Dec. 5, 2025 - Gray Area - Rex Jones & Tim Tompkins
01:08:18
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome to the gray area, guys. | ||
| Welcome to the show tonight. | ||
| Tonight is our 25th live episode. | ||
| Tim is not here in the studio today because I am very, very, very sick. | ||
| I have been puking and crapping my brains out over the past couple of days. | ||
| I will say the norovirus that's going around is really no joke. | ||
| And if you know anyone that has like a stomach bug or like their tum-tum hurts, you should probably not be around them because I got this from somebody. | ||
| I didn't think I was going to get this. | ||
| I even made the prediction I wouldn't get sick. | ||
| I have been horribly sick. | ||
| And to top that off, I've just been. | ||
| Let's get into it a little bit. | ||
| I have a little Zen pouch before I get into it because it's just something happened today. | ||
| It pissed me off. | ||
| And I just, I want to explain to you guys just a little bit about my life really quick. | ||
| And then we're going to have Tim come on. | ||
| And Tim's going to do a wonderful prepared segment that he has. | ||
| Very fascinating stuff. | ||
| I just need to rant for five minutes. | ||
| So a little nicotine break for me. | ||
| A little vomit break later too, probably. | ||
|
unidentified
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A little vomit break. | |
| Ain't that delicious. | ||
| So I just had an outrageous amount of money taken out of my business checking account because of some payment processor BS. | ||
| And the reason why I want to state that to you guys right now is to make the point of other people that you see doing the show. | ||
| They do the show and that's all they do. | ||
| And they have advertisers and they have products they plug that they don't own or don't have any stake in or any backing. | ||
| And I'm here. | ||
| I'm 23 fucking years old. | ||
| I got a warehouse. | ||
| I got employees. | ||
| I got healthcare. | ||
| I got to pay for people's benefits. | ||
| And it's just, it's a new horror every day. | ||
| These fucking companies, these middlemen, merchant processing accounts, especially for high-risk stuff like Methylene Blue, which I sell and like stuff on Junk CBD, which I sell, they will rape you up the ass. | ||
| So I've just been puking my guts out. | ||
| I've just been crapping my guts out. | ||
| And now I've been digitally raped by the bank. | ||
| So I'm a little angry. | ||
| I had some points I was going to make beforehand. | ||
| I had a whole political monologue I wanted to get into. | ||
| I am just, I'm not in the right mode, mindset, or frame for that right now. | ||
| So I'm going to go ahead and add Tim to the stage here. | ||
| And he's going to present a very interesting topic about Trump and Rwanda and the peace deal that's been going on. | ||
| So I'm going to go ahead and add Tim to the stage right now. | ||
| Welcome to the show. | ||
| What's up, man? | ||
| How are you doing? | ||
| Yeah, I can hear you good. | ||
| I'm doing good, man. | ||
| It's the first time I've been virtual as a guest. | ||
| I got somebody here. | ||
| It's not Rupert, but this is Milo, guys. | ||
| That's a little monster right there. | ||
| Yeah, he's a big boy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Very well-behaved when he wants to be. | |
| Nice. | ||
| So, how you feeling, dude? | ||
| I was feeling, I was feeling a lot better until the bank raped me. | ||
| But it's fine. | ||
| We'll be on the phone with Wells Fargo after this and just got to file disputes and do the whole thing and whatnot. | ||
| You know, I'm it is what it is. | ||
| You just don't want to be around people that are sick, especially at this time of year. | ||
| There's some bad stuff going on. | ||
| But what about yourself, man? | ||
| You jinxed yourself. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Let's not, let's not talk about it because it's going to piss me off. | ||
| But, but, what have you been thinking about today? | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, so today, you know, people have seen there's a lot of things going on, but there's this new deal that happened with like this war between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. | ||
| And you don't hear a lot of stuff that goes on in Africa if you think about it. | ||
| This is like a conflict that's been going on for 30 years. | ||
| And I'm like, ho, ho, ho, hold up. | ||
| I never really heard about this. | ||
| So, you know, me. | ||
| I got to go do my deep dives. | ||
| I got to go figure out what the hell is going on here. | ||
| And very surprising how this all happens. | ||
| And you know, it's weird. | ||
| A lot of it is, guess who's guess who's kind of leads why these whole you know people are fighting in the first place? | ||
| It's the Western societies. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| It really boils down to the same pattern playing out over and over again of like the colonialism and resources. | ||
| Well, the Europeans, especially, like the French are very notorious for this, for meddling in African affairs and whatnot. | ||
| But go ahead and get into this. | ||
| I've got it all here. | ||
| I've got the dirty laundry. | ||
| But what we'll do, I'm going to share my screen and then we're going to take a step back here before I dive into the core issues. | ||
| So let me go ahead and share my screen. | ||
|
unidentified
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give me one second okay add me to stage rex I got you, man. | |
| All right. | ||
| See you all right over here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right, cool. | |
| So, first thing we need to cover is the actual deal that's going on here. | ||
| So you see this breaking news: President Trump formally ends 30-year-long Rwanda-Congo war, signs massive minerals deal. | ||
| Trump not only stopped the war, but he's vying to get America into benefiting critical minerals in the region. | ||
| It's not that straightforward, but I'll show you guys this video. | ||
|
unidentified
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Let me know if you can hear the audio. | |
| I can't, but I get the gist of it. | ||
| You can't hear the audio? | ||
| No, it's fine. | ||
| That is important because the rest of what I'm going to show you guys is literally well. | ||
| I mean, oh, yeah, for the audience, for the audience. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So let me do this. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| See if you guys can hear this audio now. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It's still nothing. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And for people joining us now, I'm very sick. | ||
| So Tim is doing this separately so he doesn't get what I got because he doesn't want what I got. | ||
| You know what the best thing for me to do here then is? | ||
| Yeah, if you send it to me, I can send it to you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Go ahead and send me whatever you want. | ||
| I'll go ahead and I'll yap for a little bit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So the thing that we see a lot of is we see Trump resolving these smaller conflicts around the globe, like the Azerbaijan Armenia dispute. | ||
| Now, I believe it's Rwanda and Congo. | ||
| And there have been some other areas that he's taking credit for, but really like the India-Pakistan thing, they solved that themselves. | ||
| I don't think we had a whole lot to do with that whole scenario. | ||
| But we see this kind of offering to the American people of, yes, you are getting what you voted for. | ||
| This is the peace president, right? | ||
| Now, I'm not disputing that this into conflict between the Rwandans and the people in the Congo isn't good because it is good. | ||
| It's a phenomenal thing. | ||
| And congratulations on Trump for getting this done. | ||
| And hopefully it's good for them and good for America too, talking about the minerals and whatnot. | ||
| At the same time, I just like, I'm sick right now, so I don't have any filter. | ||
| Like, I can't stand the guy. | ||
|
unidentified
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I really can't. | |
| I cannot stand that company. | ||
|
unidentified
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No sugar coating from Rex. | |
| Yeah, no, I've been puking all day. | ||
|
unidentified
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So no sugar coating from Rex. | |
| Okay, so click on that first video I sent you. | ||
| That's the one that I was trying to play here. | ||
| Yeah, I got you. | ||
| I got you. | ||
| And we'll go ahead and share this. | ||
|
unidentified
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And then I'll go ahead and I'll start sharing the other ones while you're playing that. | |
| I got you. | ||
| What? | ||
| Why are my DMs all messed up? | ||
| No, is it gray area? | ||
| Ah, I see. | ||
| I see. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's from me. | ||
| 10-4. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| Yes, I've got it now, Tim. | ||
| I've got it now. | ||
| So we're going to go ahead and go to this first clip where, you know, Trump's favorite thing to do always is to like hold up the document, right? | ||
| It is, man. | ||
| It definitely is. | ||
| Eric Doherty. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Yeah, I was pretty shocked that I had never heard about this for the entire existence of my entire life. | ||
| And I like to consider myself as a well-informed person, but no, you're all good. | ||
| I'm going to go ahead and play the clip now. | ||
|
unidentified
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here we go a lot of applause for mr djt Yeah. | |
| Which one of these do you want me to go to now? | ||
| No, scroll down. | ||
| Now, the second one, that's going to be what he's talking about. | ||
| That's his little spiel on how proud he is about breaking this down for brokering this piece. | ||
| Today, the United States is also signing our own bilateral agreements with the Congo and Rwanda that will unlock new opportunities for the United States to access critical minerals and provide economic benefits for everybody. | ||
| And we'll be involved. | ||
| We're sending some of our biggest and greatest companies over to the two countries. | ||
| And we're going to take out some of the rare earth and take out some of the assets and pay. | ||
| And everybody's going to make a lot of money. | ||
| Today, the United States. | ||
| Are you able to see that, Tim? | ||
| Yeah, I can see it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, yeah, that's the 10,000-foot view. | ||
| And of course, I've got to get into the nitty-gritty because I'm like, you know what? | ||
| That doesn't learn. | ||
| That doesn't sound so crystal clear. | ||
| So this one is going to be like a semi-segment. | ||
| You know, I guess since we don't have the Sunday special, I was like, ah, why not give people a little bit more? | ||
| So I'm going to explain to you what this whole situation is about. | ||
| Go ahead and share my screen again. | ||
| And I'm just going to show everybody where, you know, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is in the first place, because that's important context. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So this is Rwanda here. | ||
| This is the DRC. | ||
| A lot of the fighting is going on in this region here, which I will break down specifically for you guys. | ||
| But ultimately, these are the two parties that are in interest. | ||
| So to break down what that deal is, the WHO is these two countries. | ||
| They've been in long conflict for a very long time. | ||
| And Donald Trump has been trying to broker a deal with America for like since for a while now, but really over the summer, they had kind of started something like this. | ||
| So what happens with this deal is like Rwanda pulls its troops out of the Congo, Congo cracks down on anti-Rwandan rebel groups. | ||
| Both sides stop backing the militias. | ||
| U.S. government is kind of like there to oversee and be big daddy, big papa, and make sure that everybody is doing what they're supposed to be doing. | ||
| And so, of course, United States, we're not going in here unless we're getting something. | ||
| So he is right. | ||
| The whole basis of the deal is we get critical minerals. | ||
| So the Eastern Congo, which is like this region here that I was talking about, holds like super valuable core minerals. | ||
| You've got like cobalt, copper, tin, tungsten. | ||
| These are like, these are like minerals that go in like EV batteries, smartphones, AI chips, military tech. | ||
| So, I mean, right now, as it stands, China dominates the market, guys. | ||
| Like they, they literally have all the raw materials and everybody kind of has to go through them. | ||
| So the U.S. stabilizing Congo gives us a bit of ability to break from China's grip if we do this properly. | ||
| So, I mean, the whole chaos, though, that's been happening in this region has been like some of the deadliest conflicts for decades. | ||
| I mean, the collapse there means more refugees. | ||
| There's bigger rebel movements. | ||
| You've got mines that would fall under militia control. | ||
| And if the United States isn't controlling those, then that's, you know, that's a big no-no for us because we like stability. | ||
| So our whole point in this whole thing is just to get leverage at the end of the day. | ||
| So I'm now going to show you guys a map. | ||
| This map here. | ||
| This is what the area that is what we were talking about. | ||
| Congo, it's in the center of Africa. | ||
| It's huge. | ||
| It is very big. | ||
| And just to put that in perspective, man, that is all of Europe. | ||
| It is bigger than Europe. | ||
| Bigger than all of these countries combined together. | ||
| Now, you got a little overlap with here with Spain, but you take all these little guys here. | ||
| I mean, you're talking about probably like 70, 80% of the space taken up just as big as Central Europe. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
| So that's a really big thing. | ||
| And the Congo, it didn't start as like a normal country. | ||
| It was created by the European powers in the late 1800s, like you kind of hinted earlier about like France and all the Europeans really getting involved. | ||
| So it was their personal extraction project with the king. | ||
| I mean, he was the guy to really lead this. | ||
| And so the whole system was built for one purpose, and it was to pull resources out and send the wealth to Europe and leave nothing stable left behind. | ||
| So I'm going to have you pull up that video now, the first one that I sent you on YouTube. | ||
| And that's going to kind of break down exactly what I was talking about here. | ||
| You can go ahead and switch to your sharing screen. | ||
| Yeah, no, I'm pulling it up now. | ||
| Sort of doctored up to make it a little. | ||
| Is it the world's most ignored war explained? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And it should be starting you at like three minutes and 50 seconds or so. | ||
| Yeah, no, I got you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So pull that up for everybody to see. | ||
| It's supposed to be on. | ||
| It's showing for me that we're still displaying the DM. | ||
| I can, yeah, it is because if you did your share your screen, make sure you share your entire screen, not just the not just the DM. | ||
| So we need to restart your share screen. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Just a little sick, guys. | ||
| My brain isn't working as good as it usually does. | ||
| But I'll keep you out. | ||
| Go ahead and talk a little bit. | ||
| I'll figure this out. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So, I mean, guys, when I look at this, you know, it makes total sense why like Europe was at its peak at some point and why they were like king of the hill. | ||
| You had France, Spain, you had Great Britain. | ||
| They were all like major powers at one point. | ||
| And a lot of it came from this resource extraction. | ||
| Now, if you look at like GDPs and you look at like I posted something earlier, Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than Britain at this point because they're not able to resource to extract those resources anymore. | ||
| We don't have any whole global. | ||
| They don't have any. | ||
| It's a global cooperation now. | ||
| They can't just go in and do anything without other people butting in. | ||
| But let's go ahead and watch this video. | ||
| This is going to show you guys what they actually did back in the 1800s. | ||
| A little bit more immersive. | ||
| This is European leaders inventing countries in Africa in the late 1800s, carving up this map, looking for resources. | ||
| And the Congo was one of the many inventions of Europeans. | ||
| Congo was created actually as the private fiefdom of a Belgian king in 1885. | ||
| And so the whole purpose of the Congolese state was always to extract from the local population. | ||
| It was never to create a government or a state that provides public services or public goods, including security. | ||
| The Belgians mapped it and discovered just how many valuable resources the place had. | ||
| The most valuable at the time was rubber, and it led to one of the most brutal colonial exploitation campaigns in history. | ||
| It's got an enormous amount of natural resources. | ||
| Yeah, Leopold II was known for cutting people's legs, feet off if they didn't work hard enough. | ||
| He's like one of the most evil figures in history. | ||
| People don't talk about it. | ||
| He killed, I think, didn't he kill like 2 million people or maybe higher? | ||
|
unidentified
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A lot of people haven't really looked into it. | |
| That's crazy. | ||
| Congo is geological scandal is what Congolese call it. | ||
| It's the largest producer of copper in Africa. | ||
| It's the largest producer of cobalt. | ||
| It's one of the largest producers of diamonds, tungsten, tanks. | ||
| That's a big one. | ||
| You go down the lists. | ||
| They have it. | ||
| The uranium used for Hiroshima Nagasaki came from the Congo. | ||
|
unidentified
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Like a lot of things came from the uranium. | |
| The uranium. | ||
| See, this is why I say the global world is intertwined, guys. | ||
| You've got uranium that came all the way from this country in the middle of Africa and was used for resources to literally wipe out 200,000 people just like that. | ||
| You can't make this stuff up. | ||
| Can't make this stuff up. | ||
| Keep going. | ||
| Again, go watch part three of that series if you want a deeper dive. | ||
| So the most important part of this section of the story is that Belgium didn't build a country out of Congo. | ||
| They built a pipeline for resources to Europe. | ||
| The roads and railways led from mines and plantations to ports, not between cities. | ||
| It created ethnic groups and tribal identities and then played them off each other. | ||
| And that was the whole reason why they carved Africa up the way that they did is they said, look, we're going to do the entire divide and conquer Cloud and Pivot strategy on this entire continent. | ||
| They're not going to know even what hit them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So like this was the goal going into the world. | ||
| They don't care about where those lines are drawn. | ||
| They never had that formalized system like the Western society has. | ||
| Like we tried to bring that there and those lines that are drawn today, that wasn't them, which is wild if you think about it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's a lot like India-Pakistan, right? | ||
| Where you have this region that's highly contested because it wasn't really, it wasn't ever set up or designed to be that way. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So that they could conquer them, but also in the process, sowing the seeds for future conflict and division. | ||
| That deep history really is important, understanding where we are today, because a lot of the habits and the trends and the logics of the state sort of persist until today. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm of the structural issues to communicate facing, moving from bad governance, destructive army, lack of a sustainable policy. | |
| That is actually where we can situate some of these trends. | ||
| Hey, real quick, let me tell you. | ||
| Okay, go ahead, pause. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| You're good to stop screen sharing that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So, man, this is, this is, this is why I love these deep dives because I was like, I didn't know this stuff. | ||
| So, you know, the legacy matters, guys. | ||
| I mean, basically what happens when you do this and they create a whole unstable society, it becomes, there's a weak central authority. | ||
| There's no like real infrastructure that's connecting the people. | ||
| You've got like deep ethnic divisions that are created by the colonizers and the Europeans. | ||
| And the government structure that like kind of defaults to just extraction instead of serving its citizens. | ||
| Because look, if they never, if the, if somebody comes in and they say, we'll give you this and we'll give you a bunch of money and make you really rich, you're just going to kind of listen to them and allow them to do that resource extraction. | ||
| Like you said in Pakistan and India, how they carved it up, they robbed India of millions of dollars worth of gold. | ||
| They had literally taxed them to the point where like people couldn't even survive. | ||
| And it was because that's what they do. | ||
| They extract the resources. | ||
| So that is the foundation for everything that comes later. | ||
| And so then we go into 1994 and Rwanda, which is the region we're talking about that's next to the Congo, goes through this genocide and it's flooded with armed groups. | ||
| So in 1994, Rwanda's genocide explodes. | ||
| You've got armed militias, civilians are freeing to East Congo, including like these extremist groups that were in Rwanda. | ||
| And, you know, those, I want to share my screen because I want people to see how terrible some of this stuff looks. | ||
| Well, absolutely. | ||
| But really quick, because I'm familiar with this. | ||
| If you look at what I'm sharing right now, the Hutu and the Tutsi people. | ||
| Oh, I'm going to cover that. | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Live in Rwanda, right? | ||
| So the Belgian colonizers, what they did is they issued like ethnic ID cards, basically making the Hutu the superior group and then the Tutsis the inferior group and it therefore be okay to oppress them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| I'm so glad you covered that because that's exactly. | ||
| They artificially created two races, essentially, and got them to basically go fighting each other. | ||
| And it leads to this massive genocide. | ||
| Now, you can see my screen here. | ||
| Go ahead and share it. | ||
| I didn't want to show the dead bodies. | ||
| So I said, all right, let me show you guys what the clothes of the dead people look like. | ||
| I mean, a million people died. | ||
| Between 800,000 to a million people died within this genocide. | ||
| And like he said, it was because those two groups were created and it was a whole civil war that occurred. | ||
| And when the plane was shot down and they tried to debate on who shot the plane down to strike this whole civil war, but essentially just know that that happened. | ||
| Now I want to look at this. | ||
| These are all of the people. | ||
| Do you understand the gravity of this, guys? | ||
| Like we talk about like people. | ||
| This is serious because you talk about people going through like mass migrations and people getting kicked out. | ||
| When I saw this photo, it really put it in perspective. | ||
| It's like, imagine, Rex, imagine like all of Austin gets like completely wiped out. | ||
| And then you've just got like everybody who ever existed in Austin starts walking all the way across to like Dallas or some shit. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| It's insane. | ||
| It is actually insane how these situations could be completely prevented, but there's a sense of greed and entitlement. | ||
| And so with this war, it created what was called like the first Congo War and the Second Congo War, which was like Africa's first like world war. | ||
| But like those fighter groups that were in Congo, they're called the FDLR. | ||
| They were sitting right across from Rwanda's border and Rwanda like used them as like they used them as a direct threat because there were people that were coming from Rwanda and rebel groups that were moving into Congo. | ||
| And because of that, Rwanda keeps intervening inside of Congo to go after these groups and pushes back. | ||
| And there's this back and forth between Congo and Rwanda. | ||
| And so at this point, when you get to the first Congo war and the second Congo war, multiple African countries start getting involved. | ||
| And you're talking about millions, absolutely millions of people dying. | ||
| And so Congo, the Congo state collapses at this point. | ||
| And so over time, you've got Rwanda's involvement that just not only grows into security fears, but also this whole eastern region is packed with valuable minerals. | ||
| So you had groups that were backed called M23, which was in Congo and gave Rwanda the influence to help counter the FDLR, which was the Congo's kind of bad boys. | ||
| And so Rwanda stays involved for two reasons: security, they want to stop the hostile genocidal groups from rebuilding in Congo. | ||
| And then the second is influencing and controlling the access to the rich minerals that are literally right across their border. | ||
| So it's a whole major mix up. | ||
| And then, so look at this graphic here. | ||
| So we're talking about Rwanda being here. | ||
| This looks like you're under a microscope and you're just kind of looking at like an Aniba in like a bunch of people. | ||
| It's probably as big as like Texas or something. | ||
| It's huge. | ||
| But what the stuff is here, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. | ||
| So during those wars, Congo's National Army basically falls apart. | ||
| They don't have any discipline. | ||
| They don't have any structure. | ||
| So, what the locals did was they formed their own self-defensive groups. | ||
| And it wasn't just the rebels that were, it wasn't just rebels, it was people that were actually trying to protect their homes when all this chaos is happening in this region. | ||
| So, eventually, Congo's government, it arms these groups to fight the rebel backs of like Rwanda. | ||
| And so, that's kind of like where we see the turning point. | ||
| because the DRC is funding like these rebel groups in here, all these dots you see here, and they're all controlled, different controlled regions. | ||
| Just imagine having like little states or countries with inside the DRC of people just basically creating a lord of the fly situation where they've got like their own marked territory and it's just the wild west in this region. | ||
| Like this is like imagine these being their own borders. | ||
| And these are not like exactly 100% accurate because they change very regularly, even they're still going fighting on today. | ||
| But once the DRC, they fund the weapons, they give them training, they give them experience, and they give these guys a taste of local power. | ||
| So, what ends up happening is now they don't want to give it back once they've gotten it. | ||
| And so, when they receive the weapons, they're mostly like these Soviet-era guns. | ||
| You've got AK-47s and RPGs and RPKs, which is like a machine gun. | ||
| And it's like cheap and they're durable and they're all over the place. | ||
| So, the Congo literally becomes flooded with Soviet-era weapons that all of these people are just trying to defend their local areas. | ||
| And so, the state can't even protect anybody anymore. | ||
| It's just the economy's broken. | ||
| Fighting just becomes the way to survive. | ||
| And so, all these armed groups become local authorities by default. | ||
| And there's a security vacuum that creates an entire militia ecosystem. | ||
| That's the gist of what's happening in this region. | ||
| You know, it's very interesting. | ||
| If you've seen the movie War Dogs or if you've seen the movie Lord of War, both based on real stories, of course, the interesting observation that can be made is in 1991, what do we have go on? | ||
| We have the fall of the Soviet Union, right? | ||
| But these events, these historical events, we think of them and go, oh, like the Soviet Union fell. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Whatever, whatnot. | ||
| Well, where did all their weapons go? | ||
| They all got sold off in places like this so that these armed conflicts could happen. | ||
| So it's always a cascade effect in history. | ||
| That's what we're seeing. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Very well said, because that is exactly what happens. | ||
| And keep in mind, there's other countries that are involved during this entire time, not just the DRC. | ||
| You've got African countries. | ||
| You've got the UN that's trying to help out in these areas. | ||
| And the war basically turned into a business model like we see with all wars. | ||
| The conflict stops being about let's take the capital or win the war. | ||
| It more becomes about extracting the value from whatever territory that you've set up. | ||
| And this region here that we're seeing here is extremely vast with resources. | ||
| When you're talking about like there's gold here, there's tungsten, there's those types of raw materials. | ||
| So what ends up happening now is based off of these militias being set up and creating their own little like government entities, they start setting up roadblocks. | ||
| They start taxing people and the farmers. | ||
| They start taking the cuts from the mines that are out here. | ||
| It's a mafia. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Dude, that's exactly what happens. | ||
| It's basically a little mafia. | ||
| So they control the villages. | ||
| They force recruitment. | ||
| And so, you know, there's a twist. | ||
| Congo's own soldiers, like from the DRC's government, they do the same thing. | ||
| There's underpaid government troops that also start setting up checkpoints and creating, you know, collecting these illegal taxes and setting up lines between state and militia. | ||
| It just becomes all blurry. | ||
| And so this is just a moment. | ||
| I'm going to show you guys this video of just showing you how this actually works and what happens with this whole resource. | ||
| Like when you set up a mine here, what happens to the gold? | ||
| How does it work? | ||
| How are these systems playing? | ||
| So let's go ahead and pull up that second video. | ||
| Yeah, no, I guess that's going to do a really good breakdown. | ||
| You have millions. | ||
|
unidentified
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I got you. | |
| Okay. | ||
| And we're going to add stage. | ||
| I guess I have to remove. | ||
| And then I have to add the stage. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's go ahead. | ||
| Of people digging for tin tungsten and mostly gold, actually. | ||
| This is a pit mind or artisanal mind. | ||
| This is thousands of young men digging in hillsides, sometimes in terrible conditions, in lots of different pits. | ||
| They're all dotting mostly very remote hillsides. | ||
| They work in these harsh conditions, often with little more than shovels, pans, sometimes bare hands pulling gold from the soil. | ||
| These are fairly militarized pits. | ||
| You'll find soldiers. | ||
| They'll provide quote-unquote protection and security in exchange for a payment. | ||
| This is unrefined gold. | ||
| So it's extracted. | ||
| Maybe it's powder or flakes or a small nugget. | ||
| And then it starts its journey towards the city. | ||
| But this journey will cross through the territory of dozens of different groups. | ||
| Roadblocks are one feature of the landscape of Congo. | ||
| There are thousands of them. | ||
| Roadblocks are everything. | ||
| So one of these armed groups has a roadblock and they demand a cut from anyone transporting minerals. | ||
| If you know the system well and you're well connected, you have relationships, that will help you with these transactions, ensure that they don't get violent. | ||
| Go into a little hut and you give them what is expected. | ||
| There'll be some negotiating back and forth, but you pretty much know what you're going to have to settle for. | ||
| They'll get some of that. | ||
| Now, again, I want to emphasize this doesn't just happen for gold. | ||
| You can be stopped for anything. | ||
| You can be stopped for carrying cattle. | ||
| You may have to pay just to move through the checkpoint. | ||
| Again, everything that moves will be taxed. | ||
| There can be 50 or 60 of these. | ||
| Yeah, it's absolutely insane. | ||
| They literally said this, by the way. | ||
| It was not just like some, this is a quote in 2017 of exactly what these people said. | ||
| They were like, you got a bike and you're trying to carry something, you get a tax. | ||
| Like, I think sometimes we take for granted, people are like so complaining about America sometimes. | ||
| And I'm guilty of it sometimes too. | ||
| But then I look at these stories and I just thank God I live in America and that I was so fortunate enough to literally be born in this first world country where I have never known a situation like this or ever had something like this even happen, let alone been stood up with a gun and somebody tried to rob me. | ||
| Yeah, no, I think it even goes a step beyond that. | ||
| No, not only are we so lucky to have never experienced this type of situation, but like we live in the new world, Tim, right? | ||
| This is old world stuff. | ||
| This is Europe enacting a system on Africa and then Africa enacting a system on themselves after the oppression of the Europeans. | ||
| And like we, there have been problems in America, of course, but you're talking about thousand-year generational tribal conflicts that the European colonizers were able to then take over and kind of use and repurpose for their own utilization. | ||
| And you know what's sad, man? | ||
| The United States just took the same playbook, man. | ||
| We did the same thing and we just did it in the Middle East. | ||
| You're seeing a parallel, right? | ||
| You're seeing literally the same thing play out just in the modern day and age. | ||
| Like we do the same thing. | ||
| We go into Saudi Arabia. | ||
| We mine these resources. | ||
| We create all this instability and people are fighting. | ||
| And then you've got like places like Sudan or you've got places like that that are having these like internal conflicts. | ||
| And then we bring a terrorist over here, praise him, parade him around New York and just say, hey, we love you, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You did so good. | |
| Good boy. | ||
| You killed all those people and took the country for us. | ||
| Like we love you. | ||
| It's like, come on. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And they always pick the most radical militant group because they know that those people that they share the same values with us, right? | ||
| Like they want, do they just want to control? | ||
| So like, we'll partner with them. | ||
| Yeah, we're no better than Europe at this point. | ||
| We're doing the same colonizing and the same type of like distrust. | ||
| And so, I mean, look, at the end of the day, I know there's a lot of people, like I hear some liberal people be like, well, America's just fall. | ||
| And they haven't seen this stuff. | ||
| They don't know what's going on in the rest of the world that's happening literally as we speak. | ||
| And it puts things in perspective. | ||
| So go ahead and play the clip. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Roblox before you get to a major city. | ||
| A motorcycle could be taxed a few bucks to pass. | ||
| If you're a big truck, maybe you're taxed $700 for a single checkpoint. | ||
| And according to the people we talk to, a lot of these transactions happen without violence. | ||
| It's the threat of violence that keeps the order going out here where there is no government. | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| But look, that is a soldier. | ||
| That is an official. | ||
| So yeah, that's the soldier that I'm talking about. | ||
| The United States, the local government is literally participating in the exact same thing. | ||
| So going back to us, you don't have to share this anymore. | ||
| It's just kind of, it's just kind of wild how this kind of all works. | ||
| And if you go onto my screen, I'm going to show you guys what ends up happening to the gold that's actually mined in these regions. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So if you guys look at this map, this is the region. | ||
| And then you got Rwanda here, and then you've got Uganda. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So like Uganda is like a really big hub. | ||
| So, okay. | ||
| These little red dots, think of those as like mines and then like just transport routes. | ||
| So on this border here, if you look, what people do is they're not like always bringing the gold over in like giant trucks or equipment. | ||
| Sometimes they're just smuggling it in like their pockets or just driving and there's like local guys that will just bring it over. | ||
| And they're doing is they're smuggling it across to regions here in Uganda. | ||
| And so Uganda is kind of like the middle ground for where the illegal extraction of gold comes from here and starts being refined. | ||
| So there are some American companies and some Western companies that have refineries here. | ||
| And, you know, the gold at 2014 that was being exploited, that was actually being exported in this region was about 500,000 in 2014. | ||
| Guess what it is today, Rex? | ||
| You tell me. | ||
| $2.3 billion. | ||
| Oh, well, that's organic, isn't it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's organic. | ||
| So it just happens. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's the gold that's being smuggled in, refined. | ||
| And then you've got these Western companies that are literally setting up shop here, taking the gold here. | ||
| And then this is kind of like how the ecosystem works. | ||
| So I'm going to give you like the supply chain, how it works. | ||
| Miners, they dig it by hand. | ||
| Then the militias and soldiers, like we saw, they tax every step as people are going through these checkholds. | ||
| Then smugglers move it across the border. | ||
| And then the refiners in Uganda and Rwanda clean it up. | ||
| And then it goes all the way to Dubai, in which it's mixed in with clean gold that comes from like more ethical ways, I guess. | ||
| And then they sell it globally. | ||
| So just keep in mind, your phone, guys, that you use and the chips that are involved. | ||
| And a lot of these things require gold in order to actually function. | ||
| Gold is like one of the most valuable assets, not just because it's like a gold bar that holds value. | ||
| It's because it's got certain material properties. | ||
| It's superconductive. | ||
| Superconductive. | ||
| And it's very important for certain devices in order to function. | ||
| And there's no other equivalent that works as good as gold. | ||
| So it sucks. | ||
| I mean, I'm guilty. | ||
| I got an iPhone right here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I don't control the supply chain system. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And this is the thing we see. | ||
| Oh, the data center, it's so wonderful. | ||
| The AI, oh, the electric car, it's so wonderful. | ||
| Lower emissions, whatever. | ||
| This is where it all comes from, right? | ||
| It comes from people dying, comes from people being extorted, comes from people being robbed, comes from people living essentially in a pit, surrounded by soldiers with guns. | ||
| And that's the reality of the situation. | ||
| 100%, Rex. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| So now this is where we kind of get into the nitty-gritty here of how is the U.S. involved in all this? | ||
| So the U.S. isn't just stepping in here out of charity. | ||
| Trump's not just trying to get the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| It has nothing to do with that. | ||
| It's literally what I mentioned in the beginning. | ||
| We're talking about minerals, power for modern technology, EV batteries, smartphones, AI chips, missiles, aerospace systems. | ||
| And right now, China currently dominates all of these supply chain systems. | ||
| So if we take a look at this proposal of the U.S.-DRC Economic and Military Partnership, one, U.S. access to strategic minerals, granting U.S. companies extraction and export rights to be able to secure stable and direct supply chain for defense and technology sectors. | ||
| Banana deepwater port development. | ||
| You've got DRC proposes granting operational control to U.S. firms ensuring American oversight of key African mineral export hub. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
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Dude, it's in plain English. | |
| Rex, do you not see the insanity of this? | ||
| It's like... I do... | ||
| I mean, I see it as a natural response to what China is doing. | ||
| That doesn't make it any less insane. | ||
| And at least the Chinese, when they come into these countries, are like, okay, we're going to do a massive amount of like urban development, highway development, resource development for you. | ||
| It looks like here, we're just like, yeah, we're going to take the authority over what goes on in your country in relation to these minerals. | ||
| We're not necessarily promising anything besides that deepwater port. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, dude, remember we were talking about Greenland becoming like the 51st state? | ||
| And people are like, oh, they would be so happy. | ||
| But it's like, come on, what's the real reason why we're doing that? | ||
| Resources, guys. | ||
| And it comes back to that macro level argument I was telling you about. | ||
| I was like, look, United States feels like at this point and these boomers that are working in there, they're like, if we don't do it, China will. | ||
| And we can't allow the enemy to get into hand over us. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| It makes sense from a national security perspective. | ||
| I'm not saying it's not immoral, but ultimately, if the entire world in the next centuries is going to be run off of the distribution of these rare earth minerals in relation to advanced technology, this is, you know, hey, it's one of Trump's smarter moves, you know? | ||
| No, and look, at the end of the day, even if America didn't get involved here, right, this stuff would be going on forever. | ||
| And you're talking about a lot of people dying. | ||
| True. | ||
| More people dying from guns. | ||
| So you could say, like, if this is done properly, U.S. troops go in, replace the UN to actually give stability in these places. | ||
| And this is where it says here: strengthen military cooperation. | ||
| So training and equipping the Congolese armed forces to protect mineral supply routes. | ||
| That's important because we can't allow those minerals to fall into rebel hands, of course. | ||
| Granting the U.S. access to military bases in key zones, military bases, military bases in key zones. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| Well, it means we got more eyes on everything and we've got more places to launch our planes from. | ||
| If anybody messes up, well, you know, there's a whole professional, I don't even want to say necessarily soldier, but ex-soldier, professional mercenary class. | ||
| And we've seen talk of, you know, some of the stuff they're doing in Somalia right now, and Trump has bragged about it. | ||
| That is a whole massive industry. | ||
| And at this point, after the global war on terror being fought for decade upon decade upon decade, the people in private contracting, specifically for these types of like, you know, peacekeeping or like resource procurement or securing job environments, they're going to be very happy with this. | ||
| We're going to see a lot of like ex-Blackwater type mercenary individuals over in these countries. | ||
| Which is crazy because Blackwater was involved in like crazy stuff in which they literally got prosecuted by the United States. | ||
| Blackwater is what Rex is talking about. | ||
| They're like private militia where these ex-mercenaries. | ||
| Exactly what it is. | ||
| And they were accused either was, I think it was Iraq or it was Afghanistan, where they literally went in and they were like killing civilians. | ||
| And it was a huge deal back in the early 2000s because that's called protection work. | ||
| You see, it's called protection work. | ||
| Yeah, it's some crazy stuff. | ||
| So the biggest part about this is replacing ineffective UN peacekeeping. | ||
| They got to use the word ineffective. | ||
| That's key. | ||
| Peacekeeping operations with direct U.S. DRC security cooperation. | ||
| Now, I'm curious how many people they're going to send over there to do all of this with the amount of militia groups and weapons. | ||
| Like, obviously, their weapons are old, Soviet style, but I mean, you're talking about you've got to have American troops on the ground in order to do something. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, we lost RPGs and AK-47s and Toyota Tacomas over in the Middle East. | ||
| I mean, I don't see why the same thing wouldn't happen here. | ||
| Now, I do see this kind of honestly as a more permissive environment for us to operate because you can talk about how corrupt the governments are in the Middle East. | ||
| I mean, Africa, it's crazy. | ||
| It takes the cake, man. | ||
| Takes the cake. | ||
| It's well. | ||
| So, this section four says shared vision for the future. | ||
| For decades, Africa has been underutilized in the U.S. strategic planning despite its immense economic potential. | ||
| The DRC offers the U.S. a unique opportunity to secure access to the world's richest mineral deposits, build a resilient. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's a nice way to say rape. | |
| Isn't that a nice way to say rape? | ||
| But you know what's crazy? | ||
| It's like we talk about all of this, and the United States, maybe it's not our responsibility to go out there and build, you know, help these countries rebuild themselves. | ||
| And maybe we've tried to do that in certain circumstances and failed in other ones. | ||
| But like our immediate go-to is just resource restriction. | ||
| We're not even trying to like establish a healthier lifestyle. | ||
| And I feel like part of the responsibility would be on America and Europe to go clean up the mess that they created in the first place. | ||
| No, because it wasn't like the African states all of a sudden decided like we're going to create two freaking races and have people fight each other. | ||
| Now, I know you're talking about like, you know, decades ago, you know, 100 years ago where some of these things have happened, but why is there no effort to do that? | ||
| I like this from the perspective of we go fuck the place up in the last century and then we come back in the next century and we go, hey, we're going to fix it now. | ||
| And then we essentially are probably going to do the same thing. | ||
| It's very, you know, it's a cycle and we see this cycle a lot. | ||
| Now, no, no, Trump is very excited about this, is he not? | ||
| No, he is. | ||
| And here's the thing: some of these things I'm just spewing out where I'm like, yeah, we should just go fix it. | ||
| But sometimes some damage is just so done to the core where it's happened over generations that the amount of money and energy that you would have to pour in in order to actually reverse the train and go in the opposite direction and create like some type of stable society would probably be either impossible or just not even worth the effort because Americans would get so mad that we'd be spending so much money on everybody when our own country. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, we just, we just don't want it. | ||
| In general, like it's much better for the place to be balkanized because, hey, you know, China's going to get in there. | ||
| We got to get in there. | ||
| And that becomes the whole narrative instead of, hey, the place is completely fucked up and it's our fault. | ||
| It's just kind of the perpetual cycle of, you know, it's what we talk about all the time. | ||
| Like the history of the world is to kick the can down the road. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Literally the history of the planet. | ||
| I only see this situation resolving itself in like two or 300 years, man. | ||
| Honestly, Africa is like the poorest continent on the world for particularly this reason, primarily colonialism, resource extraction. | ||
| Like that is the number one thing. | ||
| And even like if you talk about slavery itself, which I haven't really dove into that, but they did the same thing during slavery where they got like local militias to basically give other black people as slaves to the colonizers, essentially, and create this whole like ecosystem where like you had black people selling other black people. | ||
| Like it's kind of crazy. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| I think Africa stays poor for a very long time, man. | ||
| I don't see it. | ||
| And here's the thing. | ||
| If the United States, let's say this was the United States and we had this country, we would be making some, this would literally be richer than Dubai. | ||
| This would be like a bit richer than UAE. | ||
| If they had the first world country-esque government and systems in place where they properly were able to extract their own resources and be able to trade on the free market, they'd probably be one of the richest countries in the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So going back to what I was trying to say on this. | ||
| So right now, again, China owns the majority of this. | ||
| And the Congo, we talked about it. | ||
| It's the extraction rights. | ||
| It's the stockpile. | ||
| And I mean, I don't know. | ||
| I don't know how to feel about this one because I'm kind of like, I don't want to sound black pill, but I'm like, it's already fucked. | ||
| So, you know, I can't say at least we're getting ours type of thing. | ||
| Doesn't that sound cooked? | ||
| Doesn't that sound pretty cooked? | ||
| Yeah, I'm done. | ||
| Everyone's raping. | ||
| We might as well rape. | ||
| Like, that's that, that's the geopolitical kind of global format, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I'm done presenting this. | ||
| So you can cut back to us. | ||
| But this is everything in a nutshell, guys. | ||
| You go from the headlines of 30-year wars and conflicts, and you're like, okay, I didn't know they were in a conflict for 30 years. | ||
| Then you dive in to figure out what caused it. | ||
| And you're like, oh, okay. | ||
| And then I just, again, I hate coming on this show, doing a little deep dive and just being like, okay, well, there is no solution. | ||
| Because I was talking to Rex about this the other day. | ||
| I was like, look, I know on some of my deep dives, I kind of like talk about these things. | ||
| And I'm like, we're, I still want to come up with like some solutions and figure out like, what is the proper way to fix some of these programs and systems? | ||
| This one's a little hard for me to really figure out what would be a solution to fixing this. | ||
| Because even if we decided, like, all right, take a step back, let's not do anything, let's just allow them to work it out themselves. | ||
| Well, they haven't figured it out for the last 30 years, if you think about it. | ||
| It's just become the Wild West Lord of the Fly situation. | ||
| So maybe the U.S. coming in there maybe brings a certain level of stability, even though we're literally probably getting the best deals possible and they're probably getting a fraction of the money that they could be getting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think, you know, being from the West, specifically being from the first world, it's like you said at the beginning of the broadcast, we don't even have like a frame of reference or a concept of just how bad this is and just how lucky we are to be where we are, right? | ||
| Like this is these people don't know that they've been systematically broken up, made to fight each other and been oppressed. | ||
| All they know is they got to dig the cobalt out of the ground or else they get shot in the head. | ||
| So 100%. | ||
| And it just kind of like it's one of those things that I really like, I'm so guilty of taking things for granted. | ||
| Like I literally have all the devices I could want. | ||
| Like, you know, when you get to the point where you're like, I'm not really sure what I want for Christmas, it's a bad feeling because you're like, damn, does that mean that like I stopped being the kid? | ||
| Or is it just the fact that I'm so privileged to be in America and I've worked hard for what I've gotten, but at the end of the day, you know, I can't say the same for some of these countries where people just born into it. | ||
| And yeah, and you work the hardest and you get the least just based on kind of the global system and global trade lines and supply chain, right? | ||
| 100%, dude. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| So I really hope everybody got something out of this. | ||
| I know normally we cover a lot more, but I just, some of my segments coming up, I'm kind of like just getting towards the point where I'm just going to start exposing a lot of the dirty history. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Kind of explaining how we got to where we are today and how kind of some of these messes, things like Middle East and, you know, things like what was immigration like back in the day and what they did to the Italians when they first came over and all the Europeans. | ||
| They treated them the exact same way as we're doing the whole Mexicans. | ||
| Like there's a lot of stuff that is just forgotten in translation. | ||
| But anything that you got, man? | ||
| Well, I mean, I just want to piggyback off of that because that's what the show is about. | ||
| The show is about really talking about systems and trying to find that gray area because oftentimes we look at things in a vacuum, right? | ||
| And I feel like, and you've said this oftentimes on the show, people have kind of a goldfish mentality when it comes to like world history or just recent politics and events. | ||
| I mean, Charlie Kirk died coming up on three months ago. | ||
| And like, oh, last time people thought about that, right? | ||
| It's been that long. | ||
| So, like, even just like a small example of something happening like that, people will just be like, ah, like, sad, it's horrible. | ||
| Kind of file it away. | ||
| Don't care. | ||
| What about the stuff that happened a decade ago? | ||
| What about the stuff that happened 50 years ago, a century ago? | ||
| That's the real stuff that cascades and builds on these events. | ||
| They build on each other and they get us to the point that we're at now. | ||
| And specifically with the country of Africa, I remember a lot of high school was like, I remember English literature and then history class. | ||
| We talked about the whole scenario a lot of King Leopold and Belgium and what exactly they did to the Congo. | ||
| It's the most monstrous stuff that you can imagine. | ||
| I want to say 2 million. | ||
| I also kind of want to say 20. | ||
| I don't really know. | ||
| We should just look that up right now if you'd look at that. | ||
| How many people did Leopold II kill? | ||
| Like this guy, this was like one of the first dudes that did political cartoons about just because he was so evil. | ||
| Like one of the most evil people that's ever walked the face of the earth for what he did to the people of the Congo. | ||
| All right, let's see. | ||
| The death toll is approximately 10 million people. | ||
| 10 million people in Congo. | ||
| Yeah, everyone knows who Hitler is. | ||
| Everyone knows from 1885 to 1908. | ||
| That's not even that long. | ||
| No, no, not at all. | ||
| And, you know, it's not like a Hitler scenario where he's trying to like quickly kill the people. | ||
| It's not like a Stalin scenario where he's trying to like build this government and he's trying to kill all these people. | ||
| This is a scenario purely capitalistic where they go, okay, yeah, we're going to build this resource extraction method out of this people. | ||
| And like, I don't think he's thinking about killing them directly, but hey, I mean, we got to be efficient, right? | ||
| We got to chop off people's legs if they don't work hard enough. | ||
| It's so insane to even think about this. | ||
| Wasn't done for war. | ||
| This wasn't done directly for an ethnic purpose. | ||
| This was done purely for the money. | ||
| And we see that reflection in the modern day where, hey, maybe it's not 10 million people being killed over a couple of decades, but what it is is the same systematic system of oppression that's there. | ||
| It's never really going to change. | ||
| And it's like you say, Tim, is it as Americans, do we have to go, okay, everyone else is robbing this place? | ||
| Do we also rob it? | ||
| Sadly, I think the answer is going to continue to be yes, even though I don't agree with it, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, I look at some of these scenarios that happen, like these massacres, they're not as common today because you couldn't really get away with it as much. | ||
| Well, I mean, I'm saying they're not as common in Western proper societies. | ||
| The African-American. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Africa is a different beast. | ||
| There's still hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people dying, you know, every five years or so. | ||
| But in the Western societies in these major economic powers, you've got cameras now. | ||
| You've got videos to where no one can really just openly create these genocides. | ||
| But we forget over the history of humanity, not just like these guys, but just like in the last, you know, 300 years plus, there were guys that were killing people by the millions. | ||
| And we can't even fathom it. | ||
| It's like, imagine someone killing the population of New York City alone, which has, I think, 9 million people. | ||
| Unfathomable. | ||
| And then I think America is uniquely positioned to not understand because we haven't had those domestic conflicts really towards the Civil War and even during the Civil War. | ||
| I think it, I think it was like 400,000 people that died during World War II that were American. | ||
| And then you look at these countries, like Russia lost like 20 plus million people. | ||
| Talk about the conquest. | ||
| Because he sent people to the meat grinder stalling. | ||
| That's all he did. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, other policies too, famines. | ||
| You look at Mao. | ||
| Mao killed over 40 million people, I believe. | ||
| Oh, I didn't, I didn't realize it was that high. | ||
| Yeah, they did some like environmental control measures that were supposed to make things more plentiful. | ||
| They like introduced invasive species and stuff. | ||
| And he destroyed China. | ||
| He really, really did. | ||
| But we look at all these world. | ||
| It doesn't work. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| We look at all these world leaders and they're all kind of doing the same thing. | ||
| And then we try not to be blackpilled. | ||
| And then we look at Trump and then we go, okay, well, it really is at the crux of it. | ||
| It really is just all more of the same. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But how do we break free of the cycle? | ||
| We expose it. | ||
| We talk about it. | ||
| We talk about the history of what's gone on. | ||
| And I think that's what you do such a good job on on the gray area is really doing these prepared segments and getting into the history because people can say, oh, I know this. | ||
|
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I know that. | |
| I know everything. | ||
| No, you don't. | ||
| You need to review the information over and over and over again. | ||
| And we always need to be building on our historical context. | ||
| If you've got more you want to get into tonight, this is just kind of a short special episode because I'm sick. | ||
| I'm kind of tapped out. | ||
| I kind of got to go puke. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I'm good, man. | ||
| Shorter segment is fine. | ||
| We kind of got through the bulk of it. | ||
| Sorry that you're feeling sick. | ||
| Sorry, guys, that we couldn't. | ||
| Yeah, sorry to the audience, really. | ||
| I was sick the week before. | ||
| Everybody seems to think that I'm the one to give you that one. | ||
| Yeah, no, it wasn't you. | ||
| It wasn't me. | ||
| You had like a cold or something. | ||
| I have that norovirus that's been going around. | ||
| I've been stuff's been coming out at both ends. | ||
| I'll just keep it like that. | ||
| It's been pretty bad. | ||
| I'm on the men now and I'm getting better. | ||
| But just as I was starting to feel better, I was like, yay, I know what I want to talk about on the show. | ||
| I know Tim has something and we can maybe do 90 minutes or something. | ||
| I get this notification. | ||
| I log into my Wells Fargo account and I see payment processor trying to jack me. | ||
| So I had to go ahead and call them and file a dispute about five minutes before going on air. | ||
| So I was a little perturbed by that. | ||
| I got my stomach a little messed up. | ||
| But I think this was great. | ||
| And, you know, how often do you see shows talk about this sort of thing? | ||
| You might see a history podcast talk about this sort of thing. | ||
| You might see, you know, a scholar talk about this sort of thing. | ||
| We're talking about it from the modern political perspective of us being Americans living in America, being a beneficiary of this system, but also trying to understand the global system and why this all works in concert with each other, right? | ||
| 100%, man. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| Either sometimes it's just one or the other, where it's just the history guy just does it in a very boring history manner where he just like does a whole segment and doesn't really commentary and then the communication of just speaking like you're you're talking with your boys. | ||
| I like that this is why we do it. | ||
| We try to blend you know the modern style of what we're trying to do with a talk show and bring in a nice little deep dive. | ||
| So that way it's just kind of like one big cohesive thing. | ||
| And this is like, I definitely enjoyed this segment. | ||
| I won't be here, guys, on Sunday. | ||
| Rex will, though. | ||
| He's going to be doing a solo segment. | ||
| I'm going to be in Germany figuring out this piece of equipment, got to do tariffs, got to do a lot of stuff. | ||
| But I will be back hopefully by Thursday. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| Be able to do a Thursday segment, even though I'll be coming off a plane at four. | ||
| I'm still dedicated to the game. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| Yeah, we're going to keep putting these out there. | ||
| We're going to keep doing these episodes Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday. | ||
| Sunday is, of course, a longer show, and I should be totally healthy and happy and fine by Sunday. | ||
| So, look forward to doing that three-hour with you guys. | ||
| Look forward to doing the two-hour on Tuesday. | ||
| And then, of course, when Tim comes back, we're going to have a whole lot of exciting stuff to talk about Thursday. | ||
| And just look, anyone that's honest to God, true supporter of the show, a fan of the gray area, a supporter of what me and Tim have going on here, just always want to give the audience a thank you, the listeners, and the viewers, because y'all are why we're doing this. | ||
| This is what makes it all work. | ||
| And just thank you for being here with us tonight. | ||
| I really appreciate you, Tim. | ||
| Give Rex his flowers for coming up on here. | ||
| He's like Jordan with the flu, guys. | ||
| Like, he's really about to be World War III in the bathroom. | ||
| I'm going to let you know. | ||
| But we do it for the love of the game. | ||
| Thank you guys. | ||
| See you guys next time. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Appreciate y'all for being here. | ||
|
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Good luck and modern life has left us out of balance. | |
| Long ago, it was once said certain remedies could grant a man the vitality of a horse for over 6,000 years. | ||
| These natural remedies have been harvested and tested by generations. | ||
| Why create complex formulas when nature's roots are still in our hands? |
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