True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 496: Money for Nothing
Aired: 2025-10-13
Duration: 01:25:06


=== Judge Jerry Executioner (09:36) ===

[00:00:00]  I'm just going to read you off some names I came up with.
[00:00:02]  Oh my god, you love this so much.
[00:00:06]  Kendall Reader, Judge Jerry Executioner, Jerry Duty.
[00:00:12]  Why would someone have the last name executioner?
[00:00:14]  That's already funny.
[00:00:16]  Even if you were just like people's last names are slaughter.
[00:00:18]  Yeah, my name is Bill Executioner.
[00:00:20]  That'd be so sick.
[00:00:22]  Yeah, I'm saying that's already funny.
[00:00:23]  You don't need to do funny.
[00:00:24]  It's cool.
[00:00:25]  The like, the like Jerry Jury middle name.
[00:00:29]  Judge Jerry, like no, it's judge is Jerry is his first name.
[00:00:34]  His full name is Joe.
[00:00:36]  It's not his full name.
[00:00:37]  It's his title.
[00:00:37]  It could be like Judge Reinhold.
[00:00:39]  Judge Reinhold is neither a real judge nor has he received highest honor.
[00:00:42]  True.
[00:00:42]  But this guy is a judge.
[00:00:44]  Shout out, Nike.
[00:00:45]  And his name is Judge Jerry Executioner.
[00:00:49]  Right.
[00:00:50]  You don't want to go to trial under that guy.
[00:00:52]  No, no, you certainly don't.
[00:01:18]  And of course, Jack Cousins, Gary Gay Blige, Bo Rad.
[00:01:23]  Gary Gay Blige is great.
[00:01:26]  Herman.
[00:01:27]  Herman.
[00:01:28]  This one's maybe tough.
[00:01:29]  I haven't said it out loud yet.
[00:01:30]  Herman cheating.
[00:01:33]  Oh, like her man cheating.
[00:01:34]  Herman cheating.
[00:01:35]  Yeah.
[00:01:36]  Don Binary.
[00:01:41]  Yeah.
[00:01:41]  Suki Willie Goodman.
[00:01:44]  Oh.
[00:01:46]  Yeah.
[00:01:46]  Yeah.
[00:01:47]  Blake wife, but you have to say the South African accent.
[00:01:50]  So Blake Wife.
[00:01:52]  And Corey Ian Mann.
[00:01:55]  Wait, I don't get that one.
[00:01:57]  Corey Ian Man.
[00:01:58]  Korean Man.
[00:01:59]  Oh, there we go.
[00:02:01]  Les Lichter.
[00:02:04]  And Mo Old Man Weiner, which is my name on this remote episode.
[00:02:10]  Hello.
[00:02:11]  Hello.
[00:02:12]  I'm Liz.
[00:02:13]  My name.
[00:02:17]  Oh, no.
[00:02:19]  My name is Bryce.
[00:02:22]  And we're joined by producer Gabe Abey.
[00:02:25]  Gabe Abey.
[00:02:27]  That's the classic.
[00:02:28]  And this is Truanon.
[00:02:29]  Hello.
[00:02:30]  Storm King Daniels.
[00:02:34]  Can you imagine being named that?
[00:02:36]  And they were just like, your parents just didn't know anything about Stormy Daniels.
[00:02:40]  Yeah, they were just big fans of public art.
[00:02:44]  We love to go upstate.
[00:02:47]  God.
[00:02:50]  Hello, Brace.
[00:02:51]  Hello.
[00:02:52]  Put the list away.
[00:02:54]  I can't.
[00:02:55]  I understand.
[00:02:56]  Look how long the list is.
[00:02:57]  I know.
[00:02:58]  It's been going for years.
[00:03:00]  I know.
[00:03:01]  Look at that.
[00:03:02]  Unfortunately, I can't say many on the show.
[00:03:03]  Hello.
[00:03:04]  Hello.
[00:03:05]  And that's just one of the many lists that I have on my notes app.
[00:03:09]  That's true.
[00:03:09]  You're a list keeper.
[00:03:11]  Oh, yeah.
[00:03:12]  Yeah.
[00:03:14]  Naughty and nice.
[00:03:15]  Favorites.
[00:03:17]  Enemies.
[00:03:18]  How would you feel if you went to the studio one day and you like walk in and I have my phone out and you can see that I have my notes app a naughty list?
[00:03:30]  I would be like, man, my first reaction would honestly be, damn, Brace is the kind of guy who says naughty.
[00:03:39]  Yeah, I'm the kind of guy who says naughty.
[00:03:42]  Can you clip that, please?
[00:03:43]  Yeah, I'm the kind of guy who says naughty.
[00:03:47]  I am the kind of guy who says fucking naughty.
[00:03:49]  No, don't say it like that.
[00:03:50]  Because some people are naughty.
[00:03:55]  And I, like a very prominent individual, well loved throughout the world, make a list of people who have been naughty.
[00:04:03]  Yeah, much like Judge Jerry.
[00:04:05]  And once a year I visit them and I go into their homes when they're sleeping and I fiddle around.
[00:04:13]  Ew.
[00:04:14]  Like the Who song.
[00:04:19]  Don't talk about fiddling.
[00:04:20]  Fiddle about fiddle up.
[00:04:23]  Crazy to do.
[00:04:25]  That's my karaoke song.
[00:04:27]  What?
[00:04:27]  Uncle Ernie over here.
[00:04:28]  Uncle Ernie by the Who.
[00:04:30]  I do that and it brings the house down, Liz.
[00:04:33]  Like you've never down to the exit door.
[00:04:36]  My first date with Miss Radojowski was no second, but I did.
[00:04:44]  We went out to karaoke and I just fucking got up there and I belted my ass off to the Who's Uncle Ernie, brought the house down.
[00:04:52]  In fact, everyone left because they were weeping inconsolably, couldn't do that in the bar.
[00:04:57]  There's rules against that.
[00:04:59]  And had to go outside.
[00:05:00]  It is a hell of a song.
[00:05:02]  Down with the bedclothes up with your night shirt.
[00:05:06]  Fiddler, fidel.
[00:05:09]  I think I got to tell you this.
[00:05:11]  I got to tell you this.
[00:05:11]  I love the Who.
[00:05:13]  I love The Who.
[00:05:14]  I do.
[00:05:14]  I do.
[00:05:15]  I love.
[00:05:15]  I love some Who records.
[00:05:17]  I would say I hate the record Tommy.
[00:05:20]  I do not like that record.
[00:05:22]  I thought everyone liked that record.
[00:05:24]  No.
[00:05:24]  Quadrophenia is their good double album that also is a movie.
[00:05:34]  And I do not like Tommy because it reminds me too much of my most hated album of all time, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club.
[00:05:42]  Oh my God.
[00:05:43]  Band.
[00:05:46]  You're not going to get it.
[00:05:47]  I don't like that record.
[00:05:48]  I do not like British circus music.
[00:05:50]  That is a kind of music that I do not enjoy to listen to.
[00:05:54]  Being for the benefit of Mr. Brace.
[00:05:56]  I just don't.
[00:05:56]  I just don't like it.
[00:05:57]  I just don't like British circus music.
[00:05:59]  The Kinks did a couple of them too.
[00:06:01]  I think of all the Stones also.
[00:06:05]  It was a time, it was an era of like, it was an early circus bop.
[00:06:11]  People were bopping around.
[00:06:12]  It's interesting because all these bands were like, we're doing the blues or skiffles.
[00:06:16]  And then, like, oh, we found out about rock and roll.
[00:06:18]  And then, like, they get bored of rock and roll in two years.
[00:06:21]  They got to get on the merry-go-round.
[00:06:23]  What if we integrated something maybe from the big top circus into this?
[00:06:27]  You know, how about a tuba?
[00:06:30]  How about we drop LSD and bring a couple of horns in here?
[00:06:34]  It sucks.
[00:06:34]  It all sucks.
[00:06:37]  It all sucks.
[00:06:38]  That fucking song, the Who song Armenia, which for some reason they pronounce Armenia, Armania in the sky.
[00:06:46]  I hate that fucking song.
[00:06:47]  I hate that song.
[00:06:49]  Oh my God.
[00:06:50]  I hate that song so much.
[00:06:51]  It just reminds me of working retail.
[00:06:54]  Oh, God.
[00:06:55]  It was like anytime the Who came on, I wanted to blow my brains out.
[00:07:00]  I will say this: as a big Who fan, a lot of their hits stink.
[00:07:04]  They all stink.
[00:07:05]  I'm sorry, I don't know.
[00:07:06]  They don't.
[00:07:06]  No, the 515 off of Quadrophy, it's great.
[00:07:09]  As a woman, it's a tough one to get into.
[00:07:12]  Because you see that Daltry's feminine energy.
[00:07:16]  He, it's like you look at him, you're like, somehow he combines yin and yang, masculine and feminine, yoni, and the other penis into yogi.
[00:07:25]  It's whatever the other one is, into one form that he's almost like the perfect being.
[00:07:30]  So you're like, I hate being a woman.
[00:07:32]  I guess what I think when I say I hate being a man because we see the perfect integration in one of a hard time with like psychedelic, operatic, like 60s stuff.
[00:07:47]  It's really tough for me.
[00:07:48]  I could never, on any of the spectrum.
[00:07:50]  So like we could talk about the who.
[00:07:53]  I could never get into like T-Rex.
[00:07:55]  There was like an era of my life in which every single fucking person was like really into this kind of shit.
[00:08:02]  San Francisco.
[00:08:03]  I remember the T-Rex era.
[00:08:05]  And I myself was a someone who was extremely into like, we'll say late 70s, 80s, minimal, very cold, very depressive, Manchester, German, Northern European, will say music.
[00:08:28]  And it was just like, I wanted to blow my brains out with how happy and psychedelic everything was.
[00:08:33]  I remember saying, yeah, I remember getting that Sid Barrett record, The Madcap Laughs, or whatever, because I was like, that was sort of slated, slotted alongside Leonard Cohen to me.
[00:08:44]  I was like, this is a record that, like, you know, you bring a girl back to the apartment.
[00:08:49]  Like, not one in the morning or whatever, but, you know, during the, during like a more, you put that on because you're sort of, it's part of the seduction technique.
[00:08:58]  Because in my head, I was like, girls love Sid Barrett, because girls love Sid Barrett.
[00:09:01]  And I quickly realized that I actually did not only dislike Sid Barrett, but I hated Sid Barrett.
[00:09:07]  I hated Sid Barrett.
[00:09:08]  But did you still put it on?
[00:09:09]  Yes.
[00:09:10]  And in fact, it inspired me.
[00:09:12]  I actually built a time machine, went back in time and mega-dosed him with, I had a choice between Hitler and Sid Barrett.
[00:09:19]  And I was like, give me 50 tabs of your strongest acid.
[00:09:24]  I'm going to put this in his little kappa and I am going to change.
[00:09:28]  I'm going to make sure that this guy is out of the picture.
[00:09:30]  He is out of the picture.
[00:09:31]  He is no longer going to be at Pink Floyd or anywhere but his mother's house.
[00:09:35]  But I don't like Pink Floyd either.

