across the Middle East. It just. It is what it is. But that's a. That's a. All of this is human pettiness. Even the fact that we steer by value system is an artifact of the human mind. And remember, I don't believe there is a God. So you've got this whole thing where it's like all of this is explained by the human mind. Religion is just a layer that rides on it.

[Drew]

Got it. To me, the DSA is more of a stronger argument for this because they actually have principles and working toward dismantling things that are American fundamentalists. I think every time a Muslim does anything around the world, we have the same conversation, whereas the dsa.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you think it's the wrong conversation? I know you're trying to transition to the dsa, but I do want to go here. So you say we have the same conversation. What is the same conversation?

[Drew]

These. There's a threat to the West. These people want to kill us. These people want to take our spots. They Want to make us shithole nations like all their countries are.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay. Is that what you hear me saying?

[Drew]

I hear you say that in a lot of words. I just chunked it down to very bombastic ones.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So interesting.

[Drew]

Because Lebanon was your example. So you're saying Lebanon used to be good, now it's bad. Why is it bad? Now it's majority Muslim. Why is it bad? Because it's majority Muslim. Because now it's war torn. I don't want the US to become Lebanon.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes, but I think we have to be very careful what we take. Is my summation. Do you think that a violent civil war in a country is beneficial?

[Drew]

No, but I think that we can stop violent civil war not by immigration, but by getting people houses. I think we need to talk about economics. I think we spend way too many time in this administration that has complete control of the government about why everybody else is wrong and how we need to go internationally. How all these people over here are attacking us right now, where internally we're being mined and stripped and drained for resources. Trump made more in the last two years than he made in his previous 60 years of life. We're not talking about that at all. We're talking about a Muslim in Germany who now has some second order consequence to our American way of living instead of the person that is actively hurting my American way of living today.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay.

[Drew]

I still think we, I, there's this thing we want to fight, this monster that's two weeks coming. They're always, they're ten years away from having a nuke. They're ten years away from taking our country. They're ten years away. Ten years away. Ten years away. But the last ten days I can point to policies that this person did today that affects my neighbors, my people around the corner, whether black, white, Christian, Muslim, Republicans, Democrats, it doesn't matter. We're all paying more at the gas tent. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about ideological wars that might take place in the next five years.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so you have a list of very valid concerns in terms of just because. Not just because you have very valid concerns. We talk about the economy on the show non stop. It is our core pillar. So whatever lamentation that you have, I would assume is not aimed at me. You're just saying aimed out at the broader conversation. That's very fair. All of those things are very real. All of those things have to be addressed. We're never going to get out from under this. However, one of the single biggest points of collision over the next 10 years is going to be radical Islam coming into the west, full stop, period, end of story. And so while it is deeply unfortunate that these things are overlapping, they're almost certainly overlapping for the underlying reasons that led us to the position that we're in. That you've got in the. In America, you have a battle between the left and the right. You have same battle happening in Europe. One of the early questions you asked is, you know, is this how you get conquered from without because you're weak within? Yes. And so to your point, how do we strengthen up from within is very important, but it does not alleviate that. You are in a situation where if you don't get your immigration policy under control, if you do not have people assimilate, it is a very known thing that will happen over the Next, call it 10 to 30 years as the demographics shift. And I think that with that you will see only violence. And so I don't understand why people wouldn't want to say, okay, we've got a handful of really big issues. We're going to have to address these. One of them is the left moving to the radical left. That's going to be hugely important. One of them is the economics, as you laid out. And then one of them is that you are destabilizing your own culture. And those are probably the big three. And so if you look at political destabilization, economic destabilization, and cultural destabilization, you can't address one of them, you can't address two of them. You must address all three of them. Because failing to address any one of them, you still have a problem. Imagine you have a house that is on fire, full of people dying of the plague, and you have armed people outside of the house, killing people as they run out the door. It's like, yeah, all of those have to be addressed. You can't skip any of them.

[Drew]

That's very true. But I feel like in this argument, the analogy would be all those three things are happening, but we're talking about the mayor election that's happening next week,

[Guest or Interviewee]

I think.

[Drew]

So it's a distraction from the things that the. I think the top three things that we should be worried about. Islam migration is not in the top three. That's me.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, what are your top three?

