Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Tom Builder Show Live. Incredibly strange, dangerous times are upon us. Obviously, the war continues to rage in Iran. They named Khomeini's son as his successor, and then, hours later, he was reportedly hit and killed in a strike.
And now it was a dangerous time. Oh, not how I thought we were using that button today. Very well played. The U.S.
is expanding its messaging in terms of going from nukes to ballistic missiles and fears of Iran going underground and becoming unreachable. And so watching the U.S. get their messaging together in that in real time, you're watching the narrative game be played. Narrative warfare is everywhere, everybody, so do be careful.
Many people are confused about Iran's pattern of retaliation, but I think it makes perfect sense once you understand what Iran's actual strategy is, and we're going to be going into detail on that today. Poland has added themselves to the list of countries that are now pursuing nuclear weapons as they look around and realize, hey, we live in a world of raw power. And for anybody that's come up in the post-World War II international world order, this is a very shocking period of time that we're going through, and there's going to be a ton of disruption. We're seeing some of that play out right now in South Korea as their stock market plummeted and actually got shut down.
It's called tripping a breaker. They tripped a breaker to avoid panic selling as fears there over rising oil prices are just spinning people out of control. But that's what happens when you're importing the vast majority of your energy. We'll talk a bit about that later.
Trump is doing battle with the banks to get the Genius Act in place and to establish the U.S. as the home of crypto. I think this is really important, and people pushing back on the banks in the way that they're trying to strangle the crypto industry, I think that is very wise. It's, in my book, quite outrageous what they're trying to do.
The U.S. is now picking up side missions as we apparently joined a joint military operation with Ecuador. Did not have this one on my bingo card today. This was aimed at going after a designated terrorist organization in Ecuador.
Why now? I don't know. If I can be a little bit suspicious, if you guys will forgive me given everything that's going on. Boy, I don't know if they're burying F-C files in Ecuador now or what.
But, buddy, there's something going on because that is some really strange timing, and I'm sure that it's all going to make sense, Drew. When we look at it, it's just going to be just hunky-dory on the above board. But, yeah. Okay, well, here we go.
I feel like when we first heard about the war on Saturday to what we're talking about now on Wednesday has already started, like, shifting. How dare you notice that? How dare you notice that? There is no war.
There is no war. But before we get into the minutia of that, where are we at with the war? How are you feeling in general? Yeah, all jokes aside, it is right now, I would say, that this is a bit of a mixed bag.
So, some things are going well. Other things are not. And so, if you look at just from a pure military perspective, I think the U.S. is doing very well.
I think as you look at the way that the amount of attacks in terms of number of rockets and things that are being launched, that's from Iran to other places, that continues to diminish by the day. And the real tell in terms of us getting air superiority is the different types of airplanes that we're sending in. So, in the beginning, you're going to start with the B-2 bombers. It's super stealth.
You go in because you're expecting that their defenses are locked and loaded, they're ready to go. And if you come in in a super obvious way, you're absolutely going to get taken out. And so, the fact that we started there, I don't think surprised anybody, but we were able to do a lot of damage to begin taking out some of their radar, some of their anti-aircraft capabilities. Then you go to what we're at now, which are the B-52 bombers.
They have much bigger capacity. However, they're like super slow. They fly like 30,000 feet. They're visible to every radar ever.
And so, now the fact that we're using those tells you that we really have established air superiority. Now, there was a dogfight. And so, I believe it was an Israeli jet that ended up taking out one of the Iranian jets in a dogfight. So, it's not that their capabilities are at zero, but they're at a point now where we feel very comfortable going slow, dropping massive payloads on them.
And so, that has been a really big advantage for us. So, I think that you are winning from that perspective. However, when you see what's happening in the straight-offer moves, this is where everybody has to get very paranoid. If you want to talk about how this could all go very badly for the whole world, if they can effectively, they being Iran, if Iran can effectively shut down the straight-offer moves, they're in a really good position.
Now, the problem is that they've been able to do that without firing a shot. We've essentially sunk their entire navy, which is another big checkmark in our box. So, that's going very well. They haven't been able to place the mines that people were expecting them to be able to place.
However, they have managed to get all of the insurance companies, primarily out of the UK, to just be like, eh, we don't want to touch this. There's too many question marks going on here. And so, because of that, we're now in a position where if we didn't act and do something very dramatic that you're going to have, depending on how long it goes on, you could go up all the way from just rising prices in energy, which would be less problematic for the U.S., but certainly problematic for a lot of people the world over. But if you can get into global recession territory because you're able to choke that out for an extended period of time, now you're in real trouble.
And if I remember, 20% of all the world's oil goes through that, or at least the sea-bound oil goes through there. So, it would be a massive blow to the world economy and for anybody importing a lot of oil, it's going to be very problematic. So, Trump has just said, like, our U.S. Navy is going to handhold ships through this.
Oh, and by the way, we're going to use one of the banks that's normally reserved for helping smaller countries get moving, we're going to re-task that bank with supplying insurance to people. Now, whether this ends up being brilliant or utterly disastrous, only time is going to tell, but it is a very fascinating move on the part of Trump. So, we'll see how that one plays out. And I can't tell if they moved that fast just because they were expecting this to happen and this was something that they were gamed out and they knew this is a possibility.