=== Mega-Dosing Sid Barrett (02:55) ===

[00:09:36]  And that's a fact.
[00:09:37]  I don't really like Pink Floyd either.
[00:09:39]  And I don't even like that first double album that people are like, no, this one's actually fucking heavy, man.
[00:09:43]  But I love Hawkwind.
[00:09:45]  Interesting.
[00:09:46]  And I love the Hawkwind family of bands as well.
[00:09:49]  Yeah, the Extended family.
[00:09:50]  The Extendland family of bands.
[00:09:51]  Michael Moorcock wrote many of their lyrics.
[00:09:53]  Anyways, I'm not a big psychedelic guy, but I'm a hard rocker.
[00:10:00]  This has nothing to do with what we're talking about.
[00:10:05]  But I had a friend.
[00:10:06]  I had a friend who met Michael Moorcock once.
[00:10:09]  And he really wanted to ask him about his books.
[00:10:13]  But my friend played in a heavy rock band and all Michael Moorcock wanted to talk about was like heavy rock, which I'm like, actually, that sounds pretty cool.
[00:10:20]  I want to say that too.
[00:10:21]  We're talking about technology.
[00:10:25]  We are.
[00:10:26]  And corruption.
[00:10:29]  And the intersections of corruption and technology.
[00:10:32]  We're talking about the UAE.
[00:10:33]  It's crazy.
[00:10:34]  Cause so we're remote today, as you might be able to tell, because Liz is actually in Dubai right now.
[00:10:39]  I know.
[00:10:39]  I had to take a red eye.
[00:10:41]  Yeah.
[00:10:42]  I don't know.
[00:10:43]  I had to take a quick jaunt to Dubai.
[00:10:46]  Get this.
[00:10:48]  So I'm getting my eyebrows done the other day.
[00:10:50]  I know.
[00:10:50]  I was doing them.
[00:10:52]  No, I'm talking to the gal.
[00:10:55]  And she's like, I had the craziest client the other day.
[00:10:59]  She came in.
[00:11:00]  She had this accent.
[00:11:00]  I couldn't really understand.
[00:11:02]  You know, we were just talking and I asked her, oh, where are you from?
[00:11:04]  And she goes, I'm from Dubai.
[00:11:06]  And she's like, oh, wow.
[00:11:09]  How long are you in New York?
[00:11:10]  And she goes, oh, my daughter and I, we're here just for a week and a half.
[00:11:14]  We come every eight weeks.
[00:11:15]  We do a beauty week.
[00:11:18]  And I was like, I'm sorry, what?
[00:11:20]  You come to New York to do your eyebrows?
[00:11:24]  They don't have threaders.
[00:11:26]  They don't have threaders.
[00:11:27]  It wasn't threading.
[00:11:28]  I don't do that.
[00:11:29]  I don't know what that is.
[00:11:30]  They don't have a guy in a tank top to shave a little slice of your eyebrow.
[00:11:35]  Yeah, I was at the barber getting my getting my fade.
[00:11:39]  Liz is with some chopped unks at the barber shop at the Elizabeth Warren barbershop.
[00:11:47]  Oh my God, I forgot about that one.
[00:11:49]  Yeah, but I was like, wait, that's crazy.
[00:11:51]  Cause I feel like, isn't the whole thing in Dubai like that they have that?
[00:11:55]  It's like a fucking Disneyland or whatever.
[00:11:57]  Yeah, I don't really understand it.
[00:11:58]  Shouldn't y'all be in them fucking robes?
[00:12:01]  But it seems crazy to travel that far to get your eyebrows done.
[00:12:03]  I know, but I guess they probably don't do like, what do you think?
[00:12:06]  I mean, I'll go to New York, but.
[00:12:07]  It's crazy because I think that Dubai, obviously there's a certain kind of person in America that loves Dubai, but like, I think a lot of British people really love Dubai.
[00:12:16]  That's like the impression that I get.
[00:12:18]  And I just, it's confusing to me because I don't understand.
[00:12:20]  Like, you're just going to a mall.
[00:12:22]  It sounds like a very, very weird place to live.
[00:12:25]  But it's hot out?
[00:12:26]  Yeah, but you're inside.
[00:12:27]  And there's slave.
[00:12:29]  But you don't see them.
[00:12:31]  You know, see them slaves.

=== Dubai's Tactile Dome Mystery (03:33) ===

[00:12:32]  Yeah.
[00:12:33]  But I don't see slaves here either.
[00:12:35]  Well, so that gives you insight into how people live in Dubai.
[00:12:38]  Yeah.
[00:12:39]  And it just, it doesn't really make sense to me because I would want to go somewhere with like a tree.
[00:12:42]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:12:43]  They plant those.
[00:12:45]  I know, but like more than one.
[00:12:47]  But they also have islands that are shaped like them.
[00:12:49]  I guess that's true, but you can't like, but like, are people hitting the beach in Dubai?
[00:12:54]  No, I don't think that's how I don't think you can do that.
[00:12:56]  I don't know if they, how they do that.
[00:12:59]  Maybe they just go to somewhere else for the beach.
[00:13:01]  They love to be on yacht in Dubai.
[00:13:04]  They go to those islands in the Indian Ocean.
[00:13:06]  You know what I'm talking about?
[00:13:07]  Yeah.
[00:13:07]  And you get like a, you get a grass hut on stilt in water.
[00:13:13]  Now that's what Elon is shaped like.
[00:13:15]  Fuck, dude.
[00:13:16]  He is.
[00:13:17]  He's shaped like a really fancy Cayman Islands resort.
[00:13:20]  Yeah, he's a Hutman.
[00:13:21]  Wow.
[00:13:23]  That is.
[00:13:23]  It's interesting you say that because I'd like to do the same thing in his body that I'd like to do in one of those resorts.
[00:13:28]  Whenever I look at him, I just think turducken.
[00:13:31]  I don't know what that imagination is, but he spiritually feels like a turducken.
[00:13:34]  Do you remember when Business Insider reported that he offered that woman a horse for a hand job on the plane, the Masseuse?
[00:13:40]  Yeah, I feel like that is not, that's very expensive.
[00:13:46]  I guess he's rich, you know, and we don't wear the horse.
[00:13:49]  But could you imagine massaging him?
[00:13:53]  It's like, it would be sort of like a blind person trying to read another language in Braille, even though I think Braille is maybe a universal language, like sign language.
[00:14:00]  I guess, no, there's different sign languages, but because you're just like discovering, like you're like tactilely discovering bumps and lumps and humps that like you didn't know could be there.
[00:14:11]  Totally.
[00:14:12]  So it would, it would really be like, it would be.
[00:14:15]  It's like he's got like the third, third set of ribs.
[00:14:19]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:14:20]  You'd be like, and there's like hollow parts, and then there's parts there's too much, and then there's parts that are like weirdly mushy.
[00:14:26]  It's kind of like going into the um, what was it called?
[00:14:29]  The tactile dome.
[00:14:31]  I loved the tactile dome, me too.
[00:14:33]  That was that.
[00:14:33]  Oh, man.
[00:14:34]  When you, the kids, when they would have the party at the tactile dome, that was like here we go.
[00:14:41]  And Liz and I'm having a real birthday party.
[00:14:44]  And the only times I ever went in the tactile dome was a birthday party.
[00:14:48]  Me too.
[00:14:48]  Me too.
[00:14:49]  Well, that was amazing.
[00:14:49]  I think that sometimes we would go there.
[00:14:51]  My parents wouldn't let me in the dome without other kids there.
[00:14:54]  Just because they didn't trust you in the dome.
[00:14:55]  Because three or four kids just never came out.
[00:14:58]  You know?
[00:14:59]  They got swallowed by the ballpit.
[00:15:01]  They got stuck touching.
[00:15:03]  You know?
[00:15:04]  They found a surface that they really enjoyed and they just never...
[00:15:08]  So there was a dome in this museum in San Francisco.
[00:15:11]  Does it still exist?
[00:15:11]  Does it still exist?
[00:15:11]  They...
[00:15:11]  They moved it.
[00:15:12]  I feel like they moved.
[00:15:13]  I don't know.
[00:15:13]  They moved it.
[00:15:14]  So I don't know.
[00:15:14]  It had to.
[00:15:15]  It was one of the main attractions.
[00:15:16]  But it was a tactile dome.
[00:15:17]  It was a dome you enter as a child and it was completely pitch black.
[00:15:21]  Awesome.
[00:15:21]  So you had to move your way through, but there was all these different tactile.
[00:15:25]  It taught me what the word tactile meant.
[00:15:26]  Yeah.
[00:15:28]  And you had to move through.
[00:15:29]  I loved the tactile dome.
[00:15:31]  Well, it's better than like them calling it like the touching party.
[00:15:34]  And you know what there else there was at that museum?
[00:15:36]  What was the exploratorium?
[00:15:37]  You know what there else there was?
[00:15:38]  There was that wall that you could stand in front of and you moved and there would be a flash and there would be a there's your shadow would be imprinted on the wall for a second.
[00:15:46]  Do you remember that?
[00:15:47]  Yeah, that was cool.
[00:15:48]  Kind of a Nagasaki.
[00:15:50]  There's so many cool things there.
[00:15:52]  Yeah, that place rocked.
[00:15:55]  But now when I go, they're like, sir, you're.
[00:15:58]  Sir, is there?
[00:15:59]  Are you here with you?
[00:15:59]  Like, are you an uncle?
[00:16:00]  They're like, Judge Jerry Executioner explicitly said in the order that you cannot be here.
[00:16:05]  Yeah.

