The Pomp Podcast - #1513 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Bitcoin Rises As Trump Rebuilds The American Dream

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin, US economy, stock market, tax rates, tariffs, and how we can improve the future for millions of Americans.=====================Today’s episode is brought to you by Consensus. Consensus, crypto’s longest-running and most influential event, is coming to Toronto this May 14-16, 2025. Curated by CoinDesk, Consensus will welcome 20,000 builders, investors, policymakers, and pioneers shaping the future of the digital economy. From understanding Bitcoin’s potential amid regulatory shifts to exploring the latest innovations in digital assets and infrastructure, Consensus is your best bet to unlock market-moving intel, make meaningful connections and get business done. You can’t afford to miss it. As a listener of The Pomp, get smarter and get 15% off registration with the code POMP. Register now at go.coindesk.com/pomp=====================BitcoinOS is bringing Bitcoin into a new era. For the first time, Bitcoiners can access real DeFi across the entire crypto ecosystem, powered by revolutionary zero-knowledge technology. No more trusting sketchy bridges or giving up security. BitcoinOS reunites all of crypto around the chain where it all began. Follow BitcoinOS on twitter @BTC_OS and Be early to Bitcoin again.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a great conversation with Polina Pompliano. She's my wife, but she's also the founder and editor-in-chief of The Profile. In this conversation, we dig into some very complex topics. We talk about not only

what's going on with the Bitcoin price, which everyone's got an opinion on, but we also talk about what's going on in the United States of America, in the economy. Why is it that the working class got left behind over the last couple of decades? What is the current administration doing? Why are they letting the stock market go ahead and fall? And why does it seem like they're actually trying to help the working class more than the rich people? On top of that, we get into what my thoughts are around the tax rates, the tariffs, and many other things that have been implemented from an economic policy standpoint. This conversation dives into these topics. I don't have all the answers, but I'm trying to do my best to understand what's going

on, try to think about why we got here and what we can do to actually improve the future for millions of people. And I'd love to hear your personal opinions. What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? Let me know in the comments. It's always very helpful to get more feedback. That's how I learn. And hopefully you'll learn something from this conversation. So here's my latest conversation with Polina Pompliano. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular

investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by ConsenSys. They're the world's longest running and most influential gathering of the global crypto, blockchain, and AI communities. Curated by Coindesk, this prestigious annual event happens in Toronto, Canada on May 14th through the 16th, and it is set to welcome 20,000 builders, investors, policymakers, and pioneers shaping the future of the decentralized digital economy. From understanding Bitcoin's potential in a shifting regulatory landscape to the latest innovations in the digital assets and infrastructure, ConsenSys is your best bet to unlock market-moving intel, make meaningful connections, and get business done. You can't afford to miss it.

And because you listen to this podcast and you watch this show, you get 15% off registration if you use the code POMP15. Go to CoindeskPomp.com. Again, that's CoindeskPomp.com to register now. Once again, go to C-O-I-N-D-E-S-K-P-O-M-P.com and use code POMP15 for 15% off your Consensus Toronto tickets today. Today's episode is brought to you by Bitcoin OS. Bitcoin OS is the ultimate upgrade to Bitcoin. Bitcoiners can now experience the magic of the entire crypto world, including DeFi, scalability,

privacy, and more. But you don't have to give up control of your hard-earned sats. Bitcoin OS is powered by revolutionary zero-knowledge technology, and they let other blockchains plug into Bitcoin, offering their service to the world's largest digital asset. This lets Bitcoin holders securely move their coins across the crypto landscape, turning Bitcoin into a productive, programmable asset. Putting your Bitcoin to work once meant trusting centralized companies and bridges to protect your assets, a model that's lost crypto owners billions to hacks and fraud. BitcoinOS lets you be your own BOS, using a

system based on cryptography rather than trust, the way Satoshi intended. Using BitcoinOS, altcoins are returning home, eager to plug into Bitcoin security, network effects, and $2 trillion capital base. Bitcoin is the first and final BOS of all digital assets and will soon be reborn as the foundation of a united crypto world. Follow BitcoinOS on Twitter at BTC underscore OS. Again, that's at BTC underscore OS and be early to Bitcoin again. All right, Plano, what's the first topic? All right. So let's start with the current state of Bitcoin right now. What's going on? It is currently at 87,629. Well, I think that there's a lot of investors who they're being cautiously optimistic right now. When Trump got elected back in November, there's a ton of people

who were exuberant, right? Hey, we've got a pro-business, pro-growth, pro-technology person coming into the office. Obviously, he's pro-Bitcoin as well. And so they started to deploy a lot of capital. Now, what a lot of people forget is that markets are forward-looking. So they start deploying capital, looking forward to what is going to happen. And so you had this huge run up in asset prices, stocks went up, Bitcoin went up, etc. Now, when Trump got into office, he's delivered on a lot of his plans in terms of he pardoned certain people, he was able to establish the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. He really started to try to fulfill a number of the campaign promises. Now, at the same time he's doing that stuff, he's also fulfilling campaign