[Drew]

Economics, education, healthcare, education.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Interesting. Okay, so I will say that those are largely economics, all in one basket, but you're looking at like subfields of the same problem. Okay, so it's great. I don't need you to be animated by the same things I'm animated by. So I will simply say you've made your case. I think it's very clear. I am. It does not change my priority list. I think this is incredibly important to continue to discuss. So yeah, we'll keep discussing it now.

[Drew]

DSA in their own words. They sat down with Fox News. I feel like Fox News set them up because I don't know why this person is saying it so boldly with their.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This is the co chair of the dsa. I was honestly for a second when I watched it. So I watched the sight unseen. Just let me hear what she has to say. I thought that this was a false flag because I'm almost certain I can't prove it, but I'm almost certain that Fox has had people on in masks before to talk about different topics, like opposite sides of the topic. I could be being totally sucked into propaganda here. But I have seen people showing this guy that admittedly looks like the same guy under the mask taking different sides of issues. And so I'm like, this has to be that. This has to be a false flag. Fox is trolling. There's no way this is real. Because the things that she's saying are so insane that I was like, it's not possible. And so I looked her up. She's the co chair, national co chair of the dsa. This is insane.

[Drew]

National co chair, socialist with Presbyterian characteristics is how she acknowledges herself. Now let's get back to her actual interview where she sat down with. With I don't know who she sat down with. This lady from Fox News.

[Shannon Maldonado]

So we're going to put up on the screen a few of the things that are part of your platform. And I want to ask you, just give me sort of a true or false on these. Abolish the Senate.

[Drew]

True.

[Shannon Maldonado]

Okay. Replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them. Yep. Abolish ice. Absolutely. Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the US Illegal legally.

[Tom Bilyeu]

As a long term plan.

[Shannon Maldonado]

Yep. Defund the Pentagon. Absolutely. Abolish prisons, at least in large part.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Again as part of a long term program.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Shannon Maldonado]

Okay. So no prisons, government or public ownership of most large corporations.

[Drew]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That, that is just straight up communism. This is so wild. Do you know how authoritarian you have to be to do all of those things like this? This is completely unmasked. This is the DSA without their mask off telling you exactly what world they are trying to build. Now keep in mind they talk very specifically about giving their candidates different messaging than they actually hold as a platform. And so you're going to see candidates like Mamdani talk as if. No, no, no. Like, oh, why you guys scared? This is, oh, hahaha, this is all being blown out of proportion. When in reality this is actually what they're trying to do. Now when you start looking at, oh, wait a second, why do they want to do this? So the Senate. If you don't understand what the point of the Senate is, then that might not seem like a big deal. Yeah, why don't we just have Congress? Like that would be way better. It's simple. It represents the people. It's all based on how many of the country's people are in your state. That's your power. You're just representing the people. Okay, Remember, America was founded on one driving core principle, that power corrupts. And if you understand that you both need a government and must fear that the government is prone to tyranny, that the government itself will become tyrannical over time and you must protect yourself from it. They did not make a republic on accident. They made it very much on purpose to have checks and balances to keep any one person from coming into office and then just absolutely wreaking havoc. Now, if you absolutely hate Trump, you need to be very grateful for the founders who were designed or designed a government to protect you from things like that. Now take the Senate specifically. The way that the Senate works is every state, no matter how big, no matter how small, they get two representatives. And the reason that you do that is even though you might have a state that has a much smaller population, it allows the minority to fight back against a majority that would otherwise tyrannize them because they have more power. The weirdest thing in the world is that every government must become very muscular so that they can defend themselves against enemies, foreign and domestic. And at the same time, they need to check the themselves so that they don't become the very monster that they're trying to fight back against. And this is like when I hear people go to bat for China, I'm just like, what are we talking about? You have a government there where the second Xi has a bad idea, he can just completely drive the country off a cliff, and anybody that goes against him is just shot and killed. Okay, we saw this play out in Iran, somewhere between a couple thousand on up to 50,000, depending on whose numbers you believe were just killed in the street. Now imagine for a second that Trump, when He took over D.C. and he had the National Guard in there, imagine that to get control of it. He killed 2,500 people, which I don't think anybody disputes that number out of Iran. Now imagine he killed 50,000 people. How freaked out would people be? But that's exactly what happens when you don't have checks and balances. The DSA wants to get rid of your checks, imbalances. So they don't want the minority to be able to speak up for itself because they believe that they're right. They believe that they have the right way, that everything should be done. They are power hungry. They want power. You cannot understand radical leftists throughout history. Forget our people on the left. You can't understand radical leftists throughout history without understanding that this is a ideology based in resentment and they want power. It's not that they hate the police, it's that they want to be the police. It's not that they hate the government. They want to be the government. They want to be the people that are in power. Once you understand that, now you're going to understand the things that they put forward and the ways that they move. They have to get rid of the Senate so that they can you get rid of borders. Remember she just said it. You get rid of borders, you give amnesty and citizenship to all of the people that immigrate into the country. You know that they're going to want free things from the government. And so you get them in, you get rid of the Senate so the minority can't fight back. You've now got majority population because you got rid of your borders and you made everybody citizens. And now it just comes down to what state has the most people. Cities tend to be the most left leaning and be the most populous. And so now they're going to then run those cities with, with rent freezes and handouts. And just As a reminder, 47% of the US government right now goes to entitlements, goes to programs where we're giving people stuff. As a reminder, in the last 10 years the US budget has nearly doubled. So we are bringing in people from all around the world. We are giving them access to government programs. We are experiencing the large, largest workforce reduction in American history. So more people are saying, nah, I just want the government to take care of me, citizen or not. And so that is the goal of the left. Make the government bigger and bigger and bigger. Strip out the minority's ability to protect itself, get rid of the borders, get rid of law enforcement and you create a situation where everybody ends up having to rely on a government that is completely delusional. About how you make things safe, how you make things prosperous. And so we will end up, if we continue down this road, we will end up in the exact same place that places like Cuba have ended up. China under Mao, ended up, Russia, the USSR under the communist regime. It is so crazy that A they don't understand the economy at all, B, that they are so blinded by their