=== Bitcoin and Ophelia's Crypto Resurgence (15:20) ===

[00:16:06]  Is your name Ted Ophile?
[00:16:10]  Sorry.
[00:16:10]  No, I guess it would be Ted Ophelia.
[00:16:12]  I'm adding that to the list.
[00:16:13]  That doesn't work.
[00:16:14]  Ted Ophelia?
[00:16:15]  It does work.
[00:16:16]  Ophelia.
[00:16:18]  Little Taylor Swift.
[00:16:19]  Taylor Swift reference there.
[00:16:22]  Should we get to the episode?
[00:16:24]  We should get to the episode.
[00:16:24]  Oh, no.
[00:16:25]  We're just having so much fun.
[00:16:26]  Let's get to the episode.
[00:16:27]  Right.
[00:16:29]  Now.
[00:16:51]  Oh, Yakub.
[00:16:53]  Silverman?
[00:16:57]  The scientist who has set out to destroy me and everything that I hold dear.
[00:17:03]  I coindexter recording from the inside of my beautiful one Bitcoin apartment visited by one of my old foes, Jacob Silverman.
[00:17:18]  And you know, the thing that's in common, I can't do the voice right now because I have to save it for the show.
[00:17:24]  But the one thing that I find that all of you haters have in common is that you're all, how do I say this?
[00:17:32]  Broke as fuck when it comes to coin.
[00:17:35]  You might have fiat, you might have gold even, although I can tell just no disrespect by your haircut and stature that you have very little of that precious commodity.
[00:17:45]  But you don't have Bitcoin.
[00:17:47]  And so, you know, I wonder, you know, a gun guy, good gun journalist, he's writing for arms and ammo or whatever.
[00:17:53]  He probably has a gun or two at home.
[00:17:55]  He takes them apart, points it at his wife.
[00:17:58]  You know, a car journalist, I'm sure, drives around in a fiat or perhaps a Porsche.
[00:18:04]  But you don't seem to have many.
[00:18:06]  And so I guess my first question for you, Jacob, is what's it like hating from outside the club?
[00:18:13]  Yeah, they won't let me in.
[00:18:15]  Well, I don't have much of any of that stuff, fiat included.
[00:18:19]  So I'm just, that's just the way it is, unfortunately.
[00:18:21]  I do have a wallet with a very small amount of Bitcoin that I use in El Salvador.
[00:18:26]  So I feel like that should count.
[00:18:28]  That should count extra because I went to El Salvador and did that.
[00:18:31]  Yeah, you should get double the Bitcoin.
[00:18:32]  It should be like worth more because it's like, you know, it comes from there.
[00:18:36]  You're spending it inside the casino.
[00:18:38]  Exactly.
[00:18:39]  Yakoop is here to talk about his new book, Gilded Rage.
[00:18:45]  Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicone Valley.
[00:18:49]  It is out on, who the fuck put, oh, Bloomsbury Publishing.
[00:18:54]  Sorry.
[00:18:54]  Guys, I have the advanced copy and it doesn't have the publisher name very big on the back.
[00:18:59]  Out on Bloomsbury Books as of today, October 7th, to try to push some other things out of the news.
[00:19:07]  And welcome.
[00:19:10]  And it's, you know, and it's another, because you call that an attack on financial, but no, I'm just kidding.
[00:19:16]  Jacob, it is a pleasure to have you back here on the show.
[00:19:21]  And I just want to say this for all of the people out there who get confused when we talk about coins.
[00:19:26]  Don't worry about it.
[00:19:29]  Because it'll continue to get more confusing as we keep talking about it.
[00:19:33]  Everything's going to be clarified in the next 20 minutes.
[00:19:36]  Exactly.
[00:19:37]  So the president is Donald Trump.
[00:19:40]  Allegedly.
[00:19:42]  Right now.
[00:19:42]  I know there is people who are like, he's buying.
[00:19:45]  Liz actually spoke to me.
[00:19:47]  I was on the phone.
[00:19:48]  I feel like you told me.
[00:19:49]  No, it was in person yesterday.
[00:19:51]  I was talking about my new favorite conspiracy theories.
[00:19:54]  I wasn't endorsing them or saying I agree with them, but I was saying, I'm keeping my eye on these.
[00:19:59]  And one of them is about the cure, about why and how all of these clips of Theo Von, like the cringe compilation Theo Vaughn clips are getting circulated everywhere and people's conspiracy about why that's happening.
[00:20:13]  Really enjoying that one.
[00:20:15]  And then the second one is that during Trump's most recent health oopsies, whatever happened, that like that long weekend long ago, that there was like a coup attempt to like take to like kind of consolidate power.
[00:20:35]  And that between with like Vance, Hegseth and Rubio, the three of them, this is like one of the kind of like, what I would, I always call it blue and on, but I don't think people would do that anymore.
[00:20:45]  That's kind of like 20 like 19 coded maybe or 2022 coded, but that that is like Hegseth's big general meeting wasn't supposed to be like leaked or whatever, but everything leaks because he just like texts his friends about it.
[00:21:02]  And Trump was like, oh, perfect.
[00:21:04]  I'll turn it into a rally.
[00:21:05]  And they're like, no.
[00:21:07]  And so it was like a total disaster.
[00:21:09]  But that's what, that's what all of those kind of like hashtag resistance accounts are talking about nowadays.
[00:21:16]  Now, Jacob, many call Donald Trump fat, but few referred to him as a whale.
[00:21:22]  And my question is, this is something that I actually have had to kind of grapple with internally in my head.
[00:21:28]  Donald Trump is kind of one of the leading crypto guys in the U.S. in terms of his company, World Liberty Financial, which we've covered with you on the show before, but you've got some pretty good shit out on now.
[00:21:40]  Before we kind of get into that, could you just explain real quick, what is World Liberty Financial to the listeners?
[00:21:46]  Sure.
[00:21:47]  Well, Trump, yeah, Trump is not just in the crypto industry.
[00:21:51]  He's jumped into the deep end with some of the shadiest players.
[00:21:54]  And he now is probably the leading crypto entrepreneur in the U.S. in all the respects that matter.
[00:22:00]  So he has several companies.
[00:22:05]  World Liberty Financial is the main one.
[00:22:07]  And if you really want to get into it, he has a company that gets like 70% of all revenue from World Liberty Financial.
[00:22:13]  The ownership isn't necessarily direct.
[00:22:15]  And there's also some questions about like he's been trying to sell pieces of that vehicle that receives the revenue to other people.
[00:22:24]  And we don't know who he's trying to sell that to.
[00:22:26]  But basically, World Liberty Financial is the main Dropbox for Trump crypto, the main vehicle for all of his deals.
[00:22:35]  And it issues two tokens, the WLFI token, which started just as a governance token, meaning you couldn't really do much with it.
[00:22:43]  But then they govern themselves to vote to make it tradable, basically.
[00:22:49]  They asked the people already owned it, do you want to make this token tradable?
[00:22:54]  They all voted yes.
[00:22:55]  And so now it's being traded a lot.
[00:22:57]  And then you have USD1, which is Trump's stablecoin, which is going to be his digital dollar, his sort of stablecoin to compete with Tether or Circle of these other ones.
[00:23:08]  Wait, let me stop you right there.
[00:23:11]  Where does Trump coin, of which I am a hodler of, play into this?
[00:23:17]  That is run through a different company, and it doesn't really involve World Liberty.
[00:23:23]  There are a lot of the same people holding it, like Justin's son, your friend and mine, who he was the top holder of Trump coin at the time of that Mar-a-Lago.
[00:23:34]  I think it was Mar-a-Lago.
[00:23:35]  It might have been in Virginia, the gala that Trump held for the meme coin holders.
[00:23:40]  And he's heavily involved in both companies.
[00:23:43]  So the Trump meme coin thing is still around, still a source of income for Trump and the family.
[00:23:48]  And myself, of course.
[00:23:49]  Of course, Brace Enterprises.
[00:23:51]  But World Liberty Financial is kind of the center of things.
[00:23:56]  It's also co-founded by the Witcoff family.
[00:23:59]  So the founders are basically all the Trump sons, Trump himself, Steve Witcoff, two of his sons, and two other guys who are friends of theirs who call themselves like the grease balls of the internet.
[00:24:10]  They had a good quote in Bloomberg about how they're just dirtbags.
[00:24:14]  And so the Witcoff family, including Steve Witcoff, as of a few months ago, at least, are still getting money from this company.
[00:24:25]  So anytime, as a result, anytime Steve Witkoff is doing diplomacy on behalf of Trump, because he's the main diplomatic envoy, there's a question of is he also basically dealing in World Liberty Financial tokens.
[00:24:37]  Wait, so I have a question.
[00:24:39]  They started World Liberty Financial, what was it, 2024, right?
[00:24:43]  Yeah.
[00:24:45]  And then Trump divested from it when he became president?
[00:24:49]  I'm not even sure if he officially divested from it.
[00:24:52]  I mean, I don't know what the status of that would be now because he's still, last I heard, his family or someone on his behalf, maybe it's a trust, is getting like 70% of all the revenue from World Liberty.
[00:25:05]  So I guess just some of the legality here escapes me a little bit because it is strange that a president would start a company right before becoming president that you could just, that the only thing, it's not, the company doesn't do anything.
[00:25:20]  There's not like a product they make.
[00:25:22]  You just give it money.
[00:25:24]  Right.
[00:25:25]  Yeah.
[00:25:26]  The main thing is, I mean, they're promising a lot, you know, the glorious future of decentralized finance, like all these platforms.
[00:25:32]  It's kind of like they're just doing all the stuff from the crypto bubble of 2022 again with the Trump name attached.
[00:25:39]  So there's not much different here.
[00:25:40]  But, you know, if when it's the head of state, you could have a lot more runway to like make this thing happen, even though it's not innovative in any way in particular.
[00:25:49]  You know, we could get to it later, but that recent New York Times article about some of the deals in the UAE are very revealing.
[00:25:56]  And one thing that I've been noting is that, you know, there's a lot going on there.
[00:26:01]  But for one thing, a UAE prince wanted to take a stake in Binance and he could have just wired $2 billion USD, regular cash to Binance.
[00:26:13]  But instead, he bought $2 billion worth of the USD1, the Trump stablecoin, and then used that for his investment in Binance.
[00:26:21]  So it's kind of like, yeah, it's using this proxy that he didn't need to, but he wanted to kind of do a solid for Trump or to help jumpstart their stablecoin business.
[00:26:34]  So he paid in, you know, Trump coin basically or really USD1 instead of paying in actual dollars.
[00:26:40]  But that's the kind of thing you only do if you want to somehow help world liberty.
[00:26:46]  I think it's a good lesson to like people who got maybe a little burned by the crypto market or, you know, their own kind of coins or whatever.
[00:26:56]  And, you know, you're talking about 2022.
[00:26:58]  It's just like, you should become the president because then you can actually do all of this stuff.
[00:27:04]  I mean, Bryce, you say like, you know, the legality of it.
[00:27:06]  And it's like, well, who's, who's enforcing those laws?
[00:27:10]  Who's going after this stuff?
[00:27:12]  Nobody.
[00:27:13]  I mean, the only way is like, you know, through journalists like yourself and like, you know, this piece in the New York Times that's extremely well reported and they're a little like careful.
[00:27:22]  You know, they're very much like, we can't say that there is quid pro quo here.
[00:27:27]  However, given, you know, how these all kind of line up on the balance sheet, one can assume.
[00:27:35]  But beyond that, I mean, who, what, Pam Bondi is going to go after World Liberty?
[00:27:41]  I mean, come on.
[00:27:42]  There's just nothing.
[00:27:43]  I mean, we've talked a lot about, I feel like the rule of law and maybe libbed out on it a bit, but it's gotten so insane that everything seems to be permitted now, certainly if you're connected.
[00:27:55]  And every possible authority or accountability mechanism has been wiped away, whether it's at the DOJ or the FBI or the SEC or anything like that.
[00:28:04]  I mean, Trump has even said don't enforce the FCPA, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is how you prosecute for bribing foreign officials.
[00:28:15]  So like, you know, bribery is legal now if you want to go bribe someone.
[00:28:18]  Oh, yeah, there was the case of the Indians.
[00:28:19]  I mean, I assume that's what you're talking about right there.
[00:28:23]  I was just talking about how he, I think he ordered the general suspension of that, but I'm sure it's already happened.
[00:28:29]  I mean, yeah, I mean, that's, that's sort of what strikes me as so, I mean, again, this is the kind of constant theme over the show the past two or three years.
[00:28:36]  It's just like, it feels like there's nobody who is willing to, you know, stand in and say, hey, stop this.
[00:28:42]  Like, actually, it is, it is wrong for the leader of the country to enrich himself financially via crime while he's the president using his office.
[00:28:53]  And now you're arrested, executed, or whatever, sent to a labor camp, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:28:59]  To me, it's sort of extraordinary how this stuff, and this kind of gets into the themes of your book, too.
[00:29:06]  Like it is just completely sidestepped.
[00:29:10]  I mean, there was a recent big New York Times article about some of these dealings with the UAE in particular.
[00:29:18]  But aside from that, like there is absolutely seemingly like no regulatory authority that is even willing to take a look at this stuff, which seems pretty like, you know, cut and dry.
[00:29:30]  Yeah.
[00:29:30]  I mean, there's the big ones that we know about through because they publicly announced themselves like Justin's son, or there's some good reporting in the Times about like Sheikh Tanoon in the Middle East.
[00:29:41]  But, you know, there's another category that I've written about a bit of like, who the hell are these people that are putting $20 or $100 million in Trump's pocket?
[00:29:51]  Maybe not as much as a $2 billion from a Middle Eastern prince.
[00:29:54]  But these are people who in some cases are far shadier or like more on the kind of like outside the law organized crime or espionage end of things rather than like Middle Eastern prince.
[00:30:07]  So that's the area I think that's especially concerning and just weird is that we really don't know who some of these people are or why or what they expect when they're giving Trump like $50 or $100 million.
[00:30:20]  We've been saying this since he was sworn in, but like the Yeltsin fog over everything, you know what I mean?
[00:30:32]  Like everything feeling like a fucking fire sale.
[00:30:35]  Like there's a price for everything in this country.
[00:30:39]  And all of these people are in office to basically sell what they can, make what they can and get out before the whole thing is on fire.
[00:30:49]  Like that's what all of this feels like, you know?
[00:30:53]  It's pretty shocking.
[00:30:56]  And I think, you know, you could see it also.
[00:30:58]  We shouldn't know.
[00:30:59]  We've probably spoken about this before, but the pardons that Trump has done, you know, some of them are well known, some less so.
[00:31:05]  Like he pardoned the founders of BitMEX, which was one of like the early enforcement cases in crypto where it was pretty clear that these guys were violating banking laws.
[00:31:14]  Or more recently, he pardoned the founder of Nikola, which was this fraudulent electric car company that like pushed a car down a hill to pretend that it was working.
[00:31:24]  A Wall Street vet's favorite.

