The Government Isn’t Hiding Conspiracy… It’s Hiding Something Worse | Andrew Bustamante Pt. 1 X Impact Theory w/ Tom Bilyeu

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast with Tom Bilyeu
Guest: Andrew Bustamante (Ex-CIA Operative)
Episode: "The Government Isn’t Hiding Conspiracy… It’s Hiding Something Worse" | Part 1
Date: November 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Tom Bilyeu sits down with former CIA operative Andrew Bustamante to dissect high-profile current events and longstanding conspiracy theories, focusing on government transparency, incompetence versus conspiracy, and the anatomy of misinformation. The conversation moves fluidly through the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, the complexities of the Epstein files, Israel’s role in global politics, the proliferation of conspiracy thinking, and the mechanics of how power and narrative are wielded in government. Throughout, Bustamante applies “spycraft” logic, analytical frameworks, and realpolitik to help listeners see behind the headlines and memes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Government Secrecy: Hiding Incompetence, Not (Just) Conspiracy

• Branches of Government and Structural Silos

  • Bustamante explains how U.S. government division (executive, legislative, judicial) creates not just checks and balances but verticals that fiercely protect their own domains.
  • The recent silence from the FBI regarding events like the Trump assassination attempt and the killing of Charlie Kirk isn’t necessarily nefarious; often, it’s a matter of protocol or incompetence.

    “A lot of what’s hidden in government is actually incompetence, and that’s not comforting to know, but it’s the truth.” — Andrew Bustamante [03:21]

• Media and Public Expectation

  • Lack of transparency breeds distrust, pulling public focus away from productivity and towards suspicion and self-protection.

    “There’s so much distrust, we’re actually reducing our productivity because we feel like we have to watch our own back.” — Bustamante [06:05]

2. Conspiracies: Anatomy and Psychology

• Conspiracy Gaps: How Conspiracies Take Root

  • Conspiracies flood in whenever a factual public event is followed by an absence of information.

    “Anytime there’s a factual event that’s immediately followed by an absence of information, it just invites conspiracy. Because the human brain does not like an open loop.” — Bustamante [09:57]

• Case Study: Charlie Kirk Assassination

  • Bustamante argues evidence points to an amateur, lone actor, not a coordinated international plot, despite alternative narratives rapidly gaining steam online.

    “The killer for Charlie Kirk shows very strong amateur tendencies. Premeditated, but amateur... he was most likely operating alone.” — Bustamante [07:20]

  • Occam's Razor and Hanlon’s Razor are introduced as essential thinking tools:
    • Occam: simplest answer is often correct.
    • Hanlon: don’t attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence.

3. Combating Conspiracy Thinking: Critical Analysis Tools

• Objective vs. Subjective Information

  • Objective: Proven, verifiable, confirmed by independent sources
  • Subjective: Based on feeling or a single (repetitive) source

    “Many conspiracy theories all boil down to one person or one location... That’s called circular reporting.” — Bustamante [18:06]

  • Importance of source reliability and probability:
    • High reliability + high probability = actionable concern
    • Low reliability + low probability = likely noise

• Navigating the "Torrent" of Information

  • Bustamante likens today's information environment to whitewater rapids: fighting the current is useless; instead, you must learn how to steer, filter, and navigate toward truth.

    “If you try to fight it, it’s going to continue to just choke you... people choose where they want to go in a lot of this stuff.” — Bustamante [19:50]

4. Israel, Anti-Semitism, and Misplaced Blame

• Nuanced View of Israel’s Global Influence

  • Israel’s influence is real but not unique: every state pursues its interests. The tendency to single out Israel for villainy reflects cyclical social biases more than objective reality.

    “Everybody’s trying to manipulate the world... to single out Israel is just juvenile.” — Bustamante [24:44]

  • Blowback and diplomatic costs make the theory of Mossad assassinating Kirk highly implausible.

• Historical Perspective on Anti-Semitism

  • Tom and Andrew reflect on the cyclical nature of scapegoating Jews, especially in times of economic insecurity.

    “When you have a minority that is very successful in populist moments, where economics makes people uncertain, that anxiety has to be transmuted into anger...” — Tom Bilyeu [42:11]

• Jewish Economic Success: Community Focus

  • The book “Thou Shalt Prosper” is recommended as a touchstone for understanding Jewish economic/cultural integration, dispelling myths of insularity and instead highlighting adaptive community-building.

5. The Epstein Files: Informant Networks & The Limits of Transparency

• Epstein as Informant: The Utility of ‘Bad Guys’

  • Epstein, likely a clandestine informant (CI) for law enforcement, was valuable because of the bad actors he could access, not for his own crimes.

    “A pedophile is not that big a risk [to national security]... but when that pedophile is connected to other world leaders... now all of a sudden, that person can be granted amnesty in exchange for their cooperation...” — Bustamante [57:49]

• Why Will We Never Get the Full Truth?

  • The release of files will be heavily redacted or only made available to oversight committees, not the public. The myth of transparency persists as a red herring for political utility.

    “We might get answers, but we’ll never know if the answers that we’re given are complete, accurate, or truthful.” — Bustamante [66:19]

• Epstein’s Death: The Most Plausible Explanation

  • Highly improbable that Epstein killed himself by biological or psychological reasoning; more likely he was attacked, either purposefully or incidentally, to protect more consequential secrets.

    “Probability is he would not have killed himself... most likely... he was violently attacked. Whether they intended to kill him or just intimidate him, I don’t know.” — Bustamante [61:33]

6. Understanding Power, Incompetence, and the Reality of Government

• Corruption and Incompetence: Not New, Simply More Visible

  • The government has always operated in shades of gray; only now do technology and decentralized platforms make it visible in real time.

    “Is it more likely that we only recently became corrupt as a federal government? ... Or have we always been that way, but the advent of technology has made it more transparent...?” — Bustamante [64:06]

• The Utility of Political Red Herrings

  • For leaders like Trump, withhold or heavily redact files to leave public curiosity unsatisfied—a convenient distraction from harder political failures.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Anatomy of Conspiracy:

  “Conspiracy has always happened... anytime there’s a factual event that’s immediately followed by an absence of information, it just invites conspiracy.”
  — Andrew Bustamante [09:57]

• On Blaming Israel:

  “To single out Israel is just juvenile... They don’t want to risk that level of blowback inside the United States, especially not the conservative base.”
  — Andrew Bustamante [24:44]

• On Epstein’s Value to Law Enforcement:

  “In the eyes of national security, a pedophile is not that big a risk... but when that pedophile is connected to other world leaders... now all of a sudden, that person can be granted amnesty in exchange for their cooperation in advancing the cases for all these other targets.”
  — Bustamante [57:49]

• On the Permanence of Government Corruption:

  “That's not how government works. That's never been how government works. That will never be how government works. The whole reason we have a representative government is so that we don't have to have blood on our hands as the voters.”
  — Bustamante [66:07]

• On the Purpose of Red Herrings:

  "You don't want people to say, 'cool, I'm done.' You always want to have this red herring. A red herring is a useful tool that you can use to distract people. You want the Epstein case to always be available as a red herring."
  — Bustamante [67:21]

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Important Timestamps

• [03:21] — Government secrecy masking incompetence
• [07:20] — Analysis of the Charlie Kirk assassination
• [09:57] — How conspiracy theory fills information voids
• [18:06] — Objective vs. subjective evidence: how to analyze claims
• [24:44] — Israel’s influence & the problem with scapegoating
• [41:10] — Information warfare and Israel’s reputation
• [57:49] — The structure and incentives for Epstein’s role as a clandestine informant
• [64:06] — Governments' corruption is old news, technology just made it visible
• [66:19] — Why real Epstein transparency will never happen
• [67:21] — Red herrings and controlling public narrative

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Conclusion & Takeaways

This episode of Impact Theory provides a high-level, insider perspective on how to discern reality amid government secrecy, information warfare, and wild speculation. Andrew Bustamante urges listeners to sharpen their analytical faculties—not just to resist getting pulled into conspiracies, but also to see the true incentives and inevitable incompetence operating in large government structures. Listeners are cautioned to distinguish between objective and subjective information, rely on multiple independent sources, and be wary of narratives that satisfy emotional needs at the expense of facts. The underlying warning: the world is not made for your comfort or clarity, and those who wish to thrive must take responsibility for their own discernment.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Andrew Bustamante]

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[Impact Theory Host]

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[Andrew Bustamante]

Thanks for having me, brother.

[Impact Theory Host]

Always a pleasure, I assure you. Let me ask, as a former CIA operative, what do you read into the fact that the FBI is being so silent about the attempted assassination of Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk in the Epstein files?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The FBI is leaning into the way our government is divided, meaning how it's actually divided by the, by our founding fathers. The legislative branch, the executive branch, the judicial branch, FBI falls under the judicial branch, the President falls under the executive branch, and of course, Congress, the House, all falls under the legislative branch. So the three branches of government are built to keep each other's in check, but they're also built to kind of protect their own vertical, their own duties. So I think FBI understands there's certain duties that they have that are defined by their role in government. And it doesn't matter what the House or the President has to say, those duties can't be messed with. But then you also have this layer where Cash Patel was put in place by Donald Trump, the executive. So you already have some of this cross pollination that's unique and it's, it's unclear what it all means. Like, do we hear Trump talking about the Epstein files because he knows that the judicial branch isn't going to release anything. Is he letting this whole thing play out in the House of Representatives? Because he knows that no matter how many votes happen in the House or the Senate, at the end of the day, the judicial branch is going to be who determines what gets shared, what gets redacted, what gets kept and held back. And in all of those scenarios, Donald Trump has done what he can do to have the Epstein files released. And he knows that the assassination attempts, the assassination of. Of Charlie Kirk, like, these all blend between branches of government. And along with the checks and balances, also comes a certain amount of. Of distancing of responsibility.

[Impact Theory Host]

But Cash, like, went out of his way to say, we're going to be super transparent. We know how important this is to the American people. And then we've gotten anything but. So certainly I, as a commentator on the Internet, start speculating like crazy. What do you read into that behavior from, like, are they. Are there signs that they're hiding something? Are there signs that they're just running a good investigation? Like, what do you see the signs being?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The signs, for sure, there's. There's lots of things being hidden, but the things that are being hidden aren't necessarily nefarious. A lot of what's hidden in government is actually incompetence, and that's not something comforting to know, but it's the truth.

[Impact Theory Host]

But do you actually see signs of incompetence?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Like, you see. You see Cash Patel and FBI coming out and releasing details about arrests before the actual state police who have made the arrest are willing to share the same details. You saw that very early on with the. With the first announcement that they had apprehended a suspect in the Charlie Kirk killing, when, in fact, what they had was an old man who said, it was me, with no evidence, no proof that that was not a suspect, that was a volunteer. But you saw it go out on official channels, you saw it go out in social media. So you see these updates that are coming out at the speed of social media because Cash Patel's used to working at the speed of social media. He's not used to working at the speed of government. And that has created all sorts of questions about whether or not he's fit for the role. And then that bleeds into whether or not FBI is up to snuff to do their job? And you can just see how it snowballs out of control from there.

[Impact Theory Host]

So do you think then that he just popped off too early and now he's realizing, I gotta keep my mouth shut until we really know what's going on?

[Andrew Bustamante]

In that instance, he learned an important lesson about talking too fast, talking too early, and the importance of. Of vocabulary. Right. Government. People who are brought up and raised in government. When you've been a police officer, when you've been an FBI agent, and then you're appointed as the Director of FBI, you already know this stuff because you spent all of your formative career building this, this vocabulary for both dodging responsibility, but also for, for denoting responsibility. And then you have somebody who's appointed to the role who does not have that upbringing. And now it's very easy for them to use the wrong term in the wrong context. And that's what we jump on. Unfortunately, I think most of what media jumps on these days is vernacular. They're jumping on words and word usage, not thinking about the intention behind the words. Cash Patel was just trying to comfort the American public and say, hey, FBI is doing their job. We already have people of interest that we're looking into. But that's not the terminology he used. That's the terminology we're accustomed to. That's not the terminology he used. And now that puts the President in a place where he has to think whether or not punitive action is required for his FBI director. And there's, and that's just one case that we're all aware of. There are hundreds of cases that FBI is working through all the time that they're communicating up to the White House and back again. So what's, what do all of those cases look like? And, and what's the communication look like between the White House and FBI day to day? And how is it different from what it looked like when the whole world saw it with the killing of Charlie Kirk?

[Impact Theory Host]

Would you have expected more information to come out by this point?

[Andrew Bustamante]

In effective professional government, the public is the last to know. And that's how it's supposed to be. We are supposed to be focused on making it through our everyday life. We're supposed to feel safe. We're to supposed, we're supposed to feel comforted. We're supposed to feel secure enough that we focus our energy on our productivity. That's what we're supposed to do. That's how our country was designed. But now there's so much distrust in government. Not just distrust that the government's working in our best interest, but also distrust that the government's even competent. There's so much distrust, we're actually reducing our productivity because we feel like we have to watch our own back. We feel like we can't necessarily trust the police. We feel like maybe we can't trust our schools to, to educate our children or even keep our children safe. We feel like we can't trust our neighbor because now the most violent criminals are turning out to be middle class white boys. So like there's all this stuff that's splitting our attention that keeps us from doing the one thing we're supposed to be able to do, which is contribute to the economy.

[Impact Theory Host]

Going back to you looking at this as an outsider who has been trained on picking up on cues that other people might not see, does it seem plausible that in the case of Charlie Kirk's assassin that he acted alone? Or do you see something more coordinated?