[Drew]

own

[Tom Bilyeu]

resentment that they cannot or will not see that this will be completely destructive to all the things that ended up pulling people out of poverty the world over, not just in America. This is a massive threat. This, this in terms of you want to talk about things we have to protect ourselves against. This one's massive, Massive.

[Drew]

And to your point, I want to kind of double down because unlike the Muslim year thing where it's a 10 year to 30 year problem and we have to figure out when it would actually come to a head, the DSA has won a few primaries. They do have cultural energy. They are increasing in political power. Now there's only, I think two people in the Senate that are actually card carrying DSA members. There's about 10 that I've just won primaries. We'll see if they eventually end up in the ascending house as well. So it is one of those things that they start with one, then it leads to two, and then eventually.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And this is the same thing that I'm trying to get people to be thoughtful of with radical Islam is it starts small and it becomes big. And I will also, like, if people need to understand how this playbook goes, it goes like this. The US did it to the Native Americans. England has done it to many places that they colonized. You have Muslims have done it historically into Europe. They've done it in Africa, which was Christian at one point, North Africa. They did it in the Middle East. So keep in mind the Jews end up doing it in Israel. So you know, if you want to ask yourself, well, is there a historical precedent for this working? The answer is, is yes. So that's where I'm just like boys and girls. It may be small now, but you've got to play this stuff out. And so if you want that ideology to take over, hey, fair enough. But the thing about the DSA that I really want people to understand, this is not a couple primaries. This, the couple primaries are the bamboo shoots finally breaking the surface. So if you guys know how bamboo grows, it takes five years roughly for the ball of roots to grow under the ground. So when you first plant bamboo, it looks like nothing is happening for year after year after year, and then all of a sudden, it breaks ground and it'll grow. I forget how much, but it's like three feet in a year or something. It's just absolutely insane. And so after a couple of years, you just have bamboo everywhere. It's considered an invasive species because once it gets in, man, it is just hard to stop. And it grows so fast because you don't know it's there. And then all of a sudden, it's just shooting up. So that's the stage we are at with radical leftist ideology. It has been working its way through the education system, through the judiciary system for so long now that we're finally just becoming aware of it. But the problem is that it's been growing literally for decades on decades on decades. And so this is not something that people should be taking lightly. The only thing that I hold to with a bit of hope is that right now, unless this is propaganda, the Democrat Party is having a very hard time getting funded. And so they just had to borrow against their own real estate in order to raise, I think, 10 or 15 million dollars in debt compared to the Republicans that have, like, 120 plus million dollars. So my hope is that the everyday Democrat liberal is not succumbing to the far left ideology that will break everything that has brought us prosperity.

