#642 - James Li

11:40Theo Von:It's a company called Black Bear Sports. Black Bear Sports Group. And they own a ton of ice rinks in the Northeast. Yeah, this one right here.

11:54James Li:Wow, they banned parents from recording kids hockey. We changed that, okay?

11:57Theo Von:So yeah, I saw this article. I'm like, I got to blow this up, right? Because a lot of people aren't going to read this article. Right. So then I feel like it's my responsibility to say, hey, this is a big deal because this is just them price gouging parents. Like you're taking a moment of joy from these parents. Like they just want to, you know. You want to watch your kid practice. You're watching him. Exactly. And then now you want to paywall that and make them sign up for$50 a month, which is like more expensive than, you know, Netflix and all these other companies. So you're basically like taking advantage of their parents' love.

12:28Theo Von:It's like, yes, of course we want our kids, you know, record of our kids scoring a goal. So I'm going to pay for that. But it's like, is that good? Is that, you know, is that the right thing to do?

12:39James Li:Yeah. Like at what point is there, do we decide, Hey, we don't need to make a dollar off of this, right? There's an actual human value here that's worth more than some, um, ownership or that's worth more than like the rights to something. And then how weird does it get once you start giving away the rights to film your own kids and then it's like how long before a drone is in the sky and if you want footage of your kid playing in your yard, you have to email the drone and pay a fee to get a certain clip of your child on a swing because if you pull your own phone out in your backyard, it won't work anymore because you didn't pay a subscription fee.

13:15James Li:You know what I'm saying? That sounds dystopian. It sounds dystopian, but where we're getting now sounds dystopian in some places anyway and in some ways for sure. uh how did you get into kind of let's say investigative journalism like what spurned you to become someone who kind of wanted to expose so you want like i can give you like a

13:36Theo Von:short version or like a slightly longer version because okay so i'll i'll try to make it as succinct as possible so like many so this is like when i was a kid growing up i was i think i was in elementary school my mom asked me hey what do you want to do when you grow up and i said teacher He's like, what? And I said, yeah. And he's like, why? And I said, well, summer breaks, duh. But that wasn't so, so like for me, that was the joke reason. But really I love just like, I have this natural curiosity for things. I love learning about stuff and I love telling other people about stuff. So like that's, to me, that's a teacher.

14:09Theo Von:Like what I do right now is like teaching in a sense of like I'm reading, you know, basically like one chapter ahead. And then I'm learning about stuff like, wow, this is really cool. I want to share that with the world. and hopefully you can use that information to better your life. That's my hope. I never obviously did that. I worked a bunch of different things. And like I was saying, I was working in a call center, just random startups that didn't go anywhere. So then maybe about 10 years ago, I was talked into applying to business school. So then I went to NYU. I went to the full-time MBA program at NYU.

14:45Theo Von:You lived in New York? A couple of years. Wow. That's cool. It was cool. I mean, it was cool for a little while. I actually didn't like living in New York. It was like just too, too much for me. Like the stimulus was. It's a lot. Yeah. It was better back then. Now I go back. I go back probably a couple of times a year because I still have friends out there and I visit them. And when I go there now, I'm like, whoa, this is like sensory overload for me at this point. But anyway, so I went to business school and I actually wrote my essay because that was when I was applying to business school is when Bernie first started running his 2016 campaign for president.

15:16Theo Von:And I was a big Bernie guy. And that's when I first learned of like, oh, wow, the Democratic Party is not so democratic. I'm sure you know some of the stories about him getting screwed over by the DNC. Yeah, he got railroaded.

15:27James Li:He won some primaries and then they pulled him out.

15:30Theo Von:Well, they gave like, for example, they gave Hillary like access to the debate questions ahead of time. They were rigging all the rules against Bernie just like – and then they were creating smear campaigns that originated from the DNC like the Bernie bros. That was like a DNC manufactured smear campaign to say, oh, Bernie Sanders is a racist and a sexist. That came from the DNC themselves. That wasn't like an outside group saying that. It could be. It's like it was never an official DNC. Nobody said it was an official DNC contract. It was a leak that came out later on that said, oh, yeah, they made that.