[Andrew Bustamante]

You know, of all of the. Of all of the public killings, and I mean assassination attempts, I'll include in that, that we've seen to date. Right. And you've got two assassination attempts on the President. You have the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December of last year. You have the killing of Charlie Kirk this year. In each of those instances, you, you can start to, with a trained eye, you can start to see how the premeditated efforts were executed. And some of them required, seemingly required professional intervention, and others were completely amateur. The killing of Brian Thompson was a textbook amateur operation. Right. The guy was cased by a single individual, Luigi Mangioni, who then found him in a. A moment of vulnerability that's a mix of luck and planning. And then killed him in plain sight in front of cameras and the doorstep of his hotel. That's very amateur. But he had, he still showed some very intelligent, premeditated movements to try to get off the X and cover his tracks. And it was just luck that he was captured in a McDonald's having french fries after flirting with a waitress or whatever the story is. Right. The same thing is true, I feel, with Charlie Kirk. The killer for Charlie Kirk shows very strong amateur tendencies. Premeditated, but amateur tendencies. And that lends itself to believe that he's most likely operating alone in his intent to kill. Does that mean that he wasn't collaborating or sharing his plans with other people? Maybe, but I don't. I don't get the sense from what I've seen of the evidence that he was supported externally by foreign governments or by. By rogue elements inside our own country. He just. The evidence points to an individual who, who made a plan and executed that plan premeditatedly on a soft target.

[Impact Theory Host]

Candace Owens would beg to disagree. What do you take in her breakdown of all of this? Like, to me, this is a fascinating thing that we're living through right now. We have this massive velocity and volume of information. Rightly, there's nobody trying to censor us, so people are able to say what they think. Some people may think that she's a nefarious actor. That certainly is not what I read into it. I don't think that she's right. I think that she has a bent towards the conspiratorial. But anybody's able to say what they believe. And so you're getting a lot of narratives that are running wild. You're getting citizen journalism or podcaster journalism, I don't know what.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Neither of butcher journalism.

[Impact Theory Host]

New thing. But yeah. What do you, what do you see in the way that Candace is putting pieces together?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I'm not, I'm not very familiar with Candace's argument overall, but here's what I will say about Israel. Oh my gosh, I'll just simplify it for you. I mean, if that's the end conclusion, I would, I would love to poke holes in the entire process. Either way, there's a. There's a very clear and predictable anatomy to conspiracy, which explains why conspiracy happens. Conspiracy has always happened. The. The theory of a conspiracy, of a planned coordinated lie, has been around as long as the United States and beyond. And it happens anytime there's a factual event that's immediately followed by an absence of information. Anytime those two things happen, a factual event followed by an absence of information, it just invites conspiracy. Because the human brain does not like an open loop. It does not like to not have a conclusion. It doesn't like to not know the answer. It doesn't like to accept having to wait, wait for a conclusion, wait for resolution, wait, wait for more information. Our brains don't like that. Our brains like very clear, very closed, very consistent loops. It keeps us happy, it keeps us satisfied. It keeps us feeling safe and secure. So here with Charlie Kirk, like with any major criminal incident, there's going to be a long absence of information. Because in order for our legal system to prosecute, it has to go through a process of building a case. And if, if that case building process is undermined with people reaching in and knowing about information and evidence before it can be presented to the court, then it makes it harder to build the case, which makes it harder for us to actually find the justice that we are promising, not only for the victims, but also for the criminals who are also protected under law as a US citizen, so, so we have to accept that if we want our system to work the way that we all want our system to work, we have to give space for the courts to collect the information in secret that they need to collect. Otherwise we're actually undermining the evidence trail because we demand the need to know. And that leads that that gap of information leads to some incredible conspiracies and conspiracy theories that float around completely unsubstantiated. And you can make anything coincidental or anything accidental sound like it's intentional until you kind of vet it through an analytical process that most conspiracy theorists don't vet.

[Impact Theory Host]

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[Andrew Bustamante]

So the answer is kind of twofold. You have to understand the difference between objective information versus subjective information. Objective information is information that can be proven, that can be verified, and that is coming from more than one source. So proven if she's got receipts, or proven if she's got, you know, samples. Kind of like with 9, 11, people can show that there are certain flight manifests that are suspicious. They can show that there are. There are. There's timing that's suspicious. Like, those are facts. That's objective reality. Okay, cool. So you have facts. That's one part of what makes something objective. Another part of what makes it objective is having multiple sources of it, not just one source. Many conspiracy theories all boil down to one person or one location. One source that started the theory, and then everybody else is repeating the theory. That's called circular reporting, when all the new information actually ties back to one original source. So you're always trying to find multiple, verifiable, independent sources when you're talking about objective information. So if. If she's saying certain receipts are valid, where is somebody else independent of her verifying the same information? How do we know that the receipts are real? How do we know that the receipts actually have the connections that they have? Or is it just suspicious? If it's just suspicious, then it's not objective. It's subjective. It's based on the individual. It's based on feelings and emotion. So you have to understand that there's objective and subjective information that that makes the overwhelming amount of information that we're dealing with difficult to navigate. And then second to that, does it.

[Impact Theory Host]

Make it difficult to navigate, or there's just such a volume of subjective information that you have to filter it out quickly.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I think of it like being in a river, right? If anybody's ever tried to swim in a fast river, if you've fallen off of a whitewater raft into a fast river, you know what this feels like, too. There's an incredible volume of water that's moving, and it makes it hard for you not just to stay afloat, but it also makes it hard for you to move the direction you want to move. So it's actually hard to move in the water because the flow of the water, even if you swim arm over arm, this water is going to overpower you so many times. You have to learn how to navigate in that much volume of water. In a white water situation, when you fall into the water, you're actually not supposed to try to swim upstream. You're supposed to turn around and let the water carry you and then you just push yourself left or right and then the water will eventually carry you to one shore or the other. Because of the volume of water, you do the same, the same amount of water with no flow in like a pool or a lake and you can swim anywhere you want. So that's how I see information in our world right now. We're in this, this just tidal wave of information, subjective and objective, factual and feelings based. And if you try to fight it, it's going to continue to just choke you. There's a certain element of you have to weave your way into it to move where you want to move or else you're not going to get where you need to go. So that's when I talk about navigating, I mean the word, like controlling yourself, going where you want to go. Whether it's towards the facts, whether it's towards the fabrication. Like people choose where they want to go in a lot of this stuff.

