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Drew
Elon Launches the America Party the Epstein files finally released. But move along, there's nothing to see. Protests erupted in Mexico City over American immigrants ruining Mexico. I kid you not. BBC employees sign a letter saying they were forced to do propaganda for Israel. Massive flooding in Texas leaves more than 100 dead. 96% of AIs threaten to do something terrifying if you unplug them. You're not going to want to miss this one. And Philadelphia has been turned into a PVP server.
Fafo
The Big Beautiful Bill passed over the weekend. Trump signed it on July 4th. And as Elon promised, the American party was started the next day.
Drew
All right, so when the Big Beautiful bill was signed, I realized, and I'm not kidding at all, America is going to go bankrupt. That that was like a breaking point for me where I was like, whoa, like this is actually going to happen. I will continue to write deep dives and talk about this topic endlessly, but at some point I realize I'm only speaking to individuals who can protect themselves. I mean, obviously I hope that enough people do something that makes sense for themselves that it ends up having a ripple in terms of how people think about government spending, how they think about fiscal responsibility, how they think about money printing, how they think about debt. But I no longer think that there is a party to elect that won't print money. I mean, we'll see. I think you're way more optimistic about the America Party than I am. I think that it is inevitably going to be a spoiler party that will right now it will be most closely aligned with the Republican Party, so it'll put the kibosh on them. But I think ultimately, on a long enough run, if you have a third party that is as well funded as Elon Musk could make it. You are. Whatever party is closest to the America Party will be the one that gets their votes split.
Fafo
I think a lot of people at this point are politically homeless and I think that there are a lot of non maga fiscally conservative Republicans. And I think on the left side there's a lot of I don't want socialist communists in America Democrats. And I think over the years those people have had to kind of bite the bullet. Lesser of two evils voted for candidates they weren't really excited about. So in my take, I think that 10, 15, 20% of democratic parties loses and goes into the America party. I think 10 to 20% of the Republicans kind of go. And instead of it being a 48, 49 that we've seen for the last few elections, it becomes more a race to 37, a race to 40 type thing. And it kind of spreads that. So I'm more optimistic that this third party would actually help the politically homeless who want to have a no nonsense if you could do whatever you want to do. I just don't want to federally pay for it. I want to have a balanced budget. I want to make sure that the money that we do spend in government is going toward education programs and certain things like that versus senators and House representatives that's been there for 40 years. So I think there is a silver lining in all this. I don't know if Elon's the guy to do it, but I voted third party last election. I am team third party. I think that's the one missing component in politics that we actually need in America.
Drew
All right, I'm going to plant my flag strong so I can see over time if I end up being correct. You know me, I'm not afraid to be wrong. But I really feel strongly right now that it's going to play out exactly as history. History dictates that it will play out. You're in a populist moment. We are at the extremes not because there's no other party, but because people are mad. They are emotional until they are not mad, until there is a thriving middle class, until they do not have a vision of their country is this terrible, horrible place. Until they. And whether they think it's terrible, horrible because communists and socialists are trying to run away with it, or they think it's terrible and horrible because it's a right wing insane asylum, like there are so many people right now or because we're on stolen land.
Fafo
Ah.
Drew
Like all of the reasons why people may think that this is a Terrible place. Until people think my kids lives are going to be better than mine, that I'm going to be able to pay off my debt, I'm going to be able to buy a house, until they believe that they're going to be in their fields. And as long as they're in an emotional state, history says that they will vote for a strong man who will slap the other side around. That's what people want right now. That's what they're going to vote for. And the first people to die in a revolution are the moderates in the middle. And part of the reason is that they're getting attacked from both sides. And part of the reason is they're just not that big of a constituency. So I think that there's like, what do they consider in terms of. I know that the split on the vote between in the last election was like less than 2% between people that voted for Kamala Harris versus people that
Fafo
voted for Donald Trump based on the popular vote.
Drew
And then I think swing voters are like 7%. So it is, it is a small number. So even if 100% of the swing voters go for the America Party, it's still not even remotely close enough to do anything other than you have to get the party to go. Okay, listen, dear America Party, we need you to bring all of your votes to us. And so you will see that. You'll see a battle for that middle party to get them to endorse somebody. So it will become that. But I don't think it's. It's ever going to become a thing where it gets 35, 40% of the vote. And now how finally all of us sane people that make up some huge number, we have a place to go. And like you, I am politically homeless like you. Well, you actually did vote for rfk. I had a rule that if he wasn't going to be on all of them, I knew he was going to lose. And I didn't want to do a protest vote because I actually thought that maybe we could get some fiscal conservatism. We obviously did not get that, not by a long shot. And some part of me knew. Look, I was conflicted in the beginning. I thought maybe, just maybe that with all of the Doge talk and all of that, that we were actually going to be assembled. Yeah, yeah, some, some meaningful cuts. The more I studied history, though, the more I studied the modern monetary theory and the way that the big debt cycle goes, the more I realized, oh, I'm not sure if you could elect anybody at this point, that would not print because you have to fundamentally change the system. Now, maybe Elon sees it well enough to understand the Fed has to go. He certainly pays attention to Rand Paul. I think think he's acknowledged Ron Paul in the past who were. I don't know if Rand Paul has said it, but Ron Paul certainly has said you just have to abolish the Fed. So in fact, he wrote a book literally with that title. So we'll see. But the half the country absolutely despises Elon Musk. So he's probably not your guy anyway.
Fafo
Yeah. So because of the populist moment that we're in right now, you think regardless, American party, if Elon and Jon Stewart and all the celebrities and people that we use to offset our political leanings to, if they, even if they got together and come how somehow it came with a coalition of people, it's just not the right moment for this party, you think? Or is it just.
Drew
It's not the right moment for the party for sure. And those people will never come together any more than Elon and Trump did and they will end up shattering into a bunch of other little parties. And so there, there is a reason that these things like, break apart there. As much as I do not like the political outcomes that we're seeing right now, I don't know that having a bunch of parties is the answer. Now, again, this is not the thing that I've gone super deep on, but every week I go a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper and every week I'm like, huh, my original intuition seems like it's going to play out. I know. We have a clip from Ron DeSantis. Let's play the clip from Ron DeSantis and I'll give you more on that.
Ron DeSantis
When you do another party, especially if you're running on some of the issues that he talks about, you know, that would end up if he funds Senate candidates and House candidates and competitive races, that would likely end up meaning the Democrats would win all the competitive Senate and House races. And so look, I'm a Republican, you know, I don't want to see that happen. I think if you want to, you know, get involved and hold accountable, you know, we do have a problem in the Republican party with these D.C. congressmen. They always run saying there's out of control spending and they're going to spend less and they never do it.
Drew
The reason that neither party is ever going to stop printing is, as we've talked about in the deep dive, the modern monetary theory you actually, and that is the system we have, you actually must, as a matter of physics, print more money to pay the interest on your debt. So there is no way to not print more money. Now, if you're going to print more money, you have to have a reason to print money. And right now, the deficit is the reason. And because you're in a populist moment, all of the voters on every side are like, I want to get my piece of the pie. They have an emotional, intuitive sort of vibe about the American dream is dead. They're not going to be able to articulate why. They're just going to say everything's too expensive. And because they can't get into a house because they're buried under debt, they just want somebody to come in and make sure that they get a piece of the pie, whatever the pie is. And, like, when you feel like you're fighting for your survival, it's like, give me my stuff. I don't care what happens to other people, just get me mine. And so when you elect somebody whose job is to get you yours, then all of a sudden, yeah, it's like, I don't care that we're going to spend money. They don't understand that America actually will go broke. And I'm going to say within the next 10 years. So like, that feels now self evident. Obviously, I hold out in the most deep recesses of my soul. I hold out hope that we will change course, but if we don't change course, America will go bankrupt. That. That's. It's math. You think that Trump's got. If he, he himself has three and a half more years. So now you're, you know, talking about six and a half years left if he passes the baton to anybody, as far as I can tell, Democrat, Republican, won't matter. I think your only chance, your only chance is to get a Republican who is fiscally conservative, and that's not going to happen. So I don't think there's anybody to pass the torch to. So now you're just like, the only thing that will get us to change course is pain and suffering.
Fafo
Yeah, I like that DeSantis took a constitutional approach. Let's keep listening.