[Drew]

Cool. We need to talk about the Iran war. There's been some updates.

[Tom Bilyeu]

There have been updates, Drew.

[Drew]

Yeah, let's jump into that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I always find it deeply dissatisfying when I don't get whatever the biggest pushback is from the audience, but I trust you.

[Drew]

We need to move.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, that's my own frame of reference. I'll set that aside. All right, here's what's confirmed. The US has stopped striking Iran by Friday night, breaking 13 consecutive nights of attacks. But the question becomes, why? Why?

[Drew]

Hi.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now, Iran has halted its retaliatory strikes in parallel, so its army spokesperson confirmed the pause is conditional on ours holding. The naval blockade is still running, though. Over the weekend, the US Military reported a dozen commercial ships redirected. Two ended up getting disabled, two boarded. So there's plenty of drama going on in the Middle East. Now, when I say that there are rumors abounding as to what's going on. Some people are saying, bro, Trump is about to hit them harder than they've ever been hit. He just needs to pull back, regroup, get things together, and then we're gonna go after him hardcore. Other people are like, come on, bro, he's just trying to negotiate like you've Gotta give peace a chance. You can't just keep bombing people and expecting things to go your way. So we're gonna back off, we're gonna go to talks. Other people are saying, and unfortunately, I find myself in this camp, that the US Is running out of fucking bombs. And because we were so stupid and we completely ruined our manufacturing base and we sent it all over the world and we gutted this country's ability to be the country that we were going into World War II, that gave us the very extended period of prosperity. We are now finding out that those policy decisions have consequences. And so the fact that we are not, not actually able to make enough munitions to continue to prosecute this war in a very aggressive stance is going to put us in the very quagmire that we were trying to avoid. Now, I think it is a, without additional information of where Iran was from building up their ballistic missile capabilities and whether they were putting themselves in a position where they were going so underground that they would, they were either either almost at or actually already at the point that they could bully everybody by burying their missiles, that they could then go to a nuclear weapon because nobody would be able to stop them. And by the way we're watching that play out, we may already be there. Okay, so for anybody that tries to poo poo that explanation that Trump moved in because he had intel that said, hey, these guys are about to get to the point where we are going to be able to going to be unable to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon should they decide to do. Anybody that says that that's bullshit, I will point out we may already be there. We may have found out it really was too late. But without any information there, I will say that it's entirely possible we should just never have gotten into this war in the first place. So that's dumb. Let's say that. No, no, no. As the intel comes out, we'll see that Trump knew what we're now seeing, which is that we were at the last off ramp where we had a chance to defang them enough that they couldn't bully the region and we could actually do something to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. And so we had to move. Entirely possible that that's true. But either way, we are in the war. Now that we're in the war, whether we should be or not, we're in the war. And now the bad news is that we do not appear to have the ability to prosecute this war because at this stage of the game, not making any Moral statements about whether one country should or should not be able to go and bully another country. This is just where you go. Are you looking to protect your country and your interests? If you are defanging from a nuclear program and a ballistic missile program, the government on earth that has said over and over and over and over and over and over and over that you're the big Satan and that they chant death to America, that's probably not the people that you want to have a nuclear weapon. So we're in this war. We should want to make sure that we end this war to our advantage. And at this point, we're not going to be able to do that if we cannot keep the pedal to the metal. In terms of making this war so costly to Iran that they want a negotiated settlement, I don't have any reason to believe based on actions and based on every analyst I've ever heard speak about Iran, I don't have any reason to believe anything other than the fact that they use negotiations as astaltime tactic and that they do not have a plan to acquiesce. We are not able to put enough pressure on them to get them to be forced to acquiesce. And so we're both going to do this loop. We're going to go and negotiate. While we're negotiating, Iran's going to make a bunch of money selling oil and the US Is going to try to build up their stockpiles. Iran is going to build up their stockpiles. They're going to continue to go underground deeper and deeper to make sure that we it's harder and harder to reach them. And so it becomes the antibiotics trap. And what happens with antibiotics, the reason that it gets so risky and the reason they tell you once you start taking antibiotics, you need to take the whole run of it and not stop just because your symptoms go away. You've got to take it all the way is because what ends up happening is you're killing off all the weak bacteria and the ones that are resistant to the antibiotics that might still die if you kept going, they end up surviving and you stop early because the symptoms went away. Now they regroup and those that bacteria starts multiplying. But now the only ones multiplying are the ones that are resistant to the antibiotics. And so now you took the time off, they recolonized, you hit them again, but they're all resistant, so it doesn't do as much. You pause again because you're running out of antibiotics, they multiply again. You try to hit Them again. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, oh, we're in real trouble. So that feels like the exact strategy that we're running right now. So, again, I'm not saying we ever should have done this in the first place, but I am saying now that you're in it, this is the world's dumbest way to handle it. So, not, not expecting good things to come out of this, but we don't have enough information to know which of those three reads is true. So I'm giving you my bias, but we don't have all the information yet. We'll see.