[Impact Theory Host]

Okay, so we've got this massive torrent. We are though right now teaching the course on how to figure out what is real and what is not. So we've got objective, subjective, so we try to find things that are corroborated by multiple people that are establishing a simple thing that this happened and we see it from multiple angles.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Then the second thing that you need is some sort of index that you can use to, to compare the probability of information against the reliability of the source. So probability and reliability are very important when it comes to analytical rigor around the information or around the conclusion that you're trying to, to arrive at. If something is coming from a highly reliable source, but it's very un. Predict like it's, it's improbable, right? A very trusted source says that Russia is going to drop a bomb in New York City. That is a difficult thing to, to analyze. Whereas in a low reliability source saying the same thing is much easier to put at a lower probability. Similarly, when you have a high reliable source saying something that's also high probability, something that's, that's highly likely. So if the, if it's a Russian nuclear missile general saying that I received orders to launch a missile on New York City, now all of a sudden that's a very reliable source. And if you have SIGINT that says that the Russians are targeting New York City. Now you have something that's also very likely. So it's a significant intel or something is signals intelligence. So you have a verified secondary source, sigint, that matches the human intelligence source, the general that are both saying the same thing. Now all of a sudden you have a high probability incident. When you have single source reporting like we're talking about here in the Charlie Kirk case, that immediately reduces the probability of accuracy, the probability of likelihood. And then when you have a low reliability source, so you've got a low reliability source, and then you have an unlikely situation because you don't have secondary reporting saying that Israel isn't involved in any way. So you have this situation where in our index this is very unlikely and low probability that what she's saying is true. If there's a second independent source that's saying the same thing that moves up the probability scale, or if there's a more reliable source, not just a conspiracy theorist, then that also would move up the probability scale. But here we have, we have single source reporting from a low reliability source that makes it less probable.

[Impact Theory Host]

Okay, one thing that I know, a lot of people that buy into Candace specifically are falling into the. Not falling into. They're aligning with the very anti Israel sentiment of their controlling a lot of things behind the scenes, maybe all the way to blackmail on President Trump, which is why they would read Trump as acting like somebody towards Israel that could only possibly be being blackmailed because it's so unpopular with his base, but he's doing it anyway. You, when I first mentioned that was Candace's stance, you immediately had a. Okay, that's ridiculous. What is it about your worldview that has led you to believe the exact opposite of what feels like the new torrent of beliefs, which is Israel is manipulating the world. Yeah. How does your mental model diverge from that?

[Andrew Bustamante]

First of all, everybody's trying to manipulate the world. The fact that we're focused on Israel just kind of shows our ignorance of the reality that everybody's trying to shape the world. The Chinese are trying to shape the world, the Russians, the North Koreans, the, the Botswanans. Right. You name. Every country in the world is trying to shape the world. We're all trying to influence in, in the most beneficial way for ourselves in our limited spheres of influence, which some are very limited, some people may only be able to influence their neighbors. Some can only influence their family, others can influence entire, you know, international markets. So everybody's trying to influence everybody. So to, to single out Israel is, Is just juvenile. Of course, Israel's playing a role and if they're playing an effective role, we shouldn't be surprised because they have very strong allies, they have a strong economy, they have a, a history that has made them very self reliant and independent. So if they're good at influencing, then we shouldn't be surprised by that. The United States is also very good at this. The Russians are also very good at this. The Chinese are also very good at this. Why aren't people blaming the Russians or the Chinese or the North Koreans for what's going on with Charlie Kirk? That leads to the second point that it's because there's an anti Israeli sentiment. Our country is so susceptible to, to these nationalized biases. Do you remember when we had Islamophobia? Do you remember when we had Asia, Asia phobia. Now we have Jewophobia, Israel phobia, whatever you want to call it, right? Like we, we are so susceptible to this in large part because as a population we are so unskilled at differentiating between information. So we start to think that, oh, because Israel is attacking and killing Palestinians in Gaza and because the whole world has turned against them for that decision, they must also be villains in many other places. And now everywhere we see villainy, we can blame it on Israel. That's, that's not accurate. It's, it's not any more accurate than when we were saying, oh, now that Al Qaeda blew up the two buildings, the Twin Towers in New York, everything's terrorism. That's not really true. And for sure what's terrorism is not always Islamic extremism. And what's always Islamic extremism isn't always Al Qaeda specific. So we've got to learn how to differentiate between our feelings and the facts that are out there. The, one of the big reasons that you heard me kind of scoff at that is because there's, there's also an element of, that we call blowback. Blowback in government is, is probably the, the biggest concern that we have. And that blowback can be public blowback. But even worse than public blowback for us is diplomatic or international blowback. When you make a bad call, that then becomes knowledge to your allies and your rivals. There's a blowback penalty that's very real. Sometimes it means they stop trading with you. Sometimes it means they stop sharing intelligence with you. Sometimes it means they stop cooperating with you. They activate their own independent cells inside your country, whatever. Israel does not want to risk that level of blowback inside the United States. They don't want to risk alienating the United States, especially not the conservative base of the United States.

[Impact Theory Host]

You're saying by assassinating Charlie Kirk.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct. What would they have to gain from that long term? Outside of the fact that we want to accuse Israel of every villainy that's out there right now, what would they actually have to gain empirically? What would they actually have to gain substantially that wouldn't have asymmetrical risk? Instead, their fight's not with the United States. Their fight is with their own survival because they're surrounded by enemies on all sides. So we want to look at these through analytical laws, or what we call razors. Occam's Razor is that the simplest solution is often the correct solution. But there's a second razor that's called Hanlon's Razor. And Hanlon's Razor says you should not subscribe to conspiracy. That which can be explained through incompetence. Meaning incompetence is more likely than conspiracy. So what's really more likely? That Charlie Kirk was killed at a public event as a soft target because the security wasn't up to snuff to prevent his killing. Is that more likely? Or is it more likely that Israel launched a secret operation to have him killed and was so effective at it that nobody has been able to collect evidence to demonstrate that except one person? What's more likely? What's more probable? Which one is the one that actually meets the index of possibility and source reliability? Which one actually meets both conditions of the razor? Which one actually meets the idea of subjective and objective information when you look at it professionally? That's why it's laughable.

[Impact Theory Host]

