In short
Hunter Biden discusses his finances and debt, political money’s influence, and universal grief/trauma/addiction. He also claims Meta’s Instagram algorithms contributed to teen girls’ self-harm, and argues companies often choose profit over safety. The episode ties these themes to “money equals power,” federal legal pressure, and how AI can accelerate research.
Guests
Hunter Biden (guest), interviewed by Graham (host, “Ice Coffee Hour”). Hunter Biden is a former lawyer and public figure; he describes his work in recovery and homeless prevention in Los Angeles, plus art and writing on Substack.
Key claims
- FBI has had physical possession of his laptop for over three years; he says it contains “evidence of crime” and that legal battles cost about $15 million.
- Federal prosecutors in Delaware are investigating whether he broke federal tax law.
- He argues moneyed interests shape contract policy via PACs and spending, especially after a Supreme Court decision enabling “unlimited money in politics.”
- He recounts a Meta whistleblower claim: from 2013-2017 Instagram use correlated with increased teen girls’ self-harm and that Meta found a causal link but “did absolutely nothing.”
- He says pain is a universal connector and should be treated as interpersonal, not only personal.
Notable examples
- Instagram teen self-harm internal study (2013-2017).
- Congress/industry lobbying and PAC targeting.
- His own legal-defense debt ($15M) and multi-agency involvement.
- Art pricing controversy: New York Post claimed $100k-$500k per piece; he says House Oversight subpoenaed buyers and legal testimony contradicted the implication.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Downfall of Hunter's Crypto Coin
0:30 to 1:21
Discussion on the failure of Hunter Biden's new cryptocurrency and legal troubles.
“Hunter Biden is now out with a new slap-top crypto coin, and it crashed and burned, losing almost all of its value.”
Hunter Biden's Podcast Appearance
1:22 to 2:15
Hunter Biden shares his reasons for joining the podcast and his thoughts on connection.
“Hunter Biden, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour.”
Addressing Division and Commonality
2:16 to 3:30
Hunter discusses societal division and emphasizes shared human experiences.
“But I just think that you do a really incredible job of asking really insightful questions.”
The Importance of Pain in Conversation
3:31 to 5:20
Hunter elaborates on the universal experiences of pain and its interpersonal connections.
“And I remember I did Bill Maher's show, and I like Bill, but it's a 10-minute format and it's not a two-hour format, which doesn't lend itself to kind of really kind of in-depth discussions.”
Personal Narratives and Public Perception
5:21 to 7:48
Hunter reflects on how his narrative has been shaped by public perception and media.
“I say this a lot, is that the one thing that a human being is guaranteed to experience in a lifetime, regardless of its length, is pain.”
Family Financial Philosophy
7:49 to 10:40
Discussion on Biden family financial beliefs and their implications on personal finance.
“Meaning that I didn't have any intention of further complicating a very, very difficult job of the administration in executing on their plan and their agenda, which is very different than mine.”
The Role of Money in Politics
10:41 to 12:59
Exploration of the influence of monetary interests in political decision-making.
“I think that it was actually an incredibly noble position to take to not own any stock.”
The Impact of Money in Politics
14:00 to 14:25
Discussing the staggering amounts of money involved in politics and its implications.
“And after the Supreme Court decision, basically there's unlimited money in politics now.”
Meta's Algorithms and Mental Health
15:26 to 18:31
Exploring the harmful effects of Instagram's algorithms on teenage girls' mental health.
“Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank.”
Personal Reflections on Money and Purpose
18:31 to 20:12
Reflecting on personal experiences with money and the values surrounding it.
“And to me, I just can't think of any example that is just more direct about how money impacts our health.”
Show all 44 chapters
Struggles with Student Debt and Early Career
20:12 to 21:16
Sharing experiences of managing student debt and early career challenges.
“And it revolved around the idea of service more than anything.”
Struggles with Student Debt and Early Career
21:19 to 21:43
Sharing experiences of managing student debt and early career challenges.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
Building a Business and Navigating Conflicts
21:43 to 27:42
Discussing the journey of building a business and the ethical dilemmas faced.
“Immediately out, I was a young father, a Yale Law graduate with no savings and about$165 ,000 in debt.”
Investing and Financial Responsibility
27:42 to 28:00
Exploring personal investment habits and the importance of financial education.
“Were you making like six figures, a million dollars?”
Hunter's Financial Responsibility
28:00 to 29:00
Discussing Hunter's approach to budgeting and investments.
“I mean, not because I was investing in other things.”
Current Jobs and Social Impact
29:00 to 30:50
Hunter discusses his current roles and their significance in helping others.
“You know, the common refrain from people, the trolls online is get a real job.”
Art as a Career
30:50 to 31:10
Introduction to Hunter's journey as an artist and his art pieces.
“Guys, these are two pieces of art that you can see behind Hunter and behind us.”
Art as a Career
33:04 to 34:10
Introduction to Hunter's journey as an artist and his art pieces.
“So now that you've got the back into your business handled.”
The Art Market and Misconceptions
34:23 to 37:12
Hunter clarifies the market value of his art and media misconceptions.
“My prices are a reflection of the market.”
Transparency in Art Sales
37:12 to 39:38
Discussion on selling art transparently and ethical considerations.
“And so then it was Hunter Biden was selling his art while his dad was president of the United States for$500 ,000 apiece.”
Hunter's Writing and Future Projects
39:38 to 42:04
Insight into Hunter's writing projects and personal reflections.
“What's the most you've sold a piece of art for?”
Utilizing AI for Research and Writing
42:04 to 45:51
Learn how AI can streamline research and writing processes.
“I felt about it, the internal emotions and reactions to events that were occurring to me as they occurred to me.”
Utilizing AI for Research and Writing
45:55 to 46:14
Learn how AI can streamline research and writing processes.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
AI's Impact on Society and Employment
46:18 to 53:00
Explore the potential benefits and challenges of AI on employment and society.
“for instance, works of long-form journalism, like Bob Woodward's books.”
The Burden of Legal Debt
53:01 to 56:00
Understand the challenges and implications of being $15 million in debt.
“How does that affect daily life being$15 million in debt?”
Navigating Legal and Financial Challenges
56:00 to 59:12
Discussion on the complexities of legal debts and financial recovery.
“Is it a specific individual or cohort of people that like give out those instructions and directions or is it just like this, you know?”
Navigating Legal and Financial Challenges
59:18 to 1:00:40
Discussion on the complexities of legal debts and financial recovery.
“subscription platform on Substack, and I have two jobs.”
Building Wealth Amidst Debt
1:00:50 to 1:10:01
Exploration of strategies for wealth building while managing debt.
“One more time, that is Shopify.com slash ICH, or just click the link down below in the description to get started today.”
The Dynamics of Crypto Community Engagement
1:10:01 to 1:12:03
Learn about the speaker's beliefs in the crypto community and its political implications.
“World Food Program and believing in digital money, micro transactions, and the idea of the democratization of finance.”
Challenges in Coin Launch and Charity Goals
1:12:04 to 1:15:56
Explore the challenges faced during a coin launch and the intentions for charitable contributions.
“And instead of deploying, even if they had deployed 20 % of it or 10 % of it, instead they deployed less than 1 % of it and it completely ruined the launch.”
Navigating Public Perception and Risks
1:15:57 to 1:20:16
Understand how the speaker navigates public perception and the risks associated with their actions.
“This was something that I thought was an opportunity, and I still do, to talk to an entirely different audience.”
The Future of Cryptocurrency and Meme Culture
1:20:17 to 1:21:44
Discuss the potential of cryptocurrency and meme culture in shaping financial futures.
“But the way that the community used NFTs was somewhat predatory.”
The Future of Cryptocurrency and Meme Culture
1:22:32 to 1:22:51
Discuss the potential of cryptocurrency and meme culture in shaping financial futures.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
Commitment to Transparency and Accountability
1:22:52 to 1:24:00
Learn about the importance of transparency and accountability in managing crypto projects.
“Is it also, you know, kind of live and learn.”
Understanding Coin Market Dynamics
1:24:00 to 1:25:40
Explore the challenges and dynamics behind launching a cryptocurrency and market reactions.
“And before the podcast, when we ask you, hey, is there anything off limits?”
Navigating Cryptocurrency Experiences
1:26:05 to 1:33:35
Discuss the complexities and personal experiences of cryptocurrency investment and its implications.
“How much volume then was actually transacted during that time period?”
Financial Goals and Economic Insights
1:33:35 to 1:38:04
Delve into personal financial goals and the broader economic concerns affecting the U.S.
“But I know that that is something that is, that I just can't walk away from things anymore.”
Understanding Wealth and Taxes
1:38:04 to 1:43:26
Learn how billionaires navigate taxation and the implications for society.
“Number one is to come to terms with how we are going to continue to organize and run our entitlement programs.”
Understanding Wealth and Taxes
1:43:36 to 1:43:54
Learn how billionaires navigate taxation and the implications for society.
“practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
The Role and Impact of USAID
1:43:54 to 1:46:30
Explore the significance of USAID and its contributions to global humanitarian efforts.
“Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+.”
Rapid Fire Questions with Hunter Biden
1:46:30 to 1:51:41
Engage with Hunter Biden's candid responses on various topics and personal insights.
“I think it's the greatest power of the United States of America is the idea of who we are.”
Debating Political Perspectives
1:52:03 to 1:52:52
The hosts discuss challenging political beliefs and the difficulty of changing minds.
“And who the hell lets you back on this campus?”
Journey to Culinary Success
1:53:18 to 1:54:04
A discussion about the guest's transformation into a successful chef and YouTuber.
“So you started out as an overweight teenager who loved food, and now you're shredded, rich, successful YouTuber with 10 million subscribers.”
Challenges in the Restaurant Industry
1:54:04 to 1:54:49
Exploration of the realities and difficulties faced in the restaurant business.
“This is my new restaurant, which officially opens today.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:28This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden is now out with a new slap-top crypto coin, and it crashed and burned, losing almost all of its value. What was going through your mind when you saw it go from 50 to 30? Oh, fuck. So the FBI has had physical possession of Hunter Biden's laptop for more than three years. Now, on that laptop is indisputable evidence of crime. Regardless of whether you get indicted or convicted, it can... How much is that debt? for fighting those legal battles. Like about$15 million. The real power in Washington, D.C. is money.
1:07The federal government's power is beyond anything that you can remotely imagine. With federal prosecutors in Delaware investigating Hunter Biden and whether he broke federal tax law. By the way, this is, we can edit this part out. It's off the record. Are aliens real or are they? We should probably stop the cameras. Okay.
1:29Hunter Biden, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour. Thanks for having me. So I'm very curious, why agree to do the podcast? Oh, I think you're fascinating. I love the guests that you have on. I watch you all the time. And I think you ask really insightful questions. And the truth of the matter is, is that I usually learn something when I'm listening to you. I really appreciate that, man. Thank you. What do you have to gain from coming on, though? Well, for me, it's an opportunity to talk to people who I think have an enormous amount of influence in a category of listeners that most of the people that are my age and political persuasion don't necessarily have a chance to talk to.
2:11And I know that you guys are equal opportunity in terms of apolitical and most everything. But I just think that you do a really incredible job of asking really insightful questions. So maybe I get to learn something myself. More than anything, that's what it's about. What's the message that you hope viewers could take away from this? I think that we're fed, particularly at this moment in time, this algorithm that we're so divided, that things are so desperate, that we are on the verge of a civil war, so to speak, literally or figuratively. And while all of that may seem true, and I truly believe that our algorithms are not our reality.
2:56I think that if people just think about themselves in their own personal lives and think about their neighbors and think about the aspirations of their neighbors in their community, the truth is that we all share far more in common than we do have differences with each other. One of the things that I've noticed, you've done a lot of podcasts recently. You've talked about a lot as well. And when we were doing research for our episode, we didn't want to cover the same things that you've talked about every single time. And I am curious, what is something you wish other people had asked you? We kind of always touch this topic of universal pain that everyone experiences, but I don't really ever get to go in-depth about it.
3:40And I remember I did Bill Maher's show, and I like Bill, but it's a 10-minute format and it's not a two-hour format, which doesn't lend itself to kind of really kind of in-depth discussions. But I said to him, I said, I don't think we get to talk about issues like grief and addiction and trauma nearly enough. And he goes, I think we talk about it all the time. And in one respect, it's true, is that it's something that gets mentioned, but never really in depth. And I think that's one of the ways that I have been able to connect with people more than anything is not they don't associate out with me.
4:18Instead, they identify with me because of my experiences. And so not everybody was addicted to crack cocaine, and not everybody had my experience in terms of that becoming a widely, widely talked about public person. But everybody has a brother that has, you know, so to speak, that has dealt with addiction. Everybody has a loved one. I've never met anyone that hasn't been impacted by it in some way. And with me, there's this piece that because of who my father was and because of the notoriety that I've received because of negative kind of conspiratorial press that involves politics, you would think that people wouldn't find a connection, but it's the exact opposite.
5:08They have found a connection in the way in which I've been, I think, particularly for someone in my position, radically honest about not just my past, but my present. So what do you think is then left out of the conversation about grief and trauma and abuse that should be included? The pain is the universal connector. I say this a lot, is that the one thing that a human being is guaranteed to experience in a lifetime, regardless of its length, is pain. It's not love. It's not any other emotion. It is the experience of pain. And that pain can take many forms. Some of it's self-inflicted. Some of it is not.
5:54And I think that what we don't necessarily talk about is the role of that pain in the way in which people treat each other. You're saying then that this pain that everyone is guaranteed to experience is mostly seen as a personal experience. But what you're saying is that it's more interpersonal. That it's more of like a language, like a communication thing that everyone experiences. And that's the thing that we should observe as opposed to pain solely being a personal experience. Exactly. Again, it's this whole idea, back to what I originally said, it is a way in which we can identify with each other, not a way in which we identify out from each other.
6:36And you are just articulated much better than I have over the course of the last few months. But that's exactly right. Yeah. So what do you feel like people get wrong about you? Oh, I think that they get a lot of things wrong based upon a narrative that has been spun for close to seven years before I started to speak for myself. You know, when my name kind of became ubiquitous, it was by no intention on my part. I had led a relatively private life in a very public family. I'm camera shy in some ways. Not that I didn't have a lot of opinions and a lot to say and a lot of experience to talk about things that I cared about.
7:18But the truth of the matter is, is that I usually shied away from them. When that happened, you know, I didn't really have an opportunity over the course of the last seven years to speak for myself for a couple reasons. One, if you're under investigation from the Department of Justice, as a former lawyer myself, I can tell you is keep your mouth shut and follow the direction of your attorneys and don't make matters worse. That was part of the reason. And the second part of the reason is, is that I have a very, very close relationship with my dad, but I never, ever involved my dad in myself, in my father's politics and policy in office.
7:59Meaning that I didn't have any intention of further complicating a very, very difficult job of the administration in executing on their plan and their agenda, which is very different than mine. Speaking of your dad, he had previously said, because we're mostly a finance podcast at the end of the day, we talk about economics and personal finances. Your dad previously said that he vowed to never own a stock. I was curious if those financial beliefs transferred over to you as well. Oh, no. Let me explain why he said that. He got elected to the United States Senate at the age of 29 in 1972. And the story of the day at that time during that election, it was pre Watergate, but it was post Spiro Agnew who had resigned as vice president.
8:59And the reason that he had resigned had to do with whether I forget whether it was stock manipulation or, you know, he took stock from a donor and then basically he was getting paid off. And so during that campaign, he made a commitment that he would never own a stock or a bond for this reason, is that it is a United States senator has an almost unlimited ability to impact policy that affects every company in the world. And excuse me, at least every company in the United States, every and particularly every publicly traded company. And so he had made a commitment not to own a stock or a bond, to never have that conflict of interest.
9:49And he kept that commitment. Now, of course, you know, he has a retirement account and he has his, you know, Senate pension and his vice presidential and presidential pension. And I'm sure those pensions are, you know, disassociated from him, invested into the market in whatever way that retirement funds are. But he never has personally. He kept that commitment the entire time. Sometimes I get a little angry that he did that. And that's what we're trying to promote to the viewer is that it's not a bad thing. No, by the way, not at all. And that's 100 % not even remotely a bad thing. But it is an inherent conflict of an interest for somebody that is serving in Congress, serving in the executive branch, serving as a United States senator in the House of Representatives.
10:39And if people that have that kind of authority cannot set aside and put in like blind trust, truly, truly blind trust while they serve, then I don't think that they should be serving. I agree with you. I think that it was actually an incredibly noble position to take to not own any stock. However, he could have got, in my opinion, the exact same effect, maybe 95 % of that effect saying, I'm never going to buy an individual company. I'm only ever going to buy index funds. Yeah. Well, here's another thing about that. Okay. You're absolutely right, is that the Biden family could have used some financial literacy for a very long time.
11:18And the other side of it is this. My dad never had any money to buy any equity. You don't get paid well as like a senator? Well, I mean, in 1972, I think that the salary of a United States senator was like$46 ,000. And it went up when I think in the 80s, maybe early 90s. And don't hold me to these numbers. Yeah, sure. But, you know, I think over the course of the 36 years that he served, I think that his probably average salary was about$175 ,000 a year. Maybe not even. Actually, if you include those earlier years in the 70s and early 80s. And I know people are not going to believe me about this because you think United States Senator, oh, they're all rich.
12:01Well, 90 % of them that come into the United States Senate come in already rich because of the fact that it is not a place to go to make money if you're not making money on the side. And he was not making money on the side. And there's very, very few ways to do that today in Congress other than by buying individual stocks and trading in the way that we see many of the members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have done. And it's been made public over the course of the last several years. And remember, this is a recurring thing that comes up and then they don't do anything. But it comes up and people get pissed off.
12:45Why don't they do anything? because take a guess who's benefiting from it yeah right and who's actually going to do anything to who has the power to change it so the people who have the power to change it don't want to change it yeah because they're the only people that benefit and they benefit enormously from it but and by the way not just remember who else benefits from it is the companies yeah exactly the people look the real power in washington dc is um is uh is money and it's and it's not the way most people think. It's not by making an individual congressperson a millionaire. It's not a personal financial benefit, the vast majority of people who go serve in the Senate or the House of Representatives.
13:31What the real power is, is the way in which moneyed interests are able to impact contract policy that is important to them. And so if you're the pharmaceutical industry, you spend hundreds of millions of dollars. And what you do is you have, you know, targeted ad campaigns in certain districts, and you are able to give money to PACs that support Congress people, you know, that support whatever position that you want them to take. The amount of money is staggering. And after the Supreme Court decision, basically there's unlimited money in politics now. What is the biggest deal that you've seen behind closed doors?
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15:52brand. Visit cash.app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. What is the biggest deal that you've seen behind closed doors? And I think it was 2022, 2023, there was a whistleblower and she was a senior executive and she brought a raft of information of documents and documentation from internal documentation from Meta. The story that she came to tell was this, is that beginning in 2013, when Instagram went live to like 2017, the rate among teenage girls between the ages of 13 and 17 grew exponentially. Likewise, the rate of teenage girls in that age category that were admitted to the hospital for extreme self-harm even grew even at a greater pace than that.
16:42Okay. And meta question, because many doctors and others did and families complained directly to Facebook and their product Instagram, is that it was that they were the cause, that the algorithms being fed to these girls were leading to self-harm, extreme self-harm. And so they did an internal study And they found that yes There was a direct causal connection Between the algorithms That many of these girls were being fed Or ubiquitously across the platform For teenage girls And was having an extreme negative impact On the health and wellness of our children And you know what they did? Even after testifying in Congress They did absolutely nothing.
17:36They did nothing. Because at the same time, what it meant is that they would have to make a decision about whether or not this extremely valuable algorithm was something that in the revenue stream from it was something that they wanted to give up. Now, think about this. In what world are we living that the lives, literal lives of our daughters are worth anything, any company's bottom line or fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And to me, I don't think that there's any greater example of how money equals power. Because, by the way, it was during my dad's administration, there were Democrats that did nothing about it as well as Republicans.
18:31And to me, I just can't think of any example that is just more direct about how money impacts our health. by virtue of what decisions people in Congress and in Washington, D.C. that are in elected office, both in the executive and the legislative, make about the lives of our children. So given what you've seen, what is your relationship to money? I want to have a better relationship with money. And I really mean that, is that I got married very young and I didn't have any family money. And I never had anyone in my life in which money was the central part of like a dinner table conversation, you know.
19:20I always remember my first semester tuition at Georgetown University was, I think,$7 ,500. And we had to deliver it on the day that I came to campus, unlike most people had already sent their checks in. And because he had to mortgage a piece of, you know, refinance a piece of our house, the property, to be able to come up with that. And that's kind of the way that my brother and I were raised. And the other side of it, too, is that money for money's sake was never something that was celebrated in my family. It wasn't looked down upon. I didn't have kind of like a negative view of people that were business people.
20:07But the higher calling was always something, what is, you know, what's your purpose? And it revolved around the idea of service more than anything. Do you wish that you would have been better with money in terms of your education and buying stocks and saving a certain percentage? Oh, 100%. After Georgetown, I had about$60 ,000 in student loan debt. And I went to do a thing called the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, which was like the domestic peace corps, where you make$80 a month, literally, and you pool your money and you live with other volunteers. And I ran an emergency service center in this neighborhood in Portland where I'd help families that couldn't get their lights turned on or their utilities were off in the winter.
20:50and I would advocate for them and help them get those things back up so that they could have, you know, heat in the middle of winter. And then I got married and had Naomi, my first child. And then I got in law school and I took out, I think at the time, it was all in for law school when I graduated from Yale about... This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.
21:30Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Another$130 ,000,$120 ,000 for that. Immediately out, I was a young father, a Yale Law graduate with no savings and about$165 ,000 in debt. And the only reason I bring that up is because you asked, but also is that I look today and even with that, I was able, within a year of graduating law school, able to go buy a house and fix it up myself. and that's what we did. And I then flipped that house and I was able to do that two more times.
22:22And that's the way that I had put a little money away in terms of having savings and giving myself a little bit of a cushion to be able to send three daughters to school and have a house ultimately in Washington, D.C. for 20 years. What's been your best investment? Real estate. Right. Yeah. And so one of the things that my brother and I did with my dad is that we would literally his we just used to love doing this. And Delaware has these beautiful, beautiful old homes, just incredible, like classic architecture and the Brandywirne River Valley and really, really neat. And all of the DuPont family had these amazing estates and really cool homes.
23:09But, you know, a lot of them were fixer uppers. So he did that when we were young, after my mom died, we bought this old DuPont estate that they were going to tear down. And then we spent the next 20 years, you know, working on it. And so I had, and I love to do that with my dad and my brother. And, you know, the joke was that if you came over to our house, all of our friends, is that you expect to be put to work for at least half the time that you were there. There was always a project that was going on. How would you rate your finances one out of ten? A zero. What makes it a zero? When I got out of law school, I went to work at a bank as an attorney and then in their executive program to become a banker also.
24:03And I left there as a senior executive vice president and had done very well. And I went to work in D.C. And I went to work for a guy named Bill Daly at the Department of Commerce, where I wanted specifically to understand this new thing called the Internet. And a lot of my friends were building online companies. And so I became the executive director of what we used to call it e-commerce. And this is like 1999, 2000. And I got a really incredible view into what was coming next in terms of new technology and particularly as related to at the time being called e-commerce and the Internet. And then, you know, the crash came then in 2000.
24:51And what I had intended to do was go up, open up a law firm to focus on e-commerce, e-commerce policy, and also the new issue, which I thought was going to be the most important issue going into the early 2000s was privacy. The way in which people's personally identifiable information was being shared and collected as data without their knowledge or with opt-in processes in so many different ways in which the internet was collecting our information. And then the bubble happened. And so all of those friends of mine that were worth, not all, but a lot of my friends who were worth millions and millions of dollars who needed that type of advice from somebody who was kind of on the cutting edge of understanding it, no longer had companies to pay any legal bills.
25:49And I had a friend who was a Jesuit priest that when I was at Georgetown was a mentor of mine. He suggested that I talked to the president at the time of St. Joe's University, which is one of many incredible institutions, Jesuit universities. And they needed help with potentially securing federal dollars to do a program of sending their Ph.D. education students into the toughest neighborhoods in Philadelphia. to provide for support and help. And so I helped him do that. And then he recommended me to a friend who at Scranton University, and then he recommended me to another priest, a Jesuit priest who was president of the university.
26:33And I worked at Regis and I ended up, that became my business. The whole point being is I built a really incredible business around that. And then when Barack Obama chose my father to be vice president, what I did, because I thought that there was potentially a conflict of interest of me looking towards securing dollars within the federal budget for, even though it was for like a mobile dental clinic in Detroit for Detroit Mercy, where there was no dentist office, or even if it was all of these kind of like great programs. Yeah. Still, I unilaterally and volunteered to give up that business, which was really hard for me.
27:20Was it making money? Oh, yeah. At that time, for me, I represented probably over 17 Jesuit universities. Could you have sold that business if it was doing well and just like sell, get a lump sum for that index? No, because it was all based upon my personal relationship with this network of Jesuit presidents and what I was able to do for them in particular. Were you making like six figures, a million dollars? I forget what the exact number was, but it was enough for me to be able to pay for my girls to go to private school in Washington, D.C. and own a home and have two cars and not have any debt at that time.
27:57Were you investing? Not in the way that I should have been. No, absolutely not. What were you investing in? No, no. I mean, not because I was investing in other things. I wasn't investing in a... I had a friend who became my partner, and he did a really great job of making certain that I was being responsible, frugal with my money. Yeah. So he was monitoring your budget and investing extra funds or just kind of making sure that you don't get behind? Yeah, but again, not into the market. I didn't have any understanding of, or I didn't feel like I had any understanding. But, you know, in terms of a 401k, retirement fund, you know, 529s, all of the things that you would do responsibly without being a risk taker in any way.
28:50Yeah. When in your life were you working your hardest? Right now. Right now is harder than when you were representing these different colleges. Yeah, because right now I basically have four different jobs. You know, the common refrain from people, the trolls online is get a real job. Like, so right now I am a principal at a recovery center here in Los Angeles called Peak Path Health. and my responsibility is to stand up a foundation, the Peak Path Health Foundation, for the purposes of creating a free aftercare and availability for free aftercare and advice for people that don't have the money to go anywhere after they've done 30 days if they were lucky enough to get those 30 days.
29:38I think it's the most significant, I mean, most important gap in the healthcare system as it relates to recovery. People do their 30 days, they have nowhere to go. they have oftentimes where they do have to go is not only dangerous, it almost ensures relapse. And that's why I believe that you have the level of recidivism or relapse in people coming out of recovery. And so it's something that is near and dear to my heart, but that's one of the jobs I have. I also work with an organization called Basta Universal, and they are 501c3, and they are attendance rights and homeless prevention organization here in Los Angeles.
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30:14That's Graham's favorite. Oh, man. Oh, yeah? Well, no, he's had some problems with rental properties here in Los Angeles. Oh, gosh. So I had a house in Santa Monica and the homeless was a huge, huge issue. Yeah, well, okay. I mean, that was massive and it got so bad, ended up selling the house. Not because of the homeless people specifically, but I mean, that didn't help. It didn't even remotely help. I mean, the 10 cities that came up in Venice when I lived there and the way in which, I mean, anyway, those are two that are like full-time jobs in and of themselves. And then I'm an artist. As we can see.
30:56Yes. Guys, these are two pieces of art that you can see behind Hunter and behind us. This is, he brought these to show them off. And let me tell you, they are impressive. I am a huge fan of your art. Thank you. Yeah. I really, really like it. And I'm curious to take a quick side tangent here. What is it like selling your art? And how have your art prices fluctuated over the last few years? But before we go into Hunter's art business, it's funny because when the topic of money comes up, we always want to know the interesting stuff, like how much it costs, how much they made, how much profit there is.
31:28But we rarely talk about all the details behind the scenes because as a business begins to grow, so does the amount that you need to keep track of. Bingo, Graham. And eventually you realize that making money is only one aspect of running a business. There's this whole other side that no one even thinks about until they have to deal with it, which is exactly where our partner Gusto comes in. For those unaware, Gusto is an online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It is all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you could pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere.
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34:17Once again, UPWORK.com, Upwork.com, or just click the link down below in the description. What is it like selling your art, and how have your art prices fluctuated over the last few years? My prices have never fluctuated. My prices are a reflection of the market. And so I've never set a price for a painting myself. I've always let like a third party independent player do that. See, when I was going on your website, HunterBiden.com, if you want to look at the art, not a paid promotion, I saw each piece of art and then I clicked on it. It said like inquire about the price. And I'm like, this is exactly how very, very, very expensive and luxury things kind of market things.
35:01Like they don't tell you the price. I always thought, because I've inquired on a few pieces. Yeah. And not your pieces specifically, just in general. And I always wondered, it's like, do they just Google you and they're like, oh. What's his net worth? Let's just say it's like, oh, it's Jeff Bezos. Yeah, the price is like a million dollars. But if, you know, Jack over here inquires like. Yeah, price is 50 cents. Yeah. So here's how it originally worked with my art. Okay. So what happened was, is that I've been an artist my whole life. I've never, I hadn't sold my art. I hadn't shown in a gallery.
35:33But before my dad was even won the nomination, I met a gallerist in New York, just by chance, who came to my house in California with a mutual friend. And he looked at my art and he goes, hey, have you ever thought about showing your art? And I said, yeah, I mean, it's like a dream of mine, but no. And he said, well, let's keep talking. And we talked and talked. And he said, let's plan a gallery show. Remember, before he lost Iowa, lost New Hampshire, lost Nevada, this was not anything remotely political. And when I agreed to be represented by this gallery in New York. So when I had the show, however, what ended up happening was that the New York Post kind of set me up.
36:21And I really mean this. They went to somebody, an anonymous gallerist in midtown Manhattan. They said, how much is Hunter Biden's art worth? And he said, anywhere from$100 ,000 a piece to$500 ,000 a piece. And I mean, I was like, all right. Like, that's great. And I called George and he kind of laughed and he got in the gallerist at the time. And he laughed and he said, well, you know, it's nice for people to believe that. But, you know, like it's not, you know, as a first time exhibiting artist, I mean, the prices in anybody's estimation of what I've been able to sell my art for are really great.
36:58And I've been able to maintain a serious price that does not make it just an inexpensive commodity. However, no piece of art that I've ever sold has been close to what the New York Post said. And so what they did then, however, is George then, my gallerist, was asked by people in the press, well, how much is Hunter's art for? And he pointed to that article. And so then it was Hunter Biden was selling his art while his dad was president of the United States for$500 ,000 apiece. Now, I can tell you that's not true. And the reason I can tell you that's not true is because they had an entire impeachment hearing over it.
37:37They subpoenaed every person that ever bought a piece of art from me, and including the gallerists, and people that just attended the show. All of whom had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to testify under oath that it had nothing to do with anything and how much they bought each painting for. And then they made all of that public. So you can go read it all online in the House Oversight Committee. which is mixed in with like, yeah. Let me ask you this. Hypothetically, if you were selling for 500 ,000 apiece, what's wrong with that? Nothing. And that's exactly the point is this, is that number one, certainly nothing wrong with it now.
38:15Number two, as long as you're transparent about it and that I can show that I'm not selling to a Russian oligarch. Like take the story today that's out as it relates to John Jr. Is that a Russian oligarch came in that he's known for maybe a couple of years. He gets remarried. And this Russian oligarch who's close to Putin paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for his wedding. OK, now I think that it's kind of a legitimate question to say, what is this person that's in 62 pictures with Putin and is sanctioned by the Ukrainian government and doing paying for the president's son's second wedding on an island?
38:55And like, what's that all about? And so with me, I made it clear is that anybody that bought my art is that I would not sell to anyone outside of the United States. I would make it all transparent and I would make it all available to anybody. And they even made a rule while my dad was president that it would be anonymous to me, which made it almost impossible in many ways. Like who wants to buy a piece of art and never be known to the artist that they're buying the piece of art. But that was the case. and there's nothing wrong with it. Now, my dad's no longer president. Nobody in my family has any power over anything as it relates to elected office in any way.
39:34I'm an artist. I sell my art. I sell it for the price that the market will support. What's the most you've sold a piece of art for? I think the highest price was$85 ,000. Yeah. Well, by the way, through the gallery, which I got 50%, a little under 50 % of. So when you sell it through a gallery, they take 50%. I was curious, are you allowed to say who the coolest person is who bought your art. I can tell you the coolest person who has a piece of my art is... Trump. No. That would be a little bit. That would be pretty cool. Yeah. Well, there's the coolest person and the most important person. The most important person that has a number of pieces of art are my mom.
40:15I gifted her for Christmas these beautiful flowers with alcohol ink on aluminum sheet that I knew she would love. And so she put them up in the White House in the residence, which is really, really cool. And now they're at home with her. But I just did an interview with somebody who, not just because of his work in film, but because of the person that he has been in public life, has been someone that I truly, truly admire. It was Martin Sheen. And he came to interview me. Wow. And I really, really just love him and his wife, Janet. And we have a lot of shared kind of understanding in terms of addiction and families and things like that.
41:04And I gave him a painting that meant a lot to me that I had painted, which was based upon the Book of Kells, which is an ancient Irish text of the Bible that was created by Irish monks a long, long, long time ago. that's at Trinity College right now. A couple others. But mainly that I've gifted to my friends. Yeah. So what's the fourth job then? The fourth job is writing. You know, I wrote one book and it was released in 2021. And I have been writing on Substack now. And it's a full-time job. I have two books that I've written that I'm releasing on Substack right now that are, one is kind of the continuation of the original memoir, Beautiful Things.
41:45And then another one is an accounting of what happened in the rooms that I wasn't in, kind of the conspiracy to dehumanize me and impact our politics. And I'd done an enormous amount of research and investigation into that over the course of the seven years. One of the things about it that was so incredible, though, is this, is that I was able to write the other book, which is an incredibly cathartic experience, because just from literally, I could tell the story of what happened to me when, you know, how I felt about it, the internal emotions and reactions to events that were occurring to me as they occurred to me.
42:26The other one was like hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and investigative work and Senate Intelligence Committee declassified information and loads and loads of press of reporting on it. It was just like trying to get it all in one place. And which I've been fascinated watching some of the people that are experts with you guys is AI. I was able to use AI to feed in literally thousands of pages of documents to, number one, literally give me a glossary of names of the people and concurrent timelines and like mind maps of who was connected to who, which allowed me then to write that second book with all the footnotes and everything that I would do.
43:16So here's a really good way to digest a ton of research. If you open up Claude, you create a project. This is one of the ways that I researched you for this podcast. I listened to quite a few of your podcasts you've been on. I didn't listen to all of them because there's probably 25 plus in the past six months or so, or maybe a year. And so I downloaded the transcript for every single one of the podcasts. And then I saved it as a PDF and then uploaded it to the context of the Claude project. And then I asked, how many times were these things covered in the podcast? And there were certain things like the laptop, which was covered in, you know, it's had 20 of the 20 podcast samples I provided.
43:52There were other things that were, you know, Burisma that were covered, you know, 18 out of 20 times. And then it also gave me a list of things that weren't covered in any of the podcasts that you did. And this was all done in like 15 minutes of just downloading transcripts and then uploading as contacts. And then it's able to look through 20 plus, probably 30 plus hours of content and no perfect answers immediately. It's incredible. It's truly, truly incredible. And I love people that are transparent about how they are using it. Because the beauty of the ability for, like, for instance, I came in here.
44:29It's just you two. And so everybody knows, there's not a team of people setting up a production and lighting and, like, has, like, notebooks. And by the way, I've been to podcasts where that's the case, where there's at least 10 or 15 people that are in the background doing things. The ability for you to do all your own research, to be able to get yourselves over here, to set up, to be able to do it, to agree with each other, and do it as often. I'm assuming that I'm not the only person that you use that technique to research, right? It's just, it's truly incredible the productivity. It speeds us up.
45:13If we're transparent about it in a way that, which by the way, so there's this whole debate on Substack right now is they put in one of those AI detection tools for everybody. And number one, a lot of the authors are saying, this is total bulls. Like I'll put in a piece that I wrote in 1996 and, and this AI detection tool will come up and say, this is a, you know, this is 75 % AI. And the reason is, is because AI trained itself off the piece that that person wrote. And so the whole thing is a little wonky still anyway. But here's what I feel like. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.
45:54You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. I know some of the books that I think that are one of some of the greatest, for instance, works of long-form journalism, like Bob Woodward's books. And Bob Woodward is obviously an amazing, one of the Hall of Fame investigative reporters that we've ever had, right?
46:34Well, I know Bob Woodward works with a team of researchers. And he always has. He works with a team of other writers that collect that information and that go through the 600-page House Oversight Committee report and so forth. Man, you can take that House Oversight Committee report and beat it into a quad with 16 other equally dense reports. And if you have the capacity to know what you want and what you're looking for and how to organize it, you can do incredible things. Really, truly incredible things. What do you think about some of the safety issues about AI? I vacillate between it's all a hoax.
47:24And I'm exaggerating. Yeah. It's all just to drive. Regulation. No, I mean, it's all just to drive value like that. You know, there's the end of the world and the AI is, you know, because they're trying to juice their IPOs, which they have to do in order to be able to sustain the burn rate that they're going through. I mean, you know that there's a whole strain of thought from legitimate people that that's what it is. I find that just by my own, which is nothing, I mean, as compared to what I know others have been able to do using AI, is that there's a staggering difference in the way in which human beings are just by the AI that is available today on a retail level can live their lives if they engage with it.
48:20I have a feeling, though, what we see is just the tip of the iceberg. Like, what really is going on behind. Like, if they make something public, it's a dumbed-down version of, like, what's really going on. Oh, look, man. I don't know many people. I mean, what did Elon and Sam came out and they said that, you know, like, yeah, we got a real problem. We got to slow down a little bit. Slow down. and Dario is saying, you know, like, yeah, this could be the end of the world. And that viral tweet that went out from that former anthropic and said, it's, you know, a 10 % chance. And then you look at some like incredible thinkers.
48:58Here's what I think. I think that we are on the verge of the probably the most significant, not probably, the most significant evolutionary leap in humankind behind throughout all of history. Because if you think about it, is that if you listen to people like Kurzweil and you read about some of the most important thinkers in this space, is this. If you read superintelligence, it literally, no one, no one can tell you what happens next. It would literally be as the equivalent of a alien spaceship landing in the middle of L.A. that was so superior in almost every respect to us in terms of our capacity to reason and effectuate decisions.
49:56And everything changes then. And nobody can tell you what that means. Now, I always say, do we have a Star Trek future or do we have a Star Wars future? And I think that along the way, think of all the amazing, amazing things that we are on the verge of solving right now. According to very smart and, I think, responsible people. Whether it's related to our health, related to longevity, related to cancer research, related to climate change, related to the way in which we produce and distribute energy around the world. Just an incredibly utopian potential in our future. And the other side of it is that, you know, it may just kill us all.
50:49I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. I would love to know what your thoughts are on the potential age of abundance. And if AI ends up being this amazing thing and the economy is doing great and people's ailments are all cured and we have this age of abundance, how you're planning on capturing that in the stock market? Are you going to be investing in AI and like buying different, you know, are you looking into that at all? I'm going to be calling you guys for advice is what I'm going to be doing. Well, technically it's not financial advice. It's not. But for entertainment purposes only, you can make a lot of money.
51:26Chris Camillo really likes Amazon and Robinhood. And Bloom. Which I've done well in all three. All three, actually. Thanks, Chris. Chris Camillo is a guy that we bring on the podcast. He's like a very smart. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's a part of dumb money. And he put me on to a few stocks that they've done well. So I appreciate that, Chris. Yeah, he has a thesis that we're going to have robot workers and they're going to take over just about everything. And we could create just about anything we want that's going to bring the price down and effectively make big purchases meaningless because you could just create anything that you want, though.
52:01Yeah. And by the way. Bring it on. Bring it on. Yeah. Yeah. Because I really do mean that is that there's what's his name? Mo. He was at Google. But he makes that point. is that I think in order to get there, it is going to be the dislocation, the feeling of not having control over our future. It's going to be really difficult. It's going to be a difficult transition process for us to go through. And if they are right, that 95 % of employment will be not only unnecessary, but irrelevant in a world in which there is AGI, then that's going to be a tough time for people to figure out where they fit in the world.
52:59I'm curious to know, you've gone on the record and mentioned that you're like 15 or so million dollars in debt. Yeah. How does that affect daily life being$15 million in debt? It's staggeringly difficult in this way. Is it the idea that I'm 56 years old and I'm going to have to be able to figure out my way out of that. Now, to be fair, is that I hope that I can come to terms with some of the people that I owe money to. I'm trying in earnest to be able to do what I can do to do that. Now, for everybody who's listening, that debt was directly and solely related to my legal bills that I had that were accrued over the course of four years.
53:49None of that debt has anything to do with my addiction or drug use or anything. I did not. None of it. How much is that debt? Like about$15 million. So every single penny of that is to defend yourself. Almost every single penny. How do they keep going more and more and more? I would just think that for most people, they would stop at like, hey, listen, you know, it's like 500 grand. We're not, we're going to stop. Or why can't you find someone to represent you for free? I feel like the publicity alone. Luckily, you guys have not had, no, you know what? They wouldn't. And one of the reasons that they, that I did have some people that did, and they were great to me.
54:25Really wonderful to me. But if I had owed that, then it would be even more. It's insanely. Just think about this, okay? I had the Department of Justice, Maine Justice, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh, Crim Tax, which is a different division within the DOJ, the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit, and House Oversight Committee, House Intelligence Committee, Senate Judiciary, House Judiciary. all of those are separate and work product, you know, workflows in a law firm, as well as responding to and understanding how to be able to communicate whatever we needed to be able to communicate through the press, through courts and court filings.
55:25Could you have gotten a free public defender? No, I could not have. So if this happens to the average person, what are they expected to do? Well, this is why I always say, and I said this before it became my reality, is this. The federal government's power is beyond anything that you can remotely imagine. It's like the eye of Sauron. When you say the federal government, who? I mean the Department of Justice and all of the agencies that are either directly connected to it or that are part of the executive branch. It's incredible. Is it a specific individual or cohort of people that like give out those instructions and directions or is it just like this, you know?
56:11It's not supposed to be. And not just by norm, but in the last president of the United States that was instructing his Department of Justice what to do was Richard Nixon. And he had to resign because he even attempted it in what was called the Friday Night Massacre, which led to him leaving office. We are in a whole new world, and we were in a whole new world as it relates to the way in which the executive, the actual president of the United States, and the people that surround him in the White House are directing the internal matters of the Department of Justice. So when I say the federal government, I mean the Department of Justice, the FBI, the IRS, that whole panoply of enforcement organizations, including the SEC, the CFTC, and all of those different organizations.
57:00They need to be separated from politics in the political arm of the executive for the exact reason of it's not intended to be a dependent upon the whim of a single person. That's called a that's called a monarchy. It truly if their gaze falls upon you. the process is the thing that regardless of whether you get indicted or convicted, it can kill you. I mean, it can bankrupt you. If you want to mount a defense, it can cost, depending upon the length and complication of what you're being investigated for, can cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to be able to defend. So why not just declare for bankruptcy?
57:53Well, I might. And truth of the matter is, is that that may be the only option. I'm trying to come to terms with my creditors, which are mainly law firms and also a few others, in which I have been able to reset some of the more reasonable and realistic payment plan with them. But, you know, I plan on making good on what I'm responsible to make good for. Do you have any assets now, or how is it trying to acquire wealth when you're$15 million in debt? About. And that's a rough number. No, I don't. The only assets I have, I mean, I have this, Nico would be happy with this, I have my Timex. It's a nice launch, by the way.
58:34Yeah, by the way, which I love. But my only assets are my paintings that I have. And, you know, it's stuff that you accumulate over the course of. But no, I don't have any liquid assets in any way. How much money are you allowed to make? Well, I can make as much money as I possibly can. So you can still build wealth. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I mean, I hopefully have a, what I want is a long and sustainable career in art. And I have, building some wealth is that anyone that wants to go look at my art that's a legitimate collector and really does love art, can go to HunterBiden.com and look at art.
59:18I'm building a subscription platform on Substack, and I have two jobs. What's your monthly payment towards this debt? Is there a certain amount you have to put away? Hey, before we go into that, while Hunter's dream is building a bizarre business, I'm sure most of you watching have an idea of your own, something you would like to turn into your own business, but you just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. And unfortunately, that's where most ideas stay, in your head, in your notes app, or you just telling yourself that you'll get to it eventually. But now, getting started is a lot easier than it used to be.
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1:00:15One tap and they are done. I've personally used Shopify a ton because before I worked with Graham, I sat at probably five different Shopify stores because I tried literally everything, drop shipping, you name it. I kept going back to Shopify because I kid you not, there is not even a competitor. If you want to sell stuff online, Shopify is the best way to do it. Not to mention, Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, from leading names like Mattel and Gymshark to everyday entrepreneurs just getting started. So if you're ready to hear the of your first sale today, head over to Shopify.com slash ICH to start your free trial today.
1:00:47It's Shopify.com slash ICH. One more time, that is Shopify.com slash ICH, or just click the link down below in the description to get started today. What's your monthly payment towards this debt? Like, is there a certain amount you have to put away? Yeah, no, not right now. is that so I have not there has been no judgment against me so I don't have to now with with others that that are part of that they have given me the space to be able to renegotiate the terms of of pinning that back but with one of them I'm in litigation right now and we'll see where that goes by the way this is we can edit this part out it's off the record are aliens real or are they I well we should probably stop the cameras okay cool We're getting into some tricky territory.
1:01:34So a little more clarity around building wealth while you're in this debt. Are you able to save money and buy stocks? Are you buying stocks or how are you investing? No, I'm not there yet. And so the truth of the matter is, is that over the past, what has it been about four months since I initially went back on social media, I've gone on shows. I haven't kind of created my own platform yet other than my sub stack. And that builds slow, but it definitely isn't enough money to invest in anything. It pays the bills right now. And, you know, we lost the ability to go back to our rental home because of the fires out here.
1:02:12And my wife is South African. And so we decided to go over to Cape Town and spend some time with her family, which gave us the ability to have somewhere to stay for a period of time with friends and family there. And the truth is, I fell in love with Cape Town. It's one of the most magnificent places in the world and an incredible community of people. But more than anything, it's affordable. It's very, very affordable. And so what I'm in right now is a complete rebuilding process, like just complete rebuilding process. And there's not enough wiggle room for saving yet. But I'm trying to build something.
1:02:53You know, I've talked with Andrew Callahan to do maybe a show with them. I've talked to a couple of other people about building a platform. And I don't know whether I have it in me to do what you guys do 52 weeks out of the year. It's a lot. I mean, it's an enormous amount of commitment. And I am incredibly impressed with it. And it's not that I don't want to make the commitment, but I have to figure out. how to, number one, maintain a thing that is part of what helped save my life, which is my art. Is the practice of art is not just important to me in the sense of the idea that I could sell paintings.
1:03:38That's the least on the list of why I call myself an artist first before anything else. You could have a social media page and monetize it and use it to actually market your art about your art. Like if you had a time lapse of you making a piece and you posted it on social media, I think that actually, it would do really well. And then you listed it for sale and that was like immediate, perfect marketing for that exact piece. I follow so many artists on Instagram and my favorites are when they have the canvas turned around and it's like a sound and then they slowly, and you see what it is. You have to be like a really pretty girl in a skippy.
1:04:15For it to do well. I always get a little noise. I always get a little annoyed with them. I'm like, just turn it around. God damn it. But you're right. You know what? You know what I always thought is that one of the reasons why, do you remember that show Chef's Table, which I think is still on? I haven't seen it. Have you ever seen it? It's an amazing, amazing show about cooking. I'm not a cook and I'm not a chef and I'm not a foodie. I don't enjoy food. But the thing about that show that was so, that just made, I mean, you literally end up crying in every episode. And I'm like, why am I crying about some Argentinian chef talking about, you know, the farm to table process that he goes through.
1:04:53But part of it is, is the way in which they film people in the process of their artisanship. You know, like literally washing their hands as they slice or pick or things like that. And I've always thought that about art. The content that I most appreciate about art is watching. It's like Bob Ross. Yeah. Like you used to, people love people doing that. You could have your own Bob Ross show. That would be very easy to produce. Yeah. You know who does that, that is a genius is, oh my God, I can't believe. I have to up my creatine dose, get my memory back. What do you got today? The artist, Choi Cho, David, is it David Cho?
1:05:35The artist, he did really, really well for himself because he painted that mural for Facebook at the outset of Facebook. Oh yeah, for equity. Yeah, sure. But he's much more than that. He was one of Anthony Bourdain's closest friends, but he's an incredible, incredible artist. And he does a show like that. Now, he's also a performance artist in and of himself. But yeah. I love that. Yeah. So I'm curious. We had to ask you. Yeah. What was behind Laptop? What happened? Okay. So here's exactly what happened. I set out to build, and the whole purpose of doing this was to build a coin, a token, that was different in every respect than what every other celebrity token, including Trump token, was built.
1:06:21In which every one of them was built for max extraction. 80 % insiders, no lockup, or very limited lockup, and just pure extraction from the market. and which everyone has proven to be. And so I built a coin that, number one, reversed the tokenomics in which 30 % of the coin was on the inside. And 70 % of the coin basically was to develop and create community. 20 % airdrop, immediately give away, or over the course in two airdrops, give away a total of 20 % of the value of the coin. and then this first ever unique element of a token ever done before in which a prediction market was basically embedded into the coin.
1:07:10So for instance, like yesterday, kind of trivial and fun as the Eagles win their season opener. So they won their season opener. That means we burn, I think in this instance, 0.5 % of the coin, which raises the value for the rest of the community. And if the Eagles had lost, you would dedicate that amount to charity. So we have a minimum of 5 % charity and could be up to a maximum, obviously about 35 % charity, but more will probably end up in like the 15 % range. And so all of these things, and also it was to troll. It was to troll, which is important to me politically, and particularly with this audience, which I think is not exclusively, but a majority of 18 to kind of 35-year-old that are engaged in cryptocurrency or engaged in meme coins.
1:08:00Like, I'm not the first meme coin. You know, I'm like the 10 millionth meme coin. But what happened was this, is that on launch day, within the first minutes, a global leading market maker who had over 1.5 % of the coin for liquidity only deployed$5 ,000 into the market for liquidity purposes. And so it went from, we launched it$50 million. That was our launch price. It was significantly, I mean, low, 50 million. And within three minutes, it went to$316 billion because they only put$5 ,000, 30 ,000 coins into the liquidity pool, which made it impossible for anybody to execute their trades. And then all the, which we knew is all the bots came in.
1:08:59I think something like 85 % of all of the trades in that first moment were bots. But it drove the price up to$200 billion and then up to$316 billion market cap, which is larger than the market cap of BlackRock. And then within minutes, it came down to - But that's because they had a couple of people put a few thousand dollars in at these high prices because there wasn't enough liquidity to satisfy - Exactly. Like more reasonable price out there. And so what is the explanation of which we are trying to get an answer to of only putting, they had one, they had a million dollars in cash available to them.
1:09:35Why would you create the coin in the first place? Because in my mind, I'm like, that A, sounds like a recipe for disaster. And B, like, good luck explaining that to any audience aside from our audience. Yeah. Like our audience, even I, I understand like 5 % of what you just said. By the way, 100%. I don't get it. I get it and it's defensible, but people won't get it. Yeah, no, let me tell you why. Is this, is that I read the Internet of Money and from my own experience when I worked at the U.S. World Food Program and believing in digital money, micro transactions, and the idea of the democratization of finance.
1:10:15I truly believe in the crypto community. I believe in that, okay? And what I thought happened in the last election was just a bastardization of and taking advantage of an entire community that is largely apolitical, that is almost in every respect libertarian in the best sense of the word. And I just found that it was an incredibly dynamic way to talk to a new audience. I thought, and I still do think, and I think that that's what we will achieve when this evens out, which is not gone in any way. there is still value in the coin and there's still value in the message so one of the things i like that like look of like oh like why would you do this anyway well because like the millions of people that are invested into this economy is that i believed in it too and i think that i can do it a different way and i think that i can show that i can do it from my perspective it's like i've never seen a meme coin launch successful ever well number one that's not necessarily true but What's been successful?
1:11:18Well, I mean, Dogecoin's been successful. But that was never launched. That was launched as a bit of a joke before meme coins became a thing. And that happened organically. Yeah, but no, that didn't happen organically. There was a launch. Every coin goes through a launch, okay? Is that what didn't happen organically with us is that we were on the centralized exchanges or had commitments from centralized exchanges 48 hours before that it alleviated all of this. And after we announced that the coin would be coming out in 48 hours, we got just ravaged on crypto Twitter by whether it was trolls or bots or actual people.
1:11:57And we lost our listings on the centralized exchanges at that time. And so there was 1.5 million tokens available, 1.5%, 15.5 million tokens in the liquidity pool for this market maker. And instead of deploying, even if they had deployed 20 % of it or 10 % of it, instead they deployed less than 1 % of it and it completely ruined the launch. Now, we have a shot to relaunch and make it meaningful and do exactly what I said. But here's the other side of it is this. Ultimately, the value of this coin, I get to give away to charity maybe anywhere from 5 to, let's say, 20%, depending upon the prediction market aspect of it, away.
1:12:47Which even today, under this scenario, over the course of at least two years, I will get to give away millions of dollars to charity, all dedicated to the recovery and addiction space. what other project could i do that would remotely um i'll tell you i think you create your own podcast yeah social media and because from my perspective you have just been on this like massive comeback yeah where i've been seeing you everywhere clipped everywhere you've come off really likable really just charismatic humility is the thing that sticks out to me the fact that you went on Matan Evan. And talk about anything.
1:13:31And just rolled with the punches. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I listened to it. I loved the episode. Yeah. And I feel like, man, if you just continue in that trajectory, it's so good. And that to me is like, that seems organic. That seems like you're having fun. You don't have to be here. Even when you agreed to do that, I'm like, really? I was like, we're telling people, we got Hunter coming in. And I was like, no way. That's so cool. So to me, I'm like, oh, yeah, just continue doing that. Yeah. Well, by the way, that's what I'm going to continue to do. Look, I'm taking a swing in ways that I think are, from anybody's perspective, are risky.
1:14:12So from your perspective, it's like, you guys think it's cool when I went on Matan? There's a whole audience out there who is saying, what the f*** did you go on Matan for? Excuse my language. Or, I mean, they are, right? And so there is a whole - That's everyone who goes on Matan is like - By the way, yeah. Why did he go? So much to lose. Nothing to gain. Nothing to gain. And in the same respect, I have a whole audience of people out there that say, why are you going to talk to Tucker Carlson, traitor? You're a traitor. Why did you talk to Candace Owens? And then there's a whole group of people that say, Channel 5, Andrew Callahan, isn't that the guy that was filming backyard brawls out of his camper van?
1:14:53You know what I mean? Whereas I know it to be very different. maybe because i'm a consumer of it in a um in a in a in a way that i think is interesting to me but also this is who else goes to go talk to those people and that was the idea of the the crypto community and the reason to immerse myself the hard part is that now there is this narrative out there that's like oh you were doing all this like promotion to lead up to this like crypto meme coin cash out like the optics of it it's not the reality and i'm gonna stay here and so that's not the reality and the truth and by the way and sometimes perception becomes reality but not in the instance of me what i have found is this is that i've been kicked in the teeth about 500 times i shouldn't be here by all accounts by and by anybody's um estimation before i went out on twitter in may of of this year didn't have anything to do with cryptocurrency or any of that.
1:15:54I didn't go on Candace Owens' show with the intent and idea that that's what this is all about. This was something that I thought was an opportunity, and I still do, to talk to an entirely different audience. When I talk to somebody that's 40 years old about cryptocurrency or about meme coins, I mean, their eyes glaze over and they say it's all a grift. When I talk to somebody who's between the age of 18 and 30, it's a very, very, very different thing. meme culture in and of itself is not something most people understand, but it is an incredibly powerful culture in its own silo that has, I think, ripple effects across the board.
1:16:36And so I'm going to try everything that I can. And as long as I do it in an ethical way, as long as I do it in a way that I'm comfortable with, because one of the other things is this, is that I know me for the first time and I've gotten to know me in a way and be comfortable and confident in my truth in a way that most people don't ever have to go through and being completely and utterly shamed on a global scale. And so I agree with you is that it was a risk. I took the risk. I'm absolutely certain that this is ultimately at the end of the day going to do exactly what I intended it for it to do.
1:17:19And I get to tell that story, but it's going to take a little bit of time. So who made money and who lost money so far with laptop coin? Nobody made money. Nobody on the inside has made any money. The way that it works is that the 30 % that is dedicated to what, you know, quote unquote insiders, which is the people who hold equity in the coin, cannot touch their money for at least six months and then invests over a two-year period of time. There's a foundation, there's a liquidity pool, and then there is the pool related to the airdrop and the pool related to the event burn, the prediction market side of it.
1:18:01So nobody on the inside has extracted any money from this. But what about losing money? Like, did you have any wallets that lost a lot of money on the coin? No, I don't. Mostly like a couple hundred, few thousand. Yeah, exactly. And right now what we're doing, we're only five days in. So right now what we're doing, we have two independent reports that are being done. And I'm going to figure out exactly who. I think that last I looked, one of the reports came back and 85 % of the training that occurred in that first hour in which any significant change of capital in hands happened was through bots.
1:18:40um and so and mainly in asia but we'll be able to identify every every single wallet and every single dollar and hopefully um do what we can to to correct it this may be a very harsh opinion but i would just like to say that meme coins are exactly like emphasis on meme like for the most part yeah you know what you're getting for every part they're not an investor like no it's not Oh, by the way, do not buy my coin is the line that I used when I started out this thing. And it is not an investment in any way. It's like a trading card, literally. But if someone doesn't understand that - Who doesn't understand that?
1:19:2390 % of the market is a bunch of DGens that are literally addicted to trading. And that's what it is. And it's all about attention. It's who can attain, sustain, and maintain attention. But then I'm thinking, like, is that the market you want to go after? It's like DGENs who are just trying to, like, flip a few thousand dollars. See, if you had a podcast, you could talk to an educated audience or uneducated and hopefully still get value. Guys, I don't disagree. I don't disagree. What I'm saying is this, is that I took a shot and I think that I can still prove my point as it relates to the coin.
1:19:54I think that I can show that it can be done differently. I think that I can show that it can be a tool. I think that it's a tool just like any hammer. You can use it to build something or you can use it to tear down something. And also I can say this to you is this. And I also think it is a way in which you can build community and do well and do good at the same time if you do it the right way. I agree. That's what I believe. And the same rule applies to NFTs. NFTs were a tool. But the way that the community used NFTs was somewhat predatory. however by the nfts as an as a a fundamental idea are actually really interesting they're really interesting and there's a lot of value in that it's just the way that the community adopted it and expressed that parts of the community and it's the exact parts of the community and that is the exactly the growth phase that all of cryptocurrency is in right now yeah so i hear all of these people say, oh, this is all a sham.
1:20:49This is all a scam. It's as if the dollar bill is anything but me. Okay? That's a good one. All right. And also, you know, like this idea, well, it's a way for people to operate anonymously in a black market in a criminal way. Well, as far as I can remember is that no cryptocurrency or anyone involved in cryptocurrency was involved in the crash of 2008. I don't know of any Lehman Brothers in cryptocurrency right now. I also don't know of any Citibank that has been laundering the money for terrorist organizations for, you know, however long. And by the way, allegedly. You're really careful about not getting sued.
1:21:29No, exactly. But I really do mean this in terms of like this idea of the arrogance of fiat currency and the establishment and banking. Cryptocurrency, it has a future. I am not the evangelist for it, But I am a believer in it. I am a believer in the idea that there's an entire generation of people engaged in an economy that most people my age don't even take a second glance at or understand. So you asked me, how do you in the future build wealth in this environment in which you have debt? MemeCoin is not the answer to that for me. understanding it understanding um it to the degree and its relationship to uh to the to the current economy and which i've been talking to whether it's you guys or whether it's through a show like matan or whether it's through you know whatever audience is out there and so look this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome That's new.
1:22:32It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+. Is it also, you know, kind of live and learn. One of the things, too, is this, is that we had no optics into, and what you're not supposed to because you're supposed to be a Chinese wall with the market maker. And, you know, one fuck up, you know, can ruin a day.
1:23:10You know what I mean? And not only ruin a day, but now it's my responsibility to make it good. And as long as I'm just radically transparent about it, which I plan to be, and I am being right now as much as I can be in terms of getting the actual information of what happened exactly and, you know, make good where I can make good, then you know what? All the other stuff is not even remotely off the table. From what I see, it does appear like the best way out is through and with radical transparency, which it does appear that you're providing. So that's really good because, you know, I didn't think that this was a cash grab from the beginning.
1:23:49I thought, you know, obviously there's a chance that it is, but I tend to believe the people that are willing to sit down in front of us and answer all of the questions with potentially millions of people watching. Exactly. And before the podcast, when we ask you, hey, is there anything off limits? You say, nah. Nothing. Yeah. Nothing. Nothing. And I answer every single question that I possibly can. And I just know this too. The coin is stabilized. There is an assurance that it is stabilized and that we can actually do what we intended to do with the coin and make good if there was anything to make good about.
1:24:28But it all came down to that one market maker, one decision, and it was hard not to see how it was almost not intentional. And I'm not saying that it was. It was gross negligence. But could you see before launching that they only had 5 ,000? No, because you can't see into that. So that when you're sitting on the other side, the market maker is like a black box. And there are several market makers that you use. They had all of the liquidity and were providing that liquidity to other market makers. And there was the whole thing. And so when we were sitting there just looking at our screens and you see this, just think about this.
1:25:03There's never been a coin ever that hit$316 billion market cap anywhere. We launched at 50 million. We're at a, I don't know, 200 million FDV right now. So if that had been our trajectory, this would have been a great success, right? But in 10 minutes, it didn't just do a Christmas tree. It did a Mount Everest. And then it came all the way back down. But it was literally that spike happened in like minutes, minutes of the coin launch. How much volume then was actually transacted during that 10 period? Very little. Hey, by the way, really quick, if you want extra content just like this, as well as early access and a bonus post show posted every single week, feel free to join as a channel member to get immediate access to all of that, as well as early access to everything else that we post, along with priority responses to all of your comments.
1:26:00So if that sounds cool, feel free to join. Would love to have you on board. Thanks so much. We'll get back to the podcast now. How much volume then was actually transacted during that time period? Very little. Very little. Like you could have made a$10 purchase of the coin and it sent it up$30 billion. I mean, literally. See, that's the thing. It makes sense mathematically. It's just I don't envy you because you now need to explain yourself out of that. Exactly. And by the way, like you said, nobody has an interest in understanding liquidity and how a liquidity pool points. It's too complicated.
1:26:33I don't even understand. Right? Nobody. Okay, Grant. So you have people that are bidding and you have people that are asking. Those are the people that are willing to pay a certain price. Correct. And willing to sell at a certain price. And then you have this money that makes the transaction actually occur. Now, if there's not enough money to make the transaction occur, then like if someone's - The price wakes up. Yeah. If someone puts a market order at a buy, but there's no money that fulfills it, and there's no one that's necessarily selling it, then like the price can spike, it can go down.
1:27:01And so basically it's like the lube of an engine, if that's absent. Think about this. Why do you need this? Trump coined it and it went to$75 billion. Just remember this. Trump coin has lost 95 % of its value. Does anybody sit here and ask Don and Eric of why they would ever get involved in this? And they took out 80 % of max extraction at 3.9, but they don't give a shit. And what I was trying to do was show that you could do the exact opposite. I wanted it to be the specific troll of how they have taken over industries and ideas and made them theirs and then max extracted from them and done the exact opposite of what they said that they were going to do.
1:27:43You know, and so I may have had all these highfalutin reasons of doing it. Bottom line is this. In three minutes, the coin went from$50 million where we intended to launch it. And because of literally singular trades that could have been anywhere from a dollar to$100, dollars, sent it billions of dollars to higher than any, any, any other coin. I think by a factor of, of, of several has ever traded or ever had a market. I would be excited to hear your third party investigations into the matter. If you publish that, I think I will. I'm also. What I will do is I'll give them to you guys and I'll come back.
1:28:18I'm also very curious. Yeah. What was going through your mind when you saw it? Oh, that's what was going through my mind. You should have done like a live stream launch. Like literally. The smile turned around. By the way. No, literally. it was that because for the first like what the fuck is going on but by the way the first two minutes you must have just thought like like you know they truly truly truly experienced people that are part of this they were sitting there going like and i'm like what like how is it like what you know and it was just the most infuriating because by the way the whole thing was when i started this i said the only way that i'm doing this is that if no one ever could accuse me of doing a rug pull.
1:28:57And so we built everything into the tokenomics of it so that you could never be... But I feel like that's what everyone says and then it's somehow it's just like... By the way, name me one other person that has gone through this that, you know, a celebrity that is... Probably the Hawk Tua was like the last one and it seemed like she was like just innocent. And the only way to get back is so bad. But my point is that there were people that extracted from her coin. She was not involved in her coin. She got duped and conned by a bunch of people. I agree. I did not... Look, man. I didn't get duped and conned by anybody.
1:29:28I went into this with full eyes wide open is exactly what I was trying to tend to do. And by the way, and still have the coin still sits at the value that I wanted it to launch at. It holds that value. We have a two years of prediction market predictions to to burn coins. We still have over 10 percent of the coin to be able to airdrop to to community. I still have an enormous amount of the of the value of the coin to be able to give away to charity. look that's it the proof is in the pudding the the the and the and the pudding is the ingredients have to be an after action report an independent um that's what i'm looking forward to what happened in that 316 to see how many wallets were affected by it you know was it i promise you i guarantee you i will i will come back or i'll let you guys will be some of the first i will send the reports to and i'm not and by the way that's not like like four months from now i mean that's like the end of this week.
1:30:24Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, text it over. So actually, we could just put it in the description. We could link to the report in the description of the video if you guys would like to see it. Absolutely. Radical transparency. I can upload it to Claude so I understand what it means. Exactly. By the way, one of the reasons that we were able to figure that out is exactly that, is because Aerodome gave us their initial report of exactly what happened and we were able to feed it into Claude and give it into a granular level of exactly what happened. And that's what was fed out of it. I'm surprised by your seemingly understanding of crypto and stuff like that.
1:30:59Even knowledge on the Hawk Tula coin. I knew all the coins because I looked into every one of them and I wanted to know exactly what happened. One of the things that had to happen was the Eric Adams coin. And figuring out Eric Adams launched a coin and he did this, that, and the other thing. And it went to zero within 72 hours. And I said, like, OK, like, what are the mechanics of that? Why did that happen? Did somebody fully extract? And it turns out, I believe, allegedly, someone extracted within the within the first from the inside. It became clear that the coin went to zero. So how do you build a coin that does what coins were intended to do?
1:31:36Tokens were intended to do in terms of building something and not max extracting. And that's what we did. It seems like the best meme coins, though, are not associated with a person. Like I'm thinking recently it was like pawns was one of those meme coins. Yeah. Shot up. Yeah. But when it's like, there's not a person, it's not a thing. It just somehow appears one day. Yeah. And then some groups get ahold of it. And they're like, maybe I got a little bit ahead of myself as being an idea and not just a person. And the idea is this is the idea of, of a resilience, recovery, redemption, the idea that we all get to tell our own stories that we don't have to live in the narratives that have been written for us.
1:32:18That's the idea. You guys ask me why I'm doing this is not just the coin in any way. The larger picture of this is that I would like to build something. I think it's important. I know that it's important in terms of my future to have a financial future that goes along with it for my family, for my children, but for me too, in order to be able to make independent decisions to do the things that matter to me. That's important. But really, why I spend this much time talking about this? It's because I know I have one thing that I am eminently qualified to talk to other people about. And that's about surviving.
1:33:03That's how to make it through. How to walk through the fire about the idea that, you know what, you may get knocked down, but it truly in life is all about how you get back up. And so I look at this thing as that. I look at, look, I took a swing. I had the exact right intentions. I promise you I'll be able to show that in every single way. And now I got to get back up. I took a punch in the face on this one, but it's not the first time. And it's not like I'm happy that it happened. But I know that that is something that is, that I just can't walk away from things anymore. I mean, act as if they did not happen or that I was duped or that, you know, somebody, you know, nefarious, like, you know, there is no excuse.
1:33:53There's an explanation out there. But ultimately, at the end of the day, everything that happens is my responsibility. What sort of financial goals do you have for your own life? my immediate financial goal would be to uh to make good on um the debts that i owe that's number one is um is to uh is to have the capacity to um to come to terms with the people that i legitimately owe money to um for my defense over the period how does that relationship look today with those people oh with most of them it's great it's it's they've been very understanding and and and been willing to work with me um on that and believe in me and believe in the idea that uh that that i that i will do exactly that but number two is not i have no interest in in um in things not that i don't like things like i was talking about nico um leonard in watches i love watches.
1:34:56You know, I mean, I don't wear this Timex as like a statement because I only wear a Timex. You know, I mean, I love a Rolex. I am not saying that I don't like nice things, but that's not my goal. And maybe it's because of what I've gone through and where I've been to. My goal is to be able to have and live in an environment in which I can nurture the most important relationships that I have, and that's with my family, beginning with Melissa and Beau and my daughters. And to have an adequate space that you're not spending all of your time, like wondering what you're going to do at the end of the month.
1:35:34That's it. That's really it. Does investing play a role in that? Well, I hope that it would. I really hope that it would. But I have to get there first. I have to get to the space where there's any opportunity of any dollar that I make going to anything other than my immediate obligations right now. So what is your current like monthly expenses? I imagine that you could sell your art and like cover that and then some, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm working on it. You know what I mean? And just remember, is that literally, truly, it's just like this is the only opportunity for me to be able to do this in any meaningful way just started like 16 months ago.
1:36:27And I'm working on it. And right now, I am able to do the things that I need to be able to do to cover my obligations to people that I need to cover my obligations to take care of the family, put food on the table, and pay the rent. Do you have a financial advisor or any sort of money manager? Not technically, but I do have people that I trust very much that have been very helpful in advising me. Do you have any concerns about the future of the U.S. economy? I have. Oh, yeah. What do you think is the biggest issue right now? $40 trillion in debt. What do you think that comes from? I think 35 % of it, more than that, comes from one presidency, and that's this one, and over the two presidencies.
1:37:19But you can't blame all of the debt on any single president. I think that it is unwillingness for us to really look at very uncomfortable and unpopular things that would potentially need to be done in order for us to live in our means. Now, remember, I mean, you know, part of it is about revenue, but the other part of it is about the way in which we address entitlements. And at some point, we're going to have to be able to reconcile the two or not and face the consequences of that. What do you think are the top three things that would need to change in order to stabilize the U.S. debt? Number one is to come to terms with how we are going to continue to organize and run our entitlement programs.
1:38:17Number two, you know, there's this whole push from progressives about, you know, a very easy catchphrase, tax the billionaires, tax the billionaires. Well, the fact of the matter is, is that when most people associate taxes, they associate it with the income tax, which is the largest driver of revenue with the federal government. Billionaires don't pay income tax. And not because they're cheats on their taxes, but because they take advantage of the system as it exists. And, you know, I mean, Elon Musk famously pays himself no salary. You know, Jeff Bezos pays himself$100 ,000. And why would you pay yourself a salary to be taxed in normal income?
1:38:59So taxing the income of billionaires is meaningless. Now, that being said, too, is that, you know, I think people don't truly understand that out of 350 million Americans, there's only 984 families that are truly billionaires. and they pay no income taxes. Have you guys read, which is an incredible book, and I suggest that you read it, it's called The Second Estate. And it's by this professor who is a tax expert. And she talks about how we're dangerously coming close to a society that very much resembles France in the late 1700s, early 1800s. And what you had, what they call the second estate, is that you had the king, but then you had the feudal.
1:39:44that basically they had created a system by which they were not taxed by the king. And they passed all of those taxes down to working people. And right now, the vast majority of taxes fall on the 99%. So think about it. Well, I thought the bottom 50 % pays pretty much nothing in tax. Well, here's the thing, though. Between 99%, what do you think would put you in the top 1 % of income earners in the United States. 700 ,000. That's exactly right. $750 ,000. $750 ,000. And I don't believe that most people think, what we all know is that the chasm between$750 ,000 as your income and a billion is from not, here not to the moon, it's here to Pluto.
1:40:43Yeah. And so it's not about income tax. And many people have these aspirations and they think, look, you know, don't tax the rich. I want to be rich one day. You know, I want to make a million dollars. I want to make$5 million. I want to make$10 million. The difference between doing that in income and having, you know, a billion dollars in wealth is, you know, two very, very different worlds. So how do you tax wealth? And it's a really tricky thing because you need to tax wealth? Wouldn't someone then say, well, why don't we get our spending under control first and then figure out how much we need?
1:41:20Because here's the thing about that. Think about the politics of that, getting our spending under control. All right. In every situation, of course you should get your spending under control. A bunch of Democrats did it. My dad reduced the deficit for the first time in, I don't know how many presidencies. Bill Clinton famously balanced the budget with the Democratic Congress. You know what I mean? So getting our spending under control is obviously something that's really important. But the way in which they went about it in this past two years is asinine. I mean, take, for instance, like the whole Doge push.
1:42:01You know, Doge, you know, end it USAID. You know how much money we spend on USAID as a percentage of the budget? Less than 3%. So I thought, and again, I could be misinformed here, but I thought in terms of ending it, it wasn't ending it. It was just annotating exactly what the funds were used for. It's over. USAID, basically all of the organizations that were funded by USAID that promulgated anything from the PEPFAR program that saved 20 million lives around the world to enormous amount of good that we've done in the world since its inception in, you know, 50 years ago is gone. It's effectively gone.
1:42:42And I'll put it up. If I'm incorrect here, I'll note that I'm incorrect. I thought Elon said that he wasn't ending it. He just wanted to annotate what the funds were used for. And if they agreed to publicly disclose exactly where the funds went, he was all for it. He said that, and that's not true. 100%. 100 % said that. And I can show you where it is absolutely not the truth, is that we had, I don't know how many thousands of workers that were in sub-Saharan Africa that worked for USID distributing these programs that were critical to so many people and saving so many lives. and then there's this whole argument that he says oh well you know it was all you know joe rogan says oh you know it was all cia fronts and you know intelligence operations and they were you know funneling money into you you know uh my point about that is yeah this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.
1:43:48Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+. So you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays? Why would I be? Wayfair had everything I needed to get the house holiday ready. What if Mike brings his cheerful dogs? My tree has tons of five-star reviews telling me how sturdy it is. But what if everyone's plus one brings a plus one? We'll see how extendable this extendable table really is. And extra chairs are on the way. Okay. What if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over?
1:44:21Ready to go with extra bedding and towels. From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust. Wayfair delivers. What if some of it was? How do you think we got information and intelligence in places in the world where no other buddy could have ever gone? I work for the USUN World Food Program as chairman of the board of that. We were responsible for the$2.6 billion, 60 % of the UN World Food Program's budget. The largest humanitarian organization in the world. We've had 75 million people in 80 different countries around the world on a daily basis. We're every single major hotspot in the world at day one, whether it's refugee crisis created by war or a tsunami in the Philippines.
1:45:10And you know who is there first? Who is there first? USAID. With boxes and boxes of material and food for these people, in which it says a gift from the American people on every one of them. It was the most important, soft diplomacy that we had as a nation. Why would they want to end the programs? Because I think that he had an enormous distrust and dislike for programs like USAID. I don't think that he believes in them. I don't think that he believes that, as he famously said, is that the thing that is the most corrosive thing in American culture is the idea of empathy. Remember when he said that?
1:45:54And I think that that's because what he believes. And I also think that he believes that that's because he could at that time, is that they were almost drunk on power. And what's the lowest hanging fruit? Everybody always says, well, you're spending money over there, and why don't you spend it on the homeless people over here? Well, I think we're a great nation. I think that we can do both. And I think that we need to do both, because it's our responsibility as a great nation to be able to do both. I think that it is in our interest to be the benefactors of people that no other people stand up for in the world.
1:46:30I think it's the greatest power of the United States of America is the idea of who we are. And right now, who are we? All it seems to me is we're dropping bombs and we're not dropping, you know, food and medicine in any way. That sounded like a campaign speech to me. I saw the hands with the thumbs kind of right here. I know that's kind of the way. I started to do my bill of clenching. Oh my gosh. You gave me away. No, it's something I care deeply about. Yeah. I care deeply about. All right. Unfortunately, we are in a strong time constraint. So we would love to do a part two at some time. I would love to.
1:47:11But we're going to do rapid fire questions to kick this to an end. Do you own a single stock? No. I know that was like a bomb being dropped right there that's crazy can I at least like send you a stock oh my gosh I can send you a stock of course yeah you can't quite send a stock but you could open up I will give you the money to buy a stock yeah you tell me the stock and I'll and I'll find the money to put into it buy like one share of Apple okay you know not financial advice that's crazy I'll give you the money I would rather Robinhood alright I like Robinhood Shout out Vlad Tenet, CEO, founder of Robin Hood.
1:47:51We're getting Hunter Biden. The first stock he owns is Robin Hood stock. Right. Okay. What was the biggest surprise that you've seen at the White House? How dedicated the staff that remains with the White House are. The most wonderful people in the world. It was maybe not a surprise, but they made it a beautiful experience to be there. And they stay through administration to administration. And they show no sort of... No, they're wonderful, wonderful people. And it's just incredibly dedicated to the idea of the honor of anyone to ever walk through those doors. They're just really, really, really cool, beautiful people.
1:48:36I want a specific answer for this. What is your one least favorite thing about Trump? His cruelty. His cruelty. One specific example of that. The way in which he particularly talks to female reporters really, really, really, really bothers me. What is the one thing that you admire most about Trump? His tenacity. Anything specific? He has taken delusional thinking to an art form that is almost hard not to admire. I'll give you an example. I really do think that he thinks that he's 6 '3", weighs 225 pounds. What do you think he actually is? I think he's probably more like 6 feet and probably weighs 280.
1:49:30I mean, maybe$275 ,000, you know. But it's amazing how much that he is self-deluded in things to the degree that he makes it into a reality. Can you do a Trump impression? No, I can't. I'm not going to try. What's the cheapest thing about you? Probably clothes. What brand is that shirt? Levi's. I don't even know. I think Melissa bought me this one. I love that. Yeah. What's your biggest insecurity? Almost every one of the true insecurities, I got to lay down over the course of the last seven years in rebuilding my life. And I would have said before that you were going to find out about my secrets.
1:50:20My biggest insecurity would be that you would have found out I was a crack addict, not just an addict. My biggest insecurity would have been that you found out that I was in motel rooms with people that you don't want to be in motel rooms with. But every single one of my secrets has been exposed. So it's almost a blessing. It was one of the greatest blessings of my life. Saved my life. When's the last time you cried? Last night. I was watching Lioness and they found Joe. Do you guys watch Lioness? No, I don't know what you're talking about. That's amazing. I don't know what it is. Well, everybody will know.
1:50:58Linus is a show on Paramount. It's one of the, it's Zoe Saldana, and she was kidnapped and they found her. And I was overwhelmed. And lastly. I cry all the time. If you had this amount of money, you would feel financially free. So I watched you with John. John Morgan. John Morgan. Yeah. I'd say half that. I need half that. What he said. Remember? He said$30 million in a paid off house. $50 million in a paid off house. I can deal with maybe a, I guess, you know, a third of that in a paid off house. That's a great number. That's what a lot of people say. 10 in a paid off house. A lot of people say is 10 in a paid off house.
1:51:38Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, Hunter, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Copy Hour. This was an honor. Such an honor. No, mine. I'd love you guys. So thanks. Thanks so much. I'm coming back. Yes. We would love to have you back on. Okay. All right. Hunter. Thank you guys so much for watching. All of his information will be linked down below in the description, including the gallery. So if you want to check it out, you know where to find it. Thank you so much for watching. Till next time. What is something that the left is fundamentally right about that the right does not want to acknowledge?
1:52:07Nothing. Get the f*** out of my face! Don't do it! And who the hell lets you back on this campus? Good luck because they don't give a f***! How difficult is it to change someone's mind? Depends. I have plenty of friends. I'm fine having a few enemies. They're all in the same room. They're all going to the same parties. And when they all share the same worldview, it's a blind spot. How much money have you lost by not being PC? Many tens of millions of dollars. I've had people say that I was a hate speaker because I said soccer was... I do. I think so. What political beliefs have you changed your mind on?
1:52:47I don't know that anyone has ever actually convinced me to take a more left position. Who's been the most intelligent person you've debated? People aren't going to like this answer.
1:53:01Hey, how about this? If that wasn't enough, you get our next episode as well for a limited time. So if you join as a channel member, you get now two of our following episodes right now to watch. Our next one's actually with Joshua Weissman. So if you want the preview of that, here you go. Enjoy. So you started out as an overweight teenager who loved food, and now you're shredded, rich, successful YouTuber with 10 million subscribers. How much time is realistically needed to get to, like, a decently impressive home chef? I didn't go to culinary school. I worked in restaurants, in real-life scenarios, learning real-life techniques and tricks.
1:53:35Where's the land source? What's the worst thing you've seen in a restaurant? State officials today looking to address the growing issue of substance abuse within the restaurant and hospitality industry. There have been people that I've worked with that were like addicted. And then one day they just disappeared. Someone was standing up with their chef knife. The person stood up and turned into their knife. They got rushed to the hospital, got stitched up, went back to service. How much money do you think your restaurant's gonna make? I have no idea. I mean, how much does Gordon Ramsay make on those restaurants?
1:54:04Like$200 million a year. This is my new restaurant, which officially opens today. And it's called Ben and Lynn's. What's the most you've ever paid for a meal? One of the most expensive ones was for you guys. I wouldn't say it's phenomenal. Not my cup of tea. It's too buttery. What is the biggest mistake that you have made?
1:54:36You're not worried about hosting for the holidays? Oh, Wayfair's got me covered with holiday decor, extra dining chairs and guest bedding, all with tons of five-star reviews, so there's no surprises. Unless Uncle Matt brings his dogs again. For worry-free hosting, Wayfair delivers.
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - The Financial Disaster
00:06:15 - Why Joe Biden Never Owned a Stock
00:13:49 - Sponsor: Cash App
00:15:30 - What Really Runs Washington
00:22:51 - Rating His Finances Out of 10
00:30:24 - Sponsor: Gusto
00:32:06 - Sponsor: Upwork
00:33:27 - What His Art Actually Sells For
00:40:33 - How He Used AI to Write His Next Book
00:46:00 - Will AI Save Us or End The World?
00:51:41 - How Do You Owe $15 Million?
00:58:04 - Sponsor: Shopify
00:59:31 - Starting Over From Zero
01:04:37 - What Really Happened With $Laptop Coin
01:11:43 - Why Hunter Biden Will Talk to Anyone
01:16:04 - Who Actually Made Money?
01:21:50 - The $316 Billion Crypto Glitch
01:26:35 - Reaction To $Laptop Falling 99%
01:32:16 - Personal Debt vs. America's Debt
01:39:26 - The Trump Economy
01:44:23 - Rapid Fire: His First Stock Ever
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