← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Wall Street Meltdown, AI Shockwaves, and the Epstein Files: What No One’s Telling You | The Tom Bilyeu Show
01:14:07
Tom Bilyeu, Producer Drew, and guest Nick Fuentes dive deep into the recent market chaos, the disruptive impact of AI, and the explosive new developments in the Epstein conspiracy files.
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- [00:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Hey, Sal. Hank, what's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.
- [00:25]
Commercial Announcer
Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.
- [00:30]
Tom Bilyeu
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another Tom Bilyeu show live. This yesterday was a lot of fun, despite the markets starting to climb their way back. Yesterday they got absolutely clobbered, losing trillions of dollars across basically all markets, including gold, silver, stocks and crypto. Is this the beginning of a bear market or was it just a transient transient drop? And we're already seeing it coming back. We're going to be talking about all that and what it means to have a drop that rapid, regardless of whether we come back. Today in Conspiracy Corner, we're strapping in as claims of Epstein's Fortnite account being active after his death are actively being scrubbed from the Internet in real time. It is so wild. I cannot believe that this is really the timeline that we're on. I'm getting sucked into the vortex. I'm not gonna lie. They're starting to get to me. The Clintons have done an about face and are now ready to testify regarding their knowledge of the Epstein situation. But in a very fascinating turn of events, they want the hearing to be public so that the whole truth can belong to the American people.
- [01:41]
Drew
Tom, what is going on with these markets?
- [01:44]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, yesterday was a lot of fun. The markets got absolutely hammered as a massive series of sell offs rocketed through practically every sector from precious metals to AI and crypto. It really was a bloodbath. The crash is being attributed to massive forced selloffs in what is being described by analysts as a classic risk off event driven by a confluence of a whole bunch of factors. The big concerns are over excessive AI spending by big tech, weakening US labor data, which many believe signals a potential economic slowdown and fears of tighter monetary policy under a possible hawkish Fed shift, which that one we're going to want to talk a lot more about with what is wash meaning to the market. It's very interesting to see Trump just banging the drum about we have to lower rates. But the guy that he nominated the market is responding to as if he's going to come in and be more hawkish than what we've been seeing with too late Jerome Powell, if Trump can be believed. So it's pretty fascinating. And the sudden move looks to many like it's a mechanical unwind of overcrowded trades at a time when liquidity is drying up, causing a cascading effect across many asset classes. And this is what happens. You've got a whole lot of people trading on debt, and when the, the price of everything is going down, you get all these forced liquidations, which then causes the market to freak out. Now, there are two distinct but ultimately interrelated AI narratives that are driving some of the sell off. And it's important that we tease them apart so we can get a slightly better understanding of why the market is acting so skittish right now. I liken it to a horse, by the way, that like, has heard something and is getting jumpy and so it's going to dart off in weird directions every now and then. All right. The first of the AI narratives that seem to be having a bigger impact to the 2 is that AI is beginning to encroach into the software application layer. If you're not paying close attention to this, I don't think a lot of people understand how good AI is getting at coding. And Anthropic's release of a new legal, marketing and enterprise automation tool for its Claude cowork product sent an absolute shockwave through the software sector. You guys need to try this stuff for yourself. So we are using it here at Impact Theory. I never know how much you guys know about what we're doing on the gaming side and all that. So we're constantly looking at how we can interface with AI. And the team that we have is just like. At first they were like, this is all crap. It doesn't work. It's not very interesting. And then slowly, over time I was like, well, actually like, you know, it's completing some of the lines of code for me. And then it was like, whoa, like it's actually helping give me ideas. And it's not like I can just turn it over, but it's doing a lot. And then they had it. Not our team, but Claude. They built like a, a compiler of some kind. I forget, but it was like a like really low level compiler that does a lot of heavy lifting and it's coded from scratch, I believe, with one human offering like guidance and nudges. When they were like. Because they use like 16 different bots to go in and code this thing and they would occasionally run into the same problem and so the guy would go in and nudge them there's no doubt, much like Waymo isn't full driving itself, it's not doing this stuff on its own, but utterly fascinating to see how far it can go. So we're seeing that stuff firsthand. That's working its way into the narrative. And the response has been immediate and brutal. If large language models models can start doing the work that Companies like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe and SAP charge billions in subscriptions for, then the moats that people thought they had around these businesses may be a lot more smaller and more shallow than investors assumed. The S&P 500 software and services index lost roughly $830 billion in market value in just six trading sessions. So this appears like a straightforward repricing based on concrete product releases that demonstrated that AI really is moving in on the competition. The second narrative is that there, and we've talked about this one before, that there is a massive overspending in the AI sector. And that concern has been going around for months. Big Tech continues to pour what I will call stupid amounts of capital into AI infrastructure. Listen, this is one where we should both be glad that it's happening. This reminds me exactly of what happened with the Internet. And of course at the time it felt like all that fiber optic cable that you're laying is really stupid. Why are we doing that? That doesn't make any sense. And then you grow into it and you're glad that it's there. But for a minute, the returns take a lot longer to come back than people are expecting. And so right now, investors are increasingly uneasy about exactly when and quite frankly, how all of these infrastructure investments are actually going to pay off. Keep in mind, a lot of them didn't pay off to the investors of the Internet. They paid off to all the rest of us. So that's where this starts getting crazy. And Alphabet's announcement of 175 to 185 billion in 2026 CAPEX, which is just abbreviation for capital expenditure, the money that they're going to spend on infrastructure is way higher than what Wall street was expecting. I'm talking it's like 50 or 60 billion dollars higher than the expectations. And that sent the stock down roughly 5% after hours, despite the fact that they had beat earnings on revenue like it's wild. So they're doing incredibly well and still getting hammered because people had already priced in even more than that, or I should say even less of that spend. So more profitable dollars left on the books. Now, if the anthropic news was proof that AI is genuinely eating into the enterprise software. Would you not expect that to be bullish for companies that are building and deploying it? I certainly would have, but it wasn't. Nvidia fell over 9% on the week, Broadcom dropped 7% and AMD cratered 15% even after posting again results that came in ahead of guidance. All of that tells you that something important is shaking down. The markets aren't selectively repricing software down while repricing AI infrastructure up. It's repricing risk across the board. You're seeing people change their relationship to risk in real time. I think this is what I'll sum up. Routinely, as the market is skittish, everybody has a narrative. Nobody knows if their narrative is entirely true. You see something that runs against your narrative, you're that jittery horse, you bolt in a direction that causes this cascading liquidation. But then everybody calms down cause you're like, well, wait a second, that didn't break as hard as I thought it would. Maybe there actually is still money. And then the economy or the markets start rebounding, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. So investors are simultaneously worried that AI works well enough to destroy existing business models, but they're not confident enough that companies, the companies funding it, will be able to get a risk adjusted return for the staggering amount of money required for the infrastructure buildout. It is so fascinating. One of the most interesting things about markets is that they're aware of the previous thing. So while we're talking here and we feel like we're an enclosed bubble and we're discussing all of this, the markets largely price this kind of thing in these narratives are understood. And this is why history never repeats. It rhymes, but it's, it is always edging up on being true that markets follow the path of maximum pain because you're aware of the historicals. Everybody tries to be the smartest guy to make a move that would have made sense back then. But the timing of everything changes because everybody is so hyper aware of what happened before. So the very fact that everybody is talking about AI mimicking the Internet means that it won't play out the same way because people are going to try to adjust to it. And you create this butterfly effect, this self reinforcing loop of, well, I know that it played out that way and so I'm going to try to be early, but then that changes the timelines, the dynamics and all of that. And so the very thing that you're using to guide your decision making ends up breaking the predictability of the markets. And so markets remain eternally unpredictable. It's wild. So that framing is exactly the kind of environment that produces these broad indiscriminate selling rather than a clean rotation from one sector to another, which is what I think people were expecting was going to happen. But in short, if you want to wrap it all