And so, boom, we've got to have something in the back pocket or if somebody in the administration was just like, the guy that raised his hand was like, hey, I'm the guy, I've been waiting for this moment and you've been waiting to call on exactly me and I know exactly how we address this because they moved on this very fast. Again, the outcome of this is anybody's guess at this point, but it's a very shrewd tactical move because choking off the straight-up or moves is one of the ways that you can almost deadhand trigger this whole thing. If they can find a way to poison that, again, just by getting insurance companies if things do hot, if they've been able to put a bunch of mines in there which it doesn't look like they've been able to, if they've got strike capabilities in mobile trucks that the U.S. hasn't yet been able to shut down, that they can get up to the, close enough to the edge there that they can actually hit the ships and a bunch of ships have been hit, I think five, five to nine somewhere in there ships have been hit by the Iranians.
So, they've proven they've got the ability to do it. They've done enough damage to get the insurance companies to pull back. Okay, all of that, I think not a lot of people are going to argue. Now, I'm going to put something forward that's a little more suspect.
I'm not even sure that this theory of mine is accurate, but I have a growing sense that the hostilities between the U.S. and the U.K. are going to start playing out in very weird ways. And it is super strange to watch in real time at these two long-time allies that supposedly have this very special relationship to watch all of this unwinding.
It's very interesting. And the question becomes why. Now, you get into the immigration of it all if you're going to talk about the why now because Keir Starma certainly seems to be playing too. A growing Muslim base within this country seems to be going way out of his way to let the people know, hey, we weren't involved in these strikes.
But because their own bases are getting hit, they have to do something. And so as they put this public messaging forward that is very schizophrenic, and then behind the scenes are pulling back. It's not like the U.K. government is the one controlling the insurance, but do I expect that there is a lot of shared desire on behalf of the, quote-unquote, the City of London.
I shouldn't put that in quotes. The City of London, for people that don't understand, is different than London. I don't think a lot of people know that. So the City of London is the center of banking.
It's the center of where these big insurance companies lie. They have different rules and regulations that only apply to them. I think there are even certain things that they vote on. It's very, very interesting.
And it predates the U.K. parliament. Let that one sink in. So there's some very interesting things going on here.
Every now and then you'll hear like a conspiracy, and I think it probably is best understood, at least to the depths of many people take this, better understood as a conspiracy. But there is enough there there to talk about that the City of London has been trying to control the flow of oil in Iran and the flow of capital in Iran since 1901. I talked briefly about this on Monday. And so I have a feeling, again, I've got my tinfoil hat strapped on very tightly right now, and I will update my thinking as more data comes out.
But the more that I see the U.K. being weird, I think it's that one-two punch that they have a growing Muslim population that they have to consider as they message and get involved. And you've got the City of London, which is like all the wolf-toweling, secret bankery stuff, trying to do what they can to maintain control of the situation. And I don't think that they want Trump to be able to run his agenda.
And there are groups that put together very cohesive, though not necessarily accurate, narratives about why Trump is so hell-bent to go after the U.K. banking system. The City of London banking system is probably a better way to say it. So again, I'm super dubious that the narrative that gets put together there is accurate, that they would benefit from instability in the region.
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Thanks for staying tuned. Now, let's get back to it. It seems that the more we get under the layers of this, this isn't just like the whole, like we need to go out there and get those nukes, or this is to help the revolution, or this is to, it seems like with every turning day, we're starting to get, I've never heard this much about the Strait of Hormuz until the last three or four days. Like, it's crazy how these different things are now unwinding.
But St. Tom had a breakdown of how a lot of these things are going. Kind of give us a read on exactly what we're sending over there and how Operation Epic Fury is happening. Did you want to do the Q&A force first?
No, I'll do this clip. Good afternoon. I'm Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of the United States Central Command. In this capacity, I lead U.S.
military forces in the Middle East. I'm here to provide you an update on Operation Epic Fury, now on our fourth day of execution. First, I'd like to express my deepest condolences to the families and teammates of the extraordinary Americans who've been killed in action. And I'd also like to extend our prayers for speedy recovery to the wounded.
Yesterday, you heard from Secretary Hickseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Today, I'd like to give you an operational update on where we are and provide you with some key facts. While the order of the President of the United States and the Secretary of War, our military in the Middle East is undertaking an unprecedented operation to eliminate Iran's ability to threaten Americans as they've been doing for nearly half a century. Having spent more than 36 years in the military, I could not be prouder of America's sons and daughters in uniform who are answering the call.
More than 50,000 troops, 200 fighters, two aircraft carriers, and bombers from the United States are participating in this operation and more capabilities on the way. These forces bring a massive amount of firepower, representing the largest buildup by the U.S. in the Middle East in a generation. In the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury, U.S.
Central Command forces, together with Israel, delivered overwhelming and unprecedented strikes into Iran. Many of you may remember... I think in the beginning, and I'm not sure what the logic was if Trump just didn't think he was going to be able to win the narrative battle, but in the beginning, he was just a silent man. Like, we were clearly marching towards war.
