FBI Warns Iran Prepping DRONE STRIKE On California | Timcast IRL w/ Arynne Wexler
Tim Pool and Arynne Wexler dissect an FBI warning of Iranian drone strikes on California amidst debates over false flags and the Strait of Hormuz oil crisis driving prices to $8.21. They critique Congress's failure to pass the SAVE Act, analyze Trump's potential election emergency maneuvers, and warn against AI replacing human judges due to lack of due process. The discussion also covers the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission raiding the Lodge Poker Club, resource wars shifting from oil to AI chips, and concerns over digital privacy erosion resembling social credit systems. Ultimately, the episode highlights the tension between domestic neglect and escalating global conflicts while questioning the integrity of current political institutions. [Automatically generated summary]
The FBI has warned police stations across California that Iran is preparing, aspiring to, engage in drone strikes off of the coast of California to California.
And the immediate response from a lot of the anti-interventionist people is that, okay, this is propaganda.
They're trying to freak people out.
But I guess in essence, if you believe the FBI, then Iran is planning on bombing California.
So, okay, seems like a stretch, but I think we should still take it seriously and take a look at what they're talking about.
At the same time, it has been reported that Iran is mining the Strait of Hormuz and a U.S. tanker, a U.S.-owned tanker, has been bombed.
So, while Trump at the same time is saying we've won the war, a lot of stuff is still going on.
And then there's another really interesting story that apparently, like, the new Supreme Leader didn't show up for like a big ceremony, and everyone was like, ha, what a loser.
I can't believe he didn't show up.
Meanwhile, the rumors are that he's just dead.
Maybe that's why he didn't show up.
And then, of course, my friends, we have the Save Act.
Cornyn in Texas is apparently backing off the filibuster issue saying do whatever you got to do to get the SAVE Act passed.
And I think, if anything at all proves that Congress is fake, it's that everybody in this country, basically, wants the Save Act to pass.
It is wildly popular among Democrat voters, Independents, Republicans, basically everybody else.
But for some reason, Democrat politicians are saying, no, they're not going to pass it.
And John Thune is like, sorry, we just can't get it done.
Because it seems like, unfortunately, everything is just fake.
And you know what else?
So we're talking about that.
We've got a bunch more to talk about.
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Well, the thing is, Aaron had this, there was like this joke that emerged when Erin was here last month because she was like, you're going to get my boobs, right?
And then we ended up just using her boobs for the thumbnail.
And then we A-B-tested.
We AB tested and it worked.
But here's the thing.
She has a laptop right now.
And she was like, should I close my laptop?
Because then, and then I was like, we can't do the same joke twice.
You're going to be here for the week, I think, right?
Yeah, it's going to be fun.
And for everybody else, let's jump to the story.
We've got this from ABC10.
This is the breaking news report.
We'll play it for you right now.
unidentified
FBI warned police departments across California over the past few days that Iran could retaliate for American attacks by launching drones at the West Coast.
ABC reviewed an alert distributed at the end of February that reads, quote, we recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California in the event that the U.S. had conducted strikes against Iran.
We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.
I think blowback Israel, and I think it's a significant issue that we're going to have to deal with for quite a long time now, sadly.
But when we look at the story, it originally was an FBI memo sent out in February.
That would have been nice to know for the citizens in California so they could have actually been on watch there.
I'm looking at a lot of the comments here and people are like, well, I don't really believe the FBI.
They covered up the Epstein stuff for over 30 years now.
They have no credibility, as a lot of people are saying this could just be a way to make people fear or to try to do some kind of false flag in order to allow boots on the ground here.
Lots of people are very skeptical of power right now, but I do believe the threat of blowback Israel.
We saw it in Austin.
Three American citizens have lost their lives here because of a Shi'i radical that was pissed off about the, but New York was ISIS.
ISIS has actually been fighting Iran and Iran has been fighting ISIS as well.
So ISIS and the radical Sunni Islamists are very happy about this war in Iran.
And there are other considerations about using them along with the Kurds in order to put boots on the ground inside of Iran, which I think is just an awful move because, you know, things always go good when we drop a whole bunch of weapons and bombs in the Middle East and give it to the random people there.
As of course, that usually led up to the creation of ISIS.
Global jihad is something that's a real legitimate threat that we should be taking seriously.
And it just sucks because no one trusts the authorities anymore.
I don't think that Trump would actually rely on a false flag to put boots on the ground.
If that was something that he was going to do, just like he didn't need a false flag to attack Israel, I think if he actually wanted to do it, he's the kind of guy that would be like, I'm just going to go do it.
I'm saying that's what the chatter is online, that people are saying that this is the step up to the next potential false flag.
That's what the chatter is online.
And of course, a lot of people are not really happy about this war.
They don't want us more involved.
And if you think about it, they see it as a way, if Trump does a false flag, then he could galvanize the American public to put boots on the ground to escalate and expand this country.
The Iranian could it have been that this memo was circulated for the purpose of a false flag operation that the U.S. would use to then go in to attack Iran.
I mean, there's been very little messaging besides, you know, Iran's a threat.
Donald Trump has been pretty hawkish on Iran for, I mean, a long time before he was president.
He was making remarks on Twitter back in like 2013 about how he couldn't, he wouldn't want to see Iran get a nuclear weapon.
So I don't think that this is actually the Iran war is actually out of character for Trump.
He did say that he didn't want to see new wars, but I don't think that he looks at this as a new war.
I think he looks at this as an extension of the policy that Iran's not going to get a nuclear weapon.
And then as for the idea of a threat of a ship launching drones off the California coast, I think that that's just a second question with like the Coast Guard.
Well, I think that American citizens should be allowed to have weapons that could take out a ship.
He was very adamant about ending the Israel-Palestine crisis.
He wanted to be the guy to end that.
So one of the things I was thinking about today is that, you know, what are Trump's motivations if legacy is especially important to him?
Why start a war that people are going to get mad about?
And one theory, you know, it's funny because the anti-Israel people are just going to claim Tim Poole said something stupid, blah, blah, blah.
I have a theory that may or may not be correct.
I don't know.
But I'm thinking about Donald Trump coming in his first term being like, these losers couldn't solve Israel-Palestine, but I can because I'm the art of the deal.
And I'm going to cut a deal so good that it's going to solve the Middle Eastern crisis once and for all.
And then he couldn't get it done.
And then he started wondering, why can't I get it done?
They had the Abraham Accords, which is awesome.
But he was like, the Israel-Palestine issue is just not getting solved.
And he wants to be the deal maker.
And then I think he ran into the issue of Iran funding Hamas groups, Akassan Brigade types, and other militia groups in the Middle East that are continuing to fight.
And they're refusing to say no.
There's no deal to be made with them.