16:04James Li:I wouldn't I would not be surprised. I mean, either way, his his own party railroaded him. His own party did not give him. Oh, yeah. People wanted him and they did not give the people what they want, which is really the most democratic.

16:13Theo Von:That was the race that we were supposed to have. That's one thing that makes me sad. We were supposed to have the populist right Trump, populist left Bernie. That was supposed to be the election. And that was going to be like, imagine that fight right there. That's what the soul of America is all about. Instead, the Democrats got the most establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton. Nobody wanted her. But anyway, so around that time, I was applying to business school. So I'd seen all that happen. So I wrote my essay going to business school. I was like, hey, I want to work in the news business because I want to improve the way we report the news.

16:50Theo Von:And so I went to business school. So immediately when I got in there, they were like, I don't think you're going to be able to get a job at a news agency because you don't have any experience. So why don't you do consulting instead? Apparently anybody can be a consultant. That's true. And so, yeah, no, seriously, I was like, I have none of this background. So credit to consulting firms. If you go to the right school, they will hire you as long as you do well in the interviews and things like that. So I became a consultant, management consultant for four and a half, five years at a big four consulting firm.

17:22Theo Von:And it just so happened coincidentally. So then COVID hit like maybe a year after I started working in consulting. And it just so happened that I was working for a big pharma client at the time. um and so covid big awakening for i think a lot of us i mean for me for many other people because at first i was like one of the people who was okay i was like all right we got to stay inside we got a lockdown we got to stop the spread right who doesn't want to stop i was like i'll stop yeah let's stop the spread let's do that and then it was then the mass and then eventually the vaccines but then over the next course like maybe a year year and a half things started coming out that was like weird it was like what the heck is this like they seem to be contradicting themselves And you had that whole Joe Rogan debacle of the ivermectin when they said it was horse pace, when there's like a human version of it that obviously he's not taking the veterinary medicine.

18:16Theo Von:For sure. So then I saw that, but then I was on the inside. I was literally like, okay, something weird's going on. And then I got to do, so this is the year, I think it was like 2022, right at the beginning of 2022. And you're working for a big pharma company at that time as a consultant. As a consultant. Yeah. My specialization was supply chain. So I was doing projects like optimizing inventory. So it's like how much product you have based on how much you're going to sell and how much you're making. Because you want to have the right amount, right? If you have too much, it's going to be, there's going to be leftover.

18:47Theo Von:It's going to expire. You're going to have to throw it away. If it's not enough, then, you know, you run out of stock and you can't make money, right? So you have to have the perfect amount. So that was my job. And a lot of it was like making PowerPoints, you know, spreadsheet PowerPoint work. And so then we did this project at the beginning of 2022 for this big pharma client. I can't say which one for legal reasons, but it was one of the manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccine. And one of the projects that we did was looking at the totality of the inventory they had within this product. And we went to them with a report saying that by the end of this year, and this is once again 2022.

19:23Theo Von:So then everybody who wanted to get the vaccine had taken it by this point. It was because 2021 is where it came out. It was about a year after that. People had already gotten their first couple doses. And so we let them know, it looks like you're going to have a few hundred million dollars worth of inventory. At the very least, depending on how you calculate it, it could be worth more than that. That's going to be left over at the end of the year that has no demand against it, meaning you're not going to be able to sell it. Nobody's buying it. And then a few weeks later - You're going to have product left on the shelves.

19:57Theo Von:Well, yeah, exactly. Nobody's buying this. and then a few weeks later I see the CEO of this company go on to CNBC or one of these news you know companies news shows and he says well I think it's time to do like another booster shot and so then to me I was like holy fuck this is this whole thing is I can't do this anymore I was like I'm out so they created the booster because oh we have

20:22James Li:extra left over of course I mean people say

20:24Theo Von:that but then they'll call you a conspiracy theorist for saying that because it was like no there's scientific backing to this and that. But I'm on the inside. I'm like, this doesn't look, this is, this seems like a pure financial decision. Dude, Magellan was a conspiracy theorist, wasn't he? What, for going around the world? Well, no.