=== Speculation On Lee's Motives (15:21) ===

[00:31:27]  Yeah, and this guy was back in the day.
[00:31:29]  And his lawyer was Pam Bondi's brother and also Mu Casey, who used to be Trump's lawyer and SBF's lawyer during his sentencing.
[00:31:40]  Like everything is just on the surface here if you look at all the names associated with it.
[00:31:44]  But that guy got pardoned and now claims he's a victim of lawfare, just like so many other great people were the last administration.
[00:31:52]  And it's everywhere you look.
[00:31:55]  And so, yeah, it's certainly not reassuring.
[00:31:58]  So, I mean, one of these, let's say, small dollar donors to World Liberty Financial is a guy named Dave Lee, I guess.
[00:32:13]  Yeah, David Lee and Dave Lee.
[00:32:15]  Yeah, it's a little unclear.
[00:32:19]  Brazilian Chinese fella.
[00:32:22]  This, I got to tell you, I read a lot of stuff like this.
[00:32:26]  I feel like I'm a bit savvier than some people when it comes to some coin stuff or some of the terminology in here.
[00:32:31]  It's still at the core of this.
[00:32:34]  I don't understand from a non-criminal perspective why somebody would be doing any of this, I guess.
[00:32:42]  But like this guy's foundation or his fund, the Aqua One Foundation, sent 80 million in USDT to World Liberty Financial or bought 80 million in USDT to World Liberty Financial.
[00:32:58]  What the fuck is the Aqua One Foundation?
[00:33:01]  Why would they buy that?
[00:33:03]  And who are, yeah, what is going on here?
[00:33:06]  So I did a couple of pieces on this.
[00:33:08]  The first one was there was this announcement a few months ago that some company from the UAE called Aqua One Foundation, and oftentimes there's with some of these crypto companies, there's a foundation and a labs component.
[00:33:20]  And it doesn't really matter here in this case, but it's kind of how they farm out money.
[00:33:26]  Anyway, so they were supposedly buying $100 million worth of the WLFI token, which this is always presented as an investment rather than just buying $100 million worth of shit coins.
[00:33:37]  But I started looking and I couldn't find anything about this company.
[00:33:41]  Like, who are these people?
[00:33:42]  Is it real?
[00:33:43]  There's one guy named Dave Lee associated with it, L-E-E.
[00:33:48]  And he had an X account, and that was basically it.
[00:33:53]  And so I wrote a piece for the nation, like, does this company actually exist?
[00:33:57]  It seems not.
[00:33:58]  The next day, Reuters, after following me on Twitter and not crediting me, but anyway, I'm not angry about that, basically reproduced the story and also checked with the local authorities in the UAE, the business authorities who said, no, this company does not exist.
[00:34:14]  Eventually got a good tip and started looking around online and I identified who Dave Lee was behind the Dave Lee.
[00:34:24]  And it was, I mean, this is obviously someone who's not necessarily very good at hiding their tracks because one, I found them and also their real name is David L.I. Lee, that form of Lee with also a longer, with a middle name.
[00:34:39]  Anyway, the point is I was able to identify this guy.
[00:34:43]  And from what I could tell, he had moved to Brazil with his Chinese parents when he was a kid.
[00:34:49]  Hard to tell.
[00:34:50]  Come to Brazil.
[00:34:52]  Come to Brazil.
[00:34:53]  It happens.
[00:34:54]  There was a Chinese language article saying that they were some kind of merchant family, but that could describe anyone in the last 500 years.
[00:35:03]  I will say, yeah, a merchant family is great.
[00:35:05]  I will say, one does not give the Chinese enough credit for having a worldwide network of merchant families because there's a reason there's Chinatowns in so many towns.
[00:35:17]  It's because Chinese people would move there and be merchants.
[00:35:20]  Well, he has this interesting profile.
[00:35:23]  Then he went to NYU and he went to NYU Business School.
[00:35:29]  Yeah, that's a Chinese guy right there.
[00:35:30]  Yeah, I have a picture of him in a club here in New York.
[00:35:33]  I forget the name of it, but someone found it for me.
[00:35:36]  And then he went back to China, to Hong Kong and to Beijing, it seems.
[00:35:42]  And he worked for various Chinese state and financial institutions.
[00:35:47]  And he got joined this group called Web3port.
[00:35:51]  And Web3 Port is not very big in crypto, but they're kind of known in Asia.
[00:35:56]  And they've been written up a little bit in CoinDesk in English because they're a market maker investment firm that has basically been accused of some scams.
[00:36:05]  And what it seems to be happening here is this is like a rebranding attempt from them that their new front is called the Aqua One Foundation.
[00:36:14]  It's the same money, perhaps.
[00:36:16]  I don't know where the money comes from.
[00:36:18]  And the last sort of strange thing is that, or there are many strange things, is that this guy, David Lee, the one who identified, I identify by his full name also, he works for a Chinese state energy company.
[00:36:32]  And, you know, I saw on the blockchain at least $80 million worth of stable coins moved from the Aqua One account to World Liberty Financial.
[00:36:41]  Like, there is actual money or something like money moving here.
[00:36:44]  And someone who's better at blockchain analytics than me can take a closer look at this.
[00:36:49]  And I know some people are starting to.
[00:36:51]  But basically, you know, who the hell is this guy?
[00:36:55]  Why does he have 80 to 100 million dollars?
[00:36:58]  Is it because he's working for one of the largest Chinese state energy firms?
[00:37:01]  I don't know.
[00:37:02]  But like this stuff is happening and it's happening in the relative open.
[00:37:07]  Also, in response, he did not deny anything.
[00:37:09]  He basically said I was wrong.
[00:37:11]  Then he closed some of his accounts, but then he confirmed that he controlled these websites.
[00:37:14]  Like it's definitely the guy.
[00:37:17]  And then he sent me a few dick pics.
[00:37:19]  And that was kind of of his penis?
[00:37:22]  I don't think so.
[00:37:23]  They looked borrowed.
[00:37:25]  Ah, that's weird.
[00:37:28]  What are you working with?
[00:37:30]  Were they all different?
[00:37:32]  I think so.
[00:37:33]  Like a couple of, like, it was like late at night.
[00:37:35]  And I was like, oh, whoa, maybe delete.
[00:37:38]  And then I didn't really preserve the evidence, but you deleted.
[00:37:42]  This is a true and on tip right here.
[00:37:45]  Don't delete the dick pic.
[00:37:49]  Especially in a high-level case like this one.
[00:37:53]  Yeah, because this could be, I mean, this could be brought in open court later.
[00:37:56]  We could be, we could be looking side by side.
[00:37:58]  You know, you got the little prostitute with the iPad up there.
[00:38:00]  Oh, hang on.
[00:38:02]  What?
[00:38:03]  But it was him, I'm pretty sure.
[00:38:05]  I mean, it was him behind it.
[00:38:07]  I don't think it was his own member.
[00:38:09]  Oh, gotcha.
[00:38:10]  Yeah.
[00:38:11]  Yeah.
[00:38:12]  Interesting.
[00:38:12]  So just why would he?
[00:38:14]  I don't know.
[00:38:15]  I got some on my.
[00:38:16]  I don't know.
[00:38:16]  These guys are weird.
[00:38:17]  It's like they've thought through half half the scam, but not the whole thing.
[00:38:20]  It's, it feels like they had nothing really to say when I outed them except like, oh, there's been some false information spread by a journalist.
[00:38:28]  And I'm like, well, tell me something that's wrong or like, you know, give me your bullshit back where you're going to try to obfuscate or whatever.
[00:38:36]  And they just, they don't have an answer.
[00:38:37]  It's funny because I don't, I mean, you know, obviously that's bad, but like they kind of don't need to have an answer.
[00:38:43]  They can just kind of be true.
[00:38:45]  It's legal.
[00:38:46]  Yeah.
[00:38:46]  And when I first reached out to, when I first started doing this, I reached out to World Liberty.
[00:38:52]  I said, hey, I'm writing an article for the nation.
[00:38:53]  It kind of seems like your latest investor, Aqua One, doesn't exist.
[00:38:58]  And one of the PR people for World Liberty is like, thanks for reaching out.
[00:39:02]  On it.
[00:39:03]  CC'd a bunch of people, World Liberty.
[00:39:05]  We'll get an answer to you by whenever.
[00:39:07]  I think they said a date.
[00:39:09]  I followed up many times.
[00:39:11]  I heard nothing.
[00:39:11]  So like at first, I don't know, make it that what you will.
[00:39:15]  Maybe they didn't realize what they were stepping into, but like there's a, they know something's going on.
[00:39:21]  I love that.
[00:39:21]  That's such a good move when you're like, you get someone kind of sniffing around something that you've done and you're like, oh my God, thank you so much for reaching out.
[00:39:30]  I'm CCing all important parties here.
[00:39:34]  We are on this.
[00:39:35]  We will get back to you.
[00:39:37]  And then you just ghost the whole thing.
[00:39:38]  That's the move.
[00:39:39]  That is the move.
[00:39:40]  That is the move.
[00:39:41]  Also, I do think it could be the case of a sort of rookie PR or whatever, you know, person, a public relations person who doesn't realize that actually the company that you work for, this is sort of the intention behind it.
[00:39:57]  What could be happening here?
[00:40:00]  Let's do a little speculation.
[00:40:01]  Sure.
[00:40:02]  Let's wildly speculate or with information behind it.
[00:40:05]  I don't know if it's possible to even wildly speculating here would be like, yeah, Aqua One Foundation, they're trying to build a new kind of water called Aqua One, and they're giving money to Trump because he's secretly working on it.
[00:40:17]  Real speculation, I think, would be like he's being bribed by somebody.
[00:40:20]  Yeah.
[00:40:21]  And I think, like we said early on, like that's kind of what World Liberty exists for.
[00:40:27]  There's not the only reason you would buy into this thing is because you want to influence the president or you really believe that you can buy and sell and ride the speculative wave to make some money on it.
[00:40:38]  But I don't see anyone who has like $100 million to deploy doing that.
[00:40:42]  They're doing it for influence.
[00:40:45]  And I think Anytime you get into kind of crypto and Russia and China, you have to talk about like with a sort of espionage and national security component to it without like getting all hawkish about it.
[00:41:03]  You know what I mean?
[00:41:04]  Like maybe there's a left-wing way to talk about some of these things.
[00:41:07]  But of course, like there's still people in the Chinese state or organized criminal elements in China who would love to have some influence over Trump and maybe have $100 million in crypto to send him.
[00:41:19]  Well, I mean, no, I think there is a pretty easy way to talk about it.
[00:41:22]  It's the fact that if you can bribe the American president and you're a country that has some friction with the U.S., I would bribe the American president.
[00:41:31]  You know, it seems, it seems pretty much obvious to me.
[00:41:36]  It's not, I mean, I don't think, first of all, especially Russia deals, president.
[00:41:40]  There's so many deals up for grabs.
[00:41:42]  Yeah.
[00:41:43]  And imagine if Steve Witkoff is the one coming to see you and you're the president of like an authoritarian state or you have easy access to the treasury checkbook.
[00:41:53]  And Steve Witkoff, who also has skin in the game with World Liberty Financial, you could say like, hey, can you help solve this dispute with our neighbor?
[00:42:02]  Or, you know, we'll give you base rights and I'm going to buy $50 million worth of World Liberty tokens.
[00:42:07]  that that's just a matter of practical self-interest for pretty much any head of state well we should talk about the you know the details of this uae deal because i think it is you know pretty clear what's happening here even if we can't outright say like or the new york times won't outright and say that it's quid pro quo but
[00:42:35]  But, you know, this was a deal with Trump and Witcoff through World Liberty Financial for what looks like some very tasty chips, computer chips, but access to which the UAE was kind of denied during the Biden administration, which I think is kind of key context for this.
[00:42:58]  So walk us through what this deal was.
[00:43:01]  So as a lot of folks know, there's a lot of kind of competition and export controls over high-end chips even before the AI boom.
[00:43:10]  And the main figure on the UAE side here is this guy, Sheikh Tanun, who's a powerful member of the royal family and governing figure who controls also a lot of money.
[00:43:22]  And he basically was pursuing two deals almost simultaneously with the Trump administration and World Liberty and various Trump interests and Steve Witkoff involved in both of them, arguably.
[00:43:34]  And one of them is so that he can get a whole bunch of NVIDIA chips, the highest end chips used in AI compute and AI data centers for this company called G42 that he controls.
[00:43:48]  And there's been a lot of hesitation to allow that because the UAE has some relationships with China.
[00:43:53]  Maybe he'll let them peek under the hood or have access to all this stuff.
[00:43:57]  I mean, you can argue separately about whether that should matter anymore, but that's like the stakes as people in national security have seen it.
[00:44:05]  And then on the other side, there was the deal we talked about earlier, which was this deal by Shake Tanoon to buy a $2 billion interest in Binance and to do it using the USD1 stablecoin, which is issued by World Liberty Financial.
[00:44:21]  And, you know, anytime they're issuing stable coins, also they're potentially collecting fees or yield on top of that.
[00:44:27]  So you had both of these deals happening at once, kind of all pretty much of the same overlapping parties and interests.
[00:44:34]  David Sachs more involved in the chips deal.
[00:44:38]  And ultimately, like this blending of personal Trump family interests and foreign policy and the executive itself.
[00:44:47]  And I mean, a way we have, we've probably never seen.
[00:44:51]  You mentioned David Sachs.
[00:44:53]  That's a character we haven't talked about too much so far, but whose little fingerprints are kind of all over this.
[00:45:00]  He is the, what, they call him a czar.
[00:45:03]  I mean, what is his official position?
[00:45:05]  I hate, I hate the use of czar.
[00:45:08]  Sorry.
[00:45:09]  It just like really annoys me.
[00:45:10]  It's like not real.
[00:45:11]  It's like, we're going to make you, we're just going to, we're going to make you like the, the really important person of this one thing.
[00:45:17]  Socialist revolutionary in like 1899 ass quote.
[00:45:23]  But David Sachs, who has kind of like gone a little quiet on the internet, was definitely like pretty involved in this.
[00:45:31]  And he is a main character in your new book, Gilded Rage, which we should talk about.
[00:45:40]  He's a pro.
[00:45:42]  Because he also, I mean, he was a key figure in the lead up to the Trump election.
[00:45:50]  Of course, and, you know, we should include Vance on that because he's also an important figure here.
[00:45:55]  And this kind of, I don't know if we want to call it radicalization or kind of fever pitch that a lot of extremely wealthy and powerful and annoying and extremely online VC and Silicon Valley types,
[00:46:19]  you know, all that stuff that happened basically from 2021 up until the election last year and has continued through.
[00:46:27]  So let's talk about David Sachs a little bit and how he features in your book here.
[00:46:33]  Sure.
[00:46:33]  So David Sachs is a prominent venture capitalist, Silicon Valley executive, longtime conservative, you know, more of a political guy in his bones in the manner of like Peter Thiel, who he was co-writers with in college.