up, the software sector is getting punished for being vulnerable to AI, and the AI sector is getting punished for spending too much to build it all. Both fears are making investors skittish and feeding the same risk off behavior. Outlets like Bloomberg and CNBC describe this moment as a hard reset in valuing growth stocks, where growth alone no longer suffices. You need a clear path to returns. And wait, there's more. Add weak economic data and generalized recession fears to everything that we just went through and you begin to understand why the pullback gained the momentum that it gained and spilled out over in other areas. While there wasn't exactly anything super acute, downbeat labor indicators helped fuel the broader economic anxiety, with many people calling out that the cooling job market may have been a key trigger for the rapid de risking. Jolt's job openings fell from 7.2 million expected to 6.54 million. Actual challenger job cuts hit 108k, which is the highest January since 2009, and weekly claims rose to 231,000, stoking concerns about employment decoupling from GDP growth. That is a big deal. In a normal economy, when GDP grows, businesses expand production, they hire more workers, employment rises roughly in tandem. When the relationship decouples, GDP can even grow, it can even accelerate, while employment growth stalls, slows dramatically, or actually turns negative, leading to fewer new jobs, rising layoffs or stagnant hiring, despite on paper, what looks like a healthy economy. And this creates a situation often called jobless growth or jobless boom, where the economy produces more output without needing proportionally more human labor. It's the opposite of what economists expect from historical patterns. And when you realize that typically GDP is linked to changes in employment either direction, when that decoupling happens, it typically stems from structural shifts that boost output per worker without requiring more headcount. Now, hopefully all of you have just had two letters trigger in your minds, because we are living through exactly such a structural shift right now. GDP has been growing like crazy. We're sitting at around 4.4percent by some reports, driven, I would say, by AI adoption, largely strong consumer spending, at least at the top of the K. We very much have separate economies and the AI driven productivity gains are almost certainly involved in this decoupling of GDP go up as we hire more people. But despite all of that, employment growth really has been weak. The layoffs have hit the high levels Highest January for 17 years. If I remember correctly, you're having the highest level of layoffs since the Great Recession. Job additions were minimal in 2025. As a whole, hiring plans are remaining low and some are calling this moment the efficiency Era or the Great Decoupling. And AI and innovation itself are accelerating output without proportionally creating those new jobs, potentially making the concept of jobless growth the new normal. And if that's the the impact of AI, which I think we all kind of expect, that certainly is what I expect. This could really be disruptive to our ability to assess the state of the economy. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. Let's talk about a lie that you've been sold. Most people think expensive clothing equals quality. They are wrong. You're paying for middlemen. 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- [17:15]
Drew
All.
- [17:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Right, let's dive right back in. Many analysts, like those from Truflation and House of AI, also are highlighting rising bankruptcies, slowing growth indicators and a widening 2 to 10 year yield gap. It's the highest in 4 years on bonds. As potential recession signals, adding to the list of things that may have driven this bizarre synchronized selling, it's typical that when recession risks rise, investors are going to reduce their risk exposure across the board. It's a pretty natural response when you're worried that your money is going to be trapped for very extended periods of time, that there may be a better place to get yield. And then we talked about this briefly in the intro, but add one more log to the fire and you've got Warsh's nomination for Fed chair, which somehow people are responding to like he's going to come in and be super hawkish and keep rates tight. They're calling it the war shock. I think ultimately people just aren't sure how to read that. He historically has been hawkish, but you combine that with Trump's ambiguous comments on rate cuts, but with his own statements about needing to lower rates, and he's been so pushy about that, people again, just skittish feels like the right word. Now. Supposedly the speculation about Kevin Warsh being hawkish and pro quantitative tightening is also draining liquidity from tech, crypto and metals, because people are not convinced that those are going to keep going up. Liquidity, man, you got to keep your eye on liquidity. Where's the money coming from? Where is it flowing out of? What's it flowing into? Follow the liquidity and you can normally follow the gains. The consensus view of what just happened seems to be that all of this is a broad free fall from system wide de risking rather than any of the isolated events that it's reminiscent of past unwinds, but without that single black swan to make the cause super obvious to anybody paying attention. And if you want to take a conspiracy angle on this, there are some people who believe that they. And of course they are not specific about that, but presumably government big banks are crashing virtually every aspect of the economy, trying to drive people into the US bond market. Why? Because we have to keep the appetite for US debt sky high. Now, is that really what's going on? Probably not. But I will say that the Epstein files did break a part of my brain. And so I'm so much easier to look at something and see coordination behind the scenes. Deep dive on my thoughts on that coming out on Tuesday. Keep your eyes peeled. But yeah, that's where we are, man.
- [19:48]
Drew
Are you part of the SEC that thinks that. Okay, hold on. I'm gonna save that question. First off, in moments like this, how do you actually react from an investing standpoint? People have access. Tom buying still, are you? Do you just set it and forget it? You put your phone down. I know one of our. One of our coworkers here. He's not here today. He was stressed out pacing yesterday. To my Drew, shall I sell my crypto? Should I sell my crypto? I'm like, put your phone down. It doesn't exist. Stop thinking about it. So, like, how do you react when you see like big swings like this in the market?
- [20:16]
Tom Bilyeu
I am a macro thesis investor who does not trust his ability to see the future, who understands that you're going to get wild swings. And the reason the best advice in the universe is to buy low and sell high is because that's the advice nobody can take, myself included. So I put a thesis together and I think about what the thesis is. I don't make quick moves. I'm not trying to time the market. So while I have, in the last six months, I have moved a reasonable amount of things around. It's never been based on something went up or something went down. It's based on adjustments to my thesis. So when I look at the price of gold, everything that I just said makes sense to me. But in terms of the short term, what makes sense to me in terms of the long term is I think that you're going to see a return to what I'll call the physical world. So you're going to see that silver can't be in. In a de globalizing world, silver cannot be controlled at the paper level. It's going to be in terms of price setting. In terms of who has the power to. Manipulate may not be the right word, but I'll use it to manipulate it. It's going to be like China being able to say, well, we own the physical, the physical silver. And so given silver's role in manufacturing, I'm paying a lot more attention to that than I am a momentary dip. Copper is interesting to me. I haven't bought any yet, but, like, that's like. As I think about thesis movements, I think about, ooh, okay, if copper is needed for energy, energy is needed for AI, then it's like, oh, I could see moving something over to that. Not as a reaction to metals going up or down, a reaction to. I believe at a macro level, the world is going back to something more physical because we can't trust each other anymore. So there isn't going to be this globalized. Like, we're all just at the casino trading on paper. We're now at the casino. And I don't trust that your mark or your voucher is good. And so, no, no, no. I'm going to need you to put the chips on the table. And I want to walk out with the chips, meaning I want to walk out with the silver, I want to walk out with the gold. And so that's driving my thinking. So bitcoin goes up or down. Has it changed my thesis on bitcoin? If it has, then cool, I need to start migrating money out. If it hasn't, which it hasn't, then I don't touch it. So I haven't sold any of that. So I try to be in a position where I don't need to be smart, I need to be directionally correct and I need to be wildly diversified. And so the momentary stuff is interesting to watch in terms of human psychology. It's interesting to watch in terms of early indicators that maybe there's something, not that I'm not understanding, but what business has taught me is trends are incredibly important. You can make a lot of money with trends, but you have to understand what a trend is. A trend is merely call it 80%. It's 80% cultural energy. That's it. So it means it's psychological. So when you're pursuing a trend, you might be pursuing something that's terrible. Like, I'll give you an example. Low fat was a trend. I could have made millions of dollars as a food manufacturer pursuing that. But I had a macro thesis which was, if you focus on metabolic reality, you can build a bigger company. And so we focused on metabolic reality. But then there were trends that were both metabolically true and a thing that was just people were hyped on. And so if for whatever reason, people are just. Pretzels are the thing. Can you make a pretzel that sells? That's not an example of something we pursued, but it's an example of like there could be billions of dollars in pursuing that trend. But anchored, for me, the way that I move through the world is always anchored on a broader thesis. And so I approach the markets in the same way. And just to, to beat something to death, I do not believe I can see the future. So I'm, I'm spread across as many different market forces as I can get.