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I think that there's enough internal hatred in America that you do see left wing, right wing violence. I don't think that you have to go much further than somebody who becomes radicalized by an ideology that says you're going to hurt people that I love. And so I'm willing to take you out. Especially when I become the young, disaffected, intelligent young man who is hyper educated and underemployed. That's going to be a phenomenon that we in the west are not used to dealing with. And for a long time we Just thought we washed our hands of it with video games and pornography. And we're finding out that that is not true. That Jordan Peterson is right, that people have a Christ complex and they want something that makes them feel like they've done, they've carried their cross and they've done something meaningful. And even if that means shooting a healthcare CEO and spending the rest of your life in jail or getting the death penalty or for your lover, killing the person that you think ideologically is the biggest risk to their well being and that people get sucked up into a narrative which is exactly what I think is happening to Candace and other people. But everybody needs a world view and they're going to tell themselves a story about the world. And when that gets reinforced and there, there is quite literally no end to how far they will go. No one's gonna remember Heaven's Gate, but like people will literally kill themselves because they think the aliens are coming to whis them away to heaven. Just recently we had people that thought that the rapture was gonna happen and they were like giving away all their stuff and selling their stuff. I'm just absolutely wild what people can get sucked into. So anyway, that to me seems the most obvious razor enabled outcome we'll see. Now to go back to what they're channeling, it goes something like this. Israel has already proven that they are extremely good at putting together very future facing long term plans. To get people the pager thing, I think really it did two things. People had to be like, damn, that's impressive that they were able to create a distribution network for pagers. Like, that's so wild. So. And then to kill people with such precision in a coordinated fashion, like, very, very impressive. So people know that they do that. And also I think, I don't know if it was intentional, but there's been a lot of media around how savvy the Mossad is. Like I forget the Steven Spielberg movie Munich, Munich, where they show like, oh, you killed a bunch of our athletes, bro, forget it. Like we are, we are going to hunt you down one after the other. So there's been plenty of media around the just relentlessness, the ruthlessness, the brilliant cunning that they have displayed. So you've got that. So they would say, well, hold on a second. Like we know that they do this kind of thing. And then Charlie Kirk was killed days after saying, I just lost a big Jewish donor because I'm going to have Tucker on and I might be turning away from it. So what motive does Israel have? The motive that Israel has is that Charlie Kirk was one of the most effective people at turning that could potentially turn the youth against Israel. We couldn't have it. We can see he's going in the Tucker, anti Israel direction. Nope, hard pass. Got to take him out.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So, first of all, you cannot compare Israel's response to its existence. Existential threats like Hamas, like Hezbollah, like Iran. You can't compare its response in preparation for those threats to political threats like what they would have in the United States from a senator, a congressperson, a president, anybody else, a nonprofit. You can't compare the two. And you. You certainly can't compare the two in terms of the budget that they will spend and the risk, the blowback that they would risk in response the pager incidents. Hezbollah has been a existential threat for Israel for decades. Decades. Why did they have a plan in place to put explosives into pagers? Because they knew that Hezbollah and they knew that Hamas was using pagers. They knew the model. They had already done the research. They knew the distribution channel because it had been years in the making, because the threat was persistent and always there. Now there's all sorts of intel operations that sit on a shelf, right? We. We. The term shelving. Shelving. Something actually comes from this idea of military operations that are planned out just in case and then shelved so that in the event something happens, like a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, you're not starting from scratch. The day that you find out you can pull something off the shelf that's 80% complete, 70% complete, 90% complete. Mossad in defense of the nation of Israel, the existence of Israel. That's an existential threat. They have plans on the shelves that I'm sure would send all of our heads spinning. They knew what they were going to do in Natanz long before they ever asked the President to drop bombs on the Iranian enrichment facility. They already knew how to sneak across the border and launch drones. They had all of that on the shelf, possibly for the last decade. They just chose to execute it at a certain time. That's what happens. That's what makes Mossad seem so impressive. They essentially only have a handful of enemies, but those enemies are existential enemies where the United States has binders full of enemies and almost none of those enemies are existential enemies. So we don't put nearly as much money or time into planning that the Mossad puts into their planning for a handful of threats. So to say that Charlie Kirk meets the same kind of budgetary or existential threat that Hezbollah or Hamas or. Or Iran Meets is already flawed logic. It just doesn't happen. And then when you think about what is the most logical way to handle the threat of him potentially turning the youth against Israel, is it really better to kill the guy? Or is it better to spend a year or two trying to woo him back into your favor? Which wouldn't seem unrealistic, right? Could you arrange a large donation? Could you arrange even a blackmail operation, which is completely and totally unlikely, but it would still be easier to launch a blackmail operation that somehow compromises him and forces him to verbalize his support for Israel rather than killing the guy? Because once you kill the guy, you can't. There's no taking that back. The risk for blowback is too high. So the fact that there, that there's an argument at all that because of what Mossad is capable of with Hamas, therefore they must also be capable of that with every other target in the world, is a ludicrous argument just based on how they prioritize their time, how they prioritize their efforts. The other thing that's important to talk about here is the information warfare landscape. It's so easy for us to forget. We're constantly in a landscape of information warfare. Not only is there information, not only is there good and bad information, but there's also intentionally bad information, what's called misinformation, what's called disinformation, and what's called mal information. Misinformation, incomplete or incorrect disinformation, fully patentedly false and mal information, which is true information spun in a negative way. All of those are part of the landscape too. Why did Israel let a movie like Munich become so popular? Why did Israel promote and, and share on social media their incursions into Iran and the launching of their drones? Why did they share footage of what the, what happened whenever. Whenever the pagers went off? Because they're shaping that information warfare landscape. They want the whole world to overestimate their capabilities. Can they do amazing things? Yes. But could they do that against 161 independent countries? No. They can do it against a handful of imminent existential threats to the homeland.

[Impact Theory Host]

Okay, you brought up blackmail, by the way. That was a wonderful argument.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I'm sorry, that was just a diatribe.

[Impact Theory Host]

That was great, because I really think this is gaining steam. And boy, do I wish that people. Well, I was going to say, boy, do I wish that people would look at history and go pogroms, rear their ugly head, and never do we go, I'm really glad that we killed a bunch of Jews. We always end up going, ooh, those were monsters. But we're living through one of those moments right now. And the distressing part has become that people go, yeah, but why do people keep launching pogroms on the Jews? That's the part where I'm like, oh, my God. First of all, there's an obvious answer that when you have a minority that is very successful in populist moments, where economics makes people uncertain, that anxiety has to be transmuted into anger, because anxiety feels horrible and anger feels awesome. My audience will have heard this too many times to count, but there was a study done. Very few people, but fascinating enough that if you open somebody's skull and start electroding their brain and you touch all the regions for emotions and then ask them, which emotion did you enjoy the most that you want me to press again? They will universally say anger. So anger comes with certainty. It comes with focus. It just feels good. It's an aggressive, forward, moving thing. And so when I hear pogroms, I'm like, literally, if you were just, like, flipping through the pages of a history book, and you're like, pogrom. I'm like, they're having economic problems guaranteed every time, 100% of the time, because you need someone to blame. And so when you want to transmute the anxiety into anger, you're like, who do I aim my anger at? And so the right question for me around Israel or Jews, I guess, is, what is it in Jewish culture that makes them so effective that they can go into a strange land and become very successful? Now, is it just a focus on economics and they're just very good with money, in which case, learn about money? I don't understand people's bizarre reactions.

[Andrew Bustamante]

There's a phenomenal book called Thou Shalt Prosper, written by a rabbi, a gentleman named Rabbi Lupin, and he goes through 100%. I recommend this book. If you're a business owner, if you're an entrepreneur, you must read this book. It literally answers the question that you just asked. What is it about Jews that makes it possible for this religious ideology to basically go anywhere and be successful, financially successful. I would argue, and Rabbi Lupin would argue that their financial success is secondary, that what they're actually successful at first is community. They find real needs and real, real opportunities to enhance the community that they are now part of, and then they just maximize their contribution to the community, which has a secondary effect of maximizing cash flow, maximizing revenue, maximizing growth, because they're servicing a need in the community that Nobody else has previously serviced. And then as more and more Jews kind of come together, they also have a religious element of supporting each other. So then you may not be good at business, but you have somebody else in the synagogue who is good at business. And then they help you to develop your business idea, they help you to develop your business strategy, they help you to do your marketing, they help you to negotiate your lease, they help you to manage your books, because that's part of the community. And then as a result, you end up having this thriving sector of people who share a faith. Compare that to Christians. Compare that to. To Islam. Compare that to Buddhism. We don't share the same focus on community. We don't share the same focus on finding gaps in the existing community. We focus. Many of those religions focus first on their own kind. And in fact, Jews don't focus on their own kind first. They focus on making the most of the environment that they're in at that moment. They kind of assume hardship and they try to work their way through the hardship first.

[Impact Theory Host]

Wait, are you saying that Jews don't focus on Jews first?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't. According to what I've read and according to the book that I'm referring to you right now, that's not the first focus. The first focus is wherever they relocate to. The first focus is how do I serve, how do I exist in this community?

[Impact Theory Host]

I'm not a scholar, but I have a worldview right now that says that they are very insular, that they do focus on the Jewish community first. I'll be interested to see if that's true. I am very open to being wrong, but when I mentally map them, I take away like, ooh, must remember this in terms of helping each other. So helping people that are on your team, however you define team, but that you create a community, you find a closed system and you say, cool, we're all going to help each other so that we can rise up. And then also, and I don't know if this will hold up to historical scrutiny, but if they really do focus on money, that's brilliant. And I'm just psa, thou shalt listen to the following rant. So I learned how to make money, but I did not know how to invest money. And the last six years of my life has been basically about learning the economy. And when I say everybody must learn the economy, otherwise you will be manipulated by your government. Like right now, the litany of people that have lived and died under regimes that were manipulating them economically is so horrifying. And I See what America is now doing, and it's an organism doing it to you. It's not like individual people. It's just that the incentive structure is such that the people that have a roll of the dice, before we started rolling, we were talking about playing games like D and D, where you roll your character and you give them skills and traits based on rolls of the dice. Humans are actually like that. And so we all have traits. The people that really score high on the Machiavellian scale and they really want to accumulate power, they're going to rise to the top. And they will learn, as every empire before them learns, that, oh, you have to. You have to counterfeit your own currency is the fast way to say it. We call it money printing or quantitative easing. We give it fancy names, but it is literally just counterfeiting your own currency. And you realize that it benefits the elite that know how to invest in assets, and it just absolutely slaughters everybody else. So. So every empire ever in all of history has done the same thing. And so there's just something in the human mind to avoid being taken advantage of by that. You must learn how it works. Because once you learn how it works, it's like, oh, my God, the emperor really has no clothes and a very small dick. And you're just like, I know exactly what the fuck is going on right now. And most people just don't learn it. So the way that people go, oh, they do that. And that's so gross. I'm just like, hell, like, please, for the love of God, if it's that effective, will you just learn the skill? Yeah, like, instead of dismissing somebody, just be like, oh, that must be really effective. Let me go figure that out. But that's not the moment that we're in. The moment that we're in right now is anybody that's good at that, I'm going to take them down. And that is really. History says this is very distressing. And you become the bad guy very fast.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You're. I love what you just said. And it's important. I think it's important to highlight that what you just said has a handful of powerful truths that all need to be broken out and detailed in order for the layperson to understand, let alone for the layperson to accept. Yeah. The. The truth of what you just kind of spat out. Right.

[Impact Theory Host]

Much to my dismay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Well, but it's all. It's fair. You're dedicating a huge portion of your life to teaching people how to do this.

[Impact Theory Host]

Enjoy it while it lasts. You're talking about that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But I appreciate that you're making that dedication as a fellow teacher. I appreciate the dedication to trying. There's so many people who will learn the information, and they're like, oh, it's my information. I have a client in Florida sent, a millionaire client. He and I have had the same conversations you and I, you and I just had here, right over bourbon cigars at his giant plantation. Damn. And he's not sharing it. He's not telling anybody. He's like, yeah, this is the way it is. Sucks for everybody else, but here's what I'm doing.

[Impact Theory Host]

That's so wild.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But that's how most people are. That's when you understand how the system works. There's. There's an instinctive, an instinctual response in the human brain that makes it so that you know something somebody else doesn't know. That means you don't share it.

[Impact Theory Host]

Dude, people should have. People like that should have to, not have to. They should understand the utility in hanging a painting of Marie Antoinette on their wall.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't disagree with you, but the reality is the reality. So there's two things I want to say, kind of to close the door unequivocally, in my opinion, on the Jewish topic, right? First, read Thou Shalt prosper. Go find the book. Find it on audio. Find it in the library. However you like to read, read the book. Because it was incredibly enlightening to me as a business owner and as a. As a member of the human race to read and understand more about how Jewish people think through the lens of a rabbi talking about business. I loved it. It was life changing for me. I can't not do everything I can to express people. Look up that book, Thou Shalt Prosper. And then second, differentiating between Israel and Judaism, it's an important distinction. Israelis and Jews are two completely different bodies. They might be. They might consist of many of the same people, but Israel is a nation. It is a. It is an. A government that has been created with a. With an infrastructure above it. They don't separate between church and state, but nevertheless, Israel is a government. You have an Israeli passport. You don't have a Jewish passport. Right? Judaism is a faith. You can be a Jew and not be Israeli. You can be Israeli and not be a Jewish. There's all sorts of differences between the two. But we live in a world where we, we talk and we assume so quickly that we put the two hand in hand. There are plenty of Jews that don't agree with the policies of Israel. And it's important to have that distinction between the two, because the government of Israel can be a ruthless government. It is proving to be corrupt in its own ways. It is proving to be isolating in terms of its international policy. But that doesn't mean that Jews as a body of faith based people all reflect the same ideologies as their government does. I think you're exactly right that when there is economic pressure, when there is fear, people don't like the way fear feels. They would rather feel anger. So as fear reaches a peak, people find something to focus their anger on. When Covid was at its peak, we all hated the Chinese. When World War II was at its peak, we created concentration camps here in the United States for Japanese that were living inside the United States. We've ostracized everybody. I mean, if you're. If you're an Indian in the United States, you have felt what it's like to have people racist against you just because you're Indian. If you're Chinese, if you're Korean, if you're Mexican. We all know what it's like to have America turn against us culturally because of some fear from somewhere else, whether it's jobs and we all. Now we're afraid of Mexicans or whether it's. Whether it's fentanyl, and now we're all afraid of Colombians or whatever else. Like, there's all sorts of reasons where we choose anger in the face of fear because of how it feels. And the Jews have been victim to that too. The whole world knows about that. When they were victimized because they were the target of anger in Germany, and then that it went the way it went. So we know that that's. That we're susceptible to that. It takes effort to work against that. It takes effort to say, hey, what else could be the root cause to the pressure, to the fear that I'm feeling right now in our economy right now? What else could be the real driver? Is it really a war in Venezuela that we need? Is it really to shut off H1 visas to foreigners? Is that really what we need? Is that going to actually solve my concern? Or is that just for focusing my anger and giving me a very convenient answer to close a loop in my mind that allows me to sleep better at night so I can focus back on my productivity?