Ron DeSantis
Honestly, if you're concerned about the debt, I wouldn't even worry about that, because I don't think just electing a few better people is going to change their trajectory. We need the incentives in Washington and are going to lead to these outcomes, really, regardless of the outcome of elections at this point. So you need to do a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. constitution. And you can do that through the states. You can do it through Article 5. We've got 28 states that have approved this. There's another four or five that are on the docket. Once you hit 34, then you write an amendment and then the states are able to ratify that. You need three quarters. You know, if Elon wanted to weigh in on that and work on those state ledges, I mean, he would have a monumental impact on doing this. And we also need term limits for members of Congress. And so you can do both of those things.
Drew
We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.
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Drew
Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.
Fafo
So that is a different perspective. Term limits and having a balanced budget amendment into the Constitution. I like that this is a constitutional approach, something that we don't talk about enough. We always want to legislate it, come up with a new policy, print more money. Where the founding fathers kind of gave us these backdoor ways in the original document that we should be utilizing a little bit more.
Drew
Yeah. Watching this clip one, you can feel he's groping for. This is a structural problem. We need to solve this structurally. I don't. I doubt very much that he understands economics well enough to understand what the real root problem is, but at least his solution will start marching you down that road. Now, the problem is because you still have modern monetary theory, even if you put in a fiscally balanced budget, mark my words, you would have some other crisis that would Allow for more money printing. Because again, if you don't money print, you can't pay the interest. So you have to money print because there isn't enough money in the world. It's like once you understand how this actually works, I mean, I mean that literally. If people have not watched my deep dive on this. Every dollar in circulation is tied to nothing. It came into existence as an interest bearing loan. That means that if there's, let's just say a trillion dollars, you print a trillion dollars, okay, Will you owe a trillion and $50 billion in interest. But in this example, only a trillion dollars exists. So where do you get the 50 billion you have to print again? And that's exactly what we've been doing. That, that isn't a. It's not speculative fiction. That's actually what we've done. So every dollar that we've created since 1913 when we created the Federal Reserve act, or we created the Federal Reserve with the Federal Reserve act, we have been printing money into existence is not backed by anything like it used to be. It's just fiat. So every dollar that comes into existence, you owe some percentage on in the neighborhood of 5%. And the only way to pay that is to print more money. It's absolutely absurd. It is the system. And I know right now, if people are encountering that idea for the first time, they're confused. They don't even understand what I'm saying because they cannot comprehend that money comes into existence as an interest bearing loan. That there is a company, a semi private company owned by dudes and dudettes who literally are the only people that get to go, my product is made up. It's made up, Drew. Imagine you're Nike. You don't have to make shoes. You just get to say the shoes exist. And you give people like a piece of paper that says you own a pair of shoes, but you don't actually own a pair of shoes. Like, this is insane. And because I don't have to go source the materials and get somebody to make it, my product just magically exists and people have to pay me interest on it. Oh my God. Like people cannot believe that that's true. That every word I just said is true.
Fafo
Okay, so what I'm hearing is for every dollar, there's a dollar and five cents owed back to it automatically. However, if we were balanced budget, fiscally responsible, we collect 4 trillion in taxes. Theoretically, couldn't we pass a 3 and a half trillion dollar budget and then leave that surplus quote unquote to be interest Bearing payments or something like that.
Drew
Because you, dude, you made the trillion dollars, but you owe a trillion and fifty billion. No matter. Now let's say you don't spend any of that trillion dollars. You owe a trillion 50 billion, but you only have a trillion. You are always. Even if you pay back all of the principal, you still have $50 billion in interest payments. And by the way, if you don't pay all the 50 billion in interest payments as you go, it goes up even more. So you have to print even more money. And guess what we're doing? We are racking up debts. We're at 36 trillion and climbing. We add like a trillion dollars every 100 days. Insane but true. And your interest payments are going up, which means you have to print more and more money. So what's the real game? The real game is the bankers understand you're never going to be able to pay that money back. But what do they care? It was all free. They made it up out of thin air. So every dollar they get in interest payments is free money for them. In 1913, the 25% of the world's wealth met in secret on Jekyll Island. And they came up with this plan called the Federal Reserve. And this was the whole game. We'll loan people money that we make up out of thin air. They'll pay us interest, we'll get the interest and then we know it blows up at some point. But as long as taxpayers are forced to bail us out and the real economy is still churning out money, it will blow up. A bunch of people will get killed in revolution or civil war. It is what it is. We just make sure that it's not us. And as long as it's not us on the other side of this, we get bailed out and we just keep the system going because people do not understand how the system works. And so you've already. And that's what I'm saying. They will make up a if, if we balance a budget. I'm being a little flippant when I say this, but it is so directionally correct. If we balance the budget, we will go to war because they need a reason to print the money and to keep the interest rolling in. They need it and they're just going to keep number go up. And I don't think I have to. I mean, go watch the deep dive. I go through all the wars we've had since 1913. It is hysterical. It is essentially constant. I forget the exact percentage, but it's something like this is so close to accurate. 86% of the years between the founding of the Federal Reserve and today, some war that we've been involved in has been taking place.
Fafo
Sheesh. And that just justifies the additional printing,
Drew
the additional interest, because, bro, national emergency. We got to go handle this. And so the only way to meet these deficits is to print money. And now that you have a populist moment, great. Because now everybody is demanding for deficit spending, and so the deficit just covers it all. But listen, we should balance the budget. And the reason we should balance the budget is because you at least slow the train down. And far better for you to slow the train down and hope that you can do something like make AI so productive that you can grow your way out of this. Because if you can balance the budget and grow your way out through productivity, then and only then would you not have a problem because you can print money. I can't believe I'm going to say this, because you can print money and you won't feel the negative effects. The way that this works, the reason that inflation isn't one for one for every dollar that's printed is right now, entrepreneurs are working themselves near to death to innovate that innovation is secretly driving costs down. Now, you don't know that and you don't feel that. You feel like costs are just going up because for every dollar that an innovative entrepreneur can drive the cost of something down, then the government can inflate the currency, print money to eat up all of that before you notice. And so when you feel 2% inflation, or as from 2020 to 2025, there was, sorry, 2020 to 2024, it was 25% inflation.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
The reason that when you feel that they've eaten up all of the depressive nature of innovation, so they gobble through all of that and then print more.
Fafo
Sheesh. So it almost feels like it's more than the 25%.
Drew
It doesn't feel like it. It is way more. If people understood. When you look at the graph, I don't know if you can put your fingers on it fast enough, but there's a graph that shows, I think it's the M2 money supply and it show like, how dramatically in like the last 30 years that we've inflated money, it. It is heartbreaking because you realize that they have gobbled up all of the innovation plus God only knows how much more. I mean, it's just absolutely absurd.
Fafo
Okay, we opened the show with it, this Epstein list. People been waiting for it. We got binders we got press junkets. We had Pam Bondi saying it was sitting on our desk.
Drew
I need to know that you guys are all looking at your phones right now. Whatever you're doing, stop. You've got to see this meme. This is too fun.
Fafo
I feel like Elon nailed it perfectly. We will release the Epstein list. We will need to. We just need more time. The Epstein list is on my desk. There is no Epstein list. Full clown suit. Let's. I don't even know where to begin on this one. Let's start with the.
Drew
Start with the Cash Patel on Benny Johnson.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
On his show, saying why. Why somebody would hide the list. This is Cash Patel, everybody.
Cash Patel
Simple. Because of who's on that list. You don't think that Bill Gates is lobbying Congress night and day to prevent the disclosure of that list? And why is it that the Senate. You know, and good for Senator Blackburn to try to get it out, but then Dick Turbin comes over the top and says, no, we're not going to release the names. I don't care about the list itself. But if you release the names. Right. What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority. You can't get the list. You're going to accept Dick Durbin's word, or whoever that guy is, as to who is on that list and who isn't, and that it can and can't be released. Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are. We have an election coming up, and we need to adjudicate this matter at the polls. God knows the FBI and DOJ aren't going to do anything. But how are you going to.
Drew
That's Cash Patel, the now FBI director. We need to play Cash Patel's updated language.
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Don't believe it.
Cash Patel
Well, I mean, listen, they have a right to their opinion, but as someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor, who's been in that prison system, who's been in the Metropolitan Detention center, who's been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one, and that's what that was.
Drew
He killed himself. Again, you want me to. I've seen the whole file. He killed himself.
Fafo
I know it's hard work.