=== Recall Elections Stir Political Waters (05:01) ===

[00:46:48]  And they wrote that book, The Diversity Myth, where they made all kinds of minimization or apologies for rape and then later said they kind of regretted it, but most of the book stands up.
[00:46:59]  Anyway, we should have apologized.
[00:47:03]  I mean, there's, I would say they apologize for specific passages, but then Teal has said things like, oh, I think the book stands up, holds up.
[00:47:11]  No, no, I was making a crack about being a rape apologist.
[00:47:14]  They're like, no, actually, there's nothing to apologize for.
[00:47:16]  Right, right, right.
[00:47:17]  Sorry, I totally botched that one.
[00:47:18]  But anyway, I mean, for one thing, right now, there's a question of whether David Sachs is profiting off of some of these deals that we're just talking about.
[00:47:27]  I mean, he supposedly divested himself of crypto and other things, but because he's a venture capitalist, he has a lot of kind of indirect exposure.
[00:47:36]  You know, he's invested through Kraft Ventures, his firm, in a lot of AI and crypto-related companies.
[00:47:47]  But so with San Francisco, Sachs was a political donor like many others, but really was during the COVID era that you're talking about when the recall elections started happening in San Francisco that Sachs and some other maybe newly disenchanted rich liberals and other right-wingers decided, hey, we can start pouring a lot of money into recall campaigns in California and maybe get something for it.
[00:48:13]  So they were successful, of course, with the recall of several school board members in San Francisco, which I think had never happened in the city's history.
[00:48:21]  They tried to recall Gruesome Newsome, which is kind of funny, of course, because I think I still get it from Chopo or somewhere.
[00:48:31]  But it was kind of funny, of course, because some of these guys, including Sachs, had donated to Newsome just a couple of years before.
[00:48:40]  But that's only because they donate out of expediency.
[00:48:44]  But they tried to recall Newsome, didn't work.
[00:48:47]  And then they set their sights on Chase of Boudin.
[00:48:50]  And this is also when you started seeing a lot of these groups pop up in San Francisco called like Grow SF or Neighbors for SF and all had these similar names.
[00:48:59]  And like some of the staff members were even married to one another, like they shared a lot of the same funders of billionaire developers and tech people.
[00:49:07]  And as a lot of people may have seen at the time, they did a really successful job, including Sachs, of painting Chase of Boudin as the killer DA, as the Soros DA who had let people die.
[00:49:21]  This was also a point when there was some anti-Asian crime going on during COVID.
[00:49:26]  And like there were different sort of political kind of currents here that they were able to successfully summon to show that like, you know, the guy coming in as the reformist DA has actually made things much less safe.
[00:49:38]  And this is a larger symbol of progressive dysfunction.
[00:49:42]  Yeah.
[00:49:42]  I mean, what a time that was.
[00:49:46]  I got a couple of things I want to say about these people.
[00:49:48]  Yeah.
[00:49:48]  I mean, there's an interesting, those, those groups like Grosf, for instance.
[00:49:52]  It's an interesting confluence of this sort of Yimbi movement, which really came out, and I cannot stress this enough, really came out of the tech movement or like the tech sector.
[00:50:03]  This Yimby movement combined, which were all very sort of like bright-eyed, kind of like liberal types.
[00:50:09]  Like, we're just trying to make like a walkable, a freaking walkable city that we can walk around in, go and get an ice camp of matcha and, you know, get on our little laptops and do some vibe, Cody, although that wouldn't come out for a few years.
[00:50:21]  And then those people are sort of the foot soldiers of this, but the money all coming from people like Gary Tan, right?
[00:50:26]  Or David Sachs.
[00:50:28]  These sort of people who were, I think it's probably fair to say, belong to a different political project than maybe the one of liberalism.
[00:50:37]  And they all kind of like, their interests converged.
[00:50:41]  They came together.
[00:50:43]  And their first target, of course, was Chase Aboudin, who I believe was DA for like less than a year.
[00:50:49]  Like, what was it, like three years ago?
[00:50:52]  I mean, he has it four years ago?
[00:50:55]  There's still fundraising off of that, too.
[00:50:58]  Yeah.
[00:50:58]  And even at the time, of course, there's not much evidence that crime went up under him at all.
[00:51:03]  And his replacement was being paid by some of these groups.
[00:51:07]  Oh, yeah.
[00:51:07]  Oh, yeah.
[00:51:08]  Yeah.
[00:51:08]  Yeah.
[00:51:09]  She's a, she's a real piece of work.
[00:51:10]  I know.
[00:51:11]  And they still bring up Chasa as if he's, and again, this guy was DA for less than a year.
[00:51:15]  And, you know, and I know Chase, I like Chasa, but I frankly don't think that he had that large of an effect on crime there in either direction.
[00:51:28]  You know, he really was not in office for very long.
[00:51:30]  And ironically, the guy who was sort of behind that and the school board recall, and to be fair, there was a lot of whackadoodles on that school board.
[00:51:39]  And they were engaged in some pretty fucking stupid progressive bullshit, like the renaming of schools and all that shit.
[00:51:45]  Instead of actually, you know, maybe trying to do something good for public schools in San Francisco.