We were getting updates that they just won't agree, won't agree, won't agree. But everyone was like, are you ever going to make the case at some of these updates because, one, with AI, all of the crazy misinformation and everything that's floating around there, you need somewhere that you can go to at least hold them accountable to their messaging. So it's like, if you think of it as an official record more than this is the reality, you should not just believe what they say. People should be aggressively fact-checking this stuff because this is all going to be narrative battling.
But getting them to go on the official record and saying, this is what we are officially standing behind. This is what's happening. This is what you guys can trust. And then that way, over time, we can figure out how much we actually can trust them.
Like, are they saying the real thing? You were bringing this up earlier. It's like, so much of this stuff is changing in real time. They were talking one way about why we were going to war only to watch that then change.
And we have gone through all of the, you know, at first, Trump was just saying, this is all about nuclear, nuclear, nuclear. We're trying to have this negotiation. And then it was like, psych, just kidding, because we had already taken out all of their nuclear capabilities. And the reason that we went now was straight from the mouth of your secretary of state.
He's saying, well, Israel was about to make a move and so we wanted to preempt them. Then he walked that back and was like, what are you talking about? That's not what I said the first time. You've got to play the full context.
Which, yeah, if you have it, play it. Wait a minute. There absolutely wasn't an imminent threat. And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked and we believed they would be attacked.
That we knew that if Iran was attacked and we believed they would be attacked. The imminent threat ever, man. Yeah. Well, so here's what's crazy.
So, listen, he's, the backtracking is important and I definitely want to finish this clip and I want people to see how this stuff will change over time. And look, there is no doubt that sometimes you just, you don't say it in the right way or you emphasize the second most important thing instead of the first most important thing. I do this stuff all the time and then people will pare back but I said, I'm like, yes, but I was talking within a bigger context. So, I'll give them some of that but at the same time, it's like, clearly, the words you actually said were and so now if you want to change emphasis or what you want to like say look i misspoke or something fine but everybody watching at home is going to learn over time that everything is spin that politicians say what they need to say to stay in power like it just all becomes a lot more clear now the best lie to tell is always the lie that's the closest to the truth so you don't have like all this crazy shit going on um they're gonna have to backtrack or find some way to integrate it into the narrative later you know what i mean um and i think that they are finding their footing on the way that they should have framed this in the beginning i don't think anybody that can hear my voice right now surprised to hear that i think this is all economic in terms of the primary driver not that it's the only driver speaking of the way that my words will be used against me uh if you look at economics as the primary driver you know theology not being number one nuclear not being number one but both of those are on the list we can argue about where exactly they belong in the list but when and i'll make a bigger case for this a little bit later in the episode but i think as you look at everything that's happening if you try to explain this through uh a religious lens you're gonna be like this is confusing i don't understand why they're doing this um if you look at this through the lens of okay from a why now tactical standpoint the thing that explains why the iranian people are rising up why the iranian regime has to clamp down all that it gets very clear when you look at economics first they're a motivating factor for how we ended up here fine religious love it but the actual thing that's going to predict behavior now becomes far more tactical far more strategic and less about the why if you do it and so these guys are not being honest about their these guys in us they're not being honest about their why either and so if you listen to the words they're saying they're trying to give the words the american people will relax and feel like yes this is a just war so they're not going to give you the presentation of what actually guides their strategic thinking or their tactical execution what they're going to give you is the emotional soothing words that they need to say to get the american people to go okay like i'm gonna trust whatever you're about to do and so that's why you'll get somebody like rubio who's incredible very intelligent very on his game he's an incredible messenger uh however i think the reality was probably something more like the u.s has got to protect this two trillion dollar investment uh israel's got an issue trigger trigger finger for other reasons they see a window closing that window could be as simple as uh there's mounting pressure on yahoo and i don't know i have not looked closely enough to this and israel has done a phenomenal job of keeping himself out of this news cycle man and letting this be about the u.s like kudos to those guys they learned their lesson from all the stuff that they were doing in palestine like that was just blowing up in their face time after time after time and so uh yeah netanyahu has somehow some way found a way to like really be out of the news cycle we're all talking about the u.s what the u.s is doing so on and so forth so i bet there was some of that that okay there's this pressure from israel like guys you may decide that you're going to back out of this because trump was like i'm really trying to negotiate i'm really trying to get something done um and assuming that all of that was real and not just bluster which knowing trump probably was real but like you had to just agree to all his demands he was going to make a move but israel was like i can't wait on that so i'm going to make a move trump's like damn i've got this card i want to play it maybe i wanted to wait a little bit longer or whatever i am going to be in pole position so i am going to be the guy that's going to attack this is this is not me like i'm not dancing to israel tune or anything like that but little bros over here like fucking paranoid won't just let me run my strategy he's got an itchy trigger finger he's about to go maybe that wasn't even the primary reason maybe they were going to give trump another week or whatever but so rubio's got in the back of his head all the pressure that they've been fucking dealing with over there they haven't all gotten together on the messaging yet so trump's like cool let's go he may not even know all the reasons like why trump is pulling the trigger right now so it's like you're putting together that narrative that is both true but also we're all just sort of making all this shit up that's the thing like one side note people will ask me questions in interviews about my history and i'll say do you want the real answer or do you want the mythology because i can give