promises that may not be good for asset prices. So he is trying to cut government spending. A huge reason why asset prices continue to go up is because the government is spending out of control, where they're devaluing the dollar. If the dollar is being devalued, then asset prices push higher. On top of that, he is also putting tariffs on, taking them off, and he's playing this negotiating game, which creates uncertainty. And so the reason why I call it cautious optimism is because people are optimistic in the medium to long term. They think that an America first strategy. They think that Donald Trump and this administration are going to be good for the economy, for companies, and for asset prices. But in the short term, they're very cautious because

there is so much uncertainty. There's kind of this chaotic negotiating that's going on. And so naturally, when people are uncertain or they are cautious, what do they do? They want to seek safety. And so what you've seen is you've seen them go into certain assets where they're not being allocated to Bitcoin or other things. Now, the interesting thing about Bitcoin is that Bitcoin still is treated by some portion of the population as the savings technology that is their safety. But another portion of the population looks at it as a risk asset. And so what you're starting to see now is that more and more capital is flowing into the market via ETFs or other mechanisms that are coming from people who look at Bitcoin as a risk asset, not as a savings

technology. So historically, the like retail investor, they just dollar cost average into Bitcoin. They never sell their Bitcoin. And it really is something that did not have a lot of price sensitivity to it. You saw this in prior drawdowns of 80% where a very large portion of people just wouldn't sell their Bitcoin, even though it had dropped so significantly. That's not how Wall Street operates. Wall Street looks at things as risk on or risk off. And right now they're going risk off. And when they go risk off, the things that are on the chopping block in their portfolio are things like Bitcoin. And so naturally you're seeing them say, hey, look, I'm going to let this cool off a little bit. Now, Bitcoin is still up more than 100% from when the

ETFs were actually approved, right? I think it was trading at like $40,000. We're now at almost $90,000. So over the last 15 months or so, Bitcoin has still had this incredible performance. It's just that everyone wants to look at the local high, which was $108,000, $109,000. They're like, oh my God, it's coming down. This is very natural in a bull market to have these kind of 30% drawdowns. And so what I think that tells you is that we're still in a bull market. it's still structurally exactly kind of what you would expect. The numbers are just getting much, much bigger now. Now you're seeing $30,000 swings, where maybe historically you saw hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars now. And so I think

it's just a combination of kind of natural stuff in a Bitcoin market, along with the macro environment and investors really saying, hey, let me kind of see how this plays out here. And once I get some clarity, then I'll start to deploy capital back into the market. Do you think, and remind me because I haven't been fully paying attention to this, but does this have anything to do with the crypto digital asset stockpile that he has versus the Bitcoin one, et cetera? So basically what they did is there is a strategic Bitcoin reserve. It's only Bitcoin. Okay. That is strategic in nature.

And it is really considered, in my opinion, the same thing like the gold strategic reserve. right? It is something that the country wants to get a bunch of and they want to continue to hold. I think the market is significantly underpricing the odds that the current administration is going to be maniacal about acquiring more Bitcoin. I think that everyone is sitting there saying, oh, they're going to put the 200,000 Bitcoin in there that we already have. That's cute. I think these guys are going to be psychopaths in acquiring more Bitcoin. They're going to find as many budget neutral ways that they possibly can to go buy more Bitcoin. So that's the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Then you have the digital asset stockpile. That digital asset stockpile

is assets that we already have through confiscation from law enforcement or whatever. And these are cryptocurrencies outside of Bitcoin? Everything other than Bitcoin. Those are going in the stockpile. Now, it's not very strategic. And they're saying they're not going to buy more of that. So it's only the United States is focused on buying more Bitcoin, not more digital assets in general. And so really what they're saying is like, hey, we're going to hold on to things that have been confiscated because the law enforcement activities. And then Bitcoin is really the strategic asset. Now, I actually agree with that idea with one twist. So they've separated Bitcoin from the crypto assets. I know

a lot of people who are like, look, I'm not a Bitcoin maximalist, but I still think Bitcoin should be the only strategic asset. I know a lot of people who fall in that camp. With these other ones, I think we should actually sell the other crypto assets to buy more Bitcoin. So rather than basically hold the equivalent of tech lottery tickets, no different than a tech stock. The United States isn't in the business of buying Apple stock or Amazon stock or anything else. So the same thing should be true of the crypto assets. So sell these other crypto assets, buy more Bitcoin. We've already established that Bitcoin is the strategic asset. That's the thing that we should be focusing 100% of our time on. But look, the president and his administration,

they reserve the right to kind of figure out what their strategy is going to be. And right now, they've set up a strategic Bitcoin reserve, a digital asset stockpile. There are two different things. And Bitcoin is the only thing that they're focused on trying to buy more of. And I think that people are significantly underpricing just how much they're going to be able to buy. Understood. Stocks have been jumping yesterday and today on optimism that Donald Trump may hold back from implementing some of his wide ranging tariff plans. Bitcoin's price jumped 3% on the news from 84K to 88K. Meanwhile, uncertainty about the economy has led investors to look beyond the US stock market for gains. The whole tariff situation, is this just, I mean, I feel like it's