- [24:06]
Drew
Mm, that's interesting. Um, you brought up bitcoin. Bitcoin is definitely down more than 27% just this past month. It hit one of its all time lows at 60 yesterday. Um, it kind of bounced back. So it's now in recovery from at least the last couple days. Um, Michael Saylor tweeted Hodl, he's not, he's not letting go. Um, some people have bought more I dollar cost averaged in, um. Is it one of those situations where, like you said, the overall thesis of bitcoin is still the same, so people should still kind of have that same idea? Or do you think this Epstein rumors and he has, he has involvement and all those things are kind of muddying the waters a bit?
- [24:44]
Tom Bilyeu
I mean, I'm sure that that is some of what's influencing the cultural energy again for me, and I'm certainly not giving people advice, but if you want to understand how I approach the market, I would look at information about Epstein and say, okay, does this influence my thesis about what this is? It does not. And so it doesn't influence my thesis. Regardless of whether he was paying the people that were coding it in the beginning or not, the thing that got created means something to me in my mind. So I look at this as, currently it is a proxy for high volatility tech stocks. And so in the, in any high volatility thing, you have a lot of potential up and down. So can you stomach the down to get the up? So far I've been able to. So I'm cool there. I don't keep buying more. I dollar cost averaged in over a couple of years. And was like, okay, that's all I'm going to deploy into bitcoin and now I'm going to focus on spreading out. This is also partly at the beginning of my journey of understanding this. And so I didn't understand all the different economic forces at the time. And so at that time I might have told you that, oh, I'LL probably buy more. But. But as I've gone, I've been like, no, like that's one of the chips that I have on the roulette table. We'll let that ride. That is what it is. And now let me look at other things. So even when it goes up, I don't sell. When it goes down, I don't sell. I look at this stuff in four year time horizons because that's traditionally been the sort of real viewpoint into Bitcoin. And bitcoin over those time periods has always gone up. The reason that I think that it will continue to go up is right now it's this highly speculative tech stock, but over time, based on the, the call it mathematical fundamentals, it really is an escape raft from an inflatable currency. And so I even myself have certain paranoias around gold. So gold soothes my anxieties in some ways and creates anxieties in others. So yes, I want money there, but I don't necessarily want an overabundance of my money there. So bitcoin gives me something similar. It doesn't inflate and it's far more mobile. And the big part of my thesis is kids today don't grow up where bitcoin is a question mark. Is it a scam? Is it whatever they just grow up with, oh, it's an investor investable asset class. So given that more and more people are growing up, they're digital natives. For them, it will be easier to understand than physical gold. Like if you've ever seen the reel where the person is explaining a landline and they're like, you guys, it's this phone and it's like stuck in your house and like everybody has to share it. I can see somebody explaining gold like that. Like gold is actually a physical thing. Somebody storing it in a vault somewhere. It doesn't exist in the cloud. Like, yo, that's wild. I can't believe people do that. Like, what do you do if you want to take it somewhere? Like, you can't. That's crazy. I can't put gold on my phone and spend it like, what the. And so when I put myself in the shoes of Gen Z or Gen Alpha and think about how they'll think of digital assets, to them, it's just like, obviously everything should be virtual. So until that thesis breaks, I leave it alone.
- [28:05]
Drew
Gotcha. You brought up the job market. Some people are saying that those two things are connected. It's a AI bubble that's popping and all these layoffs are then Driving the downturn, we've seen a lot of companies that fundamentally they grew their revenues, they grew profits, but it was short of expectations, so it's dropping. Amazon example, Google is an example where traditionally we will look at companies and say, okay, you have a profit margin, you're doing good, your business is growing, the revenue is going in a positive direction, your price is going up, but instead the capex expand is a bit too much or to your point, investors are skittish, so now they're pulling back. Do you think that this is also a moment where we're starting to kind of reanalyze fundamentals or is this just still just the skittishness of the news?
- [28:49]
Tom Bilyeu
I wouldn't say that people are re looking at fundamentals. What I would say is everybody has a narrative about where they're going to get the most returns for their money. That's always a bet on the future. And so you're looking at data that gives you an indication that you now see the future more clearly than you thought you did. So when you see something that says, oh, this is even more capex and your vision of the future of the last couple months has been changing into okay, everybody acknowledges now that AI is a bubble. It's just a question of what part of the bubble are we in. Because there's billions of dollars to be made in a bubble. It's just, are you able to get out at the right time? There are plenty of traders that think that they're going to be smart enough to get out at the right time. And so some of this skittishness is like, is today the day? And so they're very quick to react, to pull back out of the market because they think, okay, cool, I found the time where it's now the issue. But everybody is trying to read the tea leaves of the announcements coming out, the labor data, the investment data, the earnings reports, all of that stuff to say, oh, the price that we have in the market right now, and this is why you can have a company that actually posts, hey, we're ahead of what we said. But if the narrative that's been priced in is different than their guidance, it doesn't matter. The price is actually about the narrative and the expectation of the investor, not the whether they beat or didn't hit expectations. So if people are forming an opinion that AI infrastructure isn't worth it, we're never going to get our money back. That we're late stage in the AI bubble and now we see. So I already believe those things and then you tell me you're going to spend more money. Now that tells me you as a person running Alphabet don't share my assessment of the future. So you're now doing, in my estimation, really dumb things. I want the out. Like if you're going to be that dumb and keep investing in Capex at an even higher rate than you told me before, like you're getting more drunk, you're not getting more sober. And so when you combine that with okay, people start making that move and then that forces liquidations and then the market looks bloody red and then everybody is convinced that it's never coming back, that this is the beginning of a decade long bear market or whatever anxiety ends up hitting them. You see this kind of cascade.
- [31:07]
Drew
Let's grab our tinfoil hats because we have quite, quite a lot to talk about.
- [31:11]
Tom Bilyeu
We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.
- [31:18]
Drew
This Friday, crime 101 hits theaters.
- [31:21]
Tom Bilyeu
What is it that you do?