you the mythology in a soundbite but i can't give you the truth in a soundbite the truth was messy the truth was stop and start and tried this and that didn't work but then did this and this part of what we did worked and that part didn't but people don't want that they want like no no like tell me that story of like you're sliding towards depression and like you figure out a way to turn it all around and then it's just like a straight line up it's like okay it's mythology it's me spinning my own story out of it for no reason i'm trying to simplify it enough to actually be able to convey it to somebody so a narrative is always and forever going to be an oversimplification it's also trump may be like well i really care about winning the terms i really care about making sure that we get the investment dollars um but he may not even be saying that out loud to anybody so it's like the real motivations are going to be different for different people they will change over time in terms of what the real emphasis is and then whatever narrative they package up is not going to necessarily be accurate it's just going to be the thing that becomes easy to repeat yeah i have a couple more clips i kind of want to react to so i'm gonna go uh like a bit round robin on this um this was the democrats after they walked out of the briefing um yesterday after the meeting there are times when you go into a classified session and you walk out and you have a better understanding about the gravity of the situation and the rationale behind the military action this is not one of those times we remain as confused as the american people are they have had three or four or five justifications for this act of war over the last four or five days and nothing in this classified session alleviated that confusion that i don't think is a problem and i don't trust the republicans assessment of the democrats i don't trust the democrats assessment of the republicans they are just looking to um show that their side makes sense and the other side is crazy that's politics absolutely despise it it is bad for the human race but nonetheless it is true so you can't take that seriously the reality is that there's going to be multivariate reasons that we're doing it and some of them are so gross and so ugly they're never going to be honest about it they can't say it out loud and this is why i find this moment so interesting and the very thing true and i don't i don't know that this is ever going to be popular but um i think it is in terms of thoughts i think it is the way that we and the independent media ought to be covering this say what is true even when it's grotesque and the reality is that money makes the world around and so if your answer doesn't explain the economics of it all the odds of it being accurate are zero and when you explain the money of it all and you talk about the number of people dying it feels monstrous but it's nonetheless true and so when like when i say this is why i think they're doing it i just say it coldly i know people confuse it with me justifying it um it really does sound gross but it really is how the world works and this is one of those when you look back in history and you actually map out all the things that happen it's like um would world war ii have looked the way that it looked had hitler not been on meth no so you're telling me that like oh so many people died because they were on meth yes like that's rough that's that's a tough pill to swallow and yet nonetheless it is true and so we have to be covetous we have to want to look at this through the naked lens of what's real but that requires we accept that humans are a brutal creature yeah it keeps getting what actually sets up a republican uh rep tim bertett's uh assessment of it senator lindsey graham is now calling for the ussr bombing lebanon in response to the the reporter's question was lindsey graham is calling on the ussr bombing lebanon now um for their response in the war lindsey graham's a fistfight he hasn't wanted to turn into a bombing right so i just take it with a grain of salt dude yes ma'am take it with a grain of salt dude and then the last one this is from uh hold on don't rush past that okay so that that is a personality type and i think we're seeing it play out right now i think one of the questions everybody should rightfully be asking themselves is okay um i get tom's thesis that the u.s is reasserting its dominance that we are in a moment now where it's pure power politics all of the weakness that existed in say russia and china that allowed the u.s to step into a monopolar world and just say this is how everything's going to be rules-based uh you can do all your silver trading and gold trading on paper you don't have to worry about the actual asset moving around you can manufacture everything in china it doesn't matter like you don't need that uh europe you don't have to have your own defense america's gonna take care of you because there's no real rival to stand up in uh against us like all of that stuff is now just beginning to fade away and all of a sudden we're realizing that okay hold on a second like this is this is going to be a fight and now we have to figure out how far is the u.s like how far morally how far from a national identity are we comfortable with the u.s going uh are we comfortable with them going after terrorist groups in ecuador in mexico are we comfortable with them um deporting people off of our own soil because we think they're not adding to the fabric of america are we comfortable with them going into um venezuela and snatching up the dictator are we comfortable with them with what they're doing in iran if all of that yields america has the western hemisphere america is in control of its area america solidifies its economic dominance for another generation like are we okay with that do we get that that's what this moment is or are we gonna say hold on any one of these things in isolation was fine but the pattern of behavior that i'm seeing now is so aggressive and so like it feels so old school of like this before we knew a better era where we were just like because we're stronger and we can we're gonna like go into all these countries and so do we really buy that somebody else would do it to us if we don't do it first so that like that new understanding of what america is is going to be um ferociously debated within america itself and so that part of what is going to be interesting for us to watch is how the american people metabolize that change in posture and do we say well that's not really us that's just trump or do we say this is what the moment requires it's interesting um i feel like it's turning on that we're hitting pause for a moment but there's plenty more ahead so don't go anywhere thanks for sticking around let's get right back into the action this last one this is a bb net yahoo on hannity um when asked directly there are people who say israel dragged donald trump into it you know there are people that say well the prime minister of israel dragged donald trump into it and as somebody that's been friends with him over 30 years nobody drags donald trump into anything number one but i want to get your reaction to that well you're right i mean that's that's ridiculous donald trump is the strongest leader in the world it's interesting so having done interviews like this i know there's a slight delay and so you can feel