like whiplash. One day he's doing it, the other day he's not. Is this just a negotiating tactic, like what's going on here? Well, I think that it's both. There's definitely negotiating leverage that's being generated from this. If you say to somebody, we're gonna put a 25% tariff on you and they say, we're gonna cut off electricity to the United States from Canada and you come over the top and say, fine,

now the tariff's gonna be 200%, guess what they do? They call up and say, let's talk. So there's definitely negotiating that's happening. Along with that though, is Trump ran a tariff experiment in 2018. He issued very specific tariffs, prices of those assets actually went down, not up. He was able to lower federal income tax level,

simultaneously. And so that experiment, I think, is being extrapolated. He's now going to go to this tariff era. And so what he's doing is he's now issuing blanket tariffs. And a lot of people don't like this. They're worried about it, whatever. But you have to bring back American manufacturing. And so if you go back to the start of America, the reason why we had a 5% tariff on all imports was because we wanted to protect American industries. You had this fragile kind of industrialization that was starting and you wanted to be able to build these industries. So what do you do? You punish external producers and you reward the domestic producers. Well, look at the situation we have right now. You can't argue that these industries are necessarily

in their infancy. There's many things like steel, et cetera, that have been around for literally centuries. But you could argue that they're actually very fragile, right? Look at something like wood. The Canadian producers of certain lumber are being subsidized by their government and it gives them an advantage to flood the American market with cheap wood. Okay, great. Well, if you're going to go and subsidize your producers and the United States is not, you now are giving your people an advantage. So for us to level the playing field, we should put a tariff on that wood

so that now American producers can produce wood at a competitive price to the Canadians. It's not like Canada has some special technology to create wood that we don't have, right? Instead, it is that they're being subsidized by their government. And so anytime that a government is intervening in a market, what they are trying to do is they are trying to create an advantage, whether that is an advantage in their economy for some of their manufacturers and producers or whatever. So now the United States, who historically has said, we're going to try to play this global free trade game. Everything should be unsubsidized, no tariffs, et cetera. We're waking up and we're realizing people have been taking advantage of America. And so the same way that our founding fathers were worried about Europe taking advantage of America and crushing the American industries, they are use this playbook of tariffs.

The U.S. today is doing the same thing, but it's not necessarily industries in their infancy. Now, what we're just saying is there's a lot of industries that are not going to be able to be competitive on a global stage unless we do this. So guess what happens? If you go and you put tariffs on certain products, if you're an American consumer, if you don't want to pay the higher prices of the imported goods, then buy the domestically produced ones, right? That's the whole point of the tariff is you are actually creating an incentive. People always look at tariffs as punishment, but tariffs are an incentive. What they are telling you is you can pay lower prices for domestically produced goods. The whole idea of buy American goods, support American workers, support American businesses. That was a political statement previously that people would talk about. They'd go to rallies, they'd yell at it, sounded good from politicians on stage, whatever. Now, economic policy is starting to implement this, but here's the dirty secret.

it. There's a bunch of people who are going to come to the United States and they are going to actually go and make investments in the U.S. Since Trump took office, there's been $3 trillion, trillion with a T, of announcements of investments in America. Saudi Arabia said they're going to do $600 billion. UAE said they're going to do $1.4 trillion. And how realistic is that? How could we hold them to that? I don't think that you can necessarily be like, well, you promised, right? What I think ends up happening is exactly what's playing out, which is we created an incentive. They want to come here. They want to invest here, right?

Because, you know, the thing that I always say is that America is the major leagues of capitalism. Point blank, period. We are the major leagues. If you're a capitalist, if you're a business executive, if you're a founder, if you're an investor, you're playing in the little leagues anywhere else in the world. Come to the major leagues. We've got the most robust capital markets. We've got the highest density of entrepreneurial, ambitious people. we have, I would argue, the best economy with the most valuable consumers, all these things.

Everyone wants to be successful in America. And so guess what these people who have all this capital want to do? They want to service the American market. And so it's not just countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia. You also have TSMC. I think they announced $20 billion. NVIDIA, I think they announced $20 billion. Apple, they announced something like $100 billion. You see all these announcements happening and you say to yourself, these people want to do business in America. They want to invest here. And some of it may be that there's incentives and they feel like America is open for business and business people are in charge and like, let's go. And some of it's going to be a stick. There's gonna be a lot

of people who say, if I don't do this, I'm going to get tariffed. And so what it does is it opens conversation. Like let's talk about a computer chips, right? This is something that I think people don't quite wrap their head around yet. The United States wants to go ahead and incentivize the production of these silicone chips in the United States. We can't be reliant on other countries for the production of one of the most important physical products for the next 20, 30, 50 years, right? So an easy way to do that would be just tariff all of the chips that are coming into the United States and incentivize domestic production. Great. But the problem is the demand is so heavy for those chips that when you put the tariffs on, if the prices rise, there's a lag

period before the American manufacturing can get up and running. So, what you have to do now is you have to play a game where there's an intersection of economics, of human psychology and incentives, of geopolitics, of national security. All of these things are coming together. I think that's why you see so many smart people coming from the business world that now are interested in the political stuff because they're realizing this is a global complex game. And if we actually want to create solutions for America, we're going to have to figure this out. And so, I don't envy the people in these positions, but what I do know is that previously we were trying to solve the problems, but it's like we were blindfolded, right?