20:38James Li:Who's the guy that prophesied that there was another place to go sail to?

20:42Theo Von:Well, Columbus was the guy that said the world is round and I'm going to go the other way. Right. People going one direction. He's like, I think I can get around to the other side. That was Columbus.

20:51James Li:Oh yeah. Columbus. That's the original reach around right there. Yeah. First of all, let's just say that dude.

20:56Theo Von:But at that point I, I thought, man, I think I'm contributing to evil and I don't want to do this anymore. Wow. And eventually I got out. There's a whole story of me getting let go because I was staying. I started getting more rogue at work, just saying stuff you're not supposed to say. Oh, yeah. Just milling around the water cooler. Well, it's powerful. The elites of the company, the people who were really high up. And I started saying stuff that was like, I think was correct, but it was uncomfortable for them to hear. And then I get brought into like a meeting. It's like, hey, what's your future look like here at this company?

21:34Theo Von:Where do you see yourself? That kind of thing. And then I was put on a performance improvement plan shortly thereafter. People who know, yeah, people who work in corporate America will know what that is, right? It's basically their way of firing somebody without legal liability. Right.

21:49James Li:They try to show that there's steps.

21:51Theo Von:Yeah, they say like, oh, we're not firing this person for any other reason other than poor performance. Except, you know, they said I was doing like typos. First of all, what Asian is doing typos? Not even to make it racial or whatever. I'm not going to say there aren't typos. Sometimes there were typos.

22:10James Li:But that's certainly more of a general Caucasian problem.

22:15Theo Von:You talking about Epstein with the typos on the emails? Oh, that's a good point, huh?

22:18James Li:Like the whole thing is typos. He didn't even want to commit to, you know, completing a word, you know?

22:23Theo Von:Yeah, it was very bizarre. I mean, this is getting off track, but very bizarre how he typed. It was like, there's commas, but then there's three spaces after that.

22:31James Li:It's almost like he wanted to show that if the case ever tried to show this, it wouldn't match up with anything else, you know? And that's when you're in such a state of like protecting yourself or like outsmarting the world. So then at what point do you start? Because you started making clips first, and then you started 5149. That's your podcast.

22:48Theo Von:So I started, so when COVID hit, I actually just started doing videos on YouTube just because I had more time on my hands and I was just like, let me look into some of this stuff. So I started doing like one video a week on the weekends. I was just like, you know, they're shitty videos. They're still up. People can look for them. They're not very good, but it's just me looking into stuff. So then after that, I started doing more and more of that. Putting stuff on. Yeah, making content. So I was on YouTube and then I started posting on TikTok. and then Instagram.

23:19James Li:And Rogan shared something here or mentioned it one time.

23:21Theo Von:Yeah, he shared something. It was actually a really funny clip because I was wearing my bucket hat and I think it was Shane Gillis or something. He was just like, yo. Oh, that's the clip right there. Yeah. Let's see it.

23:32James Li:Before you press play on that, listen, don't trust this shit. That guy with a fishing hat is not a reliable news source. My number one source of news. It looks like a movie. What I sent Jamie yesterday. You want to get mad? Yeah. Let's get mad. the LA fire fund you know they had this big big fundraiser they raised a hundred million dollars James Lee did a thing about it on Instagram this the way they distribute the money is so crazy you're gonna you're gonna read this and you're never gonna want to donate to charity again listen to this I was a I looked into it a little bit we'll watch it but I would what they say though is that within the first month they distributed half of that money hold on before you press play on that.

24:15James Li:I also don't trust this. Hold on. That guy with the fishing hat is not a reliable news source. So that's the whole thing? That's awesome though. But I remember this thing and I remember like, oh, so this guy's catching on. People are curious about this guy. People are adapting to, I think, what they feel like is genuine. Even if it's just genuine curiosity, I think people are, you can, you know, there's something inside of you that will attract to it, right? And people also are, I think they're truth seekers. It's like, you know, water seeks like a comfortable level. So it's like that's how people work, kind of finding you and being like, oh, well, there's something here that's real, you know?