=== Sean's San Francisco Paranoia (16:24) ===

[00:51:50]  But anyways, ironically, the guy who was sort of behind, or one of the people, sort of the foot soldiers, who was really a mover and shaker in this, in the recall movement in San Francisco, this guy, Joel Engardio, who eventually got elected to a supervisor seat, I believe representing the sunset, and then himself was just recently recalled because he was in favor of the paving over the great highway and making it into a park,
[00:52:18]  which nobody in the sunset liked and is definitely not going to happen.
[00:52:23]  Everybody hates this idea.
[00:52:24]  It was stupid.
[00:52:26]  Anyways, too much.
[00:52:27]  But walkable cities, Fray's.
[00:52:30]  It's the highway.
[00:52:31]  There's no other.
[00:52:32]  This is the thing about the sunset.
[00:52:33]  No, no, no.
[00:52:33]  You don't need a highway.
[00:52:34]  You need walkables.
[00:52:36]  But if you live in the sunset, that's how you get out of the sunset.
[00:52:39]  No, no, no.
[00:52:39]  It doesn't.
[00:52:40]  They can walk out.
[00:52:43]  And you know what?
[00:52:43]  There's a great park right by the great highway there.
[00:52:46]  It's called the beach.
[00:52:47]  It needs to be one walkable.
[00:52:49]  It's just one, one big.
[00:52:51]  You know what they should do?
[00:52:51]  They should pave over the whole city.
[00:52:53]  Walking through the sunset.
[00:52:56]  Walking through the sunset.
[00:52:57]  I don't wish that on anyone.
[00:52:58]  There's a reason that the streetcar goes out there.
[00:53:00]  Okay.
[00:53:01]  It is fucking, it's a long walk, and all the blocks look the same.
[00:53:04]  When I was a kid, I remember trying to go to Max's house and be like, God, it's like 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st.
[00:53:11]  It just goes on and on and on and on.
[00:53:13]  The way to do that is you take the N all the way out to like outer, outer lane.
[00:53:19]  What is it?
[00:53:20]  Outer.
[00:53:21]  What's the restaurant out there?
[00:53:22]  Oh, that I've never been.
[00:53:23]  I know what you're talking about.
[00:53:24]  But it's by the Cinnamon Toast Place.
[00:53:26]  Anyway, take it out there, get off, and then you walk along the beach, cross the Great Highway.
[00:53:32]  Yes.
[00:53:33]  Walk along the beach, all the way up to like the Cliff House, go all the way around down by Sutra Baths, and then you walk from the Richmond through the Presidio all the way up to the museum.
[00:53:49]  And then you go back, cut down, back over through the golf course.
[00:53:55]  And then you walk down Clement and you go get burgers at the which burger place?
[00:54:00]  The old school hamburger place.
[00:54:02]  I love that place.
[00:54:02]  I know.
[00:54:03]  I love that spot, my dad.
[00:54:04]  There's your walkable city.
[00:54:05]  That's how you do it.
[00:54:06]  But so the crazy thing about this stuff to me is I think San Francisco really functions like a test case for a lot of these guys flexing their political power.
[00:54:16]  And so a lot of what they did in San Francisco kind of became a bit of the model for national, the national politics, except they sort of were able to shrug off a lot of the liberal shit.
[00:54:27]  They had to do like this like, oh, yay, we're like, we're dead, we're dem Yimbies or whatever for like San Francisco, you know, local elections or whatever.
[00:54:35]  But nationally, they could be like, we need to, you know, smoke a Mexican here or there.
[00:54:39]  You know, it's, it's, it's, it's all good.
[00:54:40]  It's the price you have to pay.
[00:54:42]  Exactly.
[00:54:43]  And they spoke about in that way at the time.
[00:54:45]  Like Sachs said, like, this is going to be a model to be replicated elsewhere.
[00:54:50]  Yeah.
[00:54:50]  Yeah.
[00:54:50]  I mean, and one of their big targets, um, friend of the show, Dean Preston, they got him out and then they backed his opponent.
[00:54:59]  And so what they do is they'll, they'll get, they'll, they'll target people and then try to get someone who's like also progressive or whatever, but just completely backed by tech money to replace them.
[00:55:09]  And like, of course, his opponent was a guy who worked in the tech sector, who had some fake foundation, never had a job or whatever, and was just bankrolled by like, you know, David Sachs or whoever these fucking guys, I don't know if David Sachs specifically, but Musk himself really, really,
[00:55:23]  that's where he started to get involved because he was like, he would sort of have these horror stories about ex-employees being harangued on the street every day, which, by the way, if any crackhead killed and ate an employee of Twitter while they were still located on Market Street, not my fucking problem.
[00:55:42]  Not my fucking problem.
[00:55:44]  And I'm not going to say, you know, I'm not going to say that I'm for it, but I'm not going to say that I'm going to go to the funeral.
[00:55:48]  I might go to the funeral, but I'm not going to be sad there.
[00:55:51]  And Musk started getting really more and more incensed.
[00:55:54]  He started to say Dean Preston should be, and this is again, a city supervisor should be in prison.
[00:55:59]  And then as the 2024 election sort of, I don't know what started to advance on October 6th, in a foreshadowing of things to come, but not things that came the next day, Elon Musk endorses Donald Trump after Donald Trump had been almost shot or kind of shot, whatever the fuck that was.
[00:56:21]  And I think really, like, especially the latter half of the 2024 election, these tech guys just played such a prominent role.
[00:56:31]  Yeah, because that image that they painted on social media of blue liberal cities, starting with SF, of course, as San Francisco being out of control and being overrun by dangerous homeless criminals and open-air drug use threatening everyone, that became kind of the national programming for MAGA aligned media, whether it was on Fox News or social media.
[00:56:55]  And that became the narrative for every blue city, which is that Democratic governance, both Democratic Party and small D Democratic governance had failed.
[00:57:04]  And now this is what America's cities were like.
[00:57:06]  I mean, and it certainly fed into the wider urban panic that every conservative guy seems to feel now, thinking that you can't walk a block in a city without being attacked.
[00:57:17]  It's funny.
[00:57:18]  You have, you talk about Sean McGuire in the book too.
[00:57:21]  And I didn't realize this because Fraser brought up Trump getting shot, but this was the other assassination attempt or like the big assassination attempt when you said, this is from the book, Sean McGuire posted on X at least 51 times that day.
[00:57:37]  That's fucking crazy.
[00:57:39]  And this is a quote: the world still doesn't appreciate how coordinated and motivated Antifa is.
[00:57:45]  It should have been designated a terror organization long ago.
[00:57:48]  100 wrote Musk using the emoji indicating full agreement.
[00:57:53]  It's funny.
[00:57:53]  You know, I don't even remember that.
[00:57:55]  And yet it makes so much sense, obviously.
[00:57:57]  And it's wild to read that, you know, now almost a year and a half later when that has happened.
[00:58:06]  And, you know, I was reading just this morning that there was a professor at Rutgers that had to like basically move his family to Europe after getting death threats from kind of, you know, incensed right-wingers and activists online that have started calling him Dr. Antifa.
[00:58:26]  He's written some books on like how to be anti-fascist or whatever, whatever, you know.
[00:58:32]  And like. to kind of trace, you know, the, the book does such a good job of tracing kind of backwards this, all of this recent history.
[00:58:41]  And you can follow all this shit and you're like, oh my God, step by step, this is how we got here.
[00:58:46]  And it's a little bit shocking, you know?
[00:58:49]  Yeah.
[00:58:49]  Well, I think one thing that was helpful in a way with Ryan the book is that these guys post a lot and they're often saying they're sincere in a way.
[00:58:58]  I mean, they're saying what they think.
[00:59:00]  They allow them to have podcasts or go on each other's or talk to Lex Friedman for six hours.
[00:59:05]  You know, we get, and they're so reactive.
[00:59:08]  Like, yeah, that day, I think it was the Butler assassination attempt, Sean McGuire was amped up, tweeting constantly.
[00:59:16]  And you get a lot out of that.
[00:59:18]  And one thing that I also think is you start to understand some of their states of mind or their lack of discernment.
[00:59:24]  I mean, certainly that's something we see with Musk.
[00:59:26]  But like, yeah, Sean Maguire is someone who I wrote a longer profile of him more recently that unfortunately doesn't really appear in the book, but that was in Business Insider after he was calling Zona and Mamdani a sleeper agent.
[00:59:39]  And, you know, this is someone who has kind of been in the military industrial complex, who went to Afghanistan as a DARPA civilian employee and was working alongside intelligence people and is very much involved in Israeli military startups and stuff like that.
[00:59:54]  So he's of that world.
[00:59:57]  And then he's spreading things that are ridiculous.
[01:00:00]  I mean, calling it disinformation isn't even really the right framing.
[01:00:03]  But like even just this week or the last couple of weeks, he was saying that there were Antifa terrorist attacks.
[01:00:08]  And I mean, this is someone also who supposedly advised Trump on intelligence appointments.
[01:00:14]  Yeah.
[01:00:14]  I mean, with Maguire, it's fascinating because, I mean, I feel like a big part of the, let's say, attraction that Sequoia Capital might have to him is that he has this, like, he's kind of the Musk guy.
[01:00:27]  He just invests all their money in Musk's companies.
[01:00:29]  He's like friends with Elon.
[01:00:31]  And so he's sort of their conduit to him, but, or to Elon for Sequoia.
[01:00:36]  But he is, I mean, he's like a total paranoia.
[01:00:39]  Like he says shit that like it's it's very like, you know, little maybe bipolar uncle posting that he does.
[01:00:48]  And there was a few attempted takedowns of him, yours included, you know, a few months ago or whatever, a couple months ago.
[01:00:56]  And it was just kind of shrugged off because again, like this stuff doesn't really, it's like it doesn't really matter anymore.
[01:01:02]  And You can kind of just like, it's like, I mean, you could always just lie, but with like him, it's like you can say these like increasingly oftentimes, especially with Sean Maguire, like really racially tinged or just flat out racist comments.
[01:01:17]  And it's just like, you know, well, it's, it's Sean, you know, like he, he's our guy.
[01:01:22]  He uh, he donates to, or not donates, whether he's a, uh, he's a big supporter of Israel and he is a friend of Elon Musk.
[01:01:28]  And like, it's interesting to see sort of this big sea change.
[01:01:33]  We've talked about this a lot on the show, where like there is this still, this public perception of like a lot of culture being very liberal.
[01:01:41]  And like in a sense, I guess some of it is.
[01:01:45]  Like, I'm sure many of the people who still like work on movies or whatever are like, you know, Democrats or whatnot.
[01:01:52]  But these kind of major power centers in the U.S. are like not only conservative, but like sometimes, you know, much more extreme than just like a regular conservative.
[01:02:03]  You know, I'm talking about like, you know, these, these, obviously X, for example.
[01:02:08]  But also like a lot of these people who just work in Silicon Valley and who sort of control these levers of power to, you know, and without necessarily being like a large cultural voice, they have a lot of sway.
[01:02:20]  Yeah.
[01:02:20]  And I think it's reflective of how we got here, which, and even if you look at the story of Sean Maguire, I mean, one, at least, mile marker on his radicalization, at least as expressed to me, and he's talked about this again.
[01:02:31]  This is, he's, this is something he said on X was that supposedly he wasn't promoted to general partner at Google Ventures because he was a white man.
[01:02:40]  It was kind of the era of woke DEI office politics.
[01:02:45]  But, you know, he certainly moved on and did fine to become a partner at Sequoia, the most powerful venture capital firm in the valley.
[01:02:53]  And I think with a lot of these guys, they kind of went through the era of woke politics, of BLM protests, of Me Too, and of things related to COVID and COVID lockdowns with much less sort of effect than many other people.
[01:03:12]  You know, those movements didn't actually affect tech that much compared to like Hollywood or media or somewhere else.
[01:03:20]  But they felt very wounded by it, you know, and they're very good at playing victims.
[01:03:27]  And I think, and so there was a huge reactionary response to it.
[01:03:31]  But now what you see is someone like Maguire, again, can say things that aren't true or that seem very extreme or bigoted.
[01:03:39]  And there is no, there is, not only is there not a problem with it, but like as in my article in Business Insider, someone from the VC world told me, I think it's helped with his deal flow.
[01:03:50]  I mean, like, people like this.
[01:03:51]  He does represent in a lot of ways the kind of prevailing common sense, which is that, you know, it's like the Palmer lucky attitude that it's cool to make weapons for the government and we want to do this stuff.
[01:04:02]  And screw you if you don't care about human rights or, you know, weak platitudes.
[01:04:09]  This is what we're doing now.
[01:04:10]  You can't do anything to disrupt the deal flow.
[01:04:12]  That's right.
[01:04:13]  Pretty much.
[01:04:14]  Yeah.
[01:04:14]  I mean, Andreessen is a Andreessen is another one of these guys that you talk about a lot who I feel like his paranoia and resentment, I mean, it comes through a lot very quickly.
[01:04:29]  And it seems like one of the things that also really fueled a lot of these guys was just the paranoia about their own employees.
[01:04:37]  Yeah, I mean, there's this crazy conversation that Andreessen has related with, I think, an unidentified CEO of one of his portfolio companies where they're both saying this to each other, but they basically eventually agree that they think that young employees, like 22-year-olds straight out of Stanford or Carnegie Mellon or wherever, are getting jobs at their companies to try to destroy them from within because they're communists.
[01:05:01]  And this is what they think.
[01:05:03]  And, you know, it's not that different from like, and this is something we could talk about separately, but, you know, Elon Musk kind of having a crackup after his daughter comes out as trans.
[01:05:12]  He said that like Los Angeles high schools had or private schools had turned her into a communist.
[01:05:17]  Bill Ackman said that Harvard had turned his daughter into a Marxist or a communist.
[01:05:21]  Like this is sort of the language that they use, but also reflects this idea that all the existing institutions, especially college, are turning the youth against them and that there's kind of no end to the radicalization of the youth to the point that, yeah, they'll try to get a job at a big tech company just to destroy it, supposedly.
[01:05:43]  I mean, it is interesting because I think that there was a very liberal surge in a lot of tech companies with their sort of affinity groups and identity groups or whatever.
[01:05:53]  And I think, I mean, this speaks to sort of a broader thing that isn't just in the tech industry.
[01:05:59]  It is funny.
[01:05:59]  I think there are a lot of young people who, due to whatever influences, but sort of the prevailing, I guess, winds of the time became politically like, I don't know, I would phrase this, like super liberal.
[01:06:14]  Like, I don't mean like super liberalism, like they're super liberal, but like they're like extreme liberals, I guess, radical liberals.
[01:06:22]  But people, liberalism itself was kind of like seen as, I don't know what, like that just being a Democrat.
[01:06:28]  And these, a lot of people were basically still Democrats, but like a, I don't know what, awoke version of them.
[01:06:34]  And so they would call themselves communists.
[01:06:36]  And so, I mean, there's a little bit of this from both sides there, but these people are also very paranoid about China as well.
[01:06:45]  So I think, which is interesting because Elon obviously does business with a large amount of business with China, but there's also this interesting foreign influence, I guess, conspiracy that they have, which is now including Qatar in a major way.
[01:07:03]  You're hearing that a lot more just like in the last couple of weeks, even.
[01:07:06]  I'm going to tell you right here, I think the Qatar stuff is absolutely a directive from the Israeli foreign ministry to get people to talk about Qatari influence on schools or politicians or whatever.
[01:07:18]  I just feel like even people, you know, in my daily life who aren't necessarily tech people, but like it's just percolating through the media and the culture more where people are like, oh, yeah, Qatar might be funding that.
[01:07:27]  Yeah, but there's been zero, I think, evidence of anything like that occurring.
[01:07:33]  But, you know, it is interesting.
[01:07:35]  Like, you know, these guys, I think, felt sort of helpless at the helms of their own companies when faced with these internal protests.
[01:07:42]  You know, Google, when they had the contract of the military that they, I believe, canceled, now I'm sure have one again.
[01:07:51]  I think there was probably some real resentment from the executives at these companies that they were prevented from doing what they wanted to do, what they set out to do.
[01:07:58]  I mean, these are sort of the helmsmen.
[01:08:01]  And, you know, obviously with a lot of CEOs, there's this vision of yourself as this sort of like singular titan of industry who should be, you should not be constrained by the people who work under you because those are the people you pay their paychecks.