We were like, okay, well, I can, I have some of my senses. I can hear, I can touch, maybe I can smell, right? I got a couple of things that I can do, but all of a sudden we're taking the blindfold off. We're saying we got way more tools. We got way more senses that we can use to try to solve this problem. Imagine if I tried to solve the puzzle. Now I can see, obviously I got a better shot of doing it.

The US government's showing up and they're saying, look, we got carrots. We got sticks. We got negotiating. We got diplomatic efforts. We got all these different things. We want to do business. We want to figure out and solve our problems by having an expanded tool set that gives us higher odds of actually being successful in doing that. Yep. That's interesting. So the New York Post had this article that broke down the price action of Bitcoin since Trump took office. And it says the post-election boom pierced $100,000, leading bulls to speculate that seven digits were next as pro-crypto President Donald Trump prepared to take office. Then a day after the inauguration, a slide of more than 20% began.

But just to zoom out a little bit, I also saw an article on how CNBC conducted this massive CFO survey. And 95% of CFOs said policy is impacting their ability to make business decisions. And many said while Trump is delivering on promises, his administration's approach is too chaotic, disruptive and extreme for business to navigate effectively. And they believe that a recession is coming before the end of 2025. So if the general sentiment is that a recession may come, it makes sense as to why Bitcoin is down, stock market is down, etc. But do you think that this is part of trump's plan of like short-term pain to incentivize long-term prosperity or what do you think it is i haven't said this publicly yet but um i think that donald trump in his first term

was donald trump i want to make you know uh business thrive stock market go up rich people get richer kind of like donald trump for 70 years right like just like because it is interesting that the stock market is down and he's okay with it. I noticed that too. You meant millionaires and billionaires. That was Trump 1.0. I do think that Trump 2.0, there's two things that happened. One, he knows he's got four years.

This is his last run, right? And two is he almost died. He got shot. And I think that as somebody who has been around a lot of people who have gone through pretty significant events like that, it changes you. it really does change you. And he's getting up there in age. I think he's thinking a lot more about legacy and his reputation, you know, once he's no longer here, then maybe he wasn't his

first term. The first term was kind of like, you know, you're having blasts, you're having fun. But if you think about it, it's kind of like going back to college, right? Like when you go to college the first time, you probably spend a little bit too much time partying. You don't take things as seriously as maybe you should. Let's go into college again. Well, but if you went back now. If you went back. Right. You probably would take certain things way more seriously. And sure, you might do a little partying here and there, but also you may feel like I'm a little too old for this. Right. In a weird way, Trump is like going back to college. He's going back to the White House. And by going

back to the White House, now he's realizing, OK, I had my fun the first time. Now it's about legacy. And so here's the thing that he's doing that I think is surprising people. Donald Trump is more focused on the working class than he is on the wealthy class okay wait let me just play devil's advocate here he is surrounded himself with billionaires and millionaires and the richest people on the planet elon musk jeff bezos etc don't you think that whether he thinks about it or not there's an unconscious you know wanting to make those people rich and make those people like him versus the working class that yes, like they are the engine of America. But, you know, he has No, because the great lie in the critics of capitalism is the way that you get wealthy

is that you make life better for the people that you serve. It's all about service. So why is Jeff Bezos wealthy? Because he literally helps every single person in the United States of America press a button on their phone and stuff shows up. He brought the cost to access these goods down so low. That's why everyone uses the product. He literally brought cheap prices for goods to the entire country. It's the same reason why is Sam Walton rich? Sam Walton got rich because he brought low cost prices to your local neighborhood. Why is Elon Musk rich? Because he built the best car at a very low price. He drove the price down. Tesla's used to be over a hundred thousand dollars per car. He drove the price down. So you're saying that Trump would actively

take a stance that maybe is at odds with the billionaires and millionaires? No, what I'm saying is that the billionaires, people think that they're like sitting behind some curtain and they're like have this evil plan to extract all this value. But what I'm explaining is that the way that you build wealth is that you bring value to other people. It's all in service. So the reason why these people are all rich is because they brought value to other people. Now, what Trump is realizing is if you actually want to have a profound impact on the largest portion of the population, you have to help the working class. Now, he courted the working class. He went and he got the unions and he went and he got the longshoremen and he went

and he got and just name all these different organizations. Many of them, frankly, that have been trying to hold america hostage through all their different demands etc for years and years and years trump was able to actually unify that working class and they switched parties they used to support the democrats go talk to these groups they don't support the democratic party anymore they switched to the republican party and the reason why i think that happened and this is something that people completely uh missed but in hindsight now it's obvious and i missed it as well donald trump is a democrat running the republican party he's a democrat for decades he ran as a republican and what he has done is he has morphed the republican party they now share many of the

values the democrat party used to serve yeah so you're saying there's like it's been a convergence of there's been a swapping so think about this right um there's videos of hillary clinton and barack obama and all these people talking about close the border yeah right now it's the republican saying that uh uh anti-war did republicans used to be not close the border no but it wasn't like it wasn't a thing that they were like they were sitting on right but the democrats used to believe that anti-war trump is the first president in like 40 years during his first term that did not start a new war right he's actively he ran on the idea that if i get into office i am going to stop the wars i'm going to create these ceasefires etc and so he actually and he's publicly talked about this

He doesn't like war. He thinks innocent people die. He's very, I would say, deterrence through strength. But I would argue he's a very anti-war. He does not want to engage in wars. He does not want to send people to die, all this kind of stuff, which I think is commendable. But that used to be a very strong Democrat talking point. And so you just go through these different topics, right? Now, I'm not arguing that it's been 180 degree swap, but I think that there has been much more of the democrat ideals that are now in the republican party than maybe otherwise what was that video you were watching with the woman who identifies as a torch bill maher yeah yeah and basically one of the things that she said in there is like which party actually believes more in

equality think about this for a second right the party that says we're going to judge you by your skin color through uh race-based quotas that we are going to deny certain people the right to get into a college, not on test scores, but on their skin color, all these different things, right? Who is going to allow men to compete in women's sports? You just go through all this stuff, right? Versus the other side, which says, hey, it should be based on merit. There should be a fairness of opportunity, blah, blah, whatever. And so when you look at this and you say to yourself, it's the same ideals. And I think that's why you saw such a big portion, a huge portion of the population used to vote Democrat, right? They would win the popular vote, all this

kind of stuff. Why did they do that? Because they believed in these ideals. And I'd argue they're American ideals. Things like meritocracy, Democrat participation, you know, all this kind of stuff. Because that shifted over to the Republican Party now, you saw people shift. They actually don't have allegiance to parties. What they have is they have allegiance to ideals. Yeah. And as those ideals move to one candidate or another, they will shift. And we saw that. And it takes time, right? It's not an overnight thing. But somehow Donald Trump was able to do It's such a mind pretzel. I mean, it really is. Right. Because it's like old school Democrats. Like if you have been around long enough, you probably do remember the Democratic Party of yesteryear. But if you're a Gen Z or who just started voting, you have no idea. You think that the Republican Party has always been this way. Of course. So if you go and you take a look at this like working class idea, right, is first of all, the working class has been hollowed out by the pursuit of globalism. So we basically said is the business people, right, the executives, the founders, the investors, they went and they pursued the cheapest labor possible.

They said, I want the most efficient supply chain. I want the cheapest labor, blah, blah, whatever. And so as they did that, they were literally taking opportunity away from what started out as a small portion of the population versus 5 percent, 10 percent, 20 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent. The working class in America now is a significant double digit percentage. And depending on who you ask, there's different percentages that are out there, whatever. But when you go and you look at that, a bigger and bigger portion of those people now actually are in a bad financial position, right? So you used to have kind of a lower class, a middle class, and an upper class.

That middle class got hollowed out. So now you pretty much have the wealthy and you got everybody else. And that everybody else, they're sitting there and they're saying, my life is not better off today than it was 40 years ago. I can't afford a home. The dollar's been devalued. The dollar lost 26% of its purchasing power since 2020. That means that $1 in 2020 now buys you 74 cents worth of goods.

Who the heck can do that? Lance Lampert over at Resi Club, he recently put out this piece where he said that the income needed to buy a typical US home used to be $52,000 in January of 2020, five years ago, $52,000 through financing and down payment, also $52,000 what you need. Today, you need in the mid 90,000s, which means that the income that is needed to buy a typical US home has increased 79% in the last five years. There's nobody who got a 79% increase in their salary. So what ends up happening is wages aren't keeping up with the price of homes. So somebody like Trump steps up and he says, okay, I'm not going to try to actually enrich the wealthy people. One of the stats that

people are completely ignoring that are his critics the billionaires of america have collectively lost over 400 billion dollars since trump got into office because of the stock market because the stock market went down all the stuff so 400 billion dollars trump 1.0 would be out there tweeting get the stock market back up he'd be doing all this stuff right whatever they're openly telling you howard lutnick scott besin all these guys we don't care about the stock market we're willing to deal with some pain in the stock market because we got to get interest rates down. If we get interest rates down, that means that people can get access to cheaper capital. They can go and they can buy a home. They can actually use that money. Credit card interest

rates will come down. The refinancing of the national debt will come down. All these things that are actually going to be middle, medium to long-term good for America. And so Elon Musk, who's obviously very kind of highly debated at this point, he personally has lost a hundred billion. A huge part of that is because we're slashing government spending. And so when you start to look through all these different things, you say to yourself, Trump 1.0 was exactly what everyone thought it was going to be. He was having fun. He frankly was kind of shooting from the hip. There wasn't a great plan. And they basically got drunk at the party and they were trying to enrich everybody, right? Trump 2.0, the big surprise is that he actually has said, I'm not

worried about the rich people. They've had a good run. Literally Scott Besson went on national television said the stock market has done very well those people will be fine but we got to go and we got to help the average american and so you see gas is at a four-year low gas prices in america have not been this low for the last four years egg prices have drastically fallen as much as 50 percent egg prices egg prices exploded because under i bought 15 eggs the other day well the reason why you did that is because there was twofold one obviously you have the kind of consumer inflation but on top of that there was a huge culling of uh all of the animals oh wait no the bird flu they killed off a bunch of the animals and so naturally it's a supply demand

issue now egg prices are down 50 the border was closed it literally took them four weeks and they closed the border it does feel like there's been a lot of action and momentum um i just wonder so so what do you think the biggest priority for them right now is interest rates Well, it depends on what part of the administration you're looking at. Right. Obviously, the Treasury Secretary and I think Trump get that interest rate down. You've got to get the interest rate down. They were trying to advocate for Jerome Powell to do it. Jerome Powell is operating as an independent person with the Fed, which I think is a good thing. But he's not going to get the interest rate down yet. And so Trump and Besant basically said, we're going to make you put the interest rate down. We're going to slow the economy. We're going to create uncertainty. We're going to use the tariffs. We're going to get this stuff down because they got to refinance a couple trillion dollars worth of debt. and also they know that it's good for the American people. If you go and you look at something like national security, you know, there's kind of this weird dynamic. You got to close the border.

Okay, we're doing that. You got to deport criminals. Obviously, that should be non-controversial. We're doing that. On top of that, we then have a conflict in Russia and Ukraine. And what you're basically doing, which no one wants to really admit or talk about, is you're basically negotiating against both of them.

It's not like the U.S. and Ukraine are sitting on the same side of the table and they're negotiating with Putin. And the U.S. definitely isn't sitting on the same side of the table with Putin negotiating against Zelensky. You have a three-way negotiation, right? Because what you're having to do is you're having to bring these two sides together.

You're basically playing referee. But while you're playing referee, from time to time, both sides are upset with you. And so you've got to bring these people together. On top of that, you then got the Houthis who are popping off and they're literally blocking shipping lanes. And so you're being held hostage

by people with a couple thousand dollars worth of equipment and so now we've got strikes going there so like you constantly have things going on all around the world oh by the way is china going to try to take taiwan what's going on in this area or this area what are we going to do with the you know uh gang members that are here in the united states but you're constantly trying to figure all this stuff out and that's just in national security yeah you haven't even yet got to okay well what are we doing in other areas uh that the government oversees so what are they focused on it's like what day is it right what's the most pressing fire they got to put out and then who are we trying to help today it is interesting because i think if you think about

the greatest leaders in the world it's always people who may not like be the smartest but i think it's always like the best negotiators if you think about like the people who have ended wars or like broad economic prosperity it's like people who can negotiate well look it's um there's a very weird dynamic where um this is true in business there's people who are crazy like i'd argue richard branson he does crazy stuff right but people respect him i argue that richard branson is pretty non-controversial even though he's a billionaire no of course but but i'm just i just mean like in the sense of he does crazy things right unexpected things he gets in hot air balloons whatever right then you can go and you can look at uh maybe there's athletes they do all kinds of

crazy things but people respect them because of what like what are the results and the one thing that i think uh the current administration is focused on hanging their hat on is what are the judges by the results right and so far there's a lot of positive momentum doesn't mean that they're going to continue doesn't mean that it'll end up being successful whatever you know i always go into these things and i say listen as an independent somebody who's registered as an independent somebody who tries to look at every single uh topic and try to evaluate what do i agree with what do i not agree with right which candidate all this kind of stuff the one thing that i do think is uh being very well received by the working class is the america first uh approach

because they feel like they've been left behind so you can call it populism you can call whatever you want but they feel left behind and they feel like now there's somebody who is in the white House who actually is advocating for them. You can see this in the polls about what percentage of Americans feel like the country is headed in the right direction. The most recent poll I saw was 44%, which sounds like, wait a minute, that means half the people don't think the country's in the right direction. 44% is the highest percentage since the early 2000s, almost 25 years it has been since this high of a percentage of the population believes we're heading the right direction. That's more than George Bush, more than Obama, more than Trump's first term, more

than Biden, all of them, right? And so you say to yourself, why is it that 44% of Americans believe we're heading in the right direction and the stock market's crashing? Because again, it goes back to the wealthy is actually a small percentage of the population. The people who are not happy because the stock market's going down, they're in the minority. It is that working class, that average American family. They're the ones who are saying, I need help. And they feel like finally somebody's paying attention. What's tricky is that media, financial media specifically, there are markers for success of an administration is the stock market. It's an easy thing to measure. How do you measure that the working class is getting ahead? Well, I think what you're going to

eventually want to see is you're going to see wage growth go up. You're going to want to see GDP. You're going to want to see home affordability improve. You're going to want to see crime go down. There's things that they can look at, but to your point, there's a daily ticker on that stock market. Right. And even, you know, my prediction is that we, by the end of this year, we'll have forgotten about this whole stock market decline. Right. Yeah. I think that by the end of this year, we'll literally be like, ha ha. Remember that market decline in the first half of the year? So you think, you think as, as early as later this year is the stock market going to recover? Yeah. And I'm sandbagging like, yeah, by the end of this year, I think people are

going to be like, oh yeah, that was funny. Like, can't believe we all were so worried about it. Well, I mean the stock market beyond just like, oh, rich people invest in the stock market. I do think that it um signifies the health of an economy maybe but you can also uh again it goes back to like if you are uh out of shape and you start working out you don't see all of a sudden that you're losing weight but you're doing all the right habits right and so over time the next thing you know you show up next summer got that six-pack you feel good about yourself right but no one really saw the work and so there's always this kind of like weird dynamic right where all your friends if you're out of shape, they're betting against you. They're like, no way you're

going to get in shape. Come on, man. You've been doing this for 10 years. You've been telling me nobody believes you. But you start to show signs and all of a sudden they see you next time. I'm like, you lose 10 pounds. Oh, you're looking good. Okay. Damn, maybe I need to go get in the gym. And all of a sudden, here you go. By next summer, got that ripped six pack. That's what the United States is trying to do. Can we get to a balanced budget? There's nobody in the world that believes we can get to a balanced budget. Well, they got a plan. They're going to try to go execute it let's see what happens right where there's things that are happening and so i think that there's also um a part of this where the working class one of the things that um is really

important is hope right like there's a lot of people who say i just want to feel like my government's not working against me and whether you agree or don't agree in a crazy way a real state billionaire from the democrat stronghold of new york city has convinced a large portion of the population that he's one of them he's a fighter but i think he the government has come after him that all these things and again i'm not saying whether that's a good thing a bad thing i'm just i'm stating a fact that you can see it in the polls you can see it in the surveys part of it is convinced them that he's one of them part of it is i don't know how much of it is we are the same where he is part of us as much as it looks aspirational a lot of voters grew up watching

um the apprentice the apprentice like they know trump tower it's more of an aspirational brand of i want to be rich too versus like he's part of our working class community but this is what i'm saying is yes there's an aspirational component but he now has also convinced a very large portion of the population that he is one of them because you know there's a reason why when he got uh um the mugshot right and the mugshot came out there was literally music videos getting created right saying my president's a felon and again whether you think that's true not being whatever right but like there's a bunch of people who were like wait a second this guy is being persecuted just like me in my neighborhood he knows what it's like

Yeah. A hundred percent. So again, it goes back to if you actually want to create change, right? You don't go from a top down perspective because that top down perspective, what we have found is that it leads to globalization. So what he's doing in a weird way is he's saying, I'm going to affect change, but I'm going to go bottoms up. And by going bottoms up, I'm going to do this. People talk about tax cuts, right? They want to keep the Trump tax cuts that are about to expire. They want to keep those. They're going to work hard to do it. I think they'll probably get it done. But when you hear Howard Lutnick go on television, he's not talking about tax cuts for Wall Street. Trump's not talking about continuing

to keep the carried interest tax treatment. He's saying that I'm going to actually tax rich people more by getting rid of that carried interest. He's explicitly said that. I don't think he'll get that done but i think rich people will throw a fit i thought the democrats were trying to get rid of carried interest i told you they're so they're switching sides right like recently so no they were trying to get uh unrealized games unrealized games so howard letnick goes on national television and he talks about we want to eliminate federal income tax for anyone that makes less than 150 000 a year that is a tax cut for the working class so now they're saying rather than do it for rich people,

just keep the current tax treatment for the rich people. Let's make it so that anyone with $150,000 or less of an annual income can pay 0% federal income tax. That would be one of the most profound things you could do for the American economy because now you would put all that money back into their pockets. And again, what are the odds of them being able to do that?

I don't know. I'll put it at 10%. Okay. Right now, it's very hard to see a world where they do it, but I love the idea. And there's tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of Americans that also love that idea. And so I think that is where you're seeing the shift. Now, what does that mean for investors, right?

We usually talk about finance and business stuff here. You have to understand that in the past, you had the safety net, especially with Trump in office. He ain't going to let the stock market go down, right? March 2020 happens, bam. We take a bazooka. We drop interest rates. We just fire money into the economy. We're back to all-time highs.

he's tweeting all time high, all time high, all time high, right? He's telling you that he doesn't care about the stock market right now. That's going to change. He's going to come back. He wants to coast across that finish line. Working class is strong. Stock market's up. Trump's a genius. Whatever, right? But right now, he's telling you that I can't help the rich people until I help the people who don't have a voice. And I think that's why you're seeing so many wealthy people, successful business people, et cetera, they've spent their entire lives thinking about their customers. Jeff Bezos is famous for obsessing over how do I get the lowest cost and the fastest delivery for my customers? Jeff Bezos isn't thinking about the billionaire

sitting in a tower somewhere ordering on Amazon. He's thinking about the literally millions of people in rural America who use his products, right? Same thing with an Elon Musk, et cetera. How do I get the cost down? If you're serving rich people, you try to get the cost up, they can pay more. But these people, they don't run luxury brands, right? They're running actual products that serve people. And so I think these people are like, wait a second, what if we could actually use the government to help the same cohort? And so I know a lot of people disagree with this, but that's my analysis of what's happening right now. And it's why the stock market is going down is because all the chaos, all the uncertainty, all the negotiating, all

the stuff that they're doing, they're not trying to make the stock market go up. Because guess what? If you want the stock market to go up, you wouldn't do any of it. You'd do the exact opposite, right? But if you want to actually bring back American manufacturing, if you want to bring back jobs, if you want to bring back a better situation where children believe their life is going to be better than their parents, which historically that's always been true, but recently it hasn't been. If you want that to happen again, you have to go and say, what are the problems that these people face? How do we actually solve it for them? And to be honest, it's pretty inspiring, right? We have some of the smartest people in our country who are all coming

together and they're not all perfect. They all say crazy stuff from time to time. They're going to make mistakes. All the things that people are going to critique them on. Some of it's true, but if they can pull off one thing if they can actually make sure that the working class is in a better spot by the time they leave office again just judging by the result you just got to give them hey tip of the hat you guys pulled it off because up until and would you be able to measure that at the end of four years you'll be able to see a lot again home affordability are their wages up right is inflation down you know is crime down like there's a bunch of stuff that you can measure And everyone's going to care about different things.

If you live in a major city, you're going to care about something different than if you live in a rural city, right? Whatever. But you'll be able to tell through a lot of these data points. And the thing about politics, everyone's going to debate it, right? So like they could improve every single metric and somebody somewhere would be like, yeah, but you know, this thing or whatever. Unforeseen side effect.

Of course. So like there is no perfect solution, but again, it just goes back to it. And I have this weird relationship. I live in New York City, right? it's not lost on me that all of my friends in these major cities they're not working class some of them may come from working class families or whatever but like dude you made it you got a great life right you gotta have all this opportunity and a lot of it's because of decisions you made right that you personally put yourself in the position you did the work you did

i get it all but your experience living in the united states of america today is very different than maybe people that i know from the army oh for sure or people that i played college within or I played football with in college. Or how we grew up. Or all these people that are from North Carolina, right? Friends that I have that live all across the country that I talk to consistently. And I say to them,

you live in a suburban area or in a rural area in name whatever state, what's going on there? It's depressing sometimes to talk to these people because they're telling you what's true. And you're like, I see my friends that are in this bubble over here and they got a great life. They got great opportunity. They got, you know, all the stuff financially, these people don't. And the differences, the people who live in the major city, who've got all the great life, they got

hope. They think everything's great. They're there. It's optimistic. Let's go. The people that aren't, they're looking at this and they're saying, this sucks. Yeah. How is this going to change. I don't think I can actually make decisions to change my life. And so, when you have the loss of hope, something's got to change. And I think that's really why people basically said, look, we got to go into the voting booth and we got to make a change. And so, I go back to this idea that maybe one of my flaws in life is I actually think the people who live in the metro, you know, kind of urban areas, a lot of them weren't born there. They didn't grow up there. Yeah. They have more experience than people want to give them credit for in other communities,

working class, you know, neighborhoods, things like that. Not everybody, but a lot of them. And they actually would love to see their kind of like all boats rise together. Yeah. They just don't know what to do. There's never been a reason for them to do it. And so they're just focused on their own what's in front of their face, build my business, make money, you know do whatever but now i do think in a weird way i mean we're talking about it right like people are now saying hey these people got left behind let's go help them yeah and i think everybody no matter where you live everybody is impacted by the same things even if you live you're rich in a big city you have to grapple with crime and like things like that it's not

You know, I'm always reminded, you know, in a weird way, one of the most impactful moments over the last maybe five years for me is, you know, that there's a program that I was involved with that was very focused on helping people learn financial education. And, um, these people, uh, lived in South Florida and, uh, the way that the program worked is, uh, they received some money every month that was supposed to be put into an investment account, that investment account, they weren't allowed to touch. Uh, and the way that they got the money each month, uh, was that they showed up to these, you know, uh, classes. And I remember I was, uh, I was helping teach one of the classes and, um, everyone was on zoom.

and there was a woman who she was moving around a lot and the camera was there. She would like go in and out of the frame. And I was like, what's this woman doing? And I remember I asked her something and she looked at the camera and like unmuted it. And it was super loud in the background. And then she said something I couldn't understand her. She went on mute again. And I remember like, now I'm like doing the rest of the class, but I'm trying to figure out where is this woman? And I realized she was working in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant. But she didn't want to miss the class because she wanted to learn the personal finance stuff. And so you have a woman who is in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant.

She was a single mom and she's got her AirPods in. She's got her thing there and she's trying to learn. And she's saying to herself, I can't miss this. And to me, that was the moment where I think it really hit home to me. It's like, all you have to do is give people opportunity. And most people will end up actually being able to put themselves in a better situation. it's just a lack of knowledge it's a lack of education it's a lack of opportunity and so i use that anecdote as um you know one simple story one simple example of what i think has

happened around this entire country is that there's a lot of people like that woman who if you give them opportunity they'll be able to figure it out it's just that again for two or three decades, we forgot about those people. Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Sorry, I didn't mean to make you cry. That's all I have for today. All right, guys. Thanks so much for watching.