24:50Theo Von:Well, for me, I'm literally like the definition of a person who is just a regular guy. I don't think I'm too smarter than regular people. I was like a decent student but never the top student. Like I'm not a good reader. But what I had was this kind of like curiosity. curiosity. And one thing that I do think I'm good at is like just recognizing patterns of like this, this, this, this. And I'm like, oh, these kinds of all fit together. It's like, there's, there's like a logical pattern that's happening here. And so I'm just a little definition of a guy who imagine just like, Hey, we're going to make you like an anchor in the news.

25:25Theo Von:Like, and then you're going to be able to say whatever you want. And that's just me. So like, I have no editorial, um, sort of control from other people. It's just like, whatever I'm interested, I'll do a video on that and there's nobody really to tell me you can't do this you can't do that other than of course like getting deplatformed right which happened yeah which which did happen

25:43James Li:but other than yeah happened recently on TikTok yeah we'll come back to why that happened if I could go back in time and do one thing I I think I would invest that's what I would have done at the time I didn't know I felt like I didn't know enough oh I don't have enough information or I don't know how to get the right information. What do I, you know, I don't know where to start, but I wish I just realized that a lot of investing is just time in the market. So many of us focus only on where our money is today. Acorns is the financial wellness app that cares about where your money is going tomorrow.

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27:06James Li:Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier 2 compensation provided. Potential subject to various factors such as customer's accounts, age, and investment settings. Does not include Acorns fees. Results do not predict or represent the performance of any Acorns portfolio. Investment results will vary. Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC Registered Investment Advisor. View important to close to acorns.com As America celebrates its 250th birthday this year, let's remember the people who helped build it, the American ranchers. And one way to do that is, I believe, by supporting American ranchers.

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28:41Theo Von:So the Palisades fire specifically was now it's very much proven with facts that it originated from another fire that started 10 days earlier. I don't know if you've heard about this. There's another fire that started on New Year's Day. They said it was like fireworks. Somebody was there. And there was like a smoldering. So the firefighters had come and technically put it out. But the residents there, and I've talked to a couple residents there, they were saying, no, there was still like smoke emanating from the brushes. and then seven or eight days later, that's when the big fire came in with the wind, and it whipped everything back up.

29:16Theo Von:That's the same thing that happened in Maui.

29:18James Li:A fire was put out. The police stayed there all night with it, thought it was out. They waited there all night until like, I think until like 2, 4 a.m. or something, and then they went home. They said there's nothing left. In the morning, the winds kicked up, and that's when it got to another level. Anyway, go on.

29:33Theo Von:And Gavin Newsom was saying stuff like, oh, we couldn't have done that because of vegetation. There's like some environmental reason why they couldn't go back in. It was like kind of bullshit. So now the state's getting sued because they're culpable for it. And they even said, this is like a couple of weeks after the fire started, the deputy fire chief said, there's no way this big fire was started from the other fire because we put that fire, that fire was dead out. And now it's not dead out. Spencer Pratt has been really big on this in terms of he's running for mayor of LA and he's all over this.

30:03Theo Von:Yeah, I'm seeing that.

30:04James Li:So who says the small fire caused the big fire and who says it didn't? So what do we know what really happened?

30:09Theo Von:Yeah, no, there's now evidence that definitely came from the first fire. So now the state is getting sued by, I can't remember who the, I don't know who the plaintiff is. Because what did they do? Well, what they did was it was negligent because they didn't follow the procedures to put out the fire. Got it. Because they knew that they were still smoldering. I think there's records of this, but they couldn't go in for vegetative reasons or whatever it is. And so now they're in trouble because now the damage that's been caused to the entire Palisades community. Yeah, see, there it is.