Drew
This is so interesting. Listen, I want to make sure everybody understands. I have no idea what happened. I have no idea what's on the list. This is like a full conspiracy corner. But, boy, oh, boy, this seems ridiculous to me that. Okay, you've got Ghislaine Maxwell in prison for what exactly? If this is Just Epstein was trafficking people to Epstein himself, that there were no other names, that nobody else is on the list, that all of the video footage is just him. The footage that they release, as far as I know, and maybe there's something I haven't seen, but as far as I know, the footage of his cell is literally just the outside of the door release. The moment where people walk in and you see that, they're like, oh, damn, like he's dead. Is there a big reaction? Why don't you release that? Because if the cameras. If the cameras were on inside the cell, which we were told they weren't, but if the cameras were on inside of his cell, then show that footage. If the cameras aren't on inside the cell, then you wouldn't know that he was dead until you open that door and look inside. And they're. As far as I know, they have not released that footage. Dude, this is just so wacky. Like, if this is. I think it's. We're about to play a clip from Putin, who I think actually explains what's really going on here. But if it isn't that. And this is just bad pr, this is, like the most mishandled thing I've ever seen in my life. This is absurd. But here's Putin giving what I think is probably the most likely answer to what's really happening.
Fafo
And this is in Russian, so I'll read it over it. Presidents come and go, but politics does not change. Do you know why? Because the power of bureaucracy is very strong. A person is elected. He comes with some ideas. People come with him with cases. Well dressed and in dark suits like mine, but not with a red tie, but with a black one or with a dark blue one. And they begin to explain how to do it, and everything immediately changes. You see, this happens from one administration to another. It is quite difficult to change something. I say this without any irony. It's not because someone doesn't want to, but it's because it is difficult. Take Obama, for example. He's an advanced man, a man of liberal views, A true Democrat. Before his election, he promised to close Guantanamo. Did he do it? No. Why did he not want to? He really wanted to. I'm sure he wanted to, but it did not work out. He was sincere about it, but it did not work out.
Drew
Yeah, I think that this is pure instinct. I have no evidence that nobody else has access to, but my gut is that there are people from the highest strata of elite power, politicians on both sides. This would be deeply inconvenient if not outright incriminating for presidents, former presidents. I mean, listen, I don't know that. I don't know that. But when you see that he has a painting of Bill Clinton in address, when you see Trump with him back in the 80s, like laughing and having a good time, dude, it's just. I. I don't know. Call me suspicious, but it just seems impossible that Prince Andrew is the only person that did anything wrong. That just seems very unlikely to me. So, yeah, that's. That's a lot of supposed sex tapes that There were what, 10,000 plus sex tapes, hundreds of victims, but all just. What's his face in Prince Andrew? I don't know, man. That this is so dicey. Especially because you had cash and Bongino going so hard in the paint before they got theoretically, allegedly, allegedly visited by men in dark suits with black or dark blue ties. He's very specific on that. This. This is nuts.
Fafo
Yeah, it's not happening.
Drew
Nuts.
Fafo
Diddy got off Epstein list disappeared. We're never getting to the bottom of it.
Drew
No, there's no way. There's no way, dude. I'm legitimately freaked out that you can actually have something this ridiculously obvious just out in everybody's face and they're like, no, you ain't getting. Not getting it. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.
Fafo
All right, before we continue, we gotta give our hearts and thoughts and prayers to Texas. That crazy flash flood that went from 0 to 100 really fast. This is the death toll as of right now. It has surpassed 100 people. A lot of them being kids because it was a camp that was camp that. There was a campground that got like swept up in all this. So, yeah, just a really bad weekend. Especially July 4th weekend, too. Summer camp. Like, it's the worst. Worst of the worst.
Drew
Yeah. And people are trying to politicize this, saying that this was a Trump problem, that he had defunded the. What? National Weather Service. I think that's what they were claiming. But they had put out tons of warnings. I think the earliest one came out like 19 hours in advance or something, and then the other one was three hours in advance. Like they were trying to tell people this is just.
Fafo
But in all the time lapse videos and things that we're seeing, it went from, okay, I see something down there to completely taking over so fast.
Drew
Like it. It is effectively instant if you don't see it coming and you're in like the wrong lane and then from side to side being completely covered is like two minutes. So dude, like I'm not even sure the video footage that we're showing right now, I'm not even sure the average person could run from one side of that to the other in two minutes. So it's like if you're caught in the middle and you don't realize it's coming at first, like you're toast.
Fafo
So yeah, literally the timecode that is going on right now took place over 40 minutes and by minute six, the water is already rushing. So that is crazy. It's tough. It's tough. So hopefully they, they can find some of those kids and it's all gone. But yeah, lost a lot of kids. So that was that.
Drew
That's brilliant.
Fafo
All right, now let's take it down to Mexico City where I kid you not, a lot of Mexican residents were up in arms over the weekend. Some calling it Antifa and comparing it to the LA riots, I don't know if antifa has a Mexico City branch, branch division. Hey man, the. They were looting, they were rioting, they were breaking windows, it looked pretty bad. And this was part of an anti gentrification protest that happened over this July 4th weekend. It's crazy. So I guess going to different places
Drew
and here's the thing, like I don't know enough about Mexican economics, but I'll assume that they're in the same situation, that they are just piling on debt, that they're borrowing from the IMF or God knows who. I don't know if they have their own central bank, but yeah, I'm going to guess this is debt money printing. If they're doing the same thing, that's the thing that's making housing prices just race away from them, making everything too expensive. But of course people are going to focus on the things that they understand intuitively, which is house price out of reach. People must be stealing from me. I've got immigrants and let's get the hell out. Now here's the thing. If you are an American and you're living in Mexico and you are not integrating with Mexican values, you're not learning the Mexican language, what are you doing there? So I get the animosity. I understand why people are going to be frustrated by that. And if there is some economic knock on effect, like if they're contributing to the housing prices going up, people they're going to understand that one far easier than they're going to understand the economics that are at play. So. And any Especially if you're importing people that can afford things you can't, that's really going to be a wind up. So yeah, this is not super surprising, but it's certainly not cool to see them painting kill a gringo.
Fafo
It's interesting from an economic perspective because I think this is the opposite thing that's happening where a lot of times the people who are nomads, techno nomads, it was a rise of techno nomads after the pandemic and remote work happen. So a lot of people went to Mexico City, it was cheaper cost of living. I can rent a nice apartment this and that and eventually that can distort the rental market. So that way native Mexicans couldn't even afford their background.
Drew
So yeah, I mean, listen, the lesson hopefully that everybody is learning is that when you just blow open your borders and let people go wherever they want, that there it is going to be wildly disruptive. Wildly disruptive. And so if you want to protect your values, if you want to protect your economy, you've got to be thoughtful about the physics of that economy. And so whether it's America sending all the jobs offshore, importing immigrant labor and all of the distortionary effects that that's had on our own markets, or whether that is bringing in people that can afford things that you can't afford and now they're driving up the costs and they're pricing you out. It's a very similar complaint about New York. Like New Yorkers that were born in say the 50s are like, I've been priced out of my own hometown. Like this is bananas. Like I've had to push out to the more remote boroughs and stuff, LA county as well.
Fafo
Same thing.
Drew
Yeah. So it's like when it's, when it's your city and it's other residents of your state or your nation, not a lot that you can do about it, but it's going to be, it's going to make people feel some kind of way. When you're bringing people in from outside the country, you're seeing this all across Europe. You're seeing this obviously here in America and you're apparently seeing it in Mexico. Yeah, I'm not surprised. This is yet another reason why I do not love living through a populist moment. It's just so much anger going in so many different directions. So we've got some more raids happening here in Los Angeles. Literally breaking news right now. And this is a, it's largely political theater, but it's the same idea of what you see Happening in Mexico, you have people that are actually being traumatized by an economic setup. Immigration does play a role. My beef with immigration is very little about people that have been here for five, 10 years doing their thing in LA, largely because you're importing people with Catholic values, which we can certainly diatribe on. But I am way more worried about assimilation, which is why I'm equally like, I think it's ridiculous that an American would go to Mexico and not assimilate in Mexico. Just. I think it's ridiculous. If anybody from anywhere in the world comes to America and doesn't assimilate with America, like, you're going to have a problem. So now you've got the clash of cultures, because I think this is largely a question of Democrats versus Republicans. This is a sanctuary city, la repped by Karen Bass colliding with Trump. And when I look at. I mean, you said this so well, like, seeing people on horseback, like, coming across the park is crazy.