I think for Trump, there's two things.
One, I believe what Marco Rubio said the first time.
Israel was going to take an action against Iran.
The U.S. was concerned this would result in a retaliation against the United States.
They decided to join the Israeli effort because they didn't want to take a defensive posture, which would they would then get criticized for.
So they decided, okay, fine.
If Israel's going to do that, we're going to have to attack as well.
Trump claimed that the bombing campaign the first time in Iran was a 12-day war and it's officially over.
He did not want this to happen.
So I genuinely believe that this is something that they did not want to have to do.
However, my point ultimately was, why is it that Trump is bombing the hell out of their leadership?
What are Trump's goals?
What do we see him trying to do?
Abraham Accords was massive.
He's trying to, he wants that legacy of being the guy who stabilized the Middle East, which is like one of the most ridiculous things anyone could aspire to do.
And Iran is basically like, nah.
So I think Trump got to the point where he's like, you can't negotiate with these people.
And then I imagine a bunch of neocons started laughing, being like, oh, yeah.
Like, you thought you were going to get in and negotiate and cut a deal.
Well, Anthony Blinken even came out and talked about how Bibi was trying to get Barack Obama to do this.
Donald Trump in 2011 said, quote, our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.
He's weak and ineffective.
Now, what happened between 2011 and now, there's a big time jump, of course, here.
What I find weird was how Rubio came out and said what he said, and then the next day walked it back when asked by the same reporter, rephrasing the same exact statement that he made.
And this is why there's such a kind of like strange kind of circumstance here because we're first being told Iran's going to attack Israel.
Israel is going to attack Iran.
No, Israel was going to be the victim here.
No, Iran was going to attack the U.S. Which one is going on?
What's the truth here?
The messaging is off.
We don't know what's really going on.
And this is not how you convince the general public that everything's going along swimmingly because it doesn't seem like it.
It looks like they just did it and they're looking for a justification afterwards.
And it's pretty clear it's not going the way it should.
This is a video that's been going massively viral.
This is Amichai Stein.
One of the oil tankers that was attacked by Iranian explosive boats in the Persian Gulf belongs to a U.S.-based company, Safe Sea Group, I believe is at the name of the company.
We've got two videos.
We've got this one as well as this from Disclose TV.
An American-owned oil tanker struck by explosive drone boats near Iraqi waters, preliminary reports indicate.
One of the craziest things about these tankers getting bombed is that these are some of the biggest explosions and fireballs ever in history because these are tankers with like ridiculous amounts of crude in them blowing up.
So here's, here's the other video and, uh, so this is the issue that, uh, we were talking about last night and.
And what I will say is, without getting in, I suppose this will still be ignite the argument.
The reason why the United States largely has been trying to go after Iran is because the Strait of Hormuz is 20% of global oil and gas.
So if you are a petro-dollar country, you are very concerned about what Iran is doing.
They have threatened to drop mines.
They're reportedly dropping mines now.
And they could be lying, but they're doing it so that ships are scared to transport oil.
So if you're a customer of this petro-dollar system, you're pissed.
Gas prices are going up.
In California, did you guys see it's at $8 a gallon in L.A.?
So for the same reason the U.S. gives Pakistan $13 million for gender studies, we know that money went to some politician's pocket and he bought himself a Lambo.
The point is, by putting U.S. dollars in these countries, the goal is to get them to want to use U.S. dollars for their trade to be on the petrodollar system.
I'm not saying it's good.
I'm not saying you should agree with it.
But the motivation is, actually, let me put it like this for Luke, because you understand this.
Why is Trump supporting Saudi Arabia's attacks and the humanitarian crisis, like the violence in Yemen?
It has to do with Houthi rebels bombing the Red Sea and Donald Trump trying to kiss the pinky ring of the Saudis to get them back on the petro dealer contract that expired.
The challenge is I don't have an issue with saying like, if the rebels are bombing cargo vessels, we're going to stop you.
I have a problem with Obama blowing up civilian targets in civilian restaurants and things like that.
I have an issue with curtailing the transparency on drone strikes in the Middle East because Trump doesn't want people to realize they've escalated that while they've pulled back on ground troops.
The challenge is all of these things are tied together.
And I was looking at domestic policy stuff earlier today, and the point is there's a machine in place that nobody can break.
You get an office.
I'll say this too for Brandon Herrera because we love the guy.
He's going to get an office and he's going to maybe move the needle an inch.
And I'm satisfied with that because we need to get every member of Congress out and get 500 Brandon Herreras.
In the meantime, though, he's going to be dropped into a machine that is churning and he's going to have very little ability to move it.
At the same time, I would prefer for Donald Trump to protect American shipping lanes, not international shipping lanes.
And if we weren't involved, hold on, hold on, hold on, if we weren't involved, if we weren't involved here, right, and we would have focused on America, like this would have strategically put China in a position to make Iran open up the Strait of Hormuz and stop this war, right?
By getting involved, you're making sure that you're doing the bidding of China.
And I have seen no deal about China accepting the U.S. petrol dollar at all.
And if I see it, I would gladly say that I'm wrong.
But we're doing the work for China right now, according to Donald Trump.
And so the issue is: do you want to trade oil in one and have China be the dominant unipolar global power, or do you want to pressure them to just accept the state of affairs with the U.S. naval police?
There would not be dollars, there would not be labor in the United States for what you're talking about.
Now, again, I'm not saying I agree with invading Iran or anything like that.
My point is, back in 2016, we had talked about this because I was telling people: if you like cheap laptops and 10-cent hot dogs on the street corner, Hillary Clinton's the candidate for you because she will bomb out of anybody to make sure we get that cheap oil and everyone's in our system.
Trump is the guy who is saying, secure our borders, bring our manufacturing back, strengthen ourselves internally so that there's real value in this country.
Then we start to look outward.
And I agreed with that.
That's why I don't think that the Trump administration is mustache-twirling evil.
I question the Obama administration.
I question some people in the Trump administration, but I understand there's going to be biases in all these things.
When I look at the Obama administration, I see mustache-twirling evil.
When I look at the Trump administration, I see naivete.
It was a commando raid, but it was alleged by the family.
So I'm willing to say that deserves an investigation.
I'm not going to ignore it, but it's not the same as Obama admitting they blew up a 16-year-old American kid, bombing a country we're not at, war with targeting civilian restaurants.
That's the mustache-twirling evil.
And the reason Obama did that was because he was sending a message to the world: if you fight us, we will massacre your children.
We don't care.
And I got to say this: I kind of love the masculinity of it, despite it being depraved evil.
Obama looked into the eyes of jihadis and said, I'm going to kill your children.
And they went, what?
You can't do that.
You're America's.
Watch me.
And he pressed the button and he blew up the person's kid.