30:39James Li:One year ago, just after midnight on New Year's Eve, a small brush fire broke out in Topanga State Park above the Pacific Palisades outside Los Angeles. Within hours, the Los Angeles Fire Department arrived on scene to begin digging hand lines to stop its spread. The eight-acre fire ignited by a 29-year-old former Palisades resident who has since been charged with arson was quickly brought under control. By 4.46 a.m., the department declared it fully contained with no further updates anticipated. But the fire was never fully extinguished. A week later on January 7th, it reignited and burned more than 23 ,000 acres, destroyed 6 ,800 structures, and killed 12 people in what became LA's worst urban wildfire catastrophe.

31:18James Li:And I'm guessing that was the Palisades Fire or the LA Fire?

31:21Theo Von:That's the Palisades. There's another big fire, the Eaton Fire, which is in Altadena. That one was caused by PG &E because one of the power lines fell down. And so they're getting sued right now for that. Wow. But can a fire smolder for that long? I've been told yes. It could smolder for a number of days, even weeks. It's because it's really dry there. There hadn't been rain for a long time. I even looked. There was literally NASA satellite imagery of you could see the hot spot. And it doesn't necessarily have to be smoking, from my understanding. It could be under the earth. It could be hot. And then any kind of wind condition, you could like, I don't know how it really works from a scientific perspective, but it's like starting a fire.

32:06Theo Von:It's like starting a fire in a campsite. Like you can, under the right conditions, the fire will start. So I think the issue here in terms of the liability is that the fire department is supposed to go back in and check it to make sure that it has been put out. Got it. And because they didn't do that, the liability is now on them in terms of the damage. I mean, there's billions of dollars of damage now, which opposes, I mean, which is contradictory to what they said, which is like the fire is dead out. We did our job. What were they saying was the original cause of the fire? Well, they said it was just like an act of God.

32:35Theo Von:It was like, you know, there's no way to stop this because it was so crazy. The wind and Poseidon or whatever.

32:40James Li:Yeah. Yeah. Zeus did it.

32:41Theo Von:Yeah, exactly. And this is what Spencer Pratt's been going on. But he's like, this is not like just some crazy thing. It could have been easily preventable if you guys had done your job.

32:50James Li:But what was the issue with the with the fundraising? Were they given the.

32:53Theo Von:Oh, the fundraising. So there's actually I think they're getting sued as well now because that was like from like six or eight months ago when I was doing that video. but what happened there was like they they collected a bunch of money from this like concert right this like uh benefit concert and they're supposed to go to the fire victims but then when you do like when you partner with the non-profits a lot of that money first just gets absorbed by the non-profit for like administrative things yeah holiday parties shit like that or whatever exactly and then from what i understand like i've talked to a few residents like we didn't see any of the money.

33:27Theo Von:Like, how do we get this? And then there's people or organizations that can sign up to get that money distributed to them. And there would be other companies like diaper companies or whatever it is, like services. Diaper companies? So like, for example, these companies come in and say, well, we can help distribute diapers to residents that have lost their homes. But then now that creates another bureaucratic step for if you've lost your home, like you just want a check, like just give me some money so I can like survive. I don't want to go to this organization to like collect a diaper because I have a child.

33:59Theo Von:It just makes things like way more complicated that way.

34:01James Li:I understand. So it's a lot of, they'll donate it to these other places, maybe a friends charity, whatever this is. Yes, exactly. And the next thing you know, it's been distributed to all these different spots and there's not any actual money.

34:09Theo Von:And then the residents, they don't know like where the spots are. And so it's a lot easier for them to say, hey, this is the deed to my house. It burned down. Can I collect my$5 ,000 or whatever the distribution was? Right. It would be a lot easier to do it that way. But the people who organize this is the Balmer Group, which owns the Clippers and the stadium in L.A.

34:26James Li:But you think they would want to then do the most human thing then if it's they're owning the Clippers? You know what I'm saying? They want the fans to come to their games.

34:34Theo Von:Well, I think they thought they were doing the humane thing. But I think it's just the corruption of the system. It's like, well, we have all these charities that we already work with. So let's bring them into the fold of this. But it's not the best solution. The best solution is just to give people the money that need the help. Yeah. But then now they're just enriching the people who are their friends, like all their partners that are doing all these nonprofits. They get a little bit of a cut as well through this process. You just want a little cut.