very awkward like that did not feel like a dr evil laugh to me i think that netanyahu just has such a terrible reputation certainly in the west even some people in israel hate the guy um so i think it's easy to read him terribly the for me anyway the more interesting story is you don't get to be net yahoo without being a narcissistic egomaniac and so for him to say that trump is the strongest leader in the world is definitely political theater um so that part of like the sort of blatant manipulation of ego and all that stuff is the thing that i find um maybe more fascinating so again you don't have to go to conspiracy to look at net yahoo and go okay here's a guy that um small country not gonna be able to have all of your own resources um you have built an incredible society in the middle of the most hostile place in the world and i mean think about them coming up like in the 40s and 50s and 60s like everybody's bombing you everybody's trying to take you out and one by one you take them out take them out take them out and then you build what for my money and i'm not on the inside of this stuff so of course i could be wrong because every time i talk to this month he tells me that the french are far more terrifying but i just what the massage has been able to pull off is so crazy that you're just like okay what they've done is incredible and so does he have ambitions to continue to just expand expand expand of course and does that make it good no it absolutely does not but is it in keeping with what i know about humans yes the only thing it's out of step with is the last 80 years so this is how when people look at bitcoin they're like gold has been the thing for thousands of years bitcoin has been what 15 years and you look at humans and you go for uh how many tens of thousands hundred thousand plus years have we been these psychotic war mongers that were like oh i can't take you over so i will take you over and for 80 years we were chill and everybody's like but 80 years is normal and the rest is no no 80 years is the anomaly 80 years is the part you have to go how on earth is that going to sustain it doesn't fit the human condition so when i see somebody act in that way it does not make me like them but it certainly doesn't leave me surprised that you have a guy that is he wants to expand that left unchecked they would just keep taking territory keep taking territory and the wild thing a question i've never spent any time like really thinking about this but the real question is unchecked like how aggressive would they be i don't know i don't know and i don't know that we'll ever find out because they don't have the ability to amass enough resources to do it because they're so small there's a couple things i want to lay out there's something you said earlier about when you look at it through this lens of blank it makes sense to me that statement it made it rustle my feathers a little bit because this is one of those things that just as candace owens is looking at erica kirk through a lens of she killed her husband so everything she looks at is now through that lens so basically you're trying to make what is happening in the world fit through your lens so it doesn't make sense for you you're saying that what's happening in the world if you look at it and it fits your lens economics is the is the let's call it the slit that is getting the most information received so i want to take a step back i want to like do like a gotcha or something no please probably gotcha no it's not like because i'm gonna give us the five things like these are the five reasons why we're doing it this might be 50 this might be 5 we had those laid out now with more information coming out do you recalibrate those percentages all or is it still you still feel the same way and it's just now the narrative is slipping but you still think this was always the mingle and we have something right now nothing has oh uh so you've got roughly 35 going to um this is about economics trying to get all of the um the two trillion dollars that have been earmarked for investment in the u.s that's a big part of it the second one is the nuclear of it all so now i'll broaden that out now to the ballistic missiles and then going underground i find that to be a compelling argument even if it isn't the primary motivator because they certainly weren't talking about before um the idea that they already um that they were admitting to the negotiators like steve wickhoff that hey we could already with a little bit more refinement we could already make i think 11 nuclear weapons so does that grow um a little bit yes but it still doesn't overtake for me the economic concern okay especially as we sort of broaden this out and look at it uh and then we had the um whether the political calculus here is trump trying to do anything here with the u.s and then you've got israel trying to manipulate uh the u.s and i'm forgetting off the top of my head what the fifth one was i think it was religion i don't remember religion that was the one where people were hitting me maybe uh it's certainly a part of the equation to be sure like are these guys just a psychotic regime um that we had to take out because death to america but i'd more lump that into the the bucket that one to me is into the nuclear bucket that one to me is contextual it's important to understand why they rule the way they rule it's important to understand the way that they behave but as you try to break them you're gonna go economic as you think about how they're gonna break you they're gonna go economic and so what i'm saying there is not that religion doesn't drive people and give people a really strong how or why excuse me it's just that right now what we're talking about is what and how and so in the the context of how you get out of this it's going to be economic in terms of how they try to hurt you it's going to be economic in terms of how you hurt them it's going to be economic so it's just like all of the and then the second third order consequences are always going to be economic i gave reasons um in terms of like parallels but i really want to get to you you're saying something really important and it matters to me a lot in my personal life and will certainly matter to anybody trying to decide if they ever want to listen to a word that i say so the way that i look at it is i am trapped inside of a frame of reference i understand that there's a danger the things i'm most confident on are the things that i have the highest danger on so anytime where i feel just emotionally justified and going after like montana or i feel emotionally justified going after bernie sanders or whatever those are the times where i'm like okay this is you at your most at risk so i'm certainly aware of that it unfortunately is also me at my most entertaining because i'm legitimately just expressing who i feel and so there's going to be a contagion effect to that i'm aware of that and so when i'm building my worldview i'm always trying to see what's the disconfirming evidence and this is why it was important when mom donnie did something that i thought was potentially good so first of all the way he played trump that was brilliant and so i don't have emotional friction was saying this person who i think's policies are absolutely ruinous they just did a thing that's very impressive people should look at it study it understand it's brilliant don't try to like dismiss him so i don't see myself as i'm not a mom donnie's team what i see myself on is i'm not things be a cause and effect now the reason i feel pretty anchored around an ability to take new information and invalidate my old beliefs is that the truth has utility and so if people can trust me to be selfish if they can trust me that i want to generate more wealth so i can do more things in my life um then they just have to ask what has the highest utility and being able to predict the outcome of your investments for instance has the highest utility and so i've spent a ton of time learning about the economy one because i'm motivated to help people that really is where this started and then two when i learn something i'm trying to see if i can deploy in a real way so anyway people attacking me saying you don't understand something i'm always like cool help me understand that thing because now even if i despise you if you're willing to give me something that has utility like if anybody thinks i'm gonna go feel bad that i'm more successful in my life because someone i hate and i'm trying to hurt my feelings getting a true piece of information that's useful it's they don't understand me and they certainly they themselves are trapped inside something so i recognize the risks i am human i uh have emotions like anybody else i'm likely to be bamboozled by them and so i try to run algorithms that check against that i will not be perfect there are going to be times where i'll fool myself into thinking in a certain way because it feels so good um but the second i realize i've trapped myself i'll let it go for utility um if i could have it in one sentence less than 20 words why is america into your distance why is america at conflict with iran right now two trillion dollars of middle eastern investment is at risk nice okay so that's the u.s perspective now if we flip over to the iranian perspective it looks kind of chaotic because they were just bombing everybody we israel and uh the u.s had smoked with one person iran was like okay everybody on that side is getting a bomb what's really happening from their perspective if you had to break it down that way uh that's brilliant frank so iran is not launching missiles randomly i know a lot of people think that is true and they are not trying to turn the gulf nations against the u.s they are trying to blow up the ai bubble and break the u.s economy once you understand that iran is not full of idiots they are extremely intelligent people who have an incredibly detailed plan and even as they decentralize it they're able to continue doing this it's actually a brilliant strategy if they've got enough munitions and people to pull it off before they all get kicked off or killed so the channel logic is really straightforward okay it goes something like this middle eastern sovereign wealth funds and state-backed funds are this is a true statement the largest limited partners known as lps that are funding the western private equity and bc firms the middle east is funding all these highfalutin american private equity firms and bc firms okay hold on to that because that is incredibly important to why all of this is playing out the way that it's playing out so the people in the middle east are often not the names that you hear you're not going to recognize them but they are the ones that are funding the names that you hear all the time here in the u.s now in the first half of 2024 alone over 54 percent of all capital deployed by sovereign wealth funds globally came from just the six major middle eastern funds and they're the principal partners in most of the top private equity firms biggest funds so if you're ever wondering why is elon musk constantly speaking at events in the middle east why was it such a big deal that biden went over the middle east like wouldn't shake hands like that was super weird and why was one of the first thing trump did when he got office beeline to the middle east to start shaking hands because capital in this moment as the global world order is breaking down capital is accruing in the middle east and they no longer want to just reinvest it back into oil they want to expand beyond that that's why last night trump hopped on a plane uh and he went over to undo the damage that biden had done to u.s relations in the middle east he toured saudi arabia qatar the uae and managed to get the gold states to pledge over two trillion dollars in deals remember trump will only stay in power if he's able to make the u.s economy better for the average person and a huge part of that is going to be infrastructure projects ai specifically infrastructure projects in the u.s funded by the middle east okay that's trump's play so if i'm right the politicians will do and say anything they need to gain and retain power then the question becomes why is iran so important to trump retaining power and the answer is those two trillion dollars are funding the ai boom or bubble depending on your perspective here in the u.s now saudi arabia alone committed 600 billion dollars through its public investment fund including partnerships with nvidia amd and amazon web services to build massive ai data centers this starting to sound familiar in terms of bombing targets that seems super random and now all of a sudden maybe not so random the uae committed another 200 billion dollars on top of an existing 1.4 trillion dollar plan all anchored by a multi-gigawatt ai campus backed by g4 g42 and open ai at the scale that we are talking about these sovereign wealth funds are not your average investors they have essentially become the financial backbone of america's ai build out and america's ai build out is the backbone of america's entire economy right now you put all that together and it explains why iran just attacked every single gcc state within 24 hours bahrain kuwait qatar saudi arabia and the uae all hit with missiles and drones for the first time in history every gulf cooperation council nation the gcc was targeted by the same actor in a single day sign on jengiz at qatar university's gulf study center called it their long-standing nightmare scenario airport shutdown port suspending operations you buy in abu dhabi even took kits on civilian buildings and you know what else got hit an amazon web services data center it's not random it was struck in the uae and the uae basically went offline these attacks are forcing gulf states to pull back on u.s investments those two trillion dollars and instead pour their massive capital reserves into immediate defense and reconstruction if you start blowing up a bunch of their stuff they've got to spend money to fix it they've got to take that money from somewhere else air defensive systems ain't cheap and they're going to need a lot of military hardware if things in iran aren't settled quickly the uae alone has to spend tons of cash just to intercept the roughly 165 ballistic missiles and 541 drones sent their way in just two days this is just the beginning and 35 drones and five projectiles still manage to get through everything and do very expensive damage rebuilding costs a lot of money and every dollar that goes into their defense is a dollar that they're not sending over to the u.s to invest in ai projects now if those two trillion dollars in ai pledges slow down get delayed or even partially evaporate it pulls a critical pillar out from under u.s.
ai company valuations and makes what is already a terrifyingly skittish u.s market absolutely spastic stephen cook at the council on foreign relations wrote before the war started that the gulf ai investment was partly a play on behalf of the gcc nations to guarantee u.s security protection they knew hey if we've got all these dollars going to those guys they're gonna protect us from iran the tech sector already represents 33 percent of the s&p 500 and it's down over 11 percent from its october high ai fears plus inflation plus the iran conflict are all compounding at the same time this is incredibly dangerous to our economy iran knows that and that is exactly why they're targeting what they're targeting now if you want to know why the u.s made a move right now any explanation that doesn't include a discussion of protecting these investments is either willfully ignorant or just outright propaganda it's the gross part it's the thing nobody wants to say out loud nobody wants to hear trump say that i'm sacrificing u.s lives and blowing a whole bunch of shit up in the middle east overthrowing the government killing the successor after successor because money but that doesn't mean that's not true iran doesn't need to beat the u.s military to disrupt the u.s and change the world order for the next five generations in any way other than smashing us economically it just needs to make the gulf states spend their money on survival instead of nvidia chips to change everything because if they can redirect the capital back into the gcc companies countries instead of sending it to the u.s the downstream effects on ai valuations as one example it could be enormously painful for the u.s economy and unfortunately as of right now if you do something to destroy the top of our k-shaped economy it affects everyone so it's not the only reason i understand that but if you want to understand strategy if you want to understand the tactics you have to understand the primary driver behind all of this is economic and we're also already seeing the effects of it spreading globally globally oil prices have spiked 14 since the war started uh in south korea's market stock market is like plummeting um due to global as well it's funny to me that we say this is about economics and then we start a war and that hurts economies before it helps economy so it's is it just that the roi is better so that's why we have to do this that's why we're why we have to do a war yeah like we're taking because going to war right now is going to cause long-term harm to the oil markets oil markets are the first are the pillars in the economy when oil goes up everything else so i think the reason this feels um strange to you is because you're confusing short and mid-term and long-term long-term if we win nothing could be better because now you've got the whole middle east is safe you can go through the straight-whore moves there's no show point from a lunatic theocratic regime as trump will um call them and so now all of a sudden if you get a better regime in place because that's a big if but if you get a big regime in place and there's stability all across the middle east guess what the middle east does and i know that people do not that are constantly fighting these dumb ass fights and instead we are going to build economically we're going to become a place that people want to come we're going to be a place that has safety and stability law and order is so so so important and so being able to secure your own people not worrying about attacks having a bunch of friendly nations who say like if i'm in the middle east or let's say they flew me over to advice i would say guys listen i'm an american let me give you some advice you've got to start messaging to your own people that the next 100 years belong to the middle east that you point out how you've been able to aggregate all the capital start telling a story it's a true story but you need to mythologize it start telling the story of we crawled our way out of the desert as like bedouin herders and through this incredible resource we were able to over the last 100 years regain control of our destiny turn this into an incredible industry but it's an industry that doesn't last forever but we're going to turn that oil money into something magical in the same way that the u.s taught sand to think which is really true we're going to turn sand into investment dollars and we're going to modernize the entire middle east but it requires this stability but we are going to prosper in a diversified fashion we are not going to be beholden to just one thing that could be disrupted by one little choke point no no we're never getting put in that position again and if you can tell that story oh my god because it really is true and so i saw your face when i said that the u.s taught sand to think silicon is made from sand silicon chips have become actual intelligence if you were an alien looking down at us you'd be like how did sand just colonize the world like there's a really compelling argument that says wheat colonized humans got humans to or tame humans got them to do their thing it's pretty funny when you look at it that way because they got us to stay in one place to cultivate them to do anything everything we could to keep them replicating make sure that they were safe and sound and all that uh and then the sand has found a way to get humans to harvest it and turn it into intelligence it's wild it is wild so if the middle east can do that the next century really could be theirs it is a question of will the u.s get their shit together highly unlikely will china really pull this off maybe will the middle east be able to shut down iran chill out the theocratic craziness and leverage the insane amount of capital i don't think you understand just how much capital they've amassed can they deploy that capital and change their reputation on the global stage as like the place to go to if they pull that off it really could be an incredible century um and you know the great thing about what's happening with all this on the uh world stage the doj has been taking out fc files now the truth comes out i wish it the doj that would be amazing uh the doj has been taking out the fc files per cbs uh now that we are worthy files so it's one of those things where the distractions you know and then i don't know if you've seen a clip in a deposition where he was reminiscing over the pictures this is too let me see that again let me see it again um but he said something very interesting i really can't believe he asked to see it again that's wild and like he's got that crazy smile on his face yeah but this was what was crazier i didn't really know belaine and jeffrey i was cool with the Rothschild and i'm like bro you're going the wrong way you're not supposed to see that part out loud that's not gonna be popular but here's a quote she stated that president clinton was her friend not fc's friend is that accurate i would say that it was accurate to say that i felt closer to her than him and for the record why was that because i had seen her more and because she was very good friends with even Rothschild and his wife linda whom i knew and was in regular touch with the web of power man the web of power is really discomforting it's very weird and it's very real but there really is just something about the people that you spend time in the room with uh you're gonna do deals with they're gonna be the people you think about and the amount of power that's in that um is crazy is crazy and i forget which one of the Rothschilds it was that said listen politics are the seat of power and if you as the because he um scattered his kids but one of them scattered his kids to five different countries to start banks it's really brilliant and this is where i wish people would stop with the israel brain rot and just be like even if you want to just focus on the Rothschild they ran a brilliant strategy brilliant and diversify your risk by being in different regions so if one of the regions is collapsing then your brothers can help you out and they did exactly that uh absolutely brilliant and um one of them was like hey we really need to have relationships with politicians as like a matter of family principle and so they then would insert themselves into political spheres um in fact the very first the one that generated the first wealth and got them out of the ghetto did so because he was like an art collector or rare coin collector or something for um one of the um one of the people in the royal court i forget the names but it was like oh shit like that's really interesting so he learns very early on like because i have this one client that has all this money and i can do this incredible thing for him i'm able to generate all this wealth for the family and so that's how it ends up starting he pulls them all out of the ghetto that ends up becoming the Rothschild banking fortune and so um i yeah getting getting people even if all you're doing is instead of like having it be like this trip switch that trips in your brain every time you hear the word Rothschild there's nothing mystical happening so these are people that have like a set of rules about how they engage with the world that we see playing out now like with funding the protests and all that stuff it's people that understand okay this is not going to leverage my money all that stuff because that's what happened because I heard that I did not video so so that people I can think that the this thing and map those webs of power understand how they work it can obviously become incredibly toxic and then you want to make sure that it's drug out in the light of day everybody sees exactly what this is uh so that we can stop being manipulated by it but to understand its power i think about this a lot as a business guy one of my big weaknesses as an entrepreneur is i just don't have the impulse to network i mean nobody knows that better than you my long-suffering producer i tried to cancel the trip to uk uh you shut that down and so it literally and i think you will vouch for me it and i'm not this isn't a point of pride just so it creates a weakness in that i don't network with other people and therefore when i like i'm trying to do something that requires a big network i just can't do it so that's why i have to run a media company because i'm not gonna get somebody to let me on their show i've got to have my own show i just don't keep friends with people like that um but it protects me from like you're not gonna see my name in the epstein files because i'm not fucking connected to anybody uh so it's like good and bad anyway i have this unending obsession with getting people to look at all the evil horrific shit as just more simple easy to track rather than thinking there's you know like deep conspiracy and we're summoning cimmerian demons and shit like that like what the fuck like make contact with the simplicity of these guys just hang out with each other and they do fucking shit that you would hate and so pay attention to how these guys hang out together they'll send a messenger forward but it really represents like all these guys in the room talking so just figure out who's connected to who what are the likely economic motivations that they have it becomes far easier to understand what's going on um one thing we can all understand is to look on this guy's face when he's looking at that this is hilarious we've all been there when you find you know that picture in the back of your cabinet or something does he not know he's okay bro bro he didn't even turn the page he didn't even turn the page i what is he thinking she even has like a wide little smile she knows she's shaking her head she's like she's already back to partners meeting going like this fucking guy like even though i took he knows we talked ahead of time about what the fucking signals would be if i ever nudge you kick you under the table pull my earloaf or fucking grab something out of your hands for the love of fucking god will you please just like he couldn't you know that he knows things that he's going to get himself in trouble by talking about and you're really trying to shut that down now if they had said to him like calmly before you know like if you put your hand over the mic you're like listen keep your answers succinct that's just good advice because you're likely to say something that can be used against you especially out of context um but if that's the first time that he said something then that's like oh buddy that means that we talked about this beforehand you're going off script and that means that we all know this thing yeah so it's not not so good but look because you can spin and who knows what's really true but you can spin the clinton thing that like the smile is they're trying to trap me with this like this is ridiculous because he does start to say something to that effect before he ends up getting cut off and so i don't know if that's um anyway that one's easy to tell a story around whether it's a lie or not it's irrelevant but the it doesn't matter the clip looks so bad out of context that he just looks like a fucking um impossible pervert to be really blank um cool that's it for today thank you guys for being here you guys are amazing peace let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress you know what you need to do you need consistent nutrition we all do you need vitamins probiotics greens we all know that we should be doing more of it when your morning gets chaotic you skip it when you travel you skip it when your routine breaks everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day ag1 is designed to solve the execution problem one scoop eight ounces of water and you're done you're getting 75 plus ingredients vitamins and minerals pre and probiotics nutrients and superfoods 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