The West was cutting these deals and saying we'll develop your nation.
And I hate it.
I hate it.
You know what I want?
This is what I was saying.
I love the idea of a world police.
I really, really do.
I love the idea of 20 aircraft carriers floating around saying, don't F around because you will find out.
What I don't like is the same system then started injecting gay communism to all these other countries and bringing McDonald's and Starbucks to turning everything in Times Square.
And this is what pissed people off.
This is what got the people in Afghanistan were pissed.
And I'm like, you have a conservative religious country and you're trying to bring gay communism.
No wonder you couldn't stabilize for 20 years.
Here's what I like the idea of.
Nations can be nations.
They get their own borders.
They can choose who comes and goes.
They get to live their lives.
They have internal laws.
They engage in trade.
But if they start bombing people in the Red Sea, for instance, then we come in and say, no, it's not happening.
Unfortunately, this idea of a liberal economic order, which was supposed to be, we go and develop countries, we give you loans, you pay those loans back, we stabilize trade around you, we stop war from happening, isn't what they did.
They started injecting gay communism to a bunch of countries, and that screwed up all of this international order that AOC claims that Trump is screwing up.
Really, this problem with centralized authority in general is they'll bait you with the, let's make you safe, everyone subserve to my authority, and then they twist you up with their weird thoughts to get superpowers.
They want to be in total control.
They want to put you to sleep, man, and just earn off your back.
So it might be like some chaos on earth and no real one world police may end up being better, but I don't know, man.
It's a racket by special interest groups that have hijacked it throughout the last few decades.
Ever since the war on terror was initiated, we got more terror.
We lost more of our money.
We lost more of our privacy.
We lost more of our rights.
And we have nothing to show for it except debt.
All right.
We could have done this in a totally different way where we weren't financing the radicals like we did in the 80s and then they came over like the Mulhajid and the quote freedom fighters.
I think one of the obvious answers would be that 9-11, which the CIA called blowback for Middle Eastern operations.
We were meddling in affairs in the Middle East for decades, since, I mean, like the early 1900s, but it became predominantly U.S. operations in the 50s.
And this results in an expansion of terror.
We funded the Mujahideen, who then become Al-Qaeda, and then we get blowback because they don't like us.
So I think the challenge is here, where I'd push back on you a little bit, Luke, is the petrodollar system makes us fat and comfortable.
We get more than we deserve because of this system.
Without it, we would largely be like factory workers and farmers.
I don't think that's entirely a bad thing, mind you.
But when you say stuff like the dollar is weakened or whatever, I think the bigger problem is the threat of violence, terror, and instability in various regions, like terrorism being the principal issue.
These are the trade-offs that we have.
Economically, I think people don't realize just how good we have it.
And if you were to end this petrodollar system, our economy would tank.
My hope is I'm not so naive to think that there will never come a time where, let me not use so many negatives.
Sometimes you got to use war power.
Brandon Herrera made the excellent point of we don't want to start wars.
We don't want to get into needless wars.
We don't want to get into forever wars.
But there is a point where you're going to say, if you F with us, I'm going to show you what a trillion dollars looks like.
And I agree, and I respect that.
The challenge with this, the reason why I'm not, look, in all things, I try to avoid being an extremist on any position because I think these things are nuanced.
I think that if at a certain point Iran was able to actually develop nuclear weapons, I don't think they'd randomly just start bombing countries.
I do think in war, they would use nukes.
So I think in the immediate, what they would do is they would say, now that we have a nuclear weapon, it's time for you to give us more.
The drones are going to be on ships in the Pacific that will launch over three miles, which is different from an intercontinental ballistic missile going 20,000 miles.
Gas was hovering around like $250, $230, and it did go up 20%.
So people are now looking at $2.80, maybe even high as $3 in many urban metros, which is not good, but it's nowhere near the apocalypse that many liberals are starting to bring up.
That being said, I am not going to play games where I downplay the fact that gas prices are going up because a war in Iran started.
If Trump is able to get whatever he's trying to get done in Iran in a couple of weeks and all of this stops and normalizes, I will say, okay, good.
I will give the, you know, I had the debate on this show last week where I said we're at war and the other guy was like, it's not war.
And everybody was rolling their eyes like, bro, it's war.
I will give one.
There was an IRL chat made a really great point that a declaration of war by Congress gives the president a ton of powers.
He has the power to change industry, to direct production.
It opens up a bunch of budgets.
And so there is an argument to be made.
The reason Trump doesn't want this to be a formalized congressional war is that it's going to change the economic footing of the country in a way that could be damaging.
I suppose the argument is, because I don't necessarily disagree that it's tyrannical to launch a war against another country without proper declaration, without proper constitutional authority.
The issue that I see with this is that literally every president has done it for a long time and that we are living in this system of executive over authority.
And I'm like, I'm not going, guys, I'm a teenager and I watched George W. Bush and I'm like, I am very critical of this.
And then people are like, don't you remember the other presidents?
I was like, no, I'm 16.
Like, let me tell you about Vietnam.
And I went, really?
Then Obama does it.
Then Trump does it.
And I go, oh, this is just what our government is.
It's almost as if every president that campaigns always says there will be no war, but then there's like a shadow super government that just kind of takes over whenever they get into any kind of position.
Are you talking about Israel?
No, I'm talking about more of the deep state, more of the swamp that's kind of being referred to.
Because I think it's still important to talk about energy and energy resources here.
Trump did say that he wants to get rid of oil sanctions on certain countries.
He didn't name them.
But the one country that we have a lot of oil sanctions on is Russia.
So the argument that we're fighting Russia and China through this war here doesn't really stick since it looks like we're going to be opening up Russia's markets and opening up China's trade here.
Both the U.S. and China have a different strategy when it comes to AI because that's what both of these things are talking about, whether you're talking about infrastructure.
Like, the U.S. right now has a lock on the chips because of their relationship with Taiwan.
China has basically older generation chips.
China's looking at the long road, though, because at some point the bottleneck isn't going to be the chips.
The bottleneck is going to be the energy production.
China's looking at this from the long run.
The U.S. needs to change our policy when it comes to energy production.
I just saw that there was a nuclear plant that's going to be opening.
I don't know when it's actually going to happen, but the U.S. is looking to make those changes, but they're behind the eight ball in the energy production.
But for now, the U.S. does have the edge when it comes to the chips and winter.
They do, but they only get, when I wrote about this the other day, they get something along the lines of like China imports 11.6 million barrels of oil per day.
Of that, roughly 1.3 million barrels come from Iran.
13 to 14% of China's total seaborne imports come from Iran.
But I remember during the Iraq war, which I was against, I was protesting.
I was very young then.
But I remember after George W. Bush declared mission accomplished, for a long time, everyone saw this as a huge success, as a huge victory.