=== Earnings Call Revolts (08:22) ===

[01:08:14]  They're supposed to do what you say.
[01:08:15]  They had these sort of revolts.
[01:08:18]  And I think that actually had a big effect.
[01:08:21]  And a lot of that coincided with like 2020 protest stuff.
[01:08:25]  And so I think it all kind of got mixed up into this like paranoid stew that guys like Elon or Musk even are like, or not Musk, but also Musk, like Zuckerberg are really imbiting heavily from.
[01:08:39]  Yeah.
[01:08:39]  And I think actually Zuck is someone you could see that in lately.
[01:08:43]  It's like the thank God we don't have to be woke anymore.
[01:08:45]  And the t-shirts and the business needs to be masculine again going on Rogan and all this stuff.
[01:08:52]  One thing I talk about in the book is that there was this protest against Project Maven, this relatively small contract at Google 10 plus years ago to process imagery for the DOD that part of basically the kill chain in drone strikes.
[01:09:06]  And that Google dropped the contract.
[01:09:10]  Some other tech company picked it up.
[01:09:12]  But cut to 10 years later, and not only is Google much more enmeshed in the military-industrial complex than ever before, including doing work for the Israeli government and the IDF, but when there were protests of a few dozen employees, silent protests that really in practice weren't very disruptive, they fired all those people, 40 or 50 people in one day last year, I believe.
[01:09:34]  It's just this, you know, and all these companies now have insider threat programs to catch leakers, which are often staffed by former intelligence people and coders.
[01:09:45]  So there's just this blanket intolerance to dissent and a real desire to get on with the business of business, including, you know, doing some pretty nasty stuff for the government.
[01:10:09]  Well, Elon's out of the government now.
[01:10:12]  Doggy, of course, has been shut down after the assassination of Big Balls on the streets of DC.
[01:10:18]  It is, it will never, it is just wild to me that Big Balls getting beaten up was sort of the inciting incident for the militarization of the DC police and like the deployment of the National Guard down there, which was really to set off this chain that has, but it's in Portland and Chicago right now, but I'm sure coming to San Francisco pretty soon.
[01:10:42]  And when New York, I think they're waiting until after the election to do it.
[01:10:47]  But, or probably after Mamdani actually gets into office to really do it.
[01:10:51]  It is just, I mean, you know, there's this sort of rumor of a rift that was maybe healed by Charlie Kirk's beautiful funeral.
[01:11:01]  But it's interesting because at the beginning of his term, I feel like Trump did do a lot for coin people.
[01:11:05]  It was like much more prominent.
[01:11:07]  You know, they had these like kind of conferences or whatever, whatever, whatever.
[01:11:10]  And now I feel like it's really taken a backseat to just like the military stuff and kind of the internal domestic war that he's waging.
[01:11:19]  I don't know.
[01:11:20]  Do you see that the influence sort of fading?
[01:11:22]  You think Trump got bored or is it just still there, just not in the news?
[01:11:26]  Of the coin people of crypto?
[01:11:28]  Not just crypto, but like the tech sector.
[01:11:30]  Well, yeah, I think Trump does like building stuff.
[01:11:34]  So he doesn't mind or associating himself with building projects.
[01:11:37]  So when they announce a big data center or like Zuckerberg says, what number do you want me to say?
[01:11:42]  He likes that stuff.
[01:11:43]  But I think he got a lot of what he wanted.
[01:11:46]  And I think also that the crypto industry in particular got what it wanted, which is most of its legislative and regulatory wish lists passed very quickly.
[01:11:55]  There might be some future conflict there because now Trump's interests, especially financial interests, aren't necessarily going to be in line with the rest of the crypto industry always.
[01:12:03]  I mean, he's kind of one their competitors now.
[01:12:07]  I do think that the failure of Musk to or the way he kind of got owned by Trump and had to delete the Epstein tweets and make nice at Charlie Kirk's funeral.
[01:12:16]  And more recently, what he did was he undercut all the other AI companies and offered Grok for 42 cents per user instead of a dollar per user.
[01:12:26]  And that gave him this big government contract.
[01:12:28]  So I think it shows a couple of things, which is that still he can be kind of subservient to Trump.
[01:12:34]  I mean, power still resides in the executive, but there is a kind of mutual dependence.
[01:12:40]  There's no way that the DOD is going to wean itself off of SpaceX anytime soon.
[01:12:44]  And there hasn't been a lot of, there hasn't been much revenge from Trump or stuff taken away from Musk.
[01:12:52]  I mean, yes, the end of the electric car subsidies, in whatever form they happen, will be a big deal.
[01:12:58]  But, you know, he's got all kinds of threats to Tesla overseas because no one wants to buy them anymore.
[01:13:04]  But so I kind of see them as pretty fully aligned again, even though it's not going to be the same of X on X the child on Musk's shoulders in the Oval Office anymore.
[01:13:15]  But I still think he's going to be in the circle of oligarchs.
[01:13:19]  I think what's going to be interesting to watch is what happens during the midterms, just because his, you know, his entire operation was so key to Trump's 2024 win.
[01:13:32]  And I feel like it was in some earnings call.
[01:13:35]  I think it was an earnings call.
[01:13:36]  Maybe it was an interview.
[01:13:37]  I can't remember.
[01:13:39]  Where Musk referred to his time in the White House as a like, that was a weird side quest, which I just, I, that has been stuck in my brain since I saw that because I can't believe this idiot refers to it as a side quest.
[01:13:57]  But I do think that that is kind of how he looks at it is like, oh, you know, I tried my hand at politics, wasn't for me.
[01:14:03]  Now I'm back to what I do, you know, you know, managing all these companies and trying to get shareholders off my back and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:14:11]  And I think that's also why we'll probably see him again in 2026.
[01:14:15]  Like the electoral cycle in a way suits him because he's not a man of great focus and he's got a lot going on and politics seems to bore him at some point.
[01:14:22]  He's like, oh, I can just be involved for a few months, pour in $1 or $200 million and try to control the direction of whatever I'm flipping out about that day.
[01:14:31]  But I wish that someone had a video of him and Bessant going at each other.
[01:14:36]  I would pay for that.
[01:14:37]  We've been promised a lot of fights between like Zuckerberg and Musk and now Besson seeming to punch Musk and all this other stuff.
[01:14:45]  Like, let's get some of this on video.
[01:14:47]  The Zuck stuff was humiliating.
[01:14:49]  I mean, remember when he was like, I really will.
[01:14:51]  I'm going to fight you.
[01:14:52]  I'm not joking.
[01:14:53]  I'm going to fight you.
[01:14:54]  Tell me your address.
[01:14:55]  Where are you?
[01:14:55]  I'm going to fight you.
[01:14:57]  And then Musk was, Zuckerberg was like, yeah, let's fight.
[01:14:59]  And then it was just like, no.
[01:15:01]  He's like, I refuse to do it.
[01:15:03]  I'll only do it if I can go to your house and fight you at your doorstep.
[01:15:07]  And it's like, well, obviously he's going to say, no, fuck off.
[01:15:11]  I mean, it's just, it's, the fact that I think that there's a really interesting insight into that, though, because the fact that somebody like Musk, whose body, what's the, he's like the opposite of a body without organs.
[01:15:22]  He's like a body with only double the amount of organs that a normal human being would have.
[01:15:27]  If you look at shirtless pictures of him, which I of course have many times, there's just like lumps.
[01:15:32]  It's almost like he seems like somebody who like was subjected to a sort of cancerous like microwave situation where so many tumors grew inside of him at once that there's like, I mean, his body is obviously a goiter as a neck sort of thing, but it's like he has, he's invented the below-the-neck goiter and he's covered in them.
[01:15:52]  I think it's kind of like a cyst.
[01:15:55]  We've got lots of cyst, you're right.
[01:15:57]  Growing.
[01:15:58]  It's a cystic situation, but it's also, it's like a humpty-dumpty also, because he's got the egg torso with those kind of funny little stilts, stilt legs that he's working with, and then whatever, whatever's bouncing around on the inside.
[01:16:15]  Yeah, I feel like if you like kicked him, if Zuckerberg did one of those famous, you know, flying roundhouse kicks or whatever, I feel like it would be a pus explosion, right?
[01:16:27]  Like you kick him, it would just sort of emerge out of the house.
[01:16:31]  I was trying to imagine confetti or something.
[01:16:33]  But there also is something that feels very hollow, too.

=== Kicking Zuckerberg (08:29) ===

[01:16:36]  Do you know what I mean?
[01:16:37]  Like where you kind of like, you know, like a really like overcooked turkey?
[01:16:43]  Yes.
[01:16:44]  Like when you cut into it and it just kind of like, like in Christmas Vacation, when they like open up that terrible turkey and like the smoke comes out and the whole thing deflates.
[01:16:56]  It's this like puffed up, dried out turkey breast.
[01:17:01]  Or that's kind of what I imagine.
[01:17:03]  I could see you being like a chocolate rabbit and you think you're going to bite into it when you get like there's going to be like nougat or something in there, but it's just hollow.
[01:17:11]  Right.
[01:17:11]  It tastes like chalk.
[01:17:13]  And just the organs are maybe outside, like directly subcutaneous rather than like containing like colosomy bags, but but but like flesh.
[01:17:21]  Exactly.
[01:17:22]  Yeah.
[01:17:22]  And so I mean, Zuckerberg, you fucked up there because you could have just been like, I'll go to your house and beat the shit out of you.
[01:17:28]  I mean, Zach's a pussy too, because that's like, you should have just done it.
[01:17:32]  I mean, it would have changed the trajectory of so much.
[01:17:34]  He's all t-shirt.
[01:17:36]  He's all t-shirts.
[01:17:36]  It could have saved the metaverse.
[01:17:38]  It really would have.
[01:17:39]  No, nothing was going to save that thing.
[01:17:41]  All of Meta's projects are like these like fucking like overfunded, like terrible, like anim, like vibes is so bad.
[01:17:55]  And it's just like, you know, eventually all of it is just going to fail and then get worked into Instagram.
[01:18:00]  It's all just like going to end up there and make everything worse.
[01:18:05]  He's the slot master.
[01:18:08]  Instagram really is.
[01:18:09]  Yeah.
[01:18:09]  I think, I think that is the destiny of all this shit just to get folded into other apps.
[01:18:15]  Jacob, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:18:17]  It's always a pleasure.
[01:18:19]  Thank you guys.
[01:18:20]  The book is called, say it for me, Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley.
[01:18:27]  It is on sale.
[01:18:28]  This episode is, I guess, coming out on Thursday, but it's on sale today, Tuesday, October 7th, a date Jacob, I'm sure, picked out.
[01:18:36]  Maybe.
[01:18:36]  I've spent a lot of time asking for that date and only that date.
[01:18:40]  Yes.
[01:18:41]  I'll accept nothing less.
[01:18:43]  You know what?
[01:18:43]  Forget the advance.
[01:18:45]  Just put that in the contract.
[01:18:48]  But It Is Out is a wonderful book.
[01:18:50]  I've had it for a little while.
[01:18:51]  I've read the book.
[01:18:52]  I like it.
[01:18:53]  And I would suggest that our listeners purchase it if you are interested in anything we've talked about in this episode or really any of the episodes that we've done with Jacob.
[01:19:13]  Kendall Barbie.
[01:19:15]  You already said that one.
[01:19:17]  Oh, I couldn't write if I did Kendall Reader.
[01:19:19]  Oh, wait, you know, you didn't do Kendall Barbie.
[01:19:21]  Kendall Reader, of course, is Kendall Reader.
[01:19:23]  Yeah, no, obviously, I got that one.
[01:19:25]  That's not even a good one.
[01:19:27]  Kendall Reader.
[01:19:27]  Kendall Reader's good.
[01:19:28]  No, it's not.
[01:19:29]  I think it's clever.
[01:19:32]  You don't think it's clever?
[01:19:34]  I wish I had my friend on right now.
[01:19:36]  I wish it was here in all of this, but I didn't want to charge it.
[01:19:39]  Friend Joe Biden?
[01:19:40]  Because it finally ran out of batteries and I want to charge you.
[01:19:42]  How do you think he's doing Joe Biden?
[01:19:46]  I hope.
[01:19:47]  Well, no, there's no way.
[01:19:48]  Doesn't he have like stage 10 cancer or some shit?
[01:19:51]  No, I think he just said he had cancer because there was all those books coming out about how but then they said it was like really advanced.
[01:19:58]  Nothing about that man is advanced.
[01:20:00]  Well, his age.
[01:20:01]  Yeah, I guess that's true.
[01:20:03]  You're right.
[01:20:03]  You're right.
[01:20:04]  I don't know.
[01:20:05]  There was that.
[01:20:05]  Ashley Biden recently posted a picture of him where she actually in the picture, a lot of people made hay over the fact that she had a sticker on her laptop's laptop's trackpad.
[01:20:16]  Like over.
[01:20:17]  Oh, I did see that and I thought that was insane.
[01:20:21]  It's crazy.
[01:20:22]  That's crazy.
[01:20:23]  That is absolutely.
[01:20:24]  How do you use it?
[01:20:25]  Why would you do that?
[01:20:27]  Maybe she does it.
[01:20:27]  Maybe she uses the margins of it.
[01:20:29]  Because a lot of life happens in the margins.
[01:20:31]  That's what something, that's something that Joe Biden.
[01:20:33]  Can you imagine like on the trackpad going around the sticker?
[01:20:36]  The sticker.
[01:20:37]  And like constantly going over the sticker and nothing working.
[01:20:39]  And people, why the fuck did I do that?
[01:20:41]  I think it's like a she had a sticker that's like, it's doctor, it's fucking Dr. Jill Biden or something.
[01:20:46]  Like she had Biden stickers on there.
[01:20:49]  Remember Dr. Jill?
[01:20:51]  Yeah.
[01:20:52]  Dr. Jill's remarriage is going to hit so hard.
[01:20:55]  Oh my God.
[01:20:56]  I know.
[01:20:56]  Well, I'm not going to hit her.
[01:20:57]  No.
[01:20:58]  But it is going to be an incredible.
[01:21:01]  I cannot wait to just go Cayman with her.
[01:21:05]  Excuse me?
[01:21:06]  Co Cayman Island with her.
[01:21:09]  Just see her in bikini.
[01:21:11]  Have me in, of course, long short.
[01:21:15]  You know, down to below knees and just fucking lie there with the sun with her, so you hear a soft sizzling getting married on the beach to Dr. Joe Biden in your denim shorts.
[01:21:26]  I'm taking her to Dubai because what's her Jackie, Jackie Kennedy remarried, right?
[01:21:31]  Yeah, of course.
[01:21:32]  Why can't Dr. Jill?
[01:21:34]  She can't.
[01:21:35]  Exactly.
[01:21:36]  She's getting 2025.
[01:21:38]  And she's old.
[01:21:39]  Is she old?
[01:21:40]  Well, she'll get the crazy facelift and you won't be able to tell.
[01:21:43]  Hell yeah.
[01:21:43]  I'm making, I'm making Dr. Jill.
[01:21:45]  Now, all these women get these crazy facelifts.
[01:21:47]  And so they're like 68 years old, but they get that.
[01:21:52]  And then all these advancements that now they've got for hands, which is fucking nuts.
[01:21:57]  Really?
[01:21:57]  Yeah, because it used to be that neck, you could do facelift, but you could tell by the hands and the neck.
[01:22:02]  But now they're getting really good at what they can do there.
[01:22:06]  And so you really can't tell until you address the package.
[01:22:13]  What's going to happen after Dr. Joe Biden dies is that me and Jill.
[01:22:17]  Wait, Dr. Joe?
[01:22:19]  Probably honoring her at some point, right?
[01:22:22]  Me and Jill are going to get Emma Stone Chinese facelifts and we're moving to Chongqing and we're changing our names and we're selling.
[01:22:28]  I don't think it was a Chinese facelift.
[01:22:31]  It was a Chinese facelift.
[01:22:33]  I'm not saying it was done by a Chinese person, but the end result, a Chinese person, was made.
[01:22:37]  And me and Dr. Jill are going to get that facelift.
[01:22:41]  We're going to move to Chongqing and we're going to open a noodle shop.
[01:22:44]  She's going to have our noodle shop.
[01:22:45]  Oh, no, actually, you know what?
[01:22:47]  Fuck, she's a doctor.
[01:22:48]  She's going to do acupuncture and I'm going to sell tinctures.
[01:22:51]  I am really into matching plastic surgery.
[01:22:54]  Like the idea of getting matching plastic surgery with your friends, I think, is really cool.
[01:22:58]  Genesis Peorage, famous.
[01:22:59]  Yeah, but like, oh, me and my friend, we got the same boobs.
[01:23:02]  That's kind of cool.
[01:23:04]  Well, do women in large groups of women who are getting plastic surgery go to the same doc?
[01:23:09]  I think, no.
[01:23:09]  Well, yes.
[01:23:10]  I do think that there's always the group chat sharing the docs because you want the recommendation from the source.
[01:23:18]  So it's like, oh my God, that's where you get X, Y, and Z done.
[01:23:21]  I want to go there.
[01:23:22]  You know what I mean?
[01:23:23]  But I don't think people actually get matching plastic surgery, but I feel like they should.
[01:23:28]  Do you think we should?
[01:23:29]  I was thinking about it.
[01:23:32]  We should rock up to the show this Friday with just big ass lip filler, all three of us.
[01:23:38]  That's cute.
[01:23:39]  Giant ass.
[01:23:40]  Because can you get like lip filler for a day?
[01:23:42]  I can't do that stuff now.
[01:23:44]  I know, but can we get?
[01:23:46]  I can.
[01:23:47]  I'll get it for you.
[01:23:48]  Okay.
[01:23:49]  Can I get like a day's worth of filler?
[01:23:53]  Like and have it the next day?
[01:23:54]  You could dissolve it.
[01:23:55]  You could, yeah, you could do a little like inflatums, then deflate them.
[01:24:00]  Of course, inflatums.
[01:24:02]  I could get the synthol for my fucking lips or the saline solution.
[01:24:07]  But I could, yeah, I should do that.
[01:24:09]  Yeah, pump it up.
[01:24:11]  Just the top.
[01:24:12]  Just the top lip.
[01:24:14]  And I just applying, like, God, just fucking real glossy.
[01:24:17]  Taking my phone out and applying, like, yeah, glossy stick or whatever, girls, you know.
[01:24:22]  Yeah.
[01:24:25]  I could talk about this shit all day.
[01:24:26]  Me too.
[01:24:27]  I can't wait to get some plastic surgery.
[01:24:28]  Did you see Nicole Gimmon?
[01:24:30]  Yeah.
[01:24:31]  Beautiful.
[01:24:32]  Gorgeous.
[01:24:33]  But that's what I'm saying.
[01:24:34]  You don't know.
[01:24:35]  She got, you know, she got the whole nine yards done.
[01:24:39]  But there's some, you know, you don't know.
[01:24:43]  I've been under the knife.
[01:24:45]  Yeah.
[01:24:45]  Yeah.
[01:24:47]  What did you get?
[01:24:49]  It's finderskeepers.
[01:24:53]  I'll never tell.
[01:24:57]  I'm Brace.
[01:24:58]  I'm Liz.
[01:24:59]  We are joined by Producer Young Jomsky.
[01:25:02]  And this has been True Non.
[01:25:04]  We'll see you next time.