35:00James Li:Yeah. In its report, the House Judiciary Committee stated money went to left leaning pet projects, illegal aliens and the administrative costs related to running nonprofit organizations. This is from CBS News. You had examples of funds used for voter outreach efforts towards political advocacy groups, towards podcasters, fungus planning. those examples are pretty troubling um i do want to be clear there were many organizations that got funds non-profits that are certainly very worthy non-profits i think there was one i was talking to

35:29Theo Von:um aloe black he was because he's involved his house burned down and he was like i don't understand why the the um what was it the community college of like pasadena is getting money for this like they didn't like why do they need money right i don't know so it's i think it's more of like hey if you wanted to maximally benefit the people, you would do the right thing and you just give the money to the people. Like show a record that you own this house and then come and collect your check versus all this bureaucratic shit where people can take it. They're just trying to, the problem with California is like, there's problems that they need to solve, but they need to create, the solution always involves like people being able to like stick their hand in the cookie jar and taking a cut here, taking a cut there.

36:09Theo Von:And then by the time the money goes to the people who need it, it's like a lot less of it actually is there.

36:14James Li:There's no dessert left, really. Yeah. For the people that need it most. Oh, wait. Robertson is an attorney representing Palisades fire victims in a civil case against the city. He says public records obtained by the L.A. Times add credibility to his claim that the Lockman fire was not properly extinguished. Okay. A new report from L.A. Times claims the Los Angeles Fire Department tried to protect Mayor Karen Bass from reputational harm. it was smoldering right on the top of the ground and we have numerous hikers that took video that

36:43Theo Von:called 9-1-1 that still took photographs so they definitely there's so much evidence that the fire wasn't properly put so they're under i mean the state of california is getting sued because technically i think it's a state land and i think now it's funny i heard spencer talking about this karen bass is like trying to join that lawsuit against Gavin Newsom. She's like trying to, you know, she's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm also been wronged in this situation as well. It was Gavin Newsom. So they're all pointing fingers at this point. I mean, that's Malibu. But then, okay, so, but then the, I want to do the outcome of this is like many homes being burned down and then corporations coming in to buy these homes.

37:26Theo Von:Yeah. You know, if you, I think you could probably look up a stat, like more than 50 % of houses that have been purchased in LA after the fires were purchased by corporations. In fire districts or just anywhere? No, no, no. In the fire areas that burned down. I saw there was a headline of this for sure. Got it. The houses that have burned, I think. Not of just regular homes, I think.

37:49James Li:Let me see if we got to fact check that. Investors are buying close to half the empty lots in LA burn zones, report says. That's the conclusion. Researchers with the online real estate listings platform Redfin reached in a new report published Tuesday. Analyzing transactions in LA County burn zones during July, August, and September, they found that about 40 % of Pacific Palisades vacant lots went to corporate buyers in both Altadena and Malibu. About 44 % of such vacant lot sales went to investors. Huh. I wonder though, is there some benefit? Maybe they're putting it into just a business or an LLC.

38:28James Li:I wonder if there's some other benefit of doing it that way. You know what I'm saying? Like maybe there's a different, maybe it's insurable that way and maybe regular homes. You know what I'm saying? Like I wonder if there's something else that adjusts that.

38:40Theo Von:I don't, I mean, I don't think so. I mean, it seems like at the very least you could argue the size of the investor. Are they BlackRock or is it like some person who owns like five homes? Got it. Right, that could be something to discuss, but it's certainly not people who live there. Like if you want your home and you live there, it's not like that. It's not like for your family. It's like this guy's buying the home to like rent it out or to flip it or something like that. Yeah. Which isn't ideal for, you know, home ownership. And, you know, you want people to live in the home.

39:10James Li:Yeah. And you can get a homestead exemption that way. I mean, I just, you know, or there's different things, like if it's your primary residence. Oh, before I forget, yeah, what got you deplatformed? Let's talk about that. And then let's get into the Epstein stuff because that's kind of current. And we'll go down some rabbit holes here with one of the lead hares here.