- [31:22]
Drew
I take high value items and make them disappear.
- [31:26]
Tom Bilyeu
So you're a thief.
- [31:27]
Drew
One crime connects them all.
- [31:29]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm getting close, I know it.
- [31:31]
Drew
But only one will walk away. I underestimated you.
- [31:34]
Tom Bilyeu
Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan and Halle Berry.
- [31:38]
Drew
We're good at this. Yeah. Crime 101, directed by Bart Layton. Rated R. Under 17 on a minute.
- [31:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Without parent Special sneak previews Monday Everywhere Friday.
- [31:48]
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- [32:15]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, let's dive right back in.
- [32:17]
Drew
So the big one that I think a lot of people were looking at was the alleged photo of Epstein in Israel.
- [32:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. This is crazy. This here's the problem, boys and girls. I assume Drew's about to tell you this.
- [32:30]
Drew
This guy. AI. This guy.
- [32:31]
Tom Bilyeu
It's a.
- [32:32]
Drew
This is. Yeah, this is.
- [32:33]
Tom Bilyeu
But how. Look at that fucking thing. It looks so real.
- [32:36]
Drew
Yeah. Google, Gemini. Got you guys.
- [32:38]
Tom Bilyeu
So dude, it. But it's so real. Like that's one of those where because I distrust everything that I see online, I just immediately was looking. Is there a community note? Is there somebody in the comments? Thankfully, the one I saw because it's not on all of Them. But the one I saw had a community note that says this has been Photoshop or that this is AI. And I was just like, oh, my God. I guarantee a distressingly high percentage of people who see this photo now believe that it's real. Where they're going to be like, bro, I saw the photo, it's obviously him. And yeah, so the lie can travel faster than the truth can. Put his pants on, as they say. Like, this is crazy. What was the movie called? Mountainhead, where they're off the, whatever. Four billionaires are off on their trip and they're like trying to contend with that they have this AI solution, but the guy doesn't want to integrate it because people falling for the AI is actually really good for the business model. But then it gets to the point where like, somebody makes a thing with AI that says, like, whatever, Iran launches nukes or what. I forget what it was. But like, and then people go absolutely crazy.
- [33:50]
Drew
Causes the country to go in the revolver.
- [33:51]
Tom Bilyeu
Correct. And so no one will believe that it's AI. And we, we are racing towards something like that. Like, it's crazy, man. You have to spend so much of your time now as you get information, just checking to see, not even if it's accurate, checking to see if it's real.
- [34:09]
Drew
Yeah. Which you have to one stop your emotional response to it. The people arguing in the comments, like, you have to get through so many layers just to verify it. It's gonna be trickier before it gets better.
- [34:19]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, it's already tricky. And yes, you're right, it's going to get even trickier.
- [34:24]
Drew
All right, the rabbit hole continues. So this is from Unusual Whales. And of course I'm just gonna say allegedly at the top of this segment because we don't know if any of this is true, but allegedly. Newly released Department of Justice documents show that investigators reviewing surveillance footage from the night of Jeffrey Epstein's death observed an orange colored shape moving up a staircase toward the isolated lot tier where his cell was located at approximately 10:39pm on August 9, 2019. Which contradicts official accounts, per CBS.
- [34:55]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I don't know what that's supposed to mean. Presumably that you've got a prisoner moving towards that. Given the orange, I assume that's what they want us to read into that. But the only thing that I'll really take away from that is a thing happened that goes against official reports. Why is that important? Because it does slowly seem that more and more things go against official reports. When they launched, released all the footage and they were like, that's every second of it. No, it's not. It's missing 2 minutes, 3 minutes, whatever it was. Also, that's not facing the correct door or whatever it was. Like, there were all things that were like, that's not what you said it was. Then there's now all this stuff about the noose. Do you have anything on that that I don't? All right, so they're saying that the noose that was turned in where they said this is what he choked himself with, does not match the ligature marks on his neck. So the thing being supplied as this is how he killed himself. They're like, no, it's not. So now you've got a body that's been choked by something that couldn't have been the thing that they turned in with it. And so people are saying the actual noose has never been recovered. And then, honestly, I don't need anything more than mysteriously, all of the cameras weren't working. The second I heard that, I was like, guys, come on. It's like if somebody cleared out Fort Knox. And they were like, yeah, like, can you imagine? Every one of our guards called in sick and we had like a power outage, and so all the electronic doors were accidentally set to default open when the power goes out. Isn't that wild that it all happened when the guards were gone? It's like, huh, like, bro, you actually have to have been hit in the head with attack hammer to like, buy into some of this. So, yeah, this is crazy. This is crazy. This is one of those. I don't know what the happened, but I definitely am suspicious that what I'm being told happened, happened. I'm not saying he's alive. I'm just saying something in the official record is weird as.
- [36:53]
Drew
But wait, there's more. Epstein was killed allegedly, August 10, 2019. The Epstein files show his YouTube account username little little is jeff1. The file also shows he used the same username on the video game Fortnite. And he was an avid player showing frequent in game purchases. Fortnite tracker shows his account reach silver 1, level 4 of 9 1, 2, 3 4, brown, silver, go, respectively.
- [37:17]
Tom Bilyeu
I hate that he's not bad in the game. I don't like that.
- [37:22]
Drew
Chapter 5 Season 1 was released on December 3, 2023. It ran until March 8, 2024. Jeffrey Epstein's Fortnight account was playing from Israel in 2024, four years after his death.
- [37:33]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I don't. To be honest, I don't put a lot of stock in this one only because that, that would be a level of stupid that he has not displayed up until this point. So he has been crafty in the extreme. He supposedly was speaking with people in, like, draft emails. They were using, like, Fortnite and Roblox chat to avoid surveillance. Like, these are people that seem to have pretty deep ways of avoiding detection. And for him to be like, I don't need to create a new account, I'll just use my old account. Like, that seems impossible to believe. So again, I'm not saying that I have some clear sense of what's actually happened. And this is very much conspiracy corner. So maybe all of this is total horseshit and the dude just kill themselves in a cell. But if you want to know, you start putting all these things together and it just feels like, okay, the only thing I don't know, or sorry, the only thing I know for sure is that what I'm being told isn't accurate. Now what parts of it aren't accurate? That's where I don't know. He could still be dead. But there is. There's just too much weird shit.
- [38:43]
Drew
This.
- [38:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, my God, this is crazy.
- [38:45]
Drew
So I'll start at the. At the top. Jeffrey Epstein won the Powerball lottery twice.
- [38:51]
Tom Bilyeu
I haven't done the research. I don't know if this is actually true, but if this is actually true. What? Like, come on, man.
- [38:58]
Drew
Allegedly, he won 29.3 million in the form of an anonymous trust from the Oklahoma powerball lottery on July 2, 2028, the day after he started to serve his 18th month jail jail sentence in Florida. And then this is a newspaper article that the trust is keeping the Powerball winner a mystery. Anonymous.