[Impact Theory Host]

All right. Speaking of blackmail and open loops, Epstein, you've put a very interesting idea out that he looks far more like an FBI inside CI. I was like, I see. Walk me through that. Because this one gets Weirder by the day day. In terms of Trump releasing it all, you guys are still obsessed. What's happening? They better release everything. Like, it's so wild watching him vacillate, watching Cash Patel and Dan Bongino go from bro, day one, we got you to. I think of Putin every time. Men in black suits coming up to them, whispering in their ear, this is not how the government works. And them just suddenly, like, nobody's interested. This. This one's crazy. This one feels like the ugly under the hood machinations of the world came up to the surface, and people are just like, there's no way I'm going to let you see how things actually work. Drew, my producer, who's just off camera right now. Hi, Drew. Has said you'll never get the Epstein files. Like, he's been saying that from day one. What's happening? Give me the FBI angle.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, there's. There's a. The truth is somewhere in between the two extremes, which is what's so often turns out to be true. Right? So Jeffrey Epstein was doing a lot of illegal stuff on his own. In the eyes of the justice system, a bad guy doing bad things is useful. It's helpful. That's so wild, because bad guys doing bad things are almost always connected to other bad guys doing other bad things. And that opens up this access route, this utility for the Justice Department to say, oh, well, now we have a smorgasbord of bad guys, but we only have access to these bad guys through this one bad guy here. So they created this process called the CI. A covert informant or a clandestine informant. The CI's job is to inform and to gain and grant access to a wider net of bad guys.

[Impact Theory Host]

And this is specifically an FBI thing.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's specifically a law enforcement thing. Okay, so.

[Impact Theory Host]

So CIA or FBI?

[Andrew Bustamante]

CIA is not law enforcement.

[Impact Theory Host]

Interesting.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah. CIA's job is intelligence collection. Not. Not.

[Impact Theory Host]

They tend to kill people.

[Andrew Bustamante]

They used to be more able to kill people than they currently are. So law enforcement falls under. Under the judicial branch. Intelligence collection falls under the executive branch. That's why the President can do whatever the hell he wants to a CIA, but the President cannot do whatever he wants to with the FBI. Right. That's. That's how it was that FBI could. Could investigate the President and how he decided to have a backlash against the FBI, CIA. He just says no. He just shuts off their budget and. And tells them he doesn't listen to them and. And stops using them. And that's how you have the max. The mass exodus of 2016 that you had at CIA during Trump's first administration. So you have these two different branches of government. One controls CIA, the executive branch, one controls FBI, the judicial branch. That also means that Donald Trump can, say, release the Epstein files. And that doesn't have any impact on the judicial branch. They don't have.

[Impact Theory Host]

But it's Cash Patel that makes that decision, or someone else.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So they can. They can be pressured into acting when the legislative branch and the executive branch both work together in a checks and balance way.

[Impact Theory Host]

Like if Pam Bondi and Cash Patel say, we're releasing it, there's nobody else, right?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Not really. Yeah. They can choose to do that on their own as long as it's. It fits American law. American law is dictated by the legislative branch. So here's why I'm saying this. I'm saying this because even if our legislative branch votes to have the judicial branch release the files, that does not mean that they control what gets released or where it's released. So the files might be released only to the Senate Intelligence Committee or only to a subcommittee in charge of law enforcement, not to the American people. You're not going to. They're not going to vote today, and then tomorrow you're going to have full access to every file. They also might only release redacted files because there's going to be lines and details inside all of the files that have law enforcement, intelligence or national security relevance. So it's all going to be redacted. You're already seeing that in the emails that were leaked recently from House members. Who makes those redactions? The Department of Justice makes those redactions.

[Impact Theory Host]

Who.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Why do they make those redactions? Because they're protecting other cases that they're trying to close for criminal conviction. So release the files. What. What's laughable to me is that they can release the files and the average American still won't see them because they're not going to be released to the public. They'll be released to subcommittees. They'll be released from the current kind of bucket of control they're in in the Justice Department, and they'll be released to the Legislative Department, and then the Legislative Department and the subcommittees there will determine whether or not it should be released to the public or it should go right back to the Judicial Department because we have to protect XYZ case. Epstein as a CI was incredibly valuable because as much as he did bad things, the people that he had in his sphere of influence did worse things in the eyes of the law. This is an uncomfortable truth that people need to understand. In the eyes of national security, a pedophile is not that big a risk. Yo, that sucks. But it's true. If you're trying to protect a country, if you're trying to protect national secrets, if you're trying to protect our ability to win a war against China, a guy having sex with an underage child is not that important. But when that pedophile is connected to other world leaders, when that pedophile is connected to politicians that might be corrupt, politicians that might be allowing foreign influence in American policy, now all of a sudden, that person can be granted amnesty in exchange for their cooperation in advancing the cases for all these other targets. That makes the most sense. In any research I've done, in any expert I've spoken to, in any review of the evidence that we've gotten so far on Epstein, that explanation makes the most sense. Sense of any other that the United States said, hey, you're doing shitty, you're doing bad things. Here's a whole list of things that we can arrest you for and convict you for today. And he saw that list, and then they said, or you can cooperate with us to bring down bigger fish. And what's a guy like that going to say? This isn't the Mafia. He doesn't have to worry about somebody, you know, whacking him. He didn't think so. He's like, okay, I'll cooperate with you. Because then if I cooperate with you, you bring down some big fish. I don't ever go to jail for the things that I have to do to stay influential in my network. And now I'm protected, right? At the end of the day, we all have two instincts that we have to deal with. Our survival instinct and our tribal instinct. And those are the two instincts that drive us. Sometimes we're very survival based. Sometimes we'll sacrifice our survival to be part of a group. In that moment, Epstein was like, I need to survive. I need to take care of me more than I need to take care of my friends, which are my tribal instinct. And then life just is. That's just how human beings are wired. All of us have that same decision matrix every day.

[Impact Theory Host]

And what do you think about, was he ex filled by the FBI so they could either protect their sources, or did somebody actually have him killed? Or was this just a guy that was like, I don't want to go through the trial.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, I don't think he killed himself. I. I will say that because of evidence, what has been released to us so far, when I look at it, it just. It doesn't make biological sense to. To be able to hang yourself essentially off of a doorknob at low. Out at a low distance from the ground. It's a very difficult thing to do. So it just seems biologically improbable. Not impossible, but improbable. And then, even though I have. I have. I have supported wealthy people who have been convicted and are going to prison, I. I provide counseling and I provide training.

[Impact Theory Host]

Oh.

[Andrew Bustamante]

To sh. To shape their mindset before they go into prison. Whoa. Because they're going to come out of prison, too. Right? So I've. I've helped people in that way.

[Impact Theory Host]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I've helped people in that way later. And they all have that same thought that Epstein most likely had, where they're like, it's all over. My wealth is gone. My reputation is gone. My family will forever hate me. My kids are better off without me. So I'm just going to kill myself in jail. I'm just going to give up and never talk to anybody again. They all have that moment, and it's just a mindset moment that they have to work their way through. Without a doubt. Jeffrey Epstein had a consultant like me who came in and coached him on his mindset. Without a doubt, his attorneys would have done it, for sure. He had too much wealth behind him for someone not to invest in that way for him. So when I think of probability, probability is he would not have killed himself. Probability is even if he tried biologically, it wouldn't have been successful. So then what did happen? Was he killed in an organized criminal activity, or was he. Or was he killed as a political martyr of some sort? But most likely, most probable to me, he was violently attacked. Whether they intended to kill him or just intimidate him, I don't know. But that seems the more likely case that's completely separate from his role as a CI. If he would have been discovered as a CIA, he would have been even more likely to be killed. If he was not known to be a CI, they still wouldn't want to release the details, because to release the details of his role as a CI would be to undermine the. All the other CIS in the world right now who are providing information about worse bad guys than them to the FBI. The promise the FBI makes, the promise CIA makes to all of their assets is, we will protect you. You will provide us information. We will protect you to the best of our ability. The best of their ability when they're protecting a U.S. citizen in the United States is pretty high.

[Impact Theory Host]

It is like, this one is wild to me in terms of what. What does it say about the state of the government? I guess it doesn't say anything new.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That we've all been. We've all believed that we're good. We've all believed that we're on the right side of humankind and we're a good and decent government.

[Impact Theory Host]

When I watched House of Cards, it didn't seem plausible. So it was fun. I enjoyed it. Very over the top. I'm like, get out of here. And then Epstein happened. I was like, oh, my God.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Impact Theory Host]

Like this might actually be like the level of chicanery that's actually going on. That. That's where I'm like, wow, this is really hard to metabolize.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Again, you have to look at those two razors that we talked about, right? Occam's razor and Hanlon's razor. Is it more likely that we only recently became corrupt as a federal government? Is it only recently that we became highly politicized and survival oriented? Or have we always been that way, but the advent of technology has made it more transparent to the layperson? Which one of those is more likely? Well, if you keep. If you take the most simplest explanation, we've always been that way. So it meets Occam's razor to believe that we've always been this way. We've always been this way. It's just that technology has made it so that you and I can now keep up with it at a faster pace. And then if you look at Hanlon's razor, don't subscribe to conspiracy. That which can be explained through idiocy. Then again, we've always been this way. It's not that we've been able to keep a secret, it's just that nobody's had real time access into so much information about what's happening in government. We've never had so many leaks. We've never had so much press interest. We've never had so many channels to communicate the information that we're collecting. We've never had, like you were saying before, podcast journalism or social journalism or community journalism, whatever. Whatever isms you want to call them. We've never had that before. Everybody was too busy working on an assembly line or trying to scrape together two sticks to make a light. Right. We never. We never had that in the past. So when I look through the laws of analysis, it just confirms for me what I learned when I was at CIA. The average American has no concept of how the government works. And the average world citizen has no concept of how their government works. And for sure, they have no concept of how the US Government works. The largest, wealthiest, most militarily powerful government in the world. You think that we became that way by playing fair? You think we became that way by. By standing on the moral high ground? That's not how government works. That's never been how government works. That will never be how government works. The whole reason we have a representative government is so that we don't have to have blood on our hands as the voters. We can elect someone else to go do the dirty work.

[Impact Theory Host]

Are we ever going to get transparency into who Epstein was and what he did?

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't believe we will. I don't believe we will because it doesn't benefit our national security infrastructure to tell the true story. We might get answers, but we'll never know if the answers that we're given are complete, accurate, or truthful. Because every government knows you have to give the people something to follow, and then that doesn't have to be the truth. Just like what's happening right now in the Caribbean. Why do we have a military buildup in the Caribbean? Because of Venezuela. Run that through the two razors that we talked about. It doesn't make any sense, but that's what we're being told. And because we're being told that, we accept that, nobody's questioning whether or not our military presence in the Caribbean is due to something else.

[Impact Theory Host]

You think it's China?

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's what I believe.

[Impact Theory Host]

We'll get to that in a minute. If you were advising the Trump administration right now, how do you get enough Epstein file out there, lie or otherwise, that people go, cool?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Got it.

[Impact Theory Host]

Check. Thanks. We finally got the transparency that we needed.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You don't want people to say, cool, I'm done. You always want to have this red herring. This is the definition of a red herring. A red herring is a useful tool that you can use to distract people. You want the Epstein case to always be available as a red herring. So if I was advising the Donald Trump Organization, I would say, do exactly what you're doing right now, Donald Trump. You tell the people officially, I think that you should let the House vote on releasing the files. Even though the president, as the leader of the executive branch, could do it himself, he could tell the judicial branch to do it, and. And they would arguably, as commander in chief, be hard pressed not to listen to him. But he's not doing that. Instead, he's making it the House's problem. He's making it Congress's problem. So he's like, hey, Congress, you do this thing from the legislative branch and I'm going to be the one that's the figurehead saying, the leader, saying you do the thing that's going to help the American people. And then simultaneously you're telling Cash Patel, release whatever you need to release that doesn't compromise current investigations and anything that looks bad on our current administration, redact. Now, Cash Patel, the leader of the FBI, Pam Bondi, the head of Homeland Security, they can both go in there and they can, they can redact anything that they, that they decide looks bad on the current administration or is related to a current criminal investigation and release that. And the American people will say, oh, now we have all the files, but what about all these redactions? And now the Justice Department can always say those redactions are critical for national security because the stability of the federal government, that survivability of the current administration is considered a national security priority.

[Impact Theory Host]

Yeah, this is going to get weird. Like, this has not been good for his presidency and his inability to fix the economy in a timely manner, which I think is impossible, but nonetheless is a double whammy. We, we shall see.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Well, that's happening. I think Donald Trump is also, he's a very practical personality. No matter how you cut it, you can kind of accept that. There's a pragmatism when you look at it through the lens of Donald Trump protecting Donald Trump. That survival instinct, he's any, any failure that he has in a campaign promise is something that he can distract from. He also promised to not start any new wars and he's gone back on that several times. Right. He's turning into a very conflict oriented president, not only with Iran, but also with Venezuela. That complete, that goes completely against the campaign promise. He's done an about face on releasing JFK files. He's done an about face on releasing Epstein files. Those were also campaign promises. You see him trying to boost the economy in traditional ways. The traditional ways are not that different from the way Biden or Obama tried to boost the economy either. Even though he tries to make it look different, he knows that probability wise, this is his last term and coming out of this term, he wants all the benefits of being a former president and he wants to shore up as few risks as possible that carried over with him into the presidency. So Donald Trump's there to take care of Donald Trump and the United States will be a secondary benefit. But that's his primary goal.

[Impact Theory Host]

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