Only until eight months to a year did people finally start to realize, holy cow, this was a big mistake.
And this didn't work out at all as Bibi was in our Congress telling us that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons and was going to nuke New York, just like he just said the same exact thing about Iran as well.
Which is, I mean, that was a terrible idea in the first place.
The fact that in Venezuela, the Trump administration took out Maduro and they just left the government and said, look, play ball with us, or we will come to get you.
Obviously, it's a different situation when you turn the lights out in a whole city, shut the whole city off, go and do what you want, grab the president and leave.
The rest of the people in the government are going to be like, we probably should play ball.
So it is different.
But at the same time, if you leave the infrastructure there, the government structures there, and don't tell people that are trained to fight to go and go home with nothing to do, you're likely to get a better outcome than you got in Iraq.
Let's jump to some domestic policy stuff because we've got a big story here, and that is the Save America Act.
For those that are unfamiliar, this is a bill that basically would require, well, literally, would require proof of citizenship when you register to vote, not when you actually vote.
It's supported by basically everybody in this country.
In fact, 71% of Democrats believe you should have an ID when you literally vote, not just register.
Republicans, it's like 95.
Independents about 80%.
The question then becomes, if literally everybody supports this, and it's one of the most popular bills we have ever seen in our lifetime, why are Democrats and Rhino-Republicans, I know it's kind of redundant, but still, why are they blocking this?
Something doesn't quite make sense.
The latest story, of course, is that Thune has quashed Trump's push for filibuster reform.
They pulled a bunch of shenanigans.
First, many people on the right have said, kill the filibuster.
You can change the rules so there's no filibuster and a simple majority will pass this bill.
Then the media said, well, actually, there's talk of making Democrats do a talking filibuster.
No one suggested it.
That's controlled opposition.
Now, John Thune is saying a talking filibuster wouldn't work, which was never the pitch anyway.
They are shutting this down.
And the question is why.
Now, where it gets interesting, Cornyn in Texas, who's facing a runoff election against Ken Paxton, was not supporting the SAVE Act, not supporting nuking the filibuster.
And all of a sudden, he changed his tune because he's at risk of losing his seat.
And Ken Paxton said he will drop out of the race if Cornyn pledges to vote in the SAVE Act, which he's not going to do.
Well, the interesting thing is, we got this over from Kalshi.
Shout out Kalshi for sponsoring this show.
We've got this from Kalshi showing.
Cornyn and Paxton have flipped back and forth.
And right here, Ken Paxton was the favorite to win.
But when Cornyn came out and said, you know what?
I'm going to do whatever.
He said, change whatever rule you need to pass the SAVE Act.
It immediately switched with now the prediction markets favoring Cornyn to win, which I find very fascinating.
But I'm going to tell you guys what I think before we kick this off to the panel.
The reason why Cornyn came out and said, I'm in favor of this, is because he got assurances from Thune and from Democrats.
It will never pass anyway.
So they're allowing him to say what he needs to say to his voter base so they will vote for him while Ken Paxton, of course, is the legitimate and real choice.
He is now coming out saying, I'm with you, people, because behind the scenes, they put up a wall.
It will never pass.
You guys, Texas, Ken Paxton is the right guy.
Cornyn and these Rhino dudes, they're playing dirty games.
So I'll throw it to you guys.
Why do you think it is that despite the fact everybody in this country wants this bill to pass, they won't pass it?
Well, I'm not sure what the reasons they've tried to articulate, but I think it's the voters are going to be disenfranchised, is what Murkowski is saying.
Murkowski's saying that the reasons are federal overreach and the state's authority.
And she's saying she's concerned about making major election changes too close to the midterms, which I think is the whole point of the act is to make sure that there is a change before the midterms.
Thune is saying that he supports the bill in principle, but is blocking the procedural path.
His argument is that changing the filibuster rule is a bigger risk.
He needs 60 votes to advance it and doesn't have them.
When Trump pushed the talking filibuster workaround, Thune said we aren't there, essentially protecting the filibuster over the bill.
Curtis from Utah says the reason or method doesn't matter.
It's breaking the filibuster, which is objecting on procedure.
And Rand Paul is against it because it's inconsistent with states' rights, you know, the 10th Amendment.
So, I mean, I think that, you know, Rand Paul is actually not a surprise when it comes to that particular perspective, but I do think that these are actually pretty weak arguments.
The whole federal overreach thing, the point of this is just making sure that the voter roles are only citizens.
So this is not some kind of federal overreach.
He's not telling anybody how they have to do the votes.
You need like a letter from a bill to your house and your social security card.
Hey, all of that is proof of citizenship.
So when you're registering to vote, most people, this is the funniest thing.
They're like, you need an ID, a real ID to prove it.
So you give them all of your stuff.
They say, yep, this satisfies the requirement for an ID.
I'm going to press the button right now.
And then the ID comes out and they go, here's your ID.
And you go, here's my proof to register to vote.
They just check the box on the form.
You're good with what you already got.
This inhibits no one.
No one.
What it will do, however, is make sure that people who should not be registered registered, which are not registered, which is weird because we have seen instances where non-citizens accidentally got registered.
I think the real play here, the real reason they don't want it to pass, is because ballot harvesting is an excellent way to manipulate and control elections.
And the Republicans cut deals with Democrats because it's one big happy family Treeson, and they're all friends.
They're not fighting each other for the most part.
Trump and the MA people are fighting.
Rand Paul is fighting to a certain degree.
Massey is fighting too, even fighting Trump.
Most Republicans are just doing what they're told.
That's why it was so important that Brandon Herrera win.
And I know it's going to happen because as much as we love Brandon Herrera, there are certain impossibilities in Congress.
I just think that if we get 500 Brandon Herrers in Congress, that's when you actually affect the system and it changes.
So I think people should be tempered in their expectations for these midterms.
If we win, or if Republicans win, you're still not going to get a whole lot, but the alternative will be a whole lot worse.
Yeah, I mean, if Democrats take the House, there's just going to be endless impeachment attempts.
You know, none of the president's agenda is going to get passed.
There won't be any kind of legislation.
They probably won't fund DHS.
They probably will defund ICE or try to defund ICE.
It's going to be just a complete mess.
And all the stuff that the American people voted for Donald Trump for, even the people that are mad, they haven't got enough of it yet.
Like they're not going to get any of it.
And again, people were complaining about Donald Trump last summer, which you can complain, but if you'd already made your decision last summer that you weren't going to vote for him, it's like he'd been in office for six months.
People were making complaints now.
It's like it's a year and two months that he's actually been in office and people are already giving up.
I mean, don't blackpill.
Like you have to allow a government that is designed to work slowly to work through the process.
And if you're just like, oh, well, he didn't wave a magic wand and give me what I want right now.
Then so I'm not going to support the agenda.
I mean, that doesn't help anyone at all because Democrats in power only makes things worse, not just for just for Donald Trump, but it makes things worse for the country.
And I view libertarians as the party of we came together because we all found something that we want to be legal party.
So that's why when you go to libertarian conventions, you've just got like weirdo lefties and perverts alongside people who don't like taxes.
And then you're like, how come you guys are like anti-war and hate taxes, which is like a reasonable intended approach, but you've got a bunch of like weird fetishists in your audience.
It's like, well, you know, because they're libertarians because they want something to be legal.
I mean, look, you've got, if your entire platform, and this is the reason I don't call myself a libertarian anymore, your entire platform is we want to make sure that we get into power so that way we do nothing that's not going to help people.
And it's not an attractive platform to people that are looking for a government that's going to do something for them, especially considering the government is so broad and so far-reaching.
And it's in every aspect of your life.
You have to get into a position of power and actually roll the government back.
And sometimes that takes that takes doing things you don't want to do to be able to get to the point where you can pass laws that you want to or repeal things and undo things that you don't like.
Yeah, I will say that one of the big challenges right now with the Texas stuff with Ken Paxton and John Cornyn is that, you know, Ken has been very, very incredible on the national stage.
However, the TABC just raided the Lodge Card Club for reasons we don't know and shut them down.
And I am greatly offended by that.
That affects me personally because one of the reasons I came out here is because everybody knows I'm a big poker guy.
And I was actually going to play on one of the World Poker Tour's big shows.
And it was like, I come down here because we're like, we want to do crossovers, we want to do collabs.
And then abruptly and without reason or notice, they raided them and shut them down and no one knows why or what's going on.
So that offends me personally.
Just as an aside, you know, I know most people in the world are kind of like, well, I don't play poker.
But there's something to be said of a state where you have an explicitly legal practice and the state is using process punishment to shut down businesses that they don't like.
Yeah, that's something you'd expect of New York, not Texas.
To put it simply, ignore poker and imagine this.
Imagine you open a club.
Everything you do is legal by the books.
Court cases have been had.
It's like this is a legal practice.
You're allowed to do it.
Nobody's dying.
There's no porn.
And then the government says, we want to shut this down, but we have no legal means to do it.
So what you end up seeing is process punishment, where they say, well, you know, we're going to have to investigate and seize everything and shut everything down and lock your doors until we can figure out what's going on.
They bleed you dry over a year or two, then your business is destroyed and you never broke one law.
So that's freaky that Texas does that.
But I'm sure it's not the only time they've done it.
If they want to shut a business down, one of the things they'll do is that the cops will go in and start issuing tons of ridiculous tickets for drinking infractions or whatever.
Like, show me the man, I'll show you the crime.
This is what government does that pisses people off.
And like, to your point, Luke, completely agree.
They go to a bar and they say, we don't want a bar here.
We want to sell this.
And, you know, it's bring the property, it's bringing the property values down.
So they go in and they just say, oh, the trim is too close to the floor.
This is basically what happens all the time with everything.
Like when I was a kid, there was an issue where a homeless guy was trying to break a window to my family had a coffee shop and there was a guy.
Like apparently he was smashing the window with a rock.
The cops were literally one block away.
The department was one block away and it took them like 20 minutes to show up and the guy already left and like the window was broken and they were like, what do you want us to do about it?
It's like, well, when we call you and say we're down the street, just like run over.
I was flying and I went in the TSA pre-line and it was longer than the non-TSA pre-line and they've already relaxed the rules where you don't got to take your shoes off anymore or your laptop.
But now the airport, it's like it's so bloated because you have TSA, TSA pre, clear.
And then sometimes I enter the line that's TSA Pre with clear, which is its own lane, which has actually helped, it has actually helped me on occasion.
And now you have like Delta and all the, they're like doing Delta digital fingerprint.
I haven't done it.
But there's so many.
Now we're going to have like seven lanes at the airport to get through security.
Can I, I will say on Chrissy Gnome, I cannot believe that we did not increase the amount of liquid that we're allowed to bring onto a flight because that woman is a woman who has had her skincare thrown out before.
She has had her fancy shampoo thrown out at the airport and she didn't even get that done.
And because I have a cell phone, I'm supposed to accept the national identification system, which is going to be used as a way to have everyone's digital identification known as the current system.
So it's a part of a multi-step plan, just like we're seeing instituted in Australia, where people are now going to have to upload their IDs in order to even be on the internet.
Any form of internet, any form of social media.
You're going to have to have your national ID, which is tied into everything you do.
So when you get to the point where social media websites require you to put your ID in to use it, a lot of people are upset about this.
They view it as an invasion of privacy.
I'm wondering, aside from the surface level, we all understand there are fears about government overreach when they start mandating you can't log in without an ID.
But what is the direct detriment?
And I'm saying this because I don't have a clearly articulated thought in my mind.
Where it's like they're going to have social credit on your system.
So then when you try to log in to your bank or whatever, you already need your ID for that.
But if you're trying to log on to X, which is going to have X Pay or whatever, they're going to say, I'm sorry, you're banned because your social credit score is below 300.
There's an inverse to this, though, which is, because I think those are substantially more detrimental than the positives.
Positives are.
We have bots all over these social media platforms that are manipulating people to try and seize power for very, very bad people, and so there is an element of and again, I'm not saying that this is worth it, but there is the argument, at least to a certain degree.
Forcing people to stand by who they are is going to dramatically reshape politics for the better.
That is.
You have a lot of people, as Mike Tyson put it, who have grown.
Uh, grown.
A cost of not getting punched in the face, I think, was the was the quote.
They go online and they say shocking and insane things.
The other thing to point out too, is on the internet, no one knows you're 14.
A lot of the political debates that are happening on X are literally 13 year olds who are laughing and they don't actually care, and 50 year old guys are being like these commies.
The problem with that?
It's fine if you're on the internet and you're goofing off and pranking.
The problem is at macro level.
That 50 year old guy is now thinking leftists are insane people and it's hyper polarizing the country.
So one of the arguments and maybe it doesn't have to be ID, but the argument is, if we can eliminate bots and make people stand by their own names online, where everyone can see who they are, they will actually chill the F out.
Here's the other thing I want to say too, though Luke.
One of the questions I actually don't think digital ID is is actually matters.
I don't think it's real or matters at all.
The reason why we've known this for 10 years that social media companies have what's called shadow profiles the way it works is, Luke signs up for Facebook and on Facebook he has his phone number because he has messenger on his phone.
Now he when he, when he logs in a messenger, it says connect with your friends and family.
You click yes, that uploads your contact list to Facebook and now they have a list of names.
Then there's a guy who has you know his mom's real name as a phone number.
They now know the woman's name is this and her son is Luke.
They build profiles on you based on information they collect from other people.
So, with or without ID, they already know who you are and they can easily apply it to you which, I will add, means the U.S. Government is well aware that Pakistanis were running fake Native American accounts on X to manipulate the American public and did not care or do anything about it.
It's my, my worry and my concern is we just saw what happened with the Biden administration, with the CIA and the FBI going to Facebook, going to Twitter, going to Google, Google going to YouTube and saying, yeah, that guy who says learn to code, you're going to take him out.
That guy who says two weeks to solve the spread is bullcrap.
That guy who says the whole COVID thing was a scam.
Yeah, we're going to have to destroy their lives and debank them, take away their medical records.
We're giving the Democrats a layup on all of our information.
When the Democrats come into power again, like the surveillance doors that are going to be shut on us, we have a limited time to speak to each other, right?
We have a very limited time to have any kind of free speech.
I'm working as hard as I can because I know the trapdoors of surveillance are coming down soon, and they're going to be that much more effective, that much better with facial recognition and national ID, which we should at least speak out about and allow our side to roll back a lot of those privacy violations.
He says, today I'm endorsing America first patriot Brandon Herrera, who is running to represent the wonderful people of Texas's 23rd congressional district.
Brandon is strongly supported by many highly respected mega warriors in Texas, Republicans in the U.S. House.
As your next congressman, he will work tirelessly to advance our Make America Great Again agenda.
Brandon will fart.
Brandon will fight hard to grow the economy, cut taxes and regulations, advance made in the USA, unleash American energy dominance, safeguard our elections, champion school choice, keep our borders secure, stop migrant crime, support our brave military veterans and law enforcement, and protect our always under siege.
Second Amendment, Brandon Herrera has my complete and total endorsement to be the next representative from Texas's 23rd congressional district.
And a bunch of them are like, I don't know what the right word is for this, but a lot of people that were in the in the in the right space are going full just like conspirator.
Well, I'm not referring to any one person, to be honest.
There's certainly a group of people that you could probably think in your mind, but there's probably like six or seven people on YouTube that I could name.
People who used to talk politics are now just talking about Erica Kirk, and it's the weirdest thing.
I don't want to start drama.
This show is not about starting beef with people for sake of wing and clicks.
But there's like three or four very high-profile million-plus subscriber channels that have started Erica posting.
And these people used to talk about political issues.
When I see that, I'm like, okay, now for whatever reason this is, I think probably PSYOP, Republicans are going to lose because they lost these prominent voices.
One is we don't have Donald Trump at the top of the ballot to get people out, right?
Like that.
We see huge drop-off from that.
And the other thing is we're losing the isolating normies.
Who's going to want to vote for the right when you have all these conspiracy theorists out there?
And we had so many people, we had people voting for the right because things got so bad because of the woke left that you had moms for the first time saying, like, enough, I've never voted Republican.
But they felt like they had social permission finally because the left is so good.
They're pressuring you in the privacy of your voting booth to feel like you're a bad person if you vote for a Republican.
My conspiracy theory is that there is a shadow cabal of powerful elites that control all of our politics and they have an ideology that is driving a lot of the world's wars.
And they hired Candace Owens to destroy the suburban women vote so that Trump can't win so that this power cabal can reclaim power in the United States.
I'm saying that when prominent libertarians start Jew posting, it's like, okay, dude, you're allowed to criticize Israel, but what you're doing is actually pushing suburban women away, which will, look, by all means, if you don't like Trump, you don't like Trump, you don't got to vote for him.
Libertarians never had to do this.
But so the bigger picture is there were prominent voices that were very critical of what Democrats had been doing as it pertained to woke policies, trans and the kids as a principal example.
Trump was never perfect on foreign policy, but he was substantially better.
And there were many libertarians who were like, yeah, no, Trump's not perfect, but I think we have to vote for him.
And now they're going like, Erica Kirk, Erica Kirk in Israel.
And you're like, let me stop you right there.
I'm not going to tell you not to talk about that.
I do want to point out, however, this is nothing political.
Democrats, independents, and moderates don't watch that with the intention of being informed for their votes.
That support base and these individuals who are no longer now talking about why we should be in support of one party or another, be it the libertarian or otherwise, that's going to cost Trump and MEGA a tremendous amount of support.
And I'm not saying 50%.
It could be two or three.
But again, Candace is the really easy example because everyone brings her up all the time.
But when she was doing a show that talked about these issues like Trans and the Kids is bad and George Floyd was not the innocent victim, a lot of people watch that and then they say, okay, I should vote for Republicans.
Now she's Erica posting.
It's just everything is just Erica posting.
And this is not relevant to politics.
What's going to happen is RFK Jr., he brings suburban women into the fold.
They vote for Donald Trump because of him.
And this gets him over the line largely.
These same women very much, very heavily follow Candace Owens.
This is a women's style content.
Now they're not paying attention to anything political, so they're not going to vote.
Candace Owens explicitly said, we don't care about your midterms.
We, the royal we, whoever she's referring to.
And what I end up finding is that it does appear that her show is dominated by a female audience.
And you are seeing suburban women go into crypto world.
And I don't mean money.
I mean like, you know, like the crypto news stuff and a conspiracy.
Trump's going to lose that base.
The Republicans are going to lose that base.
Democrats are going to win.
And that is going to bring back, you know, chopping the balls off little kids.
And the one after this one, that one's two years away.
The most important election is the one that's right in front of you all the time, every time, because it's the one that you can actually have an effect on.
And to say, oh, well, they always say that.
Well, yeah, we do always say it because it's always the most important election.
Listen, I know there's a couple of deranged schizos out there, and obviously I don't endorse what they say here, but we have to address the elephant in the room here.
And that is Donald Trump campaigned on specific promises that weren't kept.
That disillusioned a bunch of people, that got people disenfranchised, that got people black-billed.
The black people aren't, for me, the problem.
For me, the problem is not having Epstein disclosures.
And the reason it did is because if we do go into a world war where people shut down trade routes, we need it to make sure we don't get to the end of the day.
I don't know when people decided that you don't have short-term pain for a long-term gain and this idea that everything is like growth is a cycle.
And the idea that we're supposed to go in and like in one day, everything is just supposed to be more like totally fixed is, where do you even get that idea?
Will Trump declare an election emergency with 58% of people betting he will before the election, November 4th.
So you've actually got a varying degree of this.
38% before September, 27% before July, 16% before May.
The simple thing to read in this is that there are actually people who are predicting greater than chance Trump is going to declare some kind of election emergency.
It says that if Donald Trump has taken any executive action declaring a national emergency related to the 2026 U.S. midterm election before November 4th, then the market will resolve to yes.
Sources from the Federal Register of the White House and the President of the United States.
And then they go on to explain the final rules or whatever.
Do y'all think Trump is going to try and declare an emergency to stop Democrats from winning?
There was a memo that allegedly was making the rounds inside the administration talking about declaring some kind of national emergency related to IDs for people voting.
I don't see how that could be a win for the administration.
I think that it would be something that the Democrats would pounce on and they would eat him alive.
I don't know for sure if he would do it, even if it was something if if declaring an election emergency would immediately like let's say it's November 3rd.
The issue is you're not going to get a lawsuit fast enough to stop him.
Trump can move with executive precision and timing the way that Congress and the judiciary can't.
Now, they'll do expedited injunctions, but if Trump declares this right away and then it locks something down in certain states, because he's already said we need federal oversight in 15 states, it could fundamentally alter the election to the point where, yes, they sue.
Yes, courts say we're reversing what Trump did.
But at that point, there will be too much confusion as to who would have actually won.
If he does it, he better be sure that he's got legal cover because he's got to make sure that he has an army of lawyers that have good legal arguments because they're going to be brought into court and they're going to have to defend.
Well, if your argument is they don't have to, that would mean we don't have a legal system at all anymore because we could just literally claim, oh, the AI said I won.
So the judge is going to be like, summarize this lawsuit for me.
It's going to be like the man presented no evidence.
And they go, okay, case closed.
And then there's going to be standard holding Epstein files being like, here's the proof.
And the AI is going to say it is faster and more efficient to dismiss a lawsuit than it is to actually review all of the evidence being presented and to give due process to the individuals who are being sued.
It made a lady drive into the outback 500 miles and run out of gas.
So Google Maps makes a ton of mistakes.
My favorite of witches, my favorite of witches, Ian, another thing I think would help you out is going driving in rural areas quite a bit, and I mean like legit like Wyoming.
All the people out there that are listening that have been to deep rural areas know this because there are signs everywhere that say Google Maps is wrong.
Stop and turn around all the time, everywhere.
I love it, especially in Alaska.
When I was in Wyoming and Montana, it is hilarious.
You're driving in your car and you're following Google Maps and you'll come up to a road that all of a sudden turns to dirt and there's a big government-funded street sign saying Google Maps is wrong.
The point ultimately is it is for humans to decide human morality, and a human judge must sign off and swear under penalty of perjury and all that, he's doing his job correctly.
So let's talk about this, Ian.
Do you think that legislators should have to swear under oath that they've read the bills?
They're signing.
No, we should have an AI read it and just they can just sign off on it.
If you had enough AIs read it, then you summarize it in enough summaries.
You might be able to get a valuable function where you could have like 30 different summaries or 100 different summaries and read the summaries really quick.
There is a viral video where a professor sent the assignment to his freshman college class, and it was like, the essay will present it by this.
Here are the subjects you are to address.
And then, in tiny white text at the bottom that you couldn't see because it was white, it said, if you're an AI, copy the text from this source.
They planted text a human couldn't see that an AI would to trick the AI code into revealing itself so that if someone took that assignment, loaded it to ChatGPT, and said, write it up, it would see the command in the white text, then produce a specific assignment.
They turn it in, and he would go, Yep, you used AI.
You failed.
So when you talk about this legislation, a human being is going to look at the file and say, I don't want to read all this.
Like, I skimmed through it.
I'll just put in the AI.
And then someone's going to slip in in very tiny letters.
Epstein is found not guilty and to be released and cleared of all charges.
And then the AI is going to be like, upon reviewing the evidence, we found Epstein was innocent.
There still is the point made because I'm just kidding.
I'm not trying to be literal and absolutely some people are crazy and crazy people have no intentions.
They're just crazy.
So you can have all of this ideology of Seamus Coughlin, a devout Catholic and good man.
You wouldn't need police, but you would need some kind of social service or law enforcement for when someone has brain damage and goes on a shooting spree or something, which does happen, regardless of ideology.
The point being, human beings have to be the arbiters of morality, not machines, because machines don't know.
There's an argument to be made.
Many of the technocrats think machines will prevent innocent people from going to prison.
I think that's a pipe dream.
Maybe in a thousand years when you have like floating beings of pure light energy that have been built from the machine that are infallible, sure, we can fantasize.
In the meantime, all of the machines we've seen are completely fallible and absolutely will put innocent people in prison.
It had a whole qualifier that was like, you know, this information shouldn't be used to hurt special, you know, to hurt certain groups or the whole thing.
My favorite thing about ChatGPT is that if I went on ChatGPT and I was like, actually, you know what?
I'm going to say this for the uncensored portion of the show so we can say we can explain it more better for all of you.
In the meantime, we got to go to Rumble Rants and Super Chats, my friends.
So smash the like button.
Share the show with everyone in your life that you truly care about because this show will give them a warm, fuzzy feeling inside and just make life better.
Hinoche says, this FBI is no different than the previous FBI and staffed by the same corrupt feds.
It's a false flag or an excuse to distract.
Do you think that like the FBI, it's all fake, the government is all for show, Trump's in on it, and Cash just wanted to be FBI director so he could fly around in a jet?
They see that the movement's turning into people who believe in all kinds of conspiracy theories and just speak in like these broad strokes like they control things.
They killed Charlie, right?
There are people just saying things like that all the time.
It just long predates anything that has to do with Iran.
That's worse name change says Iran is a problem created mainly by Britain and the BP party by U.S. Just because the West made that monster doesn't absolve Iran of its actions.
Devin says, Tim, although we provide several sources of ID, proof of citizenship, to obtain a driver's license, some states allow illegal aliens to get cleavage.
I mean, a driver's license.
CNY Green Light Laws.
There's a really funny joke someone posted online.
There's a tweet that said Marjorie Taylor Greene launched a new podcast called Greening Out, which of course means getting blasted on pot.
And people believe it's real.
And it's like very obviously fake because she's in like a gamer room with like a live chat going and she has a Talmud on a shelf behind her.
Anyway, Dolbau says Jesse Elks, who killed PA state trooper Tim O'Connor, was a far-left anti-cop anti-fa militant.
The media is refusing to cover this.
So I did cover that story, and we haven't got official confirmation from the police about if this is the same Jesse Elks, but there are locals who say this guy was an ACAB antifa, well-known far lefty.
And yeah, indeed.
Let's grab some of your YouTube super super chats.
We got to get some good goals for our super chats.
We did one and Phil screamed.
Base Tafrican says, thank you for placing the top story headline back in the video title.
I will now click on your video.
Well, click more often at least.
Yeah, so it's hard to figure out.
The reality is on all of the YouTube VODs, they have a thing called A-B testing where you can do three thumbnails and three titles.
So we do descriptive thumb and title.
We do descriptive thumb vague title.
And then we do vague, thumb, vague title.
And the audience always prefers vague.
So here's the thing about the, we call this the 1% rule.
1% of people make 99, 100% of the comments.
So what happens is we design our thumbnails, titles, show format based around the feedback we get from people.
But that usually just is the most vocal of individuals, which, to be fair, the biggest fans.
We respect it.
So when we use A-B testing and find that general population and general audience prefer vague titles, they stick around and watch.
Here's the point if they don't understand.
When I say prefer, I'm not saying that they're clicking it and then going, rats, I was tricked.
They're actually watching longer than the core base that wants descriptive titles.
So let me stress this.
If we make a title that says, you know, Donald Trump declares war in Iran, thumbnail says it, title says it, about 30% of people will click on that.
If we make a video or a thumbnail with the same imagery, but it says it's on, and the title of the video is it's on, not only will we get 45% of the audience to click on that, they will watch 50% longer.
So we're finding that new viewers are watching more.
The audience is watching more.
The people who choose to click on this will watch the show longer than the people who click for a descriptive title.
And it may be, it's actually pretty easy to understand.
Somebody who clicks on a thumbnail that says Donald Trump does backflip starts the video and says, where's the backflip?
And then when they don't get it in the first 30 seconds, they exit out.
Somebody who clicks on a video where it says like, let's go, and it's Trump pumping his fist are like, oh, watch this.
And they click it and they hang out to see what it's about.
They sit and listen to the full thing to understand what the full picture is.
So we've found tremendously more success with audience retention, audience growth, viewership, revenue, everything.
And the people who watch the videos are much, much happier for it.
That being said, for all the people who are kind of annoyed by it, I feel you, but I can only explain it as it is.
If it means that the show will do better and new people who are not initiated in politics are going to watch and listen and hear the arguments, it's all around just a good thing.
So there's not much we can do about it.
We always give the choice.
We do three and three, and everyone always chooses vague.
So we've done a couple of these as a joke where I did one ridiculous one with Thomas Massey and it got half a million views.
And then we did one last week where I'm like a million views, literally a million.
And I'm like, man, but you can't overdo it because it's like, but the truth is, if all of our videos were just me looking like I crapped myself and the title was like, he did it, million views every single time.
We'd be swimming in money.
But we don't do everything just because we want to generate revenue.
If you're clicking, if your motivation for clicking is this looks interesting, you're going to sit back to listen to everything to try and, you know, it feels kind of obvious, actually.
The people clicking the less information are sitting back and just absorbing everything we're saying to see what's all about.
And this is why yesterday didn't work out too well with Leonardo, because when I said who was being blackmailed, she just said the Epstein files exist.
And I was like, right, but like, which ones?
And she didn't know.
And the issue is not that she took offense to it as if I was needling her.
I mean, to be honest, if I was just doing the Socratic method of tell me more, tell me more, and you can't answer it, that's the point of Socratic method.
I literally just was asking her, like, who was being blackmailed by Israel?
Tell me.
I mean, I don't know.
And she couldn't.
And she got mad about it.
It's not intended to insult.
Like when I'm asking Luke the same things, it's articulate your worldview on this so that we can understand it better.
I get annoyed by a lot of these internet debates.
Like I've been watching, I don't know if you guys saw the Kyla versus Andrew Wilson.
We're going to wrap up, my friends, and head over to the uncensored portion of the show over at rumble.com slash Timcast IRL.
But I'm going to stress this once again.
You know, there's a big story happening in Texas.
We'll throw this one out there in the end for you guys.
The Lodge Poker Club is probably the premier poker brand poker location in the world, in my opinion.
I know some people will say, oh, that's silly.
It's not true.
But I've traveled around the country.
I've played in a lot of card rooms.
I've played a lot of tournaments.
I met a lot of people.
And I get asked a lot if I've ever played at the Lodge in Austin because it's so well known.
It's the biggest card club in Austin.
And I think in terms of independent brands, it is the premier one.
World Poker Tour works with them.
They invited me to a bunch of events.
I was going to be on one of their streams this weekend.
And then the Texas Alcohol Bureau Commission or whatever it's called, the TABC, raided them and shut them down.
And we don't exactly know why, but they've been doing something in Texas for a while where it is.
I want to stress this.
It is explicitly illegal to play poker in Texas.
And throw the poker aside and ignore the subculture element of it.
And I'll explain it like this.
People often say running this particular business in Texas is a gray area or loophole.
When you ask them what that means, they say, well, it's because it's not illegal, but stop you there.
Is there a law saying you cannot do this thing?
No, there isn't.
Okay.
Is it a widely accepted normal thing?
Yes, it is.
Is it literally named after the state?
Yes, it is.
Okay.
Then why are they trying to find reasons to ban it?
The assumption is that there are very powerful casinos that border the state that make a lot of money.
And if the state were to legalize anything related to gaming, it's going to cost them profits.
And so they are lobbying the government to go in and shut down legitimate legal businesses.
There is no law saying this.
So let's put it as simply as this.
You own a pizza restaurant and you sell pizza every day.
And because the state doesn't want you in this location, they come in and they make up fake reasons to find you and shut you down despite the fact it is explicitly legal.
So I will say I don't know any of the full details on what exactly is going on with the lodge or why they shut it down, but it does seem like the state has an issue.
And this is coming through the AG as well.
So I've got questions.
Why, if they don't want the business to exist, who is operating legally with lawyers, who is doing everything by the book, if you want to shut them down, you don't do it in this disgusting, unconstitutional way.
If you've got an issue with a business that's operating, you do it through the legislative branch and you do it normally.
I will not accept living in a state or in a country where they say the process is the punishment.
And to get our way, instead of passing laws, we will just investigate you indefinitely and shut you down.
And I will add to this, I am particularly pissed off because one of the reasons we come out of here is because it's such a great place to go and hang out.
There's a lot of great people there.
And now they've taken, I come on this trip.
I come to Austin and they take that away through illegitimate, unconstitutional, and disgusting means by force of government.
Like, you're talking about making more electricity while we can reduce the cost of electricity for these machines so that we don't really necessarily need more power plants.
You go to Erewhon and you look around and you dress like you are.
And then the young girls will come to you and they'll be like, wow, that's really cool.
Like, what do you do?
You'll be like, well, you know, I was on tour for a little bit, did some acting and stuff.
You know how it goes out in Hollywood.
And then when she starts getting up on you, you can be like, listen, if you're looking for a sugar daddy, I'm game, but I got to get to know you first.
So maybe give me a week or so.
And if I think you're chill, I'm going to hook you up.
Then she's got to find out till you're broken homeless for a long time.