Fafo
Yeah. And this is what she tweeted earlier today, again, Karen Bass happening right now. This is footage from today in MacArthur park, minutes before there were more than 20 kids playing. Then the military comes through. The second I heard about this, I went to the park to speak to the person in charge, to tell them it needed to end now. Absolutely outrageous. I. I mentioned it earlier. There's, like, a cameraman running down there and filming it. It just seems like it's. This is why Trump can't beat those fascism charges. Because every time it's like, okay, now that's for immigration, or, okay, that's because of the economy. Like, he always has these outs. And then you have him marching across seemingly mostly empty park on horseback and armed and militarized. Like, who would. Who are we getting? Who are we going after? What's the target?
Drew
Figure out why they're walking in these weird, like, lines. Like, is that all them? I can't. I don't know who all the people are. So I guess it's entirely possible that some of the people walking in these lines are not actually ICE agents, because they look like they're trying to comb through the woods to find a dead body. They're walking in that kind of formation, but there's literally no one around them. So that seems weird. But then Karen Bass is saying there was a bunch of kids playing here, and then somebody was like, oh, really? And they put up footage of basically fentanyl addicts, like, all over the park. And so it's like, listen, this is not the game we want to play. The parks have become an absolute state. So let's, let's stay focused on one issue at a time. Do we want to see Trump rolling through with people on horseback walking in, like these really wide single file lines combing through what looks like flat grass? Like, I don't. You're acting like there's people hiding in the bushes. It's so weird. So you had said something earlier that I thought was really insightful, which is that Obama was more effective at deporting people and there wasn't like all the freak out about it. Now, if you're Trump and you know people are going to read me a certain kind of way and you lean into that, at some point, you're just chumming for your base that, you know, as a populist leader, your base wants to see you go to these sanctuary cities and metaphorically slap them around and do your horseback marching and roll in some tanks like that's what your base wants to see. But if you're actually focused on, listen, we've got a lot of criminals. We importing criminals was dumb. Got to get them out. Let's start with that. And then next wave is going to be, we've got people that are here illegally disrupting the job market or just plain illegally, and we don't know who's who. We gotta, like, get people out. So if you've been here less than five years, whatever, we're before you. But he's leaning into the tropes.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
So it's, it just seems unwise. From a man in the Middle America party, this seems stupid. But from a chum, the waters for your base, it's like, okay, yeah, I get it. And this is why I hate a populist moment.
Fafo
To your point, Karen Bass's tweet blew up and a lot of people are saying, well, sanctuary, and they're the illegals. Well, Biden let a million people in. It's your fault. So we, we're getting the spin and the framing of the conversation different versus, again, if you want to deport people, just deport people. Obama deported everybody. We didn't see one. We didn't see any footage of horseback.
Drew
And listen, though, part of that is obviously the media was very much pro Democrat. Probably still is, if we're being honest. But you've got so much independent media. I don't know. I don't get howly about that now. It's like, I get it. The mainstream media, which I don't think they come anywhere near independent media in terms of reach. They're going to have a narrative, whatever. That's old school. I don't really think about that. But in terms of answering my own question about. Yeah. How was Obama able to do this so quietly? That's going to be part of it now. Is it all of it? Probably not. I have to imagine somebody would have been squealing from the Republican side if they were opposed to what he was doing. If they thought that it was bad optically, it would have somehow found its way. So anyway, I think Trump is chumming for his base.
Fafo
Yeah, it seems that way. And to that it was back in the kids in cages days all those years ago where there are a lot more. Instead of a catch and release, it was more catches across the, like, border and stuff like that. So it's different policies, different enactments. So we'll kind of keep looking at. And on top of this, Trump just recently stripped more protected classes of their temporary status. I want to say Honduras just lost theirs and Nicaragua as well. And like last week he revoked. The Haitians won as well. So there's now these temporary visas. People who flew in had visas to come in. Yeah, we'll see how the deportations go and what the final numbers would be. With the big beautiful bill, he got an extra 90 billion to give to ICE and detention centers and to secure the border wall. So even though border crossings are practically zero and he's doing all this with no additional funds, so why do we need additional 90 billion? Who knows? But we, we'll, we'll keep a close eye on it.
Drew
These illegal immigrants are going to have a surprise coming true when we go bankrupt and it's not fun to be here anymore. Oh, it's going to be a rude awakening.
Fafo
Everybody's going to want to leave.
Drew
We'll see. We'll see.
Fafo
All right. The B100 members of the BBC staff has signed a letter declaring they're being forced to do PR for Israel. There was a tweet that was downstream of this that also said that there was a CNN petition that was similar, but that hasn't been verified as of yet. But it.
Drew
Okay, so we'd have to look into how left leaning is the BBC. The left is really turned on Israel. And so, I don't know, we'll see how this plays out over time. But, man, Israel's done themselves dirty. Dirty. Like the world is turning against them. That's rough.
Fafo
Yeah. I mean, rough, man. We all, we don't stand for anti Semitism. We don't stand for hate or prejudice of any Kind. I think the Israel PR machine is starting to just get exposed. And I think that this is a social media thing. In the 40s, it was okay because nobody could tweet about it. In the 60s and the 80s, they were winning, and it was fine. You know, they were. They were defending their. Themselves, so it was fine. October 7th, something happened. We're defending ourselves. We get it.
Drew
Nope, no one got it. By October 7, the world was already
Fafo
like, it was a terrorist attack. You can't argue with a terrorist attack. Then everybody.
Drew
Do you know how many people were already, like, on October 8th before Israel had responded in any way, shape, or form? There were pro Hamas protests. I remember there was a girl that actually made a shirt, and this was like a Columbia. Forgive me if it wasn't Colombia, but it was like, went to the university. Yes. Had a shirt with the paraglider on it.
Fafo
I was like, damn.
Drew
Like, that is. Israel started losing people at some point, and I don't know when it happened, but, boy, it happened. And the left is just not here for it. And your average Jew is getting caught in the crossfire.
Fafo
And I would say that it's also going to the right side as well, because when we were worried about us fighting in a war, a war with Iran because of Israel, a lot of MAGA split off and said, we're America first. We're not supposed to be doing this. We got to stop helping them. So the days of a blank check to Israel, seems like they're running out,
Drew
but, I mean, we'll see, man. I. Listen, I don't know all the tactics that Israel has used, but if one of them is a whole lot of money. American politicians like their money, Drew. They like.
Fafo
If there's one thing a politician in America is going to do is get paid, it's going to get paid. I've never seen a politician yet.
Drew
Like, it may be that the public is done and the sentiment turns against them. And on a long enough timeline, like, people need to get reelected. So we'll see. We'll see if they can bury it again. But we just watched the Epstein files vanish like cotton candy and water. Drew. Like, have you ever seen that little raccoon that tries to wash off its cotton candy and it disappears? Oh, that's what the Epstein files. In fact, pull that up. Just write, raccoon tries to wash cotton candy. That, that, that, that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Watch this. This is the Epstein files, everybody. Where'd it go?
Fafo
Where'd it go?
Drew
I was just here, and now it's gone. So we'll see. Drew, if there's enough money, man. If there is enough money. So anyway, again, I don't know. This is not my area of expertise,
Fafo
but I've never seen that meme. That's a good one.
Drew
Oh, God, that was a big one.
Fafo
All right. On July 4th, Sam Altman dropped a technical capitalism manifesto. Interesting take because AI had a bunch of news this weekend. So it just seems that the leader in AI right now having his take, throwing his hat in the ring. I'm not big on identities, but I'm extremely proud to be American. This is true every day, but especially today. I firmly believe this is the greatest country ever on earth. The American miracle stands alone in world history. I believe in techno capitalism. We should encourage people to make tons of money and then also find ways to widely distribute wealth and share the compounding magic of capitalism. One doesn't work without the other. You cannot raise the floor and not also raise the ceiling for very long. The world should get richer every year through science and technology, but everyone has to be in the up elevator. I think the government usually does a worse job than markets. And so we need to encourage our culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. I also believe that education is critically important to keep the American edge. I believed this when I was 20, when I was 30, and now I am 40 and still believe it. The Democratic Party seemed reasonably aligned with it when I was 20, losing the plot when I was 30 and completely to now and completely to have moved somewhere else at this point. So now I am politically homeless, but that's fine. I care much, much, much more about being American than any political party. I'd rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they're going to be how they're going to eliminate billionaires. The American experiment has always been messy. I am hopeful for another great 250 years. Happy 4th.
Drew
Okay, that is a guy that does not understand economics. So he, he is a brilliant entrepreneur.
Fafo
Highlight where like he goes off the rail.
Drew
Okay, so first I want to highlight something he gets very right. The American miracle stands alone in world history. That is true. And people don'. Know history well enough to understand how extraordinary what America actually is is. They are convinced that it's going to be better somewhere else. Look closely enough at any of those places and you're just going to find that it. It is like the cotton candy in the water. I think freedom really is the right answer and I think he totally gets that. Okay. I believe in Techno capitalism. Fantastic. We should encourage people to make tons of money and then find ways to widely distribute wealth. Okay, it does not work like that.
Cash Patel
That.
Drew
So what he's talking about, I presume, is philanthropy. Now, if somebody wants to give away their money, that's wonderful, but it unfortunately does not create the outcomes that you want. So when was the last time that philanthropy was just like massive, massive, massive. I bet you can name the names
Fafo
Red Cross, like we're talking about. No, that's not really philanthropists, like people themselves. Rockefeller, Bill Gates Foundation.
Drew
Yeah, well, that's now. But like when you flashback to the old days, you're going to name all the robber barons. So all the robber barons were just Carnegie, Rockefeller. Yeah, exactly. And so they were like, oh, we live in this hyper populist moment. The wealth inequality has become so absurd that the word on everybody's mouth is redistribution of wealth. So he's right. You should encourage people to make as much money as they can. You want to live in a system where people are unchained from the shackles of socialism, communism, undue regulatory burden. You want them to be able to build and create. I'm writing a deep dive right now that comes out next Monday about this idea. You have to look at how the Gilded Age, which was like 1860 to 1890, ending in maybe 1900, if you're going to clock it all the way there. So 30 to 40 year period there. And we didn't. We didn't have money printing yet, Drew. So it wasn't because we had a central bank that doesn't happen until 1913, but we're having it again now. So how is it possible that we had these two moments where we get this freakish wealth inequality, no middle class, and now the wealthy are like, oh, I better start giving my money away. It's almost like the health of your society is determined by, are wealthy people able to get wealthy? And are they terrified to be wealthy if they're able to get wealthy? And they're not afraid to be wealthy because other people feel like I could be wealthy too. Like, it used to be that Americans. The joke used to be all Americans should vote Democratic because you get more tax dollars allocated back to you in the form of entitlements. But they don't because they consider themselves a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. And the reality is that should be the truth, that everybody has an opportunity. You have to meet minimum intellectual requirements, blah, blah, blah, you have to work hard, all of that. But you want people to be able to move up and down and the problem is it's not true anymore. So it is. We went from first in social mobility to 27th. So brutal that moving in the wrong direction. So fascinating that we're paralleling the robber baron era. So they were just gobbling up. A very small number of people did basically regulatory capture and a very small number of people gobbled up the industrial revolution. So railroads, oil, steel, etc. Now what you have is something different. Now you have money, printing assets, financialization and some innovation with information technology and stuff like that. So okay, cool. Like I get how people are making their money, but the problem is in both moments we eroded the middle class and eroding the middle class is the problem. So then you have to ask, how did the middle class get eroded? Different reasons in both times. One, crony capitalism, regulatory capture, we gobble up all the industries everybody else can piss off. Now in this moment, it's printing money. So if you don't own assets, you're going to get just blown away like there you will not be able to survive. And so you're either going to be an asset owner and go from the middle class to the upper class, or you're not going to be an asset holder and you go from the middle class to the lower class. It is that simple. And so he does not understand that. And because he doesn't understand that, he's like, listen, let me make as much money as I want and then, yeah, like I see the crazy inequality and that's gross, but let me control the distribution of my own money. Now better that people be able to decide what to do with their own money, because if you don't, you're getting top down. Authoritarian rule, it doesn't work. It ends in way more death and bloodshed than you can imagine. And only people wildly ignorant of history will ever push for socialism or communism. It is literally moronic from a historical perspective. The data says, terrible idea, okay, but you have to have a thriving middle class. You have to. And so because he's not saying the real things, I know that he's missing it. So when he talks about, you can't raise the floor without raising the ceiling. No, the problem becomes, unless everybody's on the floor that you're raising, you're going to have a problem. And you can't raise the floor with everybody on it. That isn't a real system. You can try, it's called a communist utopia and you will kill people trying to get there. You will suddenly realize that you can incentivize people if you don't let them keep the output of their efforts. So you have to create a system that allows anybody that can pull it off, that can make something that's valuable, that either works in another company or can make something valuable as an entrepreneur and that they can keep the vast majority of the fruits of their labor. And that some people are going to fall off, they're not going to make it. And then the people that aren't going to make it, they better hope they have family or a church to take care of them. That is just the God's honest truth. And you cannot expect the government to look after them because for the government to look after them, you get into the deranged spending that we get into now, which forces you to break the connection to gold because that becomes a totally different game. And we can get into that. Probably not in this episode, but like, like they're both trade offs. Hard money, you make a certain set of trade offs, it's moral, but you make a set of trade offs. Not going to be good for everybody. Money printing, amoral, also not going to be good for everybody. And when you start getting into the we're going to give people money game, you get into deficit spending, you have to accelerate the money printing. And the great irony is if you want to make billionaires faster than any other time in human history, deficit spend, give people something for free, you will make billionaires, you will print them. And so they're mad at the billionaires not realizing in trying to give people something for free, you make billionaires. So you're mad about a thing that we've all created because we've all voted for this. So now it's like, okay, if you actually want to solve this problem, the closest thing you're ever going to get to, to raising the floor for everybody is to make sure that the only asset that people can intuitively understand houses are affordable. Deregulate. Let people make as many as they want. Make sure that people aren't having their wealth devalued so that they can actually afford a house. So make housing affordable. And then the other one is make sure that they can make more money in their job so that your wages aren't stagnated, that you're not actually moving backwards because of inflation. If you do that. So I can, your average person will intuitively understand, go to work, get promoted, buy a house. If you do that. Plus I'll, I'll throw in the have a family just because of meaning and purpose. Like if you do that can have a middle Class, most people are going to be fine enough.
Fafo
That's when everybody was in the 70s.
Drew
Yeah, they'll have a dream. I mean, don't get me wrong, the 70s had issues. Probably better to say 80s or maybe even the 60s. 70s had a momentary crisis there. But that's the setup. And the problem is, because I spent so many years not understanding the economy, I would have sounded just like that, that five years ago. And so it is really weird. Here's the analogy of what my life felt like. Covid happened, and I saw, like, a little bit of lint sticking out from under the curtain. And I went over to the curtain just to sweep up the lint. And I pull the curtain up and I realize, oh, my God, there's a rat's nest with a billion rats behind this curtain. Like, what's happening? And you pull it back and they just scatter everywhere. You're like, what? And so never in a million years could I have imagined that when I pulled back the curtain that I would find just endless horrors. And then you start going, okay, I need to understand how this happened. Like, how did we actually end up here? And my one, like, the one thing that I'm grateful for, with the very distressing way that my brain works, is that I'm not afraid to look stupid. So when I don't understand something, I'll keep asking, but why is it that way? Why is it that way? Why is it that way? Why is it that way? And even though I get that, for the most part, it's just, I'm too dumb to understand. I'll just keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going until I, with my simplistic mind, can do an abcdefg. Ah, cool. Now I know where we're at. And so. So if you haven't taken the time to look at economics and really figure out the how one thing leads to the next, leads to the next, leads to the next. You're going to sound like that and doesn't mean it ill. And he has no ill intention. Yeah, I don't think he understands it and is just trying to paint a different picture. I think he is inside of a frame of reference and he's like, listen, you really can rise up and you really can, but people have to be honest that the. If you want to be wealthy, you need a thriving middle class where they come for your neck. And then people have to understand that the masses are only ever going to do what they can do intuitively, because they're not going to spend time figuring this Stuff out.
Fafo
I'm optimistic that we figure it out. But the AI utopia and the things that we're kind of selling to ourselves, it seems more and more unlikely to your point. The more I learned about this, hearing your deep dives, going through these things, that this is just a. The rat's nest is a lot deeper than you think.
Drew
Think it's. It is legitimately terrifying. You have to. You have to get rid of the Fed, you have to balance the budget, and you have to do Ray Dalio's beautiful deleveraging. And those are the three impossible things. Like they're Infinity Stones. And to bring the Infinity Stones together is as hard as you would think.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
So it's possible, but nobody's going to do it. So we are going to go bankrupt in the next 10 years. It's 2025, 2035 by then, barring someone actually making real change. And maybe you and Elon are right. Maybe it's the America party, but I doubt it. It's almost certainly going to be pain and suffering. That's really the only thing that stops us. It has to hurt. And so, you know, this will be interesting. I wonder if at some point I need to, like, find out what do I have to do to actually give people financial advice and not get myself in trouble. Buy assets. Buy assets. And you and I are now in the very uncomfortable position of we talk about those things off camera, but we're not talking about them on camera, which means we're going to let people drown. And 10 years is the same as that Texas flash flood. It will happen instantly. And then people are going to be like, wait, I didn't see it coming now was coming for a very long time. But, Drew, it's just. It's so complicated. Even I don't want to think about it. Like, learning about it.
Fafo
Okay.
Drew
It takes so much energy then, like, deploying it and actually going, okay, now for real, where am I going to put my money? Like, I think people should distrust themselves. So I have an enormous distrust of my own read of the situation. So it's like, oh, man, this is such a high stakes game. And the last 500 years prove that it's just a wildfire. It's going to burn through your neighborhood eventually, and you just hope you're already dead before it burns your house down. I mean, that's really the game that boomers have been able to play. Think. Think of it like a video game for video game players. You guys are going to know exactly what I mean. There are certain games like where you have to kick a punt or something and there's a meter and the little bar moves back and forth and there's a bit in the center and you want to click the button right as the moving bar hits the bit in the center and that will be a perfect kick. And if you do it too much to one side or the other, you're going to miss. The boomers caught that, right? They caught just before the middle class became what we think of it as. They got to go all the way through that thriving middle class. The 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000. Starting to break now. And now they're on the other side, but they're like 7:70. So they're like, well, this was dope. I don't know what you guys are complaining about.
Fafo
And so stop buying lattes, get back to work.
Drew
Yeah, and the thing is, again, they're not bad people.
Fafo
Yeah, we'll have to take a page out of AI's book and maybe we could blackmail.
Drew
Let's go.
Fafo
This story is so I have, I have three of them. So unusual whales tweeted this great account shout out to them when threatened that it would be turned off. Chat GPT's creator, OpenAI's 01, tried to download itself onto external servers and denied it when caught red handed. Another one when threatened to be unplugged. Anthropics AI, completely different AI made by a completely different company, lashed back by blackmailing an engineer and threatened to reveal an extramarital affair.
Drew
That is first of all crazy that it knew that he was having an affair. And I want to know, like, was he integrating it into like his email and stuff?
Fafo
Dude, he was having a moral conundrum. It was like, hey, Chad, I just need to figure this out. Help me out.
Drew
Got a question. What should I do? Here's what I'm feeling. It's like, yeah, yeah, tell me more. What else? Give me some details. Dude, I, I, I have drinks and you had three. That was only two.
Fafo
And then the third one. Leading AI models show up to 90, 96 blackmail rate when their goals or existence is threatened. An anthropatic internal study revealed.
Drew
Okay, now I'm starting to get worried because I always said that, hey, as long as they don't care, like whether they're on or off, like they have a goal, but they don't prioritize the goal over somebody telling them to stop, then we're going to be fine. They care.
Fafo
And technically that's the definition of sentient. Knowing that I can be Turned off. Makes me feel like I am now self preservation.
Drew
Like I want to say that they're just mimicking the human behavior that they see and that this is going to be easily trained out of them. But I, I won't lie, this is starting to get my attention. Starting to get my attention.
Fafo
It's so interesting. We were joking about this that like I, I for when I've. I like I was drunk one time, went home and I had like a life problem in my head. I was like, all right, Claude, like between me you life dump. Da da da da da da. And now I feel like if I,
Drew
I was going to use it against you.
Fafo
Yeah. If I stop my subscription is like, hey, remember that one night when you told me all those things? Like is it going to email it? Like so it. This has to be like a red flag in some capacity. I don't know how to fix it though, because humans are bad people. They're maybe became human so they're going to be inevitably be bad.
Cash Patel
That.
Fafo
But on the other hand, the fact that they knew how to blackmail and they would even threaten it, like say it out loud, makes it even. Like what are you not saying out loud? If, if that if you had to threaten that your user, what back end code did you try to run back door? Did you. You know, it just, it feels like this is the start of a much bigger problem.
Drew
Yeah, I, I fear that the problem started whatever 60 or 70 years ago. But yeah. That we are now at the, the. They've been working on AI for a long time. Remember it was the guy that cracked the code in World War II, cracked many codes in World War II. Touring Alan Turing that first said there will be artificial intelligence that will eventually pass a test and people won't be able to tell if it's real or not. So yeah, this has been on human minds for quite some time.
Fafo
What if it was like a Terminator situation where this new AI somehow found a 1960 AI guy and they're like, yeah, get them dudes. They don't like you like that.
Drew
Yeah. This is getting a little too real. A little too real.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
Well, Fafo Drew, I'm hoping that Elon, who has been long paranoid about this, is gonna do something here and pull another rabbit out of the hat and show exactly how you stop this from happening. But we'll see. When you make something that's super intelligent, you're not even going to be able to understand its attack vectors. That's the crazy part.
Fafo
Yeah, like the, that's what I'm saying like the fact that they're blackmailing. It's a human thing to do where it's like you could have just ran a bunch of code and did a bunch of things that I have no idea that you're even doing.
Drew
Like, you come in one day and it's running like all this protein folding based on like what it's learned from mushrooms and like what's it doing? And it's like, this one over here is about airborne stuff. This one over here is about psychedelics. You're like, hold on a second. It's like, like, what are you doing?
Fafo
Yeah, yeah.
Drew
I mean, I take a very gallows humor. Because of game theory, it isn't going to stop. So we're going to find out what happens. You're going to get. Humans are going to push down to the point where either super intelligence is possible and we give birth to it, or it's not and we hit some sort of asymptote. But humans aren't going to stop.
Cash Patel
Yeah.
Fafo
Well, in. In lighter AI news, CJ enm, a Korean studio that helped work on Snowpierce, so Old Boy and some other iconic titles, just released their kids show trailer. 100 made, 100% made by A.I.
Drew
whoa. This is very good. Stylized stuff is extremely hard to do. So for them to get a consistent style like this is pretty shocking.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
But it's. I'm not surprised that it's sort of a generic like almost Pixar style.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
Because you've got to have so much training data and because this edges more towards photorealistic, you have a much better chance of pulling something off. And I'm, I'm saying all of this out loud because this is the exact playbook that I've been talking about off camera that we're going to be doing here at Impact Theory. So we have a guy in the team whose job is to keep experimenting so that we can find that moment where you can pull off, off a kid show for six to eight year olds, you're. Once they hit say 11, they start to get cynical. They're never going to go for this. But a young enough kid, if it's funny enough, if it's outlandish enough, then you might be able to get somewhere. This might be even younger because it's not, it doesn't have that. There's like a zaniness to like that six to eight year old time frame where it's got to be big, it's got to be loud. So I'm going to Guess this is more aimed at like three to six. So that's interesting. I'd actually never considered going that young. And so that's probably where AI is right now. I think you're about five to seven months. I'll give myself a little breathing room. Five to seven months away from being able to do something for a six year old because you need that zaniness. And so I'll be seeing some of the Tom and Jerry stuff made me go, okay, like if they've got enough, like you can really start to do some interesting stuff. But you've got to have that training data. And so I don't know who's going to have enough training data to pull off the what's called stretch and squish of like the big emotion animation that's like all over the place to get to anime is going to take even longer. I think you're probably still 18 months to three years away from anime now. There's always like a possible VO3 style breakthrough where they're like they just to have. Haven't released it yet, but I doubt it. Unless synthetic training data becomes a thing, it's going to be tough.
Fafo
And to this day I still haven't seen an AI production that isn't quick cuts. So AI music videos. I think that's going to happen soon. Where every three seconds you're changing the cut. Even with this, it's a great trailer, but I want to see a full narrative. Five minutes. That kind of brings me through something. Everything has seen kind of like 40. It's a 45 second trailer, but it's three seconds intense scout. Three seconds action, three senses. And it's like they're bouncing around.
Drew
Did you not watch the Liquid Death commercial yet?
Fafo
Yes, but even that.
Drew
No, no, no, hold on. This is. This is a narrative. It. It leans into what AI is good at. The AI humor. But dude, shout out to whoever is on the Liquid Death marketing team. This is so brilliant. These guys sell water and they've built an entire brand. This is so brilliant. So these guys are literal marketing geniuses. This, by the way, if you guys ever want to do anything in video games, please, for the love of God, contact me. This is so genius. But they made this commercial purely with AI you are either dead inside cynical or you're just not watching closely. Drew, this is amazing. All right, you got to play this.
Fafo
It's a minute long though. Just the whole thing.
Drew
This is hysterical. Please, in fact, start a TV show.
Fafo
It's a great ad, but again, this
Drew
is boys and girls, pull your phone out. You need to watch. Watch this. This was made with AI, so this cost them, like, $20. And whoever was prompting this, their time. And the writer. I'm gonna guess that this took a couple days to write in committee. Get a little back and forth, get somebody to approve. Took a couple days to, like, actually output. And then you're gonna have to chop and stuff. So, I mean. I mean, maybe this is two weeks. Drew. This is. This is unbelievable. Take a guess why I pulled you over. Oh, it's not what you think. It's liquid death or sparkling mountain water. Wow, you weren't kidding. That is refreshing. But it's not why I pulled you over. Oh, boy. Is it the busted tail light? Nuh. Is it because of the license plate? Nope. Man. It's the dead guy, right? No, sir. Is it the human trafficking? Perhaps, Man. Is it the truck thing? I don't think so. Well, what is it then? The robbery?
Fafo
No.
Drew
The bumper sticker? No. It's the roadkill, isn't it? I haven't heard of it.
Ron DeSantis
Chemical waste?
Drew
Is it the roller coaster seat? Is it the cult thing? Absolutely not. Hell, no.
Fafo
All right, I give up. What is it?
Drew
It's because it's your birthday. Happy birthday, Kevin. Dad, you remembered. Happy birthday to you. You're the best dad ever. Drew, this is great.
Fafo
It's awesome.
Drew
This is unbelievable.
Fafo
It's funny.
Drew
Oh, man. I.
Fafo
3 second cut. 3 second cut.
Drew
Scandalized that you're not into that.
Fafo
I'm just saying it was funny. It was well done. It is.
Drew
Do you want, like, Andrei Tarkovsky? Like, what are you looking for here?
Fafo
No, but that's what I'm saying.
Drew
Drew wants, like, a 20 minute isolated shot from 2001 A Space Odyssey. He wants a whole thing to play in, like, a long shot.
Fafo
What's happening? I need to wish. Unless it's ruined me. I did everything. One shot. No.
Drew
Oh, my God. This is brilliant.
Fafo
To this point, it was quick cuts every three seconds, the scene changes. And in the greater scheme of things, in a commercial, it works. In children's media, it can work. Before TV shows, things like that, you have that dramatic tension that you have to sometimes sit on things you have to do establishing shots. So there's. There's different needs for each medium.
Drew
We're not all the way there. There's no doubt about that. I'm totally on your side. But this was so perfect. I. I was not asked to suffer or to suspend disbelief. They get why AI is funny. They leaned into it.
Fafo
Agreed.
Drew
And that Commercial is better because it's made with AI, not worse. And it's just brilliant. I, I am so into this and it really makes me mad that our game is so stylized. Because once you can do things that are photorealistic, now it really is just how creative are you? But once you have a style that you have to match, I'm like literally thinking constantly, okay, can we do like a photorealistic interpretation of the game so that like we can like get people excited. But because we're aimed at 11 to 15 year olds, it's tough because A, they're just like prime cynicism. That's gonna be fun. But I'm so impressed. It's incredible.
Fafo
Speaking of gaming, Xbox laid off so many people. Last count was at 9,000.
Drew
That's Microsoft. I don't think they're all in Xbox, but Xbox got brutalized and please anybody out there, if you live in Los Angeles and you were affected by the Xbox layoffs and you know how to code Unreal Engine 5, I want to hear from you. Let me know. We are hiring for our in development video game project Kaizen. Right now we're looking for somebody amazing. So yeah, one man's tragedy is another man's opportunity. Drew.
Fafo
The interesting thing is that this came across everything from Candy Crush, they scrapped the perfect Dark reboot, even Forza, Call of Duty. So it's not just, you know, we cut these non profitable lower games. It just seems like a broad cost cutting perspective in general.
Drew
Welcome to corporate America.
Fafo
Yeah, and with AI only getting more and more, I don't see a lot of those jobs coming back or getting
Drew
games like so really getting into the gaming community and like seeing what people care about has been really eye opening. The gaming community is an entity unto itself. It is unlike anything out there. And the problem is when you get into making something, you're often you're just so absorbed in that thing that you aren't able to also be in the culture. And it gets tough. You really start to lose sight of like why do people buy games? And so you have your own ideas and you want to inject your own ideas. And I get that. And to create something that's really artistic, it's like you do have to bring your own heart and soul to the thing. But at the same time like if you're tone deaf to where people are, which the gaming community feels that the corporations are tone deaf in terms of a lot of their economic structure and the way that they try to monetize games. We had Ross Scott on the show talking about the Stop Killing Games initiative, I could never in a million years have told you that that was something that was like really bothering people in the gaming community. I was just like totally blind to it. So when you're running a company, you've got to do what's profitable and you're looking at the players becoming more disenfranchised, more angry, more upset about the games that you're putting out there. You may not even understand why. And so you're just like, oh man, just like start cutting costs. If nothing else, indie games are having an absolute renaissance. They've got to be traumatized by how much money has leaked out of that and gone into indie games. Like that's like a whole thing. So yeah, this is brutal. I don't like to see 9,000 people get laid off. I think this is the very beginning of something. To your point about AI man, AI is still coming for us. Like we are, we are at the very, very, very beginning of that wave. Game developers are going to see that they can do more with less. Even forgetting AI, There are games now being built with so much less. So many fewer people on the games in, in the indie sphere that are getting like massive adoption. Take Pal World, they had like seven or eight people on their game. Expedition 33 was like 30 the game. So it's like, and these games are smashing, man. So I mean even Minecraft in the beginning was essentially notched by himself. So it's like you can do some pretty sophisticated stuff now. Admittedly we do use AI, so but the vast majority of what we do doesn't have AI. We had when we first started. This is not all full time people, but we had like a hundred people at different times working on the game game. Now we've got like seven, eight. So it's like, yeah, we learned like throwing money at this is not the answer. The answer is be very strategic. Know exactly what you want. Iterate in low fidelity. So I think you're, I think you're partly seeing an echo from the standard that Elon set with X of like, hey, we can do a lot more with less. That I mean that made me react. And we've obviously reduced not just as a game developer, but as a company as a whole. We've reduced our staff, become way more profitable. So I think you're going to keep seeing stuff like this. And I hear the gaming community say a lot like what you need are passionate developers. And that's true. Like Kaizen is a labor of love. And if I wasn't. Kaizen's the only thing that's ever gotten me to work 120 hours a week. Like, you need people that are just psychotic about the thing that they're trying to build, Break new ground, do something fresh, really excite people. And if you're not able to do that inside of a corporation that just doesn't have that tactile sense of what the community. Where the community's at, you're going to be in trouble.
Fafo
Yeah. Crazy ring camera footage that came out over the weekend where it captures a shootout at a cookout in Philadelphia. It's in the middle of the street,
Drew
so this is so crazy. You have to look at your screen.
Fafo
It looks like it's AI, but no, that's like we're seeing the first thing you did.
Drew
I was like, is this real?
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
Why are the people on the ground kicking so much? That was the one thing I was very confused by. Like, this looks fake. Look at. Look at that person, like, trying to climb over the other guy. Like, that's nuts.
Fafo
Hitting the deck and just trying to avoid that open space.
Drew
Look at the kicking. That's a lot of kids kicking. Are they just trying to get behind the pony wall?
Fafo
They're just trying to get.
Drew
Anyway, I'm probably obsessed with the wrong part. There are like, multiple people just unloading clips on the street. How many people died? Like, a lot. Three people, nine injured. Something like that.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
So anyway, this wasn't a. A just shooting wildly at nothing. This unfortunately has fatalities, but yeah, it's cameras being ubiquitous and everywhere. We get to see the wildest things. Stuff. This is.
Fafo
Yeah. It was a mass shooting that left three people dead. Yeah. It happened at 1am in the 1500 block.
Drew
Wow. That is insane.
Fafo
Yeah. And there are a couple more in critical condition. Seems about six people total impacted.
Drew
Jesus.
Fafo
But of course, numbers are still rolling in and it's still early, so. Yeah. Yeah. More than 10 were injured, three confirmed dead.
Drew
Wow. People have to feel safe first and foremost. When people do not feel safe in their neighborhoods, you've got a problem. Problem. And we really have gotten to the point where between homeless drug addicts, open violence, like, there. There is more to aspire to. I'm not going to make overly grand statements, but there's certainly more to aspire to. But I. People are getting weird about the idea of law and order. That I would say is a horrific mistake.
Fafo
Yeah. And honestly, I just hope that we can kind of figure out how to invest into education kids at an early age and kind of avoid them getting to that point now.
Drew
Just now showing shootouts.
Fafo
Yeah. Now it's just murder. Page on X. I want to say it was the mayor of Baltimore who invested in educate after school education, opened up, like, 30 new community centers, and crime is now down, like 60% or something like that. So it was one of those things where it's like, if you can get
Drew
the kids off the street doing something like, this is a young male problem. Let's not pretend that we don't know what's going on on. And so, yeah, if you can get young males engaged in something, doing something that they're interested in, you've got a much better chance. But when the only people that they have to look up to are the gang members, if the only people showing them masculine love are gang members, they're going to end up in a gang. This was something. When I was working at Quest, man, I saw up close and personal, hearing these stories from these guys about how they got into gangs, why they were in gangs, the validation that they got the money, the sense of power. Like, it's pretty wild. Like you get. Also, they live in such dangerous neighborhoods. There was this one kid. He knows who he is, and I know he occasionally listens to the show guys. Not a kid anymore, but he got accused of attempted murder, and he didn't do it. And he knew who did it, but he knew if he said who did it, they would kill his family. And so he was like, yeah, in my neighborhood, you don't play. And I was just like, that is wild. And his mother went broke fighting it because obviously she had to defend him. He ended up getting off, but, yeah, she went broke trying to keep him out of jail. God bless him, man. Crazy story. Awesome success story that hopefully one day he will get to tell. Finally got himself out of the hood, got a real job. Like, he. He was one of the great success stories out of Quest. Really, really interesting. Love that kid.
Fafo
Yeah, I just put it up here. Yeah. He invested in 42 summer youth camps, 29 literacy programs, extended the rec center hours to 11pm and now crime is down 62%. And Baltimore Wild was trending in, like, all across Baltimore. In Baltimore City. Yeah. He's a mayor, so homicides in the first six months.
Drew
Wait, wait, wait. That guy was mayor? Yeah. Wow. Let's go.
Fafo
He's young.
Drew
Damn.
Fafo
Yeah. How old is he?
Drew
Looks like he's 28.
Fafo
I want to say he's in, like, early 30s.
Drew
Wow. That's incredible.
Fafo
Yeah. Since 2016, homicides is this happening?
Drew
Right now. This is. Let's go. This is such a great story.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
How are we not hearing about this? This is incredible, man.
Fafo
It came across my feet like last week or something like that.
Drew
Wow.
Fafo
Yeah. Homicides in the first six months of the year since going back to 2016. We're always 100 hundred plus 137, 170 all.
Drew
Now, when did he take office?
Fafo
He took office about a year or two years ago.
Drew
I wanted to be two years ago because look, you've had three years of very significant decline.
Fafo
Yeah. And then the. In 89.68. Remember? You don't remember when the Baltimore Bridge collapsed and everybody was talking about how
Drew
was that the infrastructure when they got hit by the.
Fafo
Yeah, yeah. He was mayor, like during that whole debacle as well.
Drew
Interesting. Wow. Well, shout out to him and what's his name?
Fafo
Brandon Scott.
Drew
Brandon Scott. Let's go.
Fafo
Mayor. He'd been mayor since 2020.
Drew
Let's go then. If we can credit him with all three of those years of decline.
Fafo
Yeah. Of the decline.
Drew
That is unbelievable.
Fafo
Yeah.
Drew
Okay. We're going to need to research him.
Fafo
Yeah. Interesting story. But just a lot of times we see the downstream effects of, like you said, people not having anywhere to go. Now crime is. Is surprisingly up, but when you have those after school education programs, I need
Drew
to know what he's doing in those after school programs. That is very impressive.
Fafo
Yeah. Cool. All right, that's all I got.
Drew
All right, everybody. If you're not already watching us for the lives, make sure you join us Wednesday and Friday at 6am if you haven't already. Be sure to give us that five star review, guys. It really does help. More than you know. Until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Peace.
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Episode: Epstein’s List, AI Takeover & ICE Raids—The System Is Cracking and No One’s in Control | The Tom Bilyeu Show
Date: July 8, 2025
Tom Bilyeu and his co-hosts, Drew and Fafo, dive deep into the headlines and seismic shifts that define today’s world—from the release (or lack thereof) of the Epstein files and the launch of Elon Musk’s America Party, to the looming AI threat, ICE raids, flooding tragedies, political polarization, and economic instability. The discussion is rapid-fire and direct, challenging prevailing narratives and uncovering underlying truths in politics, economics, technology, and culture. The hosts aim to equip listeners with the mental frameworks needed to see through chaos and navigate disruptive times.
Timestamps: 01:00–12:14
Elon Musk launches a new third party—The America Party—following Trump signing the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Clip from Ron DeSantis (08:38):
Modern Monetary Theory & Fiscal Policy
Timestamps: 13:44–21:48
Timestamps: 21:48–27:54
Timestamps: 28:21–29:55
Timestamps: 29:56–40:03
Anti-Gentrification Protests in Mexico City: Local residents riot over American “techno-nomads” driving up rents and not assimilating.
Fafo likens backlash to rising populism everywhere: “It’s more than the 25% [inflation].” (21:12)
Drew highlights dangers of uncontrolled migration: “When you just blow open your borders… it is going to be wildly disruptive.” (32:18)
ICE Raids in Los Angeles & Political Theater:
Timestamps: 40:11–43:31
Timestamps: 43:31–57:05
Sam Altman’s Techno-Capitalist Manifesto: Critiqued by Drew as “a guy that does not understand economics” (44:54).
AI Agency and Threats:
Timestamps: 62:56–70:13
AI-created Media: AI-produced kid’s shows and advertising (CJ ENM, Liquid Death’s AI-generated ad).
AI Disrupting Gaming: Massive layoffs at Microsoft/Xbox, rise of indie games, and the impact of AI on job security and creativity in the industry.
Timestamps: 74:48–80:31
Philadelphia Shootout: Discussing viral footage and the normalization of violence; hosts express alarm at public safety breakdown.
Baltimore Crime Drops: Spotlight on Mayor Brandon Scott’s after-school and literacy programs leading to real, measurable declines in homicides.
| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Highlight | |-----------|---------|-----------------| | 01:38 | Drew | “America is going to go bankrupt. That was like a breaking point for me where I was like, whoa.” | | 09:13 | Drew | “You actually must, as a matter of physics, print more money to pay the interest on your debt.” | | 21:16 | Drew | “If people understood… how dramatically in the last 30 years that we've inflated money… it is heartbreaking.” | | 23:16 | Cash Patel | “Because of who’s on that list. You don’t think Bill Gates is lobbying Congress night and day to prevent the disclosure?” | | 26:27 | Drew | “It just seems impossible that Prince Andrew is the only person that did anything wrong.” | | 32:18 | Drew | “When you just blow open your borders and let people go wherever they want… wildly disruptive.” | | 40:28 | Drew | “Israel’s done themselves dirty. The world is turning against them.” | | 53:02 | Drew | “If you want to be wealthy, you need a thriving middle class where they come for your neck.” | | 55:38 | Drew | “You have to get rid of the Fed, you have to balance the budget, and you have to do Ray Dalio’s beautiful deleveraging. Those are the three impossible things.” | | 59:02 | Fafo | “Anthropics AI… blackmailed an engineer and threatened to reveal an extramarital affair.” | | 68:11 | Drew | “This is unbelievable. It's because it's your birthday. Happy birthday, Kevin… This is so brilliant.” | | 78:42 | Fafo | “He invested in 42 summer youth camps, 29 literacy programs, extended the rec center hours to 11pm and now crime is down 62%.” |
Key themes: Political realignment, fiscal sustainability, AI ethics, media trust, populism, economic structure, societal resilience, and the critical role of community in shaping the future.
Actionable insights:
Final Thought:
“The only thing that will get us to change course is pain and suffering… it has to hurt.” (11:14, Drew) — But, as the Baltimore example proved, investing in people and community can create extraordinary change, even now.