[Drew]

I don't know. I. I get that, you know, we might be have a lack of ammunition now, but I feel like America, with the Pentagon and how much money they got, they could spend something up. So I feel like if we really are in dire straits, we can hit the panic button and get a couple thousand spun up in the next 30 to 90 days. Trump will just tell the American people that we. We're close on the deal. That's where we're chilling.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What story runs in your head that makes you think that's true? Can you pinpoint it?

[Drew]

Yes. When you have enough money, you can mobilize anybody to do anything. And Pentagon has the most money of every government branch that we have had in the last 10. In the last 10 years. And you got Palmer, Lucky and Alex Karp, who are on both sides trying to reinvent the warfare in the modern era. And I think between the two of them and Lockheed and everybody else who, who's seeing their margins go away, they would step up and say, yes, we'll take that contract. Yes, we'll get it done in 90 days. Yes, we'll bomb the shit out of Iran.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, I love that analysis. I think that is literally the only hope. I think every day about Lucky Palmer and the fact that he is building weapons, he says, for China, but he's building weapons that could be manufactured on automobile lines. The only thing that worries me about that is the narrative that America often tells itself is not about our current crop of, of incredible engineering talent, which I will include Elon Musk in that. We don't tell ourselves that story. We tell ourselves the story of World War II. And there's that phenomenal quote from the Japanese admiral, I believe, who says, I fear that we have just woken a sleeping dragon and filled them with a terrible resolve. And that is only possible because that does play out to be exactly correct. That's only possible because at the time, we were A manufacturing powerhouse. And so right now, we might have some legacy manufacturing abilities that maybe we can sort of dust the rust off and spin back up. But I think it's going to look more like the timeline did for Ukraine to become a manufacturing superpower, which is like three years. So you're. And they also had people in the world like us to send them munitions. So the problem is that this isn't going to be measured in six months. This is going to be 18 months. This is going to be. Be three years. And so, yes, I am such a believer in America as the collector of international talent. So Alex Karp, I believe, was born in America. Lucky Palmer was definitely born in America. But Elon's an import man. And so I believe that we have collected enough incredible talent from the world over that if we are sufficiently motivated to do this, that we will do it. The problem is I don't know what. What percentage of these brilliant engineers actually believe in America, believe that America should prosecute this war. And so I have a bad feeling that you've got brilliant engineers that are like, I don't want anything to do with the US Government. I don't want to be anywhere near that, and I'm going to get spit on, yelled at by people that see me somewhere else. Like, I don't know if you saw Tommy Robinson was at, like, a fight somewhere or something. I don't know. Anyway, he was in a Middle Eastern country, probably the uae, but I don't know that for sure. And a British boxer who I believe is Muslim approached him on the red carpet and just starts berating him. So keep in mind that he's not talking about any of that. He's, like, there for the fight, and the guy ends up shoving him and, like, it, like, becomes a whole real thing. So imagine you're an engineer. That's not your life life. You don't want to get down like that. All the dinner parties you're at, they're all like, we're culturally, the acceptable narrative is still so left. Like, if you look at all the stuff that we put out from a Hollywood standpoint, it's all left. So there's so much of, like, anti, certainly anti the military. So I worry that we will have a hard time recruiting the best and the brightest to focus on the military. Now, the three that we've named, those three are already bought in. They understand that America has to be muscular, has to defend itself. Myself, but I don't know that that's going to be a very popular refrain.

[Drew]

We've started many ICE agents and we've recruited a hundred thousand in no time. So I feel like when the price is right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, but you admit that we recruited a bunch of under trained people that were creating problems. And so it's like listen, it isn't impossible and I so want to be on your team and I love that.

[Drew]

No, no, no. This is very exciting.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But like if you look even the greatest technologists of our time, there's only one that's able to do something that's an important America. China's ungodly at this, but in America the only people, the only person that has shown that he can build something from scratch at a rate that is just bewildering to the entire rest of humanity is Elon Musk. And right now Elon Musk isn't involved in the war effort at all. At least not publicly. Maybe secretly he's doing something, but it's like AI. Yes. And so there he'll be able to help. And not necessarily weapons, but like that'll be a big part of the cyber warfare and defense. And there, there will be a lot that we can do there. And so maybe I'm discounting that too much, but that's my only concern. That Palmer's amazing. Maybe I don't understand like how good he is at spinning up manufacturing facilities, but having spun up a manufacturing, multiple manufacturing facilities myself, that is hard and it's time consuming. So I will be surprised if this happens as fast as we want too.

[Drew]

Yeah, I, I think the one positive about Elon is that he set the trend. So it's kind of like Ray Kroc. Everybody talks about McDonald's and Ray Kroc and it's not that he's a genius because he made burgers, but he was a genius for two reasons. One, he did an assembly line fact way of food. And that never happened before. So Starbucks, Denny's, all these other subsequent chains came because McDonald's said okay, one burger here, one pet here is a 1, 2, 3 system for food. Anything that we've seen with like cars. But the second thing that people love is like once they've seen that, then everybody's able to take that and then duplicate that model. So I think like Ray Kroc, Elon has set an engineering standard that I think a lot of other tech bros both ogle and they, you know, Elon is a superman. That's their Jordan equivalent. Everybody wants to be like Elon. They think he's the best ever. So it's one of Those things that I think he created this system that other people would emulate. Especially if the Pentagon is writing the checks, especially like they want to get their man to like, oh, I can be the next this guy. And the pending. I could throw me 500 billion to save the war, save the, like America. I'll take that narrative. I'll become a saint. And yes, people won't like me, But I'll get 100 million subs on Eli, on Twitter's on X and you know, a house somewhere. Yeah, and presidential pats on the back.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So fingers crossed, you know, we'll see.

[Drew]

We'll get there, we'll get there. Okay, we got a bunch of supers coming up, but I want to kind of, I want to force in this Fed conversation. I know we have like 13 seconds to talk about it though, but.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, we can speed run. This will be. You'll have to probably pull me off. This is very much like a dog with a bone here, but there's something very interesting going on. Okay, so this thing started recently going viral on X. We'll play it and then I'll give you a little background on the clip itself. It was not what I expected when I started doing the research.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Yeah, it's worrisome. You know, the Fed basically has become now just a giant hedge fund. It's lost $1 trillion, you know, and counting. It's going to be a gigantic loss. What it does is borrows money at 5.4% from banks and then dumps it into government bonds. So think what that trade does that causes the government to think that, that it's better off than it is. And so that encouraged the government to be short when rates were zero. So why did the government, you know, borrow so much in T bills? Well, because the Fed was buying the bonds and it made it look like yields were going to stay low for, remember the low for long phrase? So we've got these multiple problems that are going on and it endangers the dollar. So that's the basic.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so here's the interesting thing. This clip is two years old.

[Drew]

Wow.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So I'm like, okay, why is this like popping off now? And I was like, first of all, he's making some wild fucking claims. Go back to the very beginning of this clip and hit play again. Listen to what he's. He's only going to get a couple sentences in. I'm going to tell you to stop. But listen to the claim that he says at the beginning.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Yeah, it's worrisome, you know, the Fed basically has become now just a giant hedge fund. It's lost $1 trillion, you know, and counting. It's going to be a gigantic loss. What it does is borrows money at 5.4% from banks and then dumps it into government bonds.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Pause.

[Guest or Interviewee]

So think. What.

[Tom Bilyeu]

How does the Fed borrow money from banks?

[Drew]

I thought they gave money to the banks.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Correct. So why is he saying that they borrow money from the banks?

[Drew]

Help me, Tom. I don't know the answer.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This shit made me want to ram my head through a crazy glass wall. This is where I realize, God, you start really learning about the economy, and then you come across Steve Keen. You're like, wait. There are parts of this, by the way. I cannot wait to talk to him about how he factors gdp, because anyway, he's doing a thing there that is not embraced by the world at large. So there's much to research there, but nonetheless realize, like, oh, there's a part of this that I was not thinking about. I'd heard it before, but it didn't take hold.

[Shannon Maldonado]

Hold.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So this guy says, the Fed is borrowing money from banks. And I was like, what? What do you mean? The Fed prints money? What are we talking about here? How does the Fed borrow money from banks? And I was like, that isn't the mechanism by which this works. And that both is and isn't true. So here's how money comes into being. So when you have. You want to issue government debt. So by law, if you run a deficit, then you. You have to get the capital for that deficit through government bonds. So you're going to sell those government bonds. Now, if people have money that's already been distributed and they want to buy those bonds, then you're not. There's no inflation. People buy them and they say, this is what I want to do with my money. This is how I'm going to put my money to work. Okay, cool. But when you put those out into the market, the question is, who actually buys those bonds? So when the government puts up a bond, Drew, who buys them in the initial auction?

[Drew]

The people, the banks, the corporations. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All of them.

[Shannon Maldonado]

Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

False. It's just the banks. So I actually don't know about corporations, but I know for sure. I'm almost certain only the banks. People can't. A normal person is not allowed to buy debt from the government, so they buy it. The banks first buy that debt. So the money now comes into existence. Instance as debt, as interest bearing debt. Okay? So now when the Fed becomes the borrower of last resort, what they will end up doing is if they're doing quantitative easing, they're going to go buy that government debt from the bank with money that they created. So they brought that money into existence by putting reserves into the bank's account. So that money, just like this, is how the system works. Clickety clack. The bank now has money in its reserve account, which is what they use to buy the bonds when they come on the market, should they choose to. And then as a method of quantitative easing, because what ends up happening is the bank sort of fills their coffers. They don't want to buy anymore. And the people have bought what they're going to bought. They don't want to buy anymore because they can buy them in the secondary auction. And so now it's like, well, we have a deficit, we have to issue these bonds, we have to make good on this money. I just walked you through how those get out there. The Fed creates money for the banks and their reserves. The bank then buys those at initial auction. Now though, everybody's full. We don't want to raise rates to entice the average person to buy more. So we, the Fed end up going to the bank banks and buying the debt off of them. But all the money that those were bought with in the first place was created by the Fed. So the Fed gave banks money, they bought the debt and then they act like, I've got to borrow that money off of you or I've got to buy that loan off of you. It's madness. And so I'm just like, wait, hold on. It's like giving somebody money and then borrowing it back off of them. That shit is wild and that. But that's exactly what happens. Now I'm sure, sure that when you go down looking at, you have to have, it's like this arms race. You have to charge the interest, you have to get it into the system somehow. There has to be a mechanism by which people are incentivized to loan or not loan the money to buy, to hold. And so I won't be surprised that once you decide you're going to have a central bank, these are the things that you have to do. But dude, as you start like going in and like pulling it apart, you start realizing, hold on. Also, hedge funds, their whole thing is just arbitrage. I never really stopped to think about what the fuck is a hedge fund actually doing. A hedge fund is just arbitraging. They're buying low, they're selling high. So not selling high, technically, they're Buying something that has at a low interest rate. So this is the Japanese yen carry trade. This is going to be my next area of real exploration. So yen carry trade works like this. The bank of Japan has reasons that they want to keep their interest rates ridiculously low. Not going to go into it now, but they have reasons. So they hold their interest rate really, really low. And then people the world over go, ooh, I can take advantage of that. So I'm only going to pay, let's say 2% for you. But in the US I'm going to be able to make 5%, 10% off of the stock market. Cool. I'm going to take a bunch of money invested in the stock market. I'm paying 2 here, I'm making 7 here. Let's say I've got a 5% spread. Cool. And that's a hedge fund. And they basically just look for every place that they can do that kind of thing. And the fact that that's how the Fed is getting themselves in trouble, which I have a feeling though this is a feeling. I haven't researched this yet, but I have a feeling this is why Kevin Warsh is saying, hey, we want to start reducing the holdings in the Fed because of this. Because they were buying things that were very low yielding. Sorry, they were selling things that were very low yielding. So what they're taking in in interest payments is let's say 1 or 2%. But now what they're picking up as the quantitative easing guys is giving them an obligation of like 5, 6%. I think 5.4% is what he said there. I'm not sure what the exact number is today. Somewhere between four and four and five and a half, something like that. And so now they're hemorrhaging real dollars. Because I was like, well, hold on, the Fed could just hold the money. Because what people don't think about, like they'll say, oh my God, like people are so underwater. The value of the 10 year treasury, let's say, has gone down so much. Well, it's not gone down in nominal terms, it'll go down in real terms based on inflation. But if you hold the maturity, you get the principal back and you earn the interest that they promised to pay, they're not going to default on that. But that's all nominal versus real. God, this is unfortunate where that stuff, it just gets confusing enough, people's eyes just roll back in their head. But so now though, even though that is true, the discrepancy between all the assets that they own Paying out, out, let's say 2%. And the liabilities that they have, this is the Fed of 4.5%. Somewhere in that neighborhood, that gap, they're hemorrhaging billions of dollars a year, but they're not going to hemorrhage. What are they going to do? They're going to print. So now they're creating this inflationary loss by bad essential what he's calling hedge fund policy. So I'm like, dude, Hamilton did not want us to have a central bank for this, this reason. How smart was this guy? How the smart was he? Dude, he was young when he. At 32, bro, how do you figure all this out anyway? So he was like, you can't do it if you do it. Because America ended up doing it very briefly because they understood the power of debt, but they put a ticking clock on it. So it was like 19 or 20 years and then the central bank closed, like had to by law, had to close. And then the whole 1913 thing. Anyway, story for another day. But it's like once you understand how useful but deranging central banks are, you realize how every empire before us has ended up here and how we've ended up here. It's like you wouldn't have America almost certainly if you didn't have that 20 year stretch to jumpstart it and get it going and take us from being a farming culture to an industrial culture. We use debt and a central bank to pull that off. And it worked so well and we grew so fast that we could actually overcome the debt, pay it off, close the bank. Now though, we're in a position, we're not growing. Not fast enough, nowhere near fast enough. So now you have a mechanism that just accumulates debt, debt and you can't grow your way out of it. So two times before we've grew our way out of this problem. Period number one, the industrialization of America. America, period number two, post World War II. Those two times, baby, we used manufacturing industrialization to be a global juggernaut and to grow our way out of this. Now what is your only shot? It only has two letters.

[Drew]

AI.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You got it, baby. And so now we're going so fucking ham on like, well if it doesn't work, we're fucked anyway. So just pour everything into AI. Fingers crossed. Hope, pray. Gotta get on the other side of this because it's our only shot of growing our way out of this. If it doesn't work, then you're back on my timeline, which we have roughly nine years left and all hell breaks loose. If it does work, then hey, what the problem is. Central banks are all good. It's so fucking wild. We are playing the most vicious game of chicken on like if you've ever seen. There's this road in China, I think that's like hugging up against the mountain wall and people try to walk it. And you'll like, see people like on it and they're fucking trembling and their knees are shaking because they're soaked even though there's a rope. They're so terrified if you slip, you just die. It's such like a long fall. There's no, like, oh, there's that one guy that fell, but he only broke his femur. No, you're dead. Like, it's just end of story. And that's the game of chicken that we're playing right now. Betting everything on AI. It's so crazy. Gallows humor to the extreme. And here's the problem, because I need to understand cause and effect. Boy, some days do I wish I had just never gotten into the economy. There was like a fork in the road and I could have just gone straight into video games and that. All my content's about video games and Covid it all up.

[Drew]

Drew Covid it all up in more ways than one. It's funny when you talk about the Fed and the banking's relationship, it remind me of like OpenAI and Nvidia and how it's like they just finance a $250 million deal to their customer that's then buying renting stuff from them. So you're, you're paying for a person who's renting something from you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So it's all true.

[Drew]

It's synonymous. It's interesting that the thing that we're using to get us out of the central bank is borrowing on principles that the central bank is using. So it'd be like that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, boys and girls, we have an AI masterclass coming up. It is a free class. August 5th at 1pm Pacific. I'm going to teach you guys how to use AI to build your company. You can do it with one person. If you're already a full fledged company, you just want to understand how to better integrate AI. I'm going to walk you guys through it again in it is free. Free. Free. August 5th at 1pm all right, thank you guys all for being here. We love you guys so much. Until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compound you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop 8 ounces of water and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient dense superfoods, everything that used to require six, seven different supplements and perfect planning now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts. With your first subscription. You get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus, K2 and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.comimpact to claim this offer.