39:28Theo Von:For sure. Well, so TikTok, they never tell you why you were banned. Yeah, none of these places kind of do. No, you don't know. They just one day you're banned. Some people have warnings and strikes before they're banned. I wasn't in that situation. I had a good standing account with no issues. And all of a sudden I was banned. I was banned twice, actually. So the first time I was banned, you can only now context clues. The first time was when I did a video about how our FBI director, Kash Patel, might be getting honey potted. you know people have been talking about that i don't know i i never saw i was just reading you know other people's sort of reporting and who she was and it's like hey this seems like kind of a weird relationship like does she work um you know she's working closely with prager you which is basically like an israeli run outlet there's um an intelligence officer that runs prager you so is she involved in that and then it got banned after that but then i was able to get that restored actually through a friend who knew somebody at tiktok they're like okay i think we can help get you back on.

40:28Theo Von:So then I was back. And then the next time happened very shortly after I was named anti-Semite of the week by that group Stop Anti-Semitism. Oh, yeah. The week they're doing the weekly.

40:41James Li:I don't even know that they're doing a weekly now.

40:44Theo Von:Yeah.

40:46James Li:Yeah. There you go. Oh, yeah. There you go. I remember Tucker Carlson was on this, too. Who won? Did you get into? Tucker won. Tucker won.

40:53Theo Von:Yeah. I mean, he was just in Israel. I don't know if you saw some of that interview with him and Huckabee.

40:58James Li:Oh, yeah, I did, dude.

40:59Theo Von:It's definitely pretty baffling.

41:00James Li:Yeah. What was one of the takeaways from the Huckabee interview that you found interesting?

41:04Theo Von:Well, I thought it was really interesting how Huckabee was just being so open about what the project is there. He's like, yeah, I want Israel to take the whole thing. Because Tucker was saying, hey, based on— About Gaza, you mean? About—not Gaza. The Middle East. No, the whole Middle East, basically. Because he was talking about how, based on scripture, this whole land is like the greater Israel project. And he's like, oh yeah, you have a biblical right to do this, and are you okay with Israel taking the whole thing, which includes other countries like Jordan and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, all these countries?

41:37Theo Von:And Huckabee's like, yeah, I'm good with that.

41:39James Li:Yeah. I mean, it's pretty baffling. I mean, Huckabee just really, it feels like he's more of a politician for Israel than America.

41:49Theo Von:well that's certainly the case he also he's the ambassador right he is the ambassador but he also met with jonathan pollard who's the spy convicted spy um you know traitor to america and he met him on the at the american embassy in jerusalem which is you know i mean it's pretty fucked up i mean yeah unless he was yeah there was actually a clip and he was like i didn't meet with there was not a meeting or he was like it wasn't a meeting but i meet with people all the time was more of like I was there with him okay call it what you will so but I have a theory around this because I was like why would he even want to do this why would they want to telegraph it so nakedly to people and basically say that yeah Israel controls American foreign policy that's kind of crazy thing to do and why was Tucker even allowed to do this interview and I have this theory of like basically both parties the Democrat and the Republicans, they need to create these release valves for the base in order to keep it intact.

42:50Theo Von:Like they have that on the left with like Bernie Sanders, AOC. I see them as kind of a release valve to get people back in the Democratic Party fold. Right. Instead of going to a third party, something else. You know, like the last election in Michigan, they had this non-committed vote in Michigan where people really, because they didn't want to vote for a Democrat because they're supporting the genocide in Gaza, and they voted for this non-committed party line. I'm not going to vote for anybody. And that was actually a Democratic Party move to insert that in, because if they didn't vote the uncommitted, they would have voted Green Party, and they didn't want people to vote Green Party.

43:28James Li:I see. So they created this other thing that made them feel some type of way, but really it was owned by the Democratic Party.

43:34Theo Von:So it was - Right. And they both do that. I think you're right. On both sides, there's like - And Tucker is the release valve, I think, on the right, where it's like people are kind of fed up with the whole like prioritizing Israel before everything else. So Tucker creates this like, OK, at least somebody's saying this stuff. So like we feel a little bit better.

43:52James Li:But do you think he's an instrument of the Republican Party to do that?

43:56Theo Von:That's I mean, I wouldn't know. You would have to ask him about that. I think he's from my understanding. I only know people who know him. I don't I've never spoken to Tucker, so I don't know what you know. I don't really know anything about him. But I think in general, he seems to me from the outside looking in sort of a guy who wants to do the right thing, report on the right stuff. I think he really feels really bad about the Iraq war. I mean, you've spoken to him, so you can tell me more. It seems like he's remorseful for the fact that he was such a big champion of a war that got like a million Iraqis killed, thousands of Americans created geopolitical chaos.

44:26James Li:He mentioned that in the Huckabee interview, some of that. He mentions that kind of stuff a lot.

44:30Theo Von:Yeah.

44:31James Li:To me, he seems genuine.

44:32Theo Von:I mean, but he doesn't mean, but he could still be used by the party apparatus, right? Sure.

44:37James Li:It's like, yo, you want to do this interview? We'll allow you to do this interview. Right. Oh, I see what you're saying. Right. Like even that might even be a way of being used that you don't even realize it. Exactly. Because you give somebody a like, okay, you can interview this guy of ours. We know he'll say some things. Yeah. It'll, it'll, it'll let people, some, the people, some will be like, oh, I was right. And it lets a little bit of steam out of the kettle. Exactly. Exactly. That's one thing I realized about when I was sitting with Bernie recently is, yeah, he just kind of yells these things.

45:07James Li:And I've been a Bernie guy. I wanted Trump and Bernie to be on the same ticket years ago. That would have been wild, huh? It would have been great because I feel like you need to have two people that have different views on the same ticket, like a president and a vice president. Then whoever loses becomes a vice president in the election.

45:22Theo Von:That's how they used to do it. The first three elections were done.

45:24James Li:That's how it should be done because then you have somebody that you have differing opinions, who has differing opinions than you, and you guys are in the same office and you guys have to figure things out, right? Like to me, that makes sense, right? It seems like the most democratic way to go about it. What I realized, it's like, yeah, he's coming here and yelling things. He's been yelling the same things for 30 years. Yeah. And nothing is really getting done. And then when you look at everything, it's like, oh, wait, they've all been, we've all been yelling the same things for 30 years. nothing is good it's all like you start to realize that the politicians and the people like politicians are coming on a regular podcast and we're just yelling at the people like we've got to do this we voted you to go do it don't don't vote us to send you up the mountain and then you just come back down and be like we got to do it like bitch we just sent you to say we got to do it so that's when i realized oh it's just this and i think everybody realized that that it's a little bit like theaters it's a shell game yeah and it's yes it's theater and i think everybody's starting to see that and so i think it's um to me i think it's getting very interesting right now uh which in some ways also is kind of exciting well i think i mean that's one of the

46:37Theo Von:things i do appreciate about trump is that they are saying some of these things just very nakedly so then we could just have the conversation about the real thing right it's like when we go take like Maduro and Venezuela. It's not like some bullshit about democracy or this and that. It's like, oh yeah, no, we do want the oil. That is a primary reason why we're going over there. So then we don't have to do this whole rigmarole, this dance around why we're actually there. It's like, oh, we want the oil. So then we can decide, is this really good? Do you really want to be the country that everybody hates?

47:05Theo Von:I just, you know, I want to take Greenland, so I'm going to have it. I'm going to take Venezuela. I'm going to take Cuba. Is that really good or is it better for U.S. standing in the world to like do more diplomacy to get what we want versus just like straight up just sending aircraft carriers or like, you know, the SEAL team to go in there and do the thing.

47:23James Li:I agree. I mean, and I think there's a part of us now that like you're even looking back at historical, like I'll watch old movies, like war movies now. And it's like it, I remember as a child, I'd be like, oh yeah, America, we did it. Right. And then you watch now and you're like, what are we doing there?

47:39Theo Von:Well, that's the Top Gun. It was like basically the Iran strike. It was literally the plot is the same, