Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the FTX collapse, exposing Sam Bankman-Fried's Ponzi scheme and mocking his hypocritical "earn to give" philanthropy despite living in a $40 million penthouse. They critique Kevin O'Leary's pivot to demanding bailouts as "privatized profits, socialized losses" while alleging Ukraine funneled taxpayer aid through FTX to corrupt U.S. Democrats. The hosts argue the corporate press suppresses these truths to protect the establishment, comparing current silence to ignored scandals like Epstein and Paul Pelosi, ultimately suggesting systemic corruption drives both financial fraud and political decay. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Grab Seats Before They Sell Out00:02:08
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
This is the show.
And me and Robbie the Fire will be doing a show in just a few days, about a week now in Poughkeepsie, New York.
The tickets are very close to being sold out.
So if you want to come see me and Robbie the Fire, we got BK Chris coming along with us.
Go over to comicdave Smith.com.
Ticket links are posted up there.
Grab yourself some seats because this will probably be, this will probably be the last show that I mention it before it sells out.
So go grab them now if you'd like to come out.
That's going to be a fun time.
Yeah, I also got the New Year's Eve show.
Still tickets available for that with Louis J. Gomez at the comedy store in Los Angeles.
What else you got coming up, Rob?
I got New Orleans this Friday doing an 8 p.m. show and then coming out because I got no plans after that.
I'm going to fucking drink up a storm in New Orleans.
Rob will hang with you for the entire night in New Orleans.
That's right.
I know that.
I know that about Rob.
Come fucking party.
Let's do it.
Bring your tubers.
Speaking of you, I will say I was taking an Uber home, a long Uber ride home from the stand last night after one of the funniest podcasts in the history of the world, last week's Legionist Gangs.
You guys got to check that out.
And I watched, because someone just reminded me, I meant to watch this.
And then I just, I guess someone tweeted at me about it or something.
So I watched your appearance on what's Corinne Fisher's show.
Handling Offensive Talking Points00:10:00
Without a country.
Yes.
Or I watched like the last half hour.
They said like the last half hour is what you want to watch to get into it.
And dude, you did a fucking fantastic job, dude.
I was really fucking proud of you, man.
You fucking, it's unbelievable to just see these.
Like, I don't, I don't know.
It's a weird thing because we get so removed from kind of that world.
You know what I mean?
Like you, you live in like your normal life day to day isn't a political event.
Right.
You know, you just like kind of live your life and then you talk politics.
And when you get to kind of where we are, where you build up a platform and you have like a following, you kind of you do.
There is this kind of balkanization of political ideology, you know, where you talk to a lot of people who are like-minded and then you, you know, and you research people who you think are doing good, you know, work.
And you're a little bit removed from this.
And I, you know, it was interesting for me to even like watch it and watch the crowd reaction and watch the people like coming up.
And I completely understand people not paying attention to politics at all.
I understand and support it.
I think that's a great idea for most people.
It's so bizarre when people do pay attention, but don't at all.
And so like they want to talk about inflation, but have no idea what inflation is.
And then you're just almost sitting there and going, okay, real quickly, let me explain to you what inflation is.
Like if we're going to have a conversation about inflation, maybe you should know what it is.
So here's what it is.
But yeah, I thought you did a fucking great job, dude.
I was really fucking proud of you.
Well, thanks, bud.
It'd be interesting to do that again because I would know how to better handle it.
I was a little, that was very new to me.
Yes.
Well, I could see a little bit of that on you.
And believe me, I've been through that myself.
I've just had a little bit more experience in those like moments.
And what just kind of like what ends up making it a little bit, you get, you get used to it.
It's almost like in the same way, like when you start standup and you have to get like get used to just like telling jokes to people in a crowd.
But then after a while, you're like, that's not even like a thought anymore.
That's just, yeah, you're like, that's what I do.
I tell jokes to people in a crowd.
You almost have to get used to the fact that you're like, oh, all these people are triggered right now.
And this is all happening.
And then the more, which I think I'm sure, even just from that one experience, you start getting the confidence of like there'll almost be an insecurity, even when you're right about something and you really know you're right about something.
There is this thing in the back of your mind, especially when you're new to those type of situations, where you're like, shit, what if someone just devastates me with like a point right now?
Like, what if someone just hits me with something and I go, oh shit, I never thought of it like that.
Or, oh, I didn't have that information.
I'm going to look like an asshole right now, you know?
But the more I kind of saw it as that people were like heckling you with more things and the other girls coming up and arguing this, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you just, you have nothing for me.
Like, this is, oh, yeah, you're like, you're like, it's almost like you're at level like 12 and you're worried someone else might be at level 13.
And then they're coming in at level two.
And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, oh, right, right, right.
No, none of that is true.
But you having the immunologist come up there and then basically making her confirm that you're right about everything you're saying was so goddamn beautiful.
And she's even like has to sit there and go like, okay, well, I got my undergrad here and then I got my master's here and I'm currently about to finish my PhD.
And here's what this is.
Here's what a vaccine is.
And then you're like, okay, how does that contradict anything I just said?
Okay, well, it doesn't.
And she's like, okay, so then I'm right to say this.
And she's like, well, yes, yes.
Okay.
But I hesitate.
One of the things that I thought was really interesting, by the way, if people, if they haven't seen it, we'll throw the episode in the description here, just so people, if you're like, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about and you want to go just watch that.
It's like the last half hour of the show.
What's interesting too is that it's not even that people, it's just, it was, it's an interesting like social, social psychology thing.
It's not that people have seen the arguments that you're making and have seen better counter arguments.
It's not that people have a different interpretation of the data than you and think you're getting it all wrong.
It's that you're saying things that offend their sensibilities of what they think is supposed to be what right sounds like.
And then as soon as you say it, they're almost like, oh, wait, what?
Huh?
You're saying this doesn't make sense?
They don't have a counter argument for it.
It's just like frustrating to them.
And like, it's, you see, it really is to me, it's like, it's a religious impulse.
It's the impulse of like blasphemy, not that there's actually like an argument going on.
And that's that, I, we all understand that's how human beings work in general, but it's interesting to see it on a political show in a political audience where you're like, but aren't you here for that you're still just here for this like religious experience in a way?
I don't know.
I found it very fascinating.
Yeah, there just seems to be a general buy-in that government's good and moral.
And if I read the New York Times and the talking point that supports that, I'm more moral and superior to you.
Yeah.
But and then there's an oddity because if you put forward an argument that contradicts their worldview, they won't take on the argument.
They just kind of go back to some sort of a talking point.
Well, I read this in the times.
Right, but that doesn't, you're not taking on what I just said.
I just told you why that's wrong.
And I think my reasoning's sound.
Do you want to take on what I just said?
And it's like, well, no, I read this other talking point in the Times.
And they actually oftentimes, you know, what's interesting about it's, it's always you're playing a game of numbers and the game is never, you're never expecting that the like masses are going to like all like you, you know, it's not going to be like, oh, you turn all of those people around.
But the thing that's worthwhile about it is like there will be a percentage of people watching who go, huh?
That did sound like it was making sense to me.
And oh, look, yeah, he really, this, this expert really had nothing to say, you know, and like all of this.
So you kind of like wake, you know, you kind of, you win people over little by little.
But the truth is that the, the most people there, it's not even like they want, it's not even like they want to understand your argument and have an argument that can defeat it.
They want you to stop saying what you're saying because it hurts them.
It's like they're like, I don't want to hear this.
I don't want to hear you saying this.
It's a very, very bizarre thing.
Human psychology is a fucking weird thing, man.
But it's like they just don't want you.
You are not supposed to say this.
I've had this experience in a lot of these like type of things.
I remember the one at the Pauly Center or Paley, Paley Center, with David Cross and them all on the stage, which was like a completely liberal audience.
I mean, there was not one other person there who like was on my side politically.
My wife was in the crowd.
But besides that.
And she left going, Hey, Dave, I think you're a little out of line up there.
Well, no, she did.
She heckled at one point and I gave her a look, like, don't do that again.
But David Cross came up with some example.
He goes, he said something.
Oh, man, it was years ago.
I can't remember exactly, but it was something about how I was saying that the government shouldn't censorship, shouldn't censor lies and that lies are free speech.
And then he gave some example.
He goes, well, someone comes out and calls you a pedophile, you know, and someone, so now his, of course, his example is right to slander, you know, it's like, which even whether you agree with slander laws or not, it's just not a good example to prove because that wasn't what we were talking about.
But he goes, they call you a pedophile.
And now your life is ruined and your wife leaves you.
And she like heckled and she goes, she goes, I'm not going anywhere.
Like something like that.
She goes, I'm not leaving anyone.
It was pretty funny.
But I was like, stop, please.
But even in those situations where you kind of like, there's this weird thing where even when you start saying something, you can hear, you can feel in the room, like you feel it.
Like if I start going, you know, they're like, well, you shouldn't be allowed to deny climate change.
And I'll just be like, I'll be like, you should be allowed to say whatever you want to.
And you feel them all like, wait a minute, but you're not just, you're not just confirming my religious views.
You're not, you're, now you're challenging them.
Like, stop.
You know, it's like going into a church and being like, well, what evidence do we really have of God?
Like the reaction is like, yo, dude, you're now there are some theological, you know, very brilliant people who are like very happy to have that debate with you.
But in general, like most people in a church are going to be like, yeah, we're not really here for that.
We're not really here to like defend the logic of this.
We're here because we believe.
And that's now that's fine in a church.
It's just very different when you're like in theory here to have a like discussion about policy or something like that or politics or whatever.
I don't know.
It's very bizarre.
I had a weird one just the other day.
Probably the biggest shit show of a debate that I've ever been a part of on this one on this YouTube channel with Kurt Metzger and Jimmy Dore.
And we were arguing with these two guys, Adam and Sitch.
And oh my God.
Yeah.
Well, the whole thing, oh my God, it turned into such a fucking shit show.
Like they, uh, Kurt is just Kurt's Kurt.
You know, he's brilliant.
Gay magicians without the magicians, they just do the gay stuff and dress like magicians.
The gayest.
None of the magic works.
It's just gay stuff.
Then they try magic.
They're like, I'll pull something out of my hat.
There's nothing in my hat.
He goes, oh, it's just another cockering.
The Bernie Madoff Crypto Scam00:06:15
All right.
No, but Kurt is just, he's, he's an incredible comedian.
He's also a psychopath.
He just has no tolerance for arguments that he decides are dumb.
And they were making a lot of dumb arguments.
And so he's just like interrupting them constantly and being real disrespectful.
Jimmy Doerr just bailed at one point.
Like no one even told him what he was getting into.
And it was a shit show.
And he's just like, guys, I'm out of here.
I have no interest in doing this.
And then I did my best to just fucking argue with them.
But yeah, it was this one was a real shit show.
Anyway, you get the more I think you do these things and the more you do them in different environments, I think you just get more comfortable with it, like anything else.
But you did a very good job, especially for you saying like that was like when you're first kind of like in a live, hostile environment, taking on everyone, like you versus the room.
I thought you fucking handled it great.
Thank you.
And you won over the crowd.
Like I was reading, I mean, when I say the crowd, not even the live, you won over the audience, like completely.
Like I was literally looked at it because I was watching it last night coming over and I was reading like the comments, the comment section.
It's just all you.
Just all like, oh, Rob just owned everyone here.
So that was, I don't know.
I thought that was a cool moment.
Go check that out.
Show Rob some support and come out to New Orleans and go drink with him.
Okay.
All right.
So after that intro, I wanted to talk about a few things today.
Big, big news.
Quite a scandal that just broke out, Rob.
I don't know how deep into this FTX thing have you gone?
I just want to say that even though I share the same face as this individual, he is not me, not a relative.
I don't endorse him.
Face, genetics, moral compass, everything.
Well, let's just start from a very simple starting point, which is don't believe any of the shenanigans about liquidity, this, that, or the next.
This guy was a thief.
He stole.
And this is the way fractional reserve banking works.
And this is what happens when you just aren't backed by the Fed.
Not saying that being backed by the Fed's a good thing, but just understand that this is rampant through all of the financial sector.
It just happens to be in this case, you can actually have a run on the platform, which is what happened.
Right.
So that's, well, essentially, so it's, it was basically a crypto exchange that he was running.
And it was huge.
I think it was one of the top, the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, like top three or four or something like that.
And they were also printing their own coins.
And so, right.
So what you're saying, I think, is basically that like they were essentially acting as a central bank in the sense that they were just out of fiat printing their own currency and then exchanging that.
And like, yeah, if you don't have that as the world reserve currency backed by the empire's Army, it doesn't work nearly as well.
It doesn't, the, the scheme doesn't last nearly as long.
And it was a straight, it was a straight-up Ponzi scheme that they were running, just getting new investors in and spending their money.
And, you know, I think he was, he was pulling money out and directing it to his hedge fund because he figured that, you know, not everyone was going to pull out their deposits.
But one of the, before we even go into the conspiracy space, one of the more interesting angles here is that I think this guy was pushing for crypto regulation.
And I think he thought that he was going to beat out the competitors such as Binance by becoming their preferred platform of institutional investors and basically getting Gensler's stamp of approval.
And by the way, he might have then ended up in a framework where he was backed by the Fred and he could have done way worse things with the money there because he actually had the backing.
But this was funny because the Binance guy basically tweeted out, hey, look at what's going on in the back end over here.
And then everyone took out their funds and kaboom, whole platform done.
Guy lost, what, $20 billion in a day?
Well, it's a, it's the thing about running a Ponzi scheme is that everything works fine as long as people aren't pulling out their money.
Right.
Like it's everything is fine and it looks great on paper.
This is how Bernie Madoff lasted for so long.
And it wasn't until the recession when people needed their money liquid that the whole thing came down.
And it comes down like that.
Because as soon as people start pulling out, as soon as investors start pulling out, it becomes very clear, very obviously the money's not there and they don't have the money.
And then the whole thing fucking collapses.
But it's very, so it's interesting how these things can be built up so big and then completely collapse.
There's so so there's a I don't know.
There's a lot of different angles to go on this.
It's crazy how big this guy, Sam, was the guy's name, how big he got, how in with the establishment he got, and then to go down like this.
To your point, there's Brian, I sent you two videos actually.
If you could just pull those up, I emailed both of them to you that I thought was just an interesting way to like kind of look at how these things work.
This is bigger than just this one example, but it's something about this example.
And, you know, you talk about this guy racing to the regulation of crypto.
That is what the major push has been from the establishment as a result of this is that this is, well, this is proof.
This was like an unregulated company.
So this is why these things need to be regulated.
Obviously, that is not the correct lesson to learn from any of this.
Madoff was existing in a very regulated industry.
In fact, I think he was, I believe he was investigated by the SEC multiple times.
And, you know, they investigated him and couldn't find out that he had no underlying investments.
Like, how thorough of an investigation were these regulators doing?
Like, imagine it's almost like if I was like, I'm going to investigate your house.
And I conducted several investigations and never figured out that it wasn't a house.
Why Masterworks Needs Regulation00:02:52
It was just a big, it was like just a big painting of a house.
But then once you walk around the side of it, there's actually no walls and you go, oh, it's not a house at all.
It's a photograph.
That one really doesn't seem that tough because you would look at the reports of what they're reporting everyone's accounts to be worth with the growth that they had.
And then you would actually look at the market to see if the trades happened that corresponded with it.
Like I understand doing a backlog of trades internally to report to investors like, oh, yeah, we invested in this thing that went up.
But if you're the SEC, I would think you'd have access to the market to know whether or not those trades actually took place at those volumes.
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Taking Risks on Our Own00:15:27
Okay, so first, let's, because I want people to understand this is how these things work in general, right?
So this is, and now we're going to pick on, of course, and he's getting a lot of heat for these videos, of course, as they've emerged over the last few days, and he deserves it.
I will say, this is Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank.
I am a fan of his on Shark Tank.
I think he's great on that show, the best one on that show.
So I feel a little bit bad picking on him.
When my wife was pregnant with our first kid, we just binge-watched Shark Tank constantly.
And I love the show.
I think it's an incredibly entertaining show and really fascinating.
And I love Mr. Wonderful on that show.
However, this is such a great little example.
And there's a lot that people who want to understand how our rigged economy actually works to learn what's going on here.
This is how high-level investors act constantly, and it's infuriating.
So here is him a few years ago.
Paid spokesperson to FTX and a shareholder there, too.
And big advocate for Sam because he has two parents that are compliance lawyers.
If there's ever a place I could be that I'm not going to get in trouble, it's going to be at FTX.
He has accepted a position as a paid spokesperson for FTX.
He's also an investor and he's bragging about how safe he is because this guy's parents are compliance lawyers.
So this is that's him.
Now, of course, this has been exposed as a gigantic Ponzi scheme that has gone belly up and very clearly a criminal organization.
And so here's Mr. Wonderful in response the other day.
This investment in international and U.S., I got to ask for your reaction today.
Obviously, one of frustration.
There's no question about it.
I'm still a huge advocate for the potential of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
I'm disappointed like many other shareholders.
It sets in a way, though, I always try and find what is the outcome of something like this.
I mean, yes, I'm a shareholder in the international.
That's a zero.
It's not the first time I've made a bad investment, probably not the last time.
But luckily, I make more good ones than bad ones.
And I learned from my mistakes.
What's going to happen now is there won't be another situation like this for institutional investors ever again.
We're simply not going to put cap over work until this stuff gets regulated.
And what is occurring, and I'm just one voicing it, what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to fly to Washington and I want regulation.
I want it now.
No more delaying.
I think this puts tremendous pressure on the SEC.
I think a bill like the stablecoin.
It's just too infuriating.
The world is not looking for his regulation.
It's preferred protection.
Because as a sophisticated investor, the guy is more than capable of doing his homework and assessing risk.
And when he gets it wrong, being punished for it.
What he's saying is, unless I know that the government's going to bail me out of a bad investment or take the risk out of this investment, then I'm not interested in investing here, which by the way, so don't.
There'll be other people who are willing to take risk and invest in better places.
This is, it's exactly, Rob.
This is what's so infuriating about this.
And this, it's a little microcosm of the entire economy.
And he even goes, he goes, I'm not alone in this.
No, you're not.
No, you're not.
That's right.
Every fucking billionaire is right there with you.
When in video number one, he is overselling how sure he is, bragging up the company.
And I'm quite happy to get filthy, stinking rich with this company.
And then when he loses his money, we're going to run to the government.
And this is what they want: privatized profits, socialized losses.
And this is, yeah, well, then we can't just be taking this risk on our own, which again, to your point, fine.
Yes, that should be the lesson there.
The lesson should be, yeah, you shouldn't be investing in these very risky companies, and especially ones that are criminal Ponzi schemes.
Okay, that's a good lesson to learn.
But instead, the lesson is I'm going to need the taxpayer to subsidize this risk.
I'm going to need, so that's, it's right there.
It's like, oh, as soon as when they're winning, they're completely happy with these investments.
And as soon as they're losing, we run to Washington, D.C.
It's everything that's wrong with our cartelized economy.
And they just couldn't, I'm sorry, but those two videos back to back just couldn't illustrate the picture better.
That, yeah, all of a sudden now we demand regulation.
We demand the government get involved.
And of course, the sad thing about all of this is that in many ways, the cryptocurrency has become so popular in part because people see it as like a last escape from the control of fiat currencies and the super states that they empower.
And so now, because of this guy who's very in bed with the super state, now because of that, they're going to demand that the government come in and take over this industry that was supposed to be a refuge from government control.
And just so we don't get in trouble with all of our crypto Bitcoin loving guy swans out there, I guess the Bitcoin advocates would say, well, this is your lesson about being in all the shitcoins because Bitcoin is what you're describing of being a refuge from centralization and government fiat, whereas all this other shit is literally shit coins or trying to become processing things that might be in line with the government and are not decentralized in the way Bitcoin is.
Yeah, I haven't, I haven't heard anything from Guy about this yet.
I'll be interested to check out his content.
I'd be happy to have him back on and have him give his take on this.
But just to be clear, Guy Swan, who is our crypto guy, our Bitcoin guy, more specifically, this does not make him look bad at all.
If you've actually been listening to what he's been saying, because he was always a big critic of these like these exchanges, and he's always been a guy who is like, you know, you have to have your own keys and your own, you know what I mean?
And also a big critic of shitcoin in general.
So this, none of this like reflects poorly on him or a lot of the Bitcoin community.
It does look like this is quite possibly, at least a lot of people are saying, going to have cascading effects to other major exchanges.
I mean, if the third biggest one was a complete Ponzi scheme, who the fuck knows how insolvent some of these other ones are?
I'm no expert in the technical logistics of how all these things are run.
It does seem like companies like this are ripe for abuse.
That you're like, I mean, just like when I just first even heard that they could be printing their own coin and then like they were leveraging their investors money, you know what I mean?
To like just taking enormous risk.
It's like, yeah, man, you should really, I would not put any substantial amount of money in a company if I did not, was not able to know what they were doing with all of this stuff.
And then the, he referenced that he has two compliance lawyer parents.
So let's differentiate now I'm opening the door into slightly more conspiracy space here.
But those two parents of his are like Stanford lawyers, very well embedded in the Democratic Party.
The lady, the ugly Jubra that they were all apparently having sex with on beanbags, her dad is tied in, used to be Gensler's boss, who is like the guy who's been looking at the SEC stuff.
I think part of why this platform might have been as big as it was, and this is exactly what Mr. Wonderful was saying there.
Well, he's got the two parents won't get in trouble.
The whole thing with the crypto world has been, well, are the institutional investors going to step in?
And if the institutional investors step in, where are they going to place their money?
And then that's going to have more value.
So it seems like these people are trying to pick the platform that will essentially be tied in with the Fed, be well regulated and have like kind of the advantage of being there first.
And so obviously, if you're there first and you're holding that currency and all of a sudden that currency is actually being used, you're going to make money.
But that what we're talking about is trying to be preferred player.
That these people kind of were like, oh, these are the guys that are tied in because their parents are a part of the Democratic Party.
And this is the one that has the uncle who's got the friend who's working over at the Fed.
This is what Ratface's wife got in trouble for when she almost got appointed to the Fed was that she was working for an agency and got them like direct access to the Fed, which created instant value for them.
But this is where money is made for these people is that they have access that other people don't.
And so you go, oh, I got the crypto platform, but the Fed's actually going to work with me.
So now that's instant value.
Yep.
Yep.
No, that's exactly right.
And clearly, this guy was, there were a lot of very connected people around him.
And when you watch this guy come out of nowhere and just all of a sudden build up this enormous company, become like an overnight billionaire.
And then he's making like TikToks with Tom Brady and like, he's just like in the world like so quickly.
And all of the people around him are so connected.
Yeah, it does make you makes you wonder like, well, okay, what's really going on here?
But I think you're right.
I think that in the bigger picture of it all, like, I don't know if you remember if you've ever like looked at these, I don't have the numbers offhand, but like Microsoft, if you remember in the year 2000, the federal government like sued Microsoft under what's it called, antitrust laws.
I believe it was the antitrust Sherman Act or something like that.
And they were threatening to break up the company.
And previously to that, because Microsoft at the time, if you remember, was damn near close to a monopoly with Windows.
It was like, this was before like the resurgence of Apple.
And so basically every computer had Windows on it.
And so they were claiming they were a monopoly or monopolistic.
And they, the company Microsoft, had spent like basically nothing on lobbying.
They were just in the business of making it.
He was in the vaccine business.
Yes, yes.
This is before he became a vaccine expert.
And then in the years following, they started spending billions on lobbying.
They've never had a problem again.
And so this is like, it's this cost that's like incalculable to the economy, to the real economy, meaning like helping, you know, raise the standard of living for a large amount of people, is that they, you go, oh, okay.
So lesson learned, you thought your job here was just to create computer software and build computers.
And your job wasn't to be bribing politicians.
Well, okay.
Now you learned there's this huge risk associated in doing that.
And there's tremendous security associated with playing this game.
And so they draw in capital to this fucking bullshit game that doesn't do anything to make anybody any wealthier than they were.
Whereas in the market, you were providing a product for people that there was tremendous demand for.
So we've taken, we've extracted a not small amount of your time and resources from producing things that people want that make their lives better to playing this game of politics, which is just nothing, does nothing for anyone.
So, and this happens all over the place.
And so, yeah, of course, people are, if you're under a system where there is a central bank and a centralized regulatory apparatus, of course, it's going to be a huge advantage to anybody who's in tight with them.
Okay.
I think we should throw some of the other conspiracy stuff.
Well, let's get, okay, so let's get to the next major element in this conspiracy.
Okay, so, well, first, what should be set up, what's known about this, and this isn't a conspiracy, is that this guy was the guy who ran FTX, Sam.
What's his last name again?
I can't remember.
Yes, that's right.
Sam Jewface.
Just kidding.
Where's both?
We all got a couple.
We're all a bunch of Jewfaces here.
He was Bankman.
Yeah, how do I forget?
His last name was fucking Bankman.
I mean, Jesus, not grown in a Jew lab.
Are we trying to prove Kanye right about everything?
Could we stop short a little bit?
Okay, so He was a huge, huge, as Donald Trump would say, huge donator, contributor to the Democratic Party.
40 mil.
Yes.
He was, I believe, second only to George Soros in terms of how much money he was sending to Democratic politicians, made huge contributions to Barack Obama, excuse me, to Joe Biden, as well as a bunch of Democratic Congress campaigns and Senate campaigns and all this stuff.
Now it has been widely reported.
And this is almost just, it's, I don't even know what to say.
It's just like, it couldn't have, it couldn't be out of a fucking movie.
It would be too cheesy for a movie.
And this comes as two people, me and you, who have been two of the biggest critics of America's policy of funding the war in Ukraine.
But it turns out, according to some pretty solid reporting, that Ukraine has been investing large sums of money in FTX.
So if you get this straight, try to put this together here.
Think of, imagine a circle in your mind.
Okay.
You have Democratic candidates who are legislating that we send tens of billions of dollars in weapons and aid over to Ukraine.
Ukraine is then taking money, sending it over to FTX.
FTX is taking that money and sending it over to Democratic politicians.
That's what we're looking at here.
Yep.
And that's just the money going to politicians that we know of publicly.
I think there's $2 billion missing from the platform.
The idea that paydays couldn't be taking place.
And by the way, the paydays could be as simple as we're going to put this $500,000 aside for a speech in two years when Biden leaves office.
Money Flowing to Politicians00:02:08
Yes.
It might not even be as crazy as just private bank accounts, but you know, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, who knows like the level of just because all of that shit is like, like, look, I'll be honest.
I don't even know technically if any of this is illegal.
Technically, I mean, it's technically not illegal for like Goldman Sachs to give $200,000 to like Barack Obama for a speech, even though Obama like bailed out Goldman Sachs, continued the bailouts of Goldman Sachs.
It's not illegal.
They have a right to do that.
It is blatantly corrupt to anyone looking in.
Like there's no way they just wanted to hear him speak that badly.
You know, they're like, obviously, like paying him back for what he gave to them.
And it's small and a great.
It's more like they have a meeting where they're like, all right, everyone's got to show up and pretend like you're paying attention because we got to get this guy a $400,000 bribe.
So we need everyone in the room and pretend like this is the, this information was worth the 400 grand.
So clap, stay awake, do pretty much.
Honestly, I'm sure their fucking executives are quite happy to like, oh, we get to mingle with Barack Obama.
This is pretty neat.
And they all get a kick out of it.
But they're not, you know what I'm saying?
They're spending that money for a reason.
And it's like, it's a signal to all the other politicians in power that, oh, yeah, you take care of us.
You will get taken care of.
Now, there's nothing illegal there technically, but it's so goddamn corrupt.
I don't know.
I mean, this feels like now it's not just a Ponzi scheme.
It's a Ponzi scheme with a twist of money laundering is what this feels like.
But I'm not even quite sure.
I'm not quite sure.
Again, I'm no lawyer.
I don't know.
Is that actually illegal?
I mean, is it illegal for Ukraine to invest in this company and then this company to donate money to politicians?
My guess is it's probably legal.
But it's still outrageously corrupt.
Outrageously corrupt.
Of course, Ukraine has had a history of being a very corrupt country.
But this is really, this is really something, huh?
Hypocrisy in Wealth and Advocacy00:09:43
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All right, let's get back into the show.
And now we got a play.
I just sent it over to Brian's way.
While this guy's out there and he's stealing money, he's filtering it back to the Dems.
Of course, he's out there like a fucking millennial Instagram influencer going, I don't care about money.
I just want to be able to combat global warming, help the poor, make sure everybody's vaccinated.
And here's my philosophy of earning just to give.
All right.
Yeah, let's play the video.
But Sam is not a traditional billionaire because he believes in the concept of earn to give, which means his goal as a human is to make as much money as possible just to give it away.
Earn to give.
And that's exactly what he's doing.
So let's say that you have $100 and you want to figure out what you can do with it to help the world.
Earning to give is thinking about which causes which charity saves the most lives per dollar.
This $100 can go as far as it possibly can to help the world.
Last year, this 29-year-old guy donated $50 million.
Next, he's planning to donate $500 million a year.
And next decade, he will probably give away more than $10 billion.
The amount of good that you can do for the future of the world is really large.
And it's way more than you can do to actually make yourself happy with anything like that amount of money.
And he is funding everything you can think of.
Global warming.
It's one of the biggest problems that we have to tackle together as a world.
COVID-19 preparedness.
We have to be ready for the next pandemic.
Neglected tropical diseases.
More than a billion people suffer from them.
We have to eliminate these diseases.
And of course, animal welfare.
Animals deserve to live just like we do.
It's also why I'm vegan.
Sam doesn't need the money to buy a Lamborghini or to buy a Rolex or to impress his friends.
In fact, his car is a Toyota Corolla.
Hold on.
Where's your car?
It's that one there.
That's not quite a Toyota.
Uh, yeah.
It's a Corolla.
Why don't you buy a Lamborghini, man?
I didn't have any particular need for one.
He wants to get rich in order to impact the cheese.
Yeah, isn't it?
I mean, it looks like a Saturday Night Live spoof or something like that.
I mean, like this schlubby billionaire archetype.
I don't know.
It's very, very weird.
So yeah, look, I mean, there's just a lot to kind of take apart there.
And over the next 10 years, he's going to give $10 billion.
Well.
Maybe not.
Don't cash those checks yet over the next 10 years because it seems more likely he'll go to jail than be donating money.
But isn't there something about this?
First of all, I mean, it's just like, you know, you got to learn how to smell propaganda.
And if you can't smell propaganda on that, then you're in trouble.
But there's something, I don't know, there's something very Randian that comes to mind about this kind of the people who insist that they're the most philanthropic and that they want to shove that down your face, actually being the worst people.
And that, you know, like, I don't want a billionaire who's pretending to me that they don't even care about money.
They don't even want any money.
Oh, I just drive a Corolla.
I'd much rather talk to a billionaire who's like, yeah, I have 10 Lamborghinis.
That's why I work so hard to become a billionaire because like I wanted all this nice stuff.
I just find that to be more genuine and more honest.
And then look at this, the guy who's like, I just earn to give.
I just make money to give away.
Not only is that not true, but he's so much slimier than your average billionaire who at least runs a company that does produce something.
He's just robbing everyone.
He got rich by robbing from by robbing people's money.
And he's putting himself out there as the guy who got rich just so he could give it away.
Just think about the levels there.
It's the example that Tucker Carlson, he uses a lot, where he goes, Tucker Carlson, I've heard him use this example a few different times and I very much like it.
He talks about the difference between lying and sociopathic lying.
And he says, like, lying is like human nature.
People lie, but it's usually very clear what the reason is.
And he goes, like, a normal person's lie is you catch your kid eating cookies when they're not supposed to.
And you're like, did you have six cookies?
And they're like, no, I only had four.
Now they're lying, but you understand why they're lying.
They're trying to minimize like how guilty they feel or how bad they were in the situation.
And he was like, sociopathic lying is like you go, did you have six cookies?
And then, and they go, no, you had the cookies.
You know, like it's a complete inversion of the truth.
And like, you're just blown away by the gall of them even lying to you where you're like, but you know that I know I didn't eat the cookies.
And you, we both know this and you're still just lying through your teeth.
There's something like that about this.
The idea that you would present yourself when you're actually the guy who is just ripping other people off.
But then you not only do you put yourself out there as like, I'm not ripping other people off.
Not only do you go like, oh, I'm a billionaire and you try to make yourself feel a little bit better by going like, well, even though I have five Lamborghinis, I also give some money to charity.
Like that's kind of the typical billionaire way to play it.
But you go, oh, no, no, no.
I'm only getting rich to give to other people.
And I drive a Corolla.
Something tells me this guy during his run of going from nothing to a billionaire enjoyed some of the finer things in life.
Oh, yeah.
They were putting out these pictures as if they were living in an office, sleeping on beanbags.
And then it turns out he's got a $40 million penthouse.
Yeah.
All right.
Exactly.
Wow.
That is pretty crazy, man.
That is really something to see those pictures.
All right.
Are there any other levels?
I just think it's so indicative of these fucking lefty assholes who pretend like they're so mortal and righteous.
These are the people that are preaching to you about halting global warming, the ESG scores, the feel-good capitalism.
It's all a lie.
They're as interested in corporate profits as anyone's ever been.
They're just a little bit slicker in their marketing and that it's a new bitch boy way of like pretending like you're a nice person.
And so it kind of gets people's past people's guards where they're not used to seeing people like this who are evil.
Yeah, well, it's kind of like it's again, it just reminds me of it's a very Randian insight.
And this doesn't mean you have to completely agree with her.
I don't completely agree with her.
And she's very like dogmatic in the like absolute applications of all these principles.
But the idea, or so, so Rand's idea was basically that selfishness is the greatest virtue and that self selflessness is like the worst vice.
And that, you know, now I don't know if I 100% agree with her on that, but there certainly is some truth to the idea that like we are all self-interested and that's okay.
And to deny that, the people who deny that the most often end up being the biggest hypocrites and some of the most selfish people in the most destructive ways.
And so, you know, like, it's like Adam Smith's whole thing in Wealth of Nations that he wrote about the invisible hand.
Like, you know, it's not the benevolence of the butcher that leads him to, you know, provide, you know, food for the, right?
Like he's trying to make money.
He's trying to support his family.
But in order to do that, he'll provide a service for you that you need.
And you're also just trying to get the service and get that for you and your family.
And like everyone's, everyone's got their self-interest.
Losing Trust Through Silence00:04:48
And there is something this is all over the place.
It's really particularly on the left.
But there's even just like influencers and political commentators on the left who from every level, from like YouTubers and TikTokers, all the way up to like people who work in the corporate press and shit like that, who all day long are talking to you about what a moral outrage inequality is.
Meanwhile, they're getting filthy rich.
And like, okay, I don't begrudge them for getting rich, but there is something inherently dishonest about sitting there and advocating for socialism, railing against the moral outrage that is income inequality, and then making millions of dollars every year.
There's just something like very hypocritical about that.
If you really think it's wrong for people to have, you know, for there to be income inequality, well, then, okay, you can close the gap on that quite a lot.
You can put your money where your mouth is and actually, you know, share your income, but you're not doing that.
So like, don't give me this shit.
Like, you want nice stuff.
You want to get rich, just like most people do.
Okay, that's fine, but let's be honest about that.
And this is just, it's just sickening with how transparently bullshit it is.
And now, of course, we have the proof.
Okay, so we're coming up toward the end here.
Is there any other level of to this conspiracy that you think we didn't touch?
The big one I wanted to get to was the Ukraine thing because that's just too delicious to ignore.
I think the money laundering and then just this almost, I don't buy into the manufactured person thing so much, but this kind of reeks of it.
Yeah.
Look, it does, it does smell like that a little bit.
We'll see.
It'll be interesting to see what more comes out about this.
Again, this is going to be a story that, of course, the corporate press, which is just, you know, an arm of the Democratic Party at this point, they're not going to have too much interest in this story.
But I have a feeling this one's going to live.
They're already barely reporting on it.
I mean, this is like we live in this world where everything's like the Paul Pelosi thing, where you've got some really interesting event that goes on.
They just scream, hey, you're a bunch of conspiracy theorists, and we move on from it.
I mean, it's even the fucking hanging of Epstein in jail.
We just moved on from it.
We just accepted.
But not online.
Online, there's still a lot of people hanging on to it, but you're right.
From all the like official institutions, yeah, just move right on.
And we're supposed to pretend that that doesn't exist.
And it's, it's, this is one of the things, and it's interesting because they never talk about that.
They just blame the fake news and all this other shit.
And the same with this: we just need the government to regulate the internet for disinformation, or we just need the government to regulate the crypto market.
That's always the response to this.
But there's never more of a like one ounce of introspection to go, oh, yeah, maybe that's why people don't trust the institutions anymore.
Like, maybe, you know, when we caught that ABC reporter on the hot mic talking about how she had the Epstein story all ready to go and ABC killed it because they, uh, their words were that it would hurt um them getting access to the royal family.
Like, what is what once that came out?
Shouldn't the like, um, shouldn't even from the corporate press point of view, their response have been, well, we're going to have to like fire a bunch of people, have at least show investigations to make people think we're taking this really seriously, and because we're going to lose complete trust in us if it is perceived, let's say, let's say not even real, but the perception is that we buried a story on an active,
like um child predator with who is in bed with the most powerful people in our country.
And we buried that story for access to the royal family.
If that's the perception, then people will never trust us again.
So we better do something to correct that.
There's no attempt like that.
And then they just sit around.
And that's just one example of things.
Like there's a million examples like this.
And it's like, and then they sit around and go, man, trust is dwindling.
It must be all this misinformation.
It's really, it's, it's like the whole thing is just hilarious.
Well, with the FTX down, they're really going to have to figure out new funding for their pedophile rings.
Uh, because after Epstein got taken out, you know, they found this new Jew guy.