- [39:18]
Tom Bilyeu
So here's what makes this fascinating. And it goes back to the. Oh, the Fort Knox. The doors just happened to be unlocked on that day. Like, so this Powerball, they had a computer glitch. I'm not making this up. A computer glitch. So they couldn't do it publicly, so they. This one that Epstein's trust apparently won was the one that they did privately with just auditors. Come on, bro. So not only does he win Powerball twice and like tens of millions of dollars, by the way, but that, oh, look at that. How crazy that you won the one that was done behind closed doors. Isn't that weird? So it becomes a question of will. Do we have the will? And then you're going to be fighting against people who want this stuff to be invisible. Mark my words, over the next five years, you're going to see a battle of what the average person is allowed to know. I mean that you are going to find a battle around mal information where it is a true thing and people are not allowed to know it. And that is. That's a super red line for me. So. But we're living in a very weird time. I get it. Previously it was just easy to keep most people from knowing something and letting people know everything is dangerous. There, there is a risk. But I am of the mind you absolutely have to do it. So. But that's going to be a battlefront and I think what you're going to see are lawsuits against social media companies if, if Republicans fall out of office, you will see internationally people will. In fact, they'll probably do this in the lead up to. I don't think they'll do it in the lead up, not aggressively in the lead up to the midterms, but they'll do it aggressively in the lead up to the 2028 election. And they'll essentially try to internationally shut down these companies to try to bog down, to get them to censor people with the ultimate goal of trying to get them to censor people here in the US and not just, you know, trying to do different things in every different country where they just go like. And they do it blanket across the US where they get the US to pass laws that make them liable for the things that people post on their platform. And if you do that, you will have given back control to the censorship industrial complex. But that really feels like the next battle, like, this is not going away. There are people right now who are like, my secret cabal is going to be the one to get outed. And so how do we shut this all down? They are very good at systems level thinking. And so they're not going to say, oh, we're going to go violate the individual freedom of speech rights of any one person. We're going to nip this in the bud at a choke point. Like, think about it. From international military strategy. Was talking to Peter Zion. Awesome interview. When's it coming out?
- [42:04]
Drew
Next Thursday.
- [42:05]
Tom Bilyeu
Next Thursday?
- [42:05]
Drew
Set your alarm. I love Thursday is going to blow your mind.
- [42:08]
Tom Bilyeu
He and I do not agree on everything, but boy, man, did I enjoy my time with him. Peter, shout out to you. That was extraordinary. It's one of the most fun interviews I've done in a very long time. Yeah, so absolutely fantastic. But one of the things he was talking about is he was countering my hypothesis on China and he was like, bro, if Trump were trying to Choke out China. He would not be going to Venezuela and Iran. That's nonsensical. There's a few places that he would go where it'd be super easy. You could literally cause civilizational collapse. That's a quote. Cause civilizational collapse with like a couple of military carriers. If you put them like it was like off the coast of Singapore, I think. And so he was like, if you really want to choke him out, you watch the interview to find my rebuttal to that. I do have one. But it made a very interesting case for there are these choke points from a military perspective. If you're willing to do it, there are going to be consequences, but you can go and like really choke things out. And I think from an information standpoint right now that just like I teach in Impact Theory University, if you want to market, you've got to be on social media, period, end of story. You might do other things, but like, that's the core thing. So that's, that is a core choke point. That is how we communicate these days. And so expect a battle to play out sometime between now and the 2028 election where international groups go after these. And by the way, I'm saying those international groups will be operating in a coordinated fashion to come after the social media companies as a way to try to censor Americans. Count on it.
- [43:45]
Drew
The information is getting out there because allegedly the Clintons have agreed to testify in front of Congress and they said they want to make it public. Some speculation is that this could lead to a potential impeachment for Trump. But both Bill and Hillary have agreed and Hillary is fighting to make it public. She was going back and forth with James Comey clapping. So is this the first domino that you think falls that might actually lead to transparency?
- [44:10]
Tom Bilyeu
The way that it's being billed is that they have something that they're planning to weaponize against the people basically asking them questions. But I would be a little surprised if when it plays out in reality that it plays out in a fashion that is mutually assured destruction. I just, I can't imagine that. So we'll see. It may just be that what ends up making it to the public is a watered down version of the questions they wanted to ask because they know, look, Bill knows too many of the things and he's willing, he's at least bluffing that we're going to go all in because they, they have switched tack and I don't know why. They obviously see some angle that is politically advantageous to them in the Democratic Party. I Don't know what it is. I can't can guess.
- [45:00]
Drew
I feel like they have no sauce in the Democratic Party anymore. They're both grandfathered out. They. So with them it might be mutually assured destruction, but Hillary isn't eating if AOC gets put on or if Harris gets put on.
- [45:11]
Tom Bilyeu
Like, I have a very different mental model of that. So I believe that they are, in fact hyper connected to the Democrat Party, that they're the people invited into the rooms because remember meaning and purpose. So, yes, she's going to have given up on being the first female president. However, behind the scenes, she's so connected, knows so many people that she'll go into what I'll call grandma mode. Clinton's already in grandpa mode, so he still wants to matter until the day that he dies. He wants to be important. He and I'm sure is connected to all of these people. Also in terms of how do you keep the, you know, million dollar invites still rolling in this way matter, like be on the front lines of the fight. And so there's no universe in which these two are not communicating with the sharpest minds in the Democrat Party. If nothing else, then you want your legacy protected. You're going to make sure that the Democrats still love you, want to defend your legacy after you're gone. So many people go into the presidency and a huge part of their brain is allocated to how am I going to be remembered? So there's no way that Clinton isn't thinking about that. And so if they've got a final chip to play where it's like they feel like they're being sweated in a partisan way, they're going to play something about the files that have been released, changed their strategy. And so there's either now enough people are implicated that they feel like what came out on them just isn't that bad. And they can hide behind that smokescreen, but they know things that, like, are either coming out in the future or haven't come out yet. And so they've got like, a strategy to, like, either drop a redacted name that we'd want to see because they're like, I don't know if you guys saw. I flagged this in the last episode, but we never got to it. There were certain things being redacted where the person being redacted is clearly the victim. Miser. They are not the victim. So it's like, why the is that being redacted?
- [47:04]
Drew
Yeah.
- [47:05]
Tom Bilyeu
So I don't know if they are prepared to squawk on some of those people, I don't know. I have no idea what's shaking down. All I know is when you go from I'm willing to face contempt of Congress charges to actually, I want to talk now. And I want it to be in front of the whole world. Like, I want it to be as public as possible. And the other side is like, no, we don't want to do this publicly. It's like, oh, like something changed. They feel their leverage has changed, so it'll be interesting to see what that ends up being.
- [47:38]
Drew
And then on top of that, we also have Ghislaine Maxwell set to testify before Congress on February 9th. So it seems like, directionally, they're moving in the right direction. But you don't think that we're gonna get truth from it. What do you think is the result?
- [47:53]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't know. I think we really could. I really think that this could be a thing that. Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna try to sum this up as fast as I can because I never get any response back. So this either I'm a lunatic and nobody cares, or I'm not making it land. Reading James Burnham. James Burnham, the author who talks about the iron law of oligarchy, the need to control narratives. And he goes, we have a real problem that we're living in the social media age because you can't be a functioning society without shared narratives. Shared narratives require. He doesn't say force, but that's the idea. And so I'm reading that going, whoa, we draw very different conclusions. You absolutely cannot try to put that genie back in the bottle because it will require force, lies, manipulation. And even if that's what's been happening historically, we're finally at the point where we can get out from under that. And I believe we have a moral obligation to get out from under that. And so I'm like, this really could be. But. But I. As. As I'm saying this to myself, I'm thinking, ooh, but there are going to be consequences. And so what are the consequences of the way I want to do it look like? And I think they look like this. I think they're going to force us to confront that the level of corruption is terrifying, that the number of people that are doing it is small, very small. And so we're going to be like, whoa, this is a few thousand people, man, and a few thousand people are controlling the destinies of billions. I think that it is going to create a level of distrust, a level of rage and anger that will Echo. Especially because it's happening at a populist moment where people already feel, they can feel it viscerally in their pocketbook that something, something bad has happened to them. They don't know what it is, but something bad has happened to them. This is going to be terrible. If you have kids in the room, get them out. But the, the analogy that feels perfect here is you went out on the town with Bill Cosby and you wake up and your ass hurts, and you're like, I don't know what happened, but it was bad. And so now people, they're feeling that, and now they're getting this flood of information that's like, oh, this is exactly what's happening. You got roofied. He has a history of doing this, like, all that shit. And you're like, yo. And so now, as people find out exactly how much of the world is manipulated, I think things begin to at least have directional energy for change. Now, whether that change is pure chaos or that change actually moves in a high utility direction, that I don't know yet. But I think that people aren't going to let go. In fact, you got to play the Nick Fuentes clip on this. People are not going to relent on this one, especially because they've pushed. They got the thing they wanted. The thing they wanted is terrifying. They know there's more. They're going to want to push harder. People are now doing the sleuthing. Expect the sleuthing to go on for another 612 months. Like, I, I think real shit is going to come out. We'll see.
- [50:45]
Drew
I want to pivot to Nick. We're going to bring this up in two seconds, but one last question to kind of put a button on this. Is there a scenario? I'm throwing this out there. I've seen House of Cards vibes. My writer brain is going off. I got this pitch for you. Bill Clinton goes up there. He's an old man. He's going to get grandfathered in. He believes in Satan. He's going to go see his maker. He's happy. He's. He's gonna ride off into the sunset. Is there a situation in which he goes in there, he says, Hillary knew nothing about it, Just like I cheated her in office. Hillary's exonerated. She's just been a strong wife. She's Christian value. She supports me. She's good. Me, I'm a pos. You guys caught me in office. You caught me out of office. It was me and Trump and Epstein. We were the three amigos. And we was out here with 12 year olds.
- [51:24]
Tom Bilyeu
0% chance. 0% chance it's gonna go.
- [51:28]
Drew
No way. He like nukes himself and tries to take Trump down with him.
- [51:31]
Tom Bilyeu
Nope. Because as far as I know, nothing's come out in the files. The. The most damning stuff has been on Bill Gates where it's just like actively I had sex with these Russians. I got an std and I want to slip my wife some antibiotics because either she did get it or I'm worried she'll get it.
- [51:49]
Drew
So there was some stuff with Trump and the 12 year olds and the, the period he check. And the finger thing, like in the buried bodies in the golf courses. Like they're.
- [51:58]
Tom Bilyeu
There were some things that finger thing I hadn't heard. So that. Thank you for making my day way worse. The buried in the golf cart. I think all that's going to come out. Like we're going to find out like that. That is. You've got way too much like radar detection that you can do and just walk around. You don't have to dig anything like around. If you find them, Holy Rome is going to burn. People will lose their. Their minds. So. But I think that's going to come out now. How much of that is real? I don't know. Here's the thing. I don't. There, there. There's like a invisible line with the Epstein stuff where it goes from horrifying sexual abuse, which unfortunately we see every day. So we know that the odds of that being real are just through the roof. Then there's like Pizzagate and it starts being like, could that really be real? Like, do humans really do that? So that one like gets a. Are we pushing it too far? Are we making too many leaps? Time will tell because there's enough weird shit there. Something's going on. And then there's the. I think I can say this because it was actively in the files and I saw it with my own eyes. I'm simply repeating what I saw in the Epstein files with no claims of legitimacy. I don't know if this is true, but Robin Leach choking a woman to death at a party and then they somehow dispose of the body. And people saying they've got a door that sticks out of a cliffside and literally just drops to the ocean. Like, why would you ever do that? Nobody said it. But intimating that they basically.
- [53:32]
Drew
That's worse than the locked door that Murdoch had in his office when women would walk in. He just pressed a button in the door lock.
- [53:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Like, I need to stop talking to you, you know, details that distress me.
- [53:41]
Drew
That was the first. That was me too. Movement. Like when you have a button in your. In your. Under your desk. Like, you are. You're a predator. You. That should be, like, premeditated. Like, you know how, like, if you buy a gun and then you kill somebody, it's a different murder charge. That should be like a different rape charge if you have a button that locks your door automatically.
- [53:56]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, that is wild.
- [53:57]
Drew
Okay, we neither here nor there. Let's jump to the next one. Oh, my bad.
- [54:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, I. Just. To wrap that up. So it's like you get to the, like, Satan worshiping the pizza slicing. I'm not even going to say more than that. If you know, you know, like, that's where I feel like, okay, we. We sort of start getting farther and farther out where admittedly, I don't. I don't want to believe it. So I have motivated thinking. Yeah, we'll see if all that stuff comes out. But, dude, if this. Okay, the sexual abuse stuff is enough to bring down every person related to it forever, but if they're also, like, murdering and burying people, that is so wild. So anyway, yeah, I really hope this does not go all the way to the pizza slicing. That would be a level of horror that. I mean, you don't recover from that psychologically as a country for a while. That. That's rough.
- [54:53]
Drew
You'll need a Bukele. Somebody who's like, hey, everybody, we're having a meeting. All you guys are getting investigated. There's. It's just like Tom Holman in Minnesota. There's gonna have to be an adult that comes into the room. I don't know who that adult is, but it's gonna have to be somebody that has a moral, like, compass and somebody that's okay with saying, hey, as an American. Pedophiles are bad. Sorry, Ted Cruz. You want to stop attacking them? I want to continue to attack them. Like, we need to draw this line, and it needs to be big and bolded in Sharpie permanent marker, painted with the same paint thing that they use to paint on the side of the road. Like, it needs to be as thick as possible. So that way we know. Because if we don't have that line, then we have no moral compass. The anarchy is real. And we need to call Michael Malice up and see where the bunker is.
- [55:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes. Poor Michael Mouse will hate being drawn to that depiction of anarchy. We love him. But. So, yeah, look, man, that. That is. I just don't want to exist in a world where people really do that. That would be horrifying.
- [55:52]
Drew
Somebody said. But Drew Trump said it's time to let it all go. You're right, my bad. Nick Fuentes, regardless, is saying, either way, maga's gonna feel it on the midterms. He's staying home, him and all his goipers. Let's hear from.
- [56:03]
Political Commentator
I cannot wait for the Democrats to take the House. They subpoena and investigate Kristi Noman, Lauren and Corey Lewandowski and they find so much corruption it's going to make the impeachments during Trump 1 look like a joke.
- [56:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, this is. You need truth, you gotta have the truth. The I want to watch it all burn attitude always makes me nervous. I think people always assume something better comes along behind it and that is not necessarily true. So I would, if I were giving a speech right now, it would be all on. Okay. Dear public, first of all, vote for who you think is going to make your life better. Second, don't relent, don't relent on the pressure. But the. I want to get political operatives in there to go and start arresting people. Like that whole thing, I just. People are not thinking about the second and third order consequences. You make politics existential. What you should want is your own team to have so much pressure on them that, that they have to. That a Thomas Massie or somebody like that is like. I mean, he's already doing it, but propping up Thomas Massie, empowering him so that he knows America's behind him. Don't relent. Get this guy reelected like he's our man, he's actually there fighting for it. Anybody that's rocking with Thomas. Anybody that's trying to get the, the visibility and the truth that we need out of this? Yeah, like get those people going. That energy is so different than. Oh, I can't wait. I know. There's so much political hatred between these sides. Get the Democrats in there, they're just gonna go fuck em up. That's a very different energy than like we wanna get the truth. This is like, I wanna see these guys hurt. I mean, let him play, let him, let him keep going. Cause he. The animosity that he feels comes out pretty clearly.
- [58:14]
Political Commentator
All that stuff about Paul Manafort and the business documents and the Ukrainian phone call, the corruption that they will discover when the Democrats are in the House. It's going to make all that stuff look like a joke and they're just going to keep stacking it up on top of Vance. We're going to be in our War with Iran. The Middle east is going to be a mess.
- [58:37]
Tom Bilyeu
What's their beef?
- [58:38]
Political Commentator
The economy is going to be a.
- [58:39]
Drew
Mess, is falling out of the favor.
- [58:41]
Political Commentator
The Trump administration is corrupt. He might even be impeached. You are. And we are not going to bail you out. Sorry, 2026, I'm telling people to stay home. You know what my message is in 2026? Stay home.
- [59:00]
Tom Bilyeu
We got to vote. That's the part that I don't like. Like vote. Vote for what you think is going to make the country better. Now if you think that the Democrats are going to make the country better, then vote for the Democrats, but don't be some sort of team based voting bloc. And it's like, well, we know we can never vote for the other side, so just stay home. It's like, no, no. Like, who do you believe is the right person? Stay active, stay vocal. Go vote for who you think is going to make America a better place. But the weaponizing of the vote, like, is just always seems so nonsensical to me.
- [59:29]
Political Commentator
On track. Fuck you. And I, the guy that posted it, I like the guy guy, it's not directed at him, but that sentiment, we gotta get everybody back on track. Go yourself. You told us when we fast.
- [59:45]
Tom Bilyeu
So here's something. Do, dear voting public, do with this what you will. But when you look at minorities that are able to get like their candidate elected, whether it's in the UK with Muslim mayors everywhere, whether it's in the Somali community getting the politicians elected that are friendly to their causes, it's very small number of people. But when you vote as a block, like, you can really get something done. So if you are withholding your vote, you are making yourself vulnerable to somebody else's voting block. You are removing the one thing that you have that is, call it a moral weapon, which is to make your voice heard, to say, this is the person that I want to see in office. So, yeah, this does not strike me as good strategy.
- [60:31]
Political Commentator
The Epstein files. We don't need your votes anymore. Hey, wish granted. Remember that.
- [60:38]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, this is all petty.
- [60:40]
Political Commentator
Remember in July of 2025 when Trump said, if you want the Epstein files, you're not a real supporter. I don't want your vote. Hey, wish granted, pal.
- [60:50]
Drew
Wish granted.
- [60:50]
Political Commentator
Wish granted.
- [60:51]
Tom Bilyeu
You wanted it. You stupid thing to say.
- [60:54]
Drew
You want to get dumb to hang the hat? This was crazy.
- [60:57]
Political Commentator
Call Netanyahu. That's the part that I love. They sell us out. H1B visas galore. Student visas galore. No mass deportations. Burying the Epstein Files. I think Bill Clinton's a great guy. And then in 26 they're going to be begging us for the vote. Hey guys, we need your help. You know, President Trump needs more seeds.
- [61:25]
Tom Bilyeu
This is a very good reminder to politicians, man like you, you really have got to be thoughtful about what you say. It, it is wild. It is reason 462 why I would not make a good politician. Like the things you say, man, they echo. This is why I'm talking about second and third order consequences. Like he might Trump when he was saying those things, like there might be people near him that that was like a positive thing to say. Or you might have thought that it was gonna get his die hard supporters to back off. Yeah, this has not ended up playing well in that those second and third order ways. So yeah, stupid.
- [62:08]
Political Commentator
You know what I have to say about that? You're worried about your majority in 2026. You're worried about losing the House. Why don't you ask Bill Clinton for his vote?
- [62:18]
Tom Bilyeu
That then.
- [62:19]
Drew
Wow.
- [62:20]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, he's ask Bill. Thrilled at that.
- [62:23]
Political Commentator
Ask those 600,000 Chinese students. Ask the H1B workers. Ask the Israelis. Ask Netanyahu for a vote. He gave Netanyahu $20 billion.
- [62:33]
Drew
Ask him to vote for and another 3.3 billion.
- [62:37]
Political Commentator
You gave Wall street the corporate tax cut extension. Why don't she ask?
- [62:42]
Tom Bilyeu
I think. But yeah, this is. It is. It is understandable outrage. But I think that he's channeling it in a way that is not going to help the things that he cares about in the long term. Yeah. My appeal to people would be Thomas Massey is playing this right. He's insisting on getting this actually out. That this is never going to relent the victims that are willing to step forward, make sure that we're banging the drum for them, make sure that people are hearing their voices. That kind of thing goes a lot longer way than the hahaha. Like you. You piss me off. And now I just want to watch it all burn. Someone in the comments said that that emotion can be a catalyst. It can. There's no doubt about that. But it. Emotion tends to be a caustic weapon. So it, it costs people as much as it gets them.
- [63:32]
Drew
Yeah. So speaking of upcoming elections, Kamala is back and she's is changing Kamala HQ into headquarters. The new Gen Z Progressive Content Hub.
- [63:44]
Tom Bilyeu
Madam Vice President, what's going on with Kamala hq? Well, I'm so glad you asked.
- [63:48]
Drew
I have good news. So Kamala HQ is turning into headquarters and it's where you can Go online.
- [63:55]
Tom Bilyeu
To get basically the link. This is crazy. This was not on my bingo card for her to be the front runner. I think polymarket has her as the front runner to be the Democratic nominee for 2028. And they're going so hard in the paint for leaning into Gen Z. The problem is, and for anybody looking at the screen, let's see. I'm not sure if you guys were able to see it, but as Drew was scrolling around on his feed, because it's in the comments of the video that we were showing you in the feed. It's like everybody doing the hello fellow kids meme. And so it just feels ridiculous that she's trying to do like this 6, 7 thing, which by the way ended up being they got clowned on so hard. If you look at it now, headquarters is now headquarters 6, 8 of politics.
- [64:48]
Drew
The presidential nominee list is out and Polymarket's giving Gavin the edge.
- [64:55]
Tom Bilyeu
He's still the one.
- [64:55]
Drew
Yeah, Gavin is getting the edge at 30%. AOC is at 8, Kamala's at 6, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg. But there was an interesting report from even Ross Smith and he was talking about that they tested various Democratic Party visions from a range of the elected and the pundits and fight language stood out the most for them. So that that is not surprising. Beto the Texas, he was like a one hit wonder. I don't even know why he's still politically relevant because he actually hasn't held office in years. But he was like, imagine the Democratic Party that fights, really fights for all of us. No rolling over, no bending over, no big money in corporate politics. A message defined by people in every state, not consultants and pollsters. No matter who you are, we're here to listen, learn and work with you. That was a 14 plus 14 effect.
- [65:39]
Tom Bilyeu
That is populism put into sentence form.
- [65:43]
Drew
And then a negative. The worst receiving message was Gallego. He's a senator out of Arizona. I talk to men about pride, family insecurity. And I say, I'm going to make sure you get out of your mom's house. House. Make sure you can get a job so you can get rich. Democrats should talk about those things. People don't want to hear words like economic stability. They want the American dream. And that was the least.
- [66:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, I hate that. That's the least.
- [66:05]
Drew
That was the least.
- [66:06]
Tom Bilyeu
It's like the one that's most grounded. The one that is like somebody really trying to get at the core of what's causing the malaise is like people like, nah, Fuck that. Like, I want to know that you're mad as hell. I want to know you're going to go slap somebody. I want to know that you're going to fight. You're like, literally fighting. Fight.
- [66:21]
Drew
Yeah.
- [66:22]
Tom Bilyeu
And that's what gets people turned on. And here's the bad news. That is what gets people turned on. Like, if you want to get people's blood pumping. So I used to do a YouTube series called Impact Quotes. And it's funny, there are still people that'll come up and be like, oh, my God. I was just listening to one of those this week, and I filmed those seven years ago, and to make them good, I finally had to, like, let go and just say, okay, I'm gonna perform these. These are not. I'm not trying to be like, even deal. I'm trying to get you amped up. And people would cut them together into super cuts, like, music under them.
- [66:59]
Drew
And ha.
- [67:00]
Tom Bilyeu
And when you're doing it, yes, you use aggressive language. You get, you know, talk about going hard, leaning in, fighting, not stopping, ripping, tearing. It's like, it really does it. It would get me amped up saying it. It got people amped. People used to talk about listening to in the gym. And so it was like, yep, that's where we're at, that people have anxiety. They want it transmuted into anger. They want to feel aggressive. Aggression is drug like. Aggression is a positive emotion. Remember, if you stimulate somebody's brain, go all through all the emotions, you say, okay, cool. You felt them all. Anger, happiness, sadness. Which one do you want me to re stimulate? It is not happiness. It's anger. People want anger restimulated because anger comes with so much clarity. It feels powerful. I'm ready to a fight. That's why you see coaches rile their team up, get them going. You actually become more energetic. You become more aggressive. Your pain tolerance goes up there. There is two types of energy, boys and girls. You have physical cellular energy, and then you have psychological energy. And getting people over into that aggressive, angry, militant, righteous indignation. If you can get them there, they are way more likely to take action. They're way more likely to. To push into the danger zone. You don't want somebody feeling anxious or unsure. Like, you don't want to be talking about pride, that you want to get people mad. You want to point to a singular enemy and get people after them. And if you want to know how dangerous that is, read Mein Kampf. That's a book where he goes, you know, we need. We need an enemy. We need a singular enemy. I can get all these young men mad as hell. We can point at them and say, they're the problem. Let's go fucking get them. And that's what you're living through. So you are living through a time where people understand. This is exactly how you get people riled up. This is exactly how you get them to take action. This is exactly how you turn them into a weapon that you can point in a direction. Oh, and did I mention that sitting on top of all this are people that know how to manipulate. Be careful, because there are people that want you mad. There are people that want you to not understand economics. There are people that want you to not understand yourself so that they can whip you into a frenzy and point you with the thing they want you pointed at. That's what scares me. It works way too well.
- [69:25]
Drew
Do you think the American dream is dead?
- [69:27]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes, as disco.
- [69:30]
Drew
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. I thought it was like, well, you know, you have to fight it. It's up to you. And, you know, I was definitely, well.
- [69:38]
Tom Bilyeu
The American dream is dead. If you're asking me, can an individual still succeed, of course you can. That, like the.
- [69:44]
Drew
Give me the differentiation between those two.
- [69:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay. So I won't rat this person out. But somebody. Somebody very meaningful to me came and said, your phase one stuff made me feel like it was something important, meaningful. Okay? That was all the mindset stuff, the impact quotes that fed their soul. And they're like, now just doesn't feel as important, doesn't feel as meaningful. I don't feel like it's helping. And I was like, wow. One of them. The reason I stopped doing mindset content, it's not that it's not useful. It helps a very small number of people. It's that the way that it helps is the way that. That Advil helps. It's temporary relief to a pain. It's not a solution, doesn't address the underlying thing that put you in that position. What I'm doing now is me saying, what are the most consequential problems that we face as a society? And those are going to be the things that I talk about. And it pisses people off. It's wild. And the. The people that enjoyed me in phase one almost universally hate the direction that I'm going in now. And for them, I have changed. And I'm just like, what? Like, this is literally phase one was my first attempt of, like, I'm gonna do direct emotional appeals. They feel awesome. But this isn't how I Live my life. I'm building companies. Like, if you think I'm running around like giving rah rah speeches, I do it. But it's not. I don't live there. I live in the tactics of building a business. I live in a spreadsheet. I live in, like, cause and effect, first principles. Like, like, that's where I live. So then, cool, slowly, Covid, they've all heard the story. I end up over here where it's like, okay, these are the most consequential things in my own life. They're also the most consequential things to other people. You're gonna end up in economics if you're dealing with consequential things. So over here, dealing with that, and people really feel like, oh, but these things, they don't matter. And it's like, like that's where you're interfacing with the real world. I don't understand, like, how people view that as something that doesn't matter. Okay, how is, does all of that relate to the American dream? The American dream is an economic framework. The American dream is there is a path that we're going to help you. We, the government, are going to help you walk so that you can be on a default path that has a really good outcome that is dead. We made decisions starting in 1913 that gave elite bankers the ability to manipulate your wealth. And wouldn't you know it, they manipulate it in a way where people who understand the financialized gambling, they do very well. And the people that don't have all their money stolen from them. Okay. Is what it is. But that killed the American dream because houses became unaffordable as a function of the physics of modern monetary theory. There was no other way that that could play out. It's physics, it's just math. It's just how money, like money has a. Money has physics. And so no one's ever going to be able to violate the laws of physics. So that's where we've ended up. Now the fact that skills have utility, which is the part that I just cannot get people, like, I always want, I feel like whoever the guy was that said the true thing that nobody wants to hear. The only real thing people need to hear from me, skills have utility. Once you understand that you can go get so good at something, people can't stop you from doing it. So my private message to everybody is, I don't know that we can save society. Society may actually just be a function of cultural energy. Cultural energy runs in cycles based on debt and so that's just gonna play out. No one's escaped it so far. So listen, just like I hold out hope that they'll radically extend life, even though so far nobody's escaped death, I hope that maybe we sort of can. I hope that somehow we can figure this debt game out such that we don't follow the same loop of history. But history tells me that I'm gonna die. And history tells me that this cycle is gonna play out in a very similar fashion to all the cycles before it. So then I'm just like, well, okay, those are societal level trends. What about the individual? The individual can always win because skills have utility. And if you focus on that, you can get so good at investing money, you make money no matter what happens. You can get so good at starting a business, you can add value to people's lives, make a ton of money. So there are ways that the individual can succeed in any moment in time. Literally any moment in time. But I. It is a question mark as to whether we can stop society's momentum and redirect it. I don't know. Till then, my friends be legendary. Take care. Peace.
- [74:49]
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- [75:18]
Tom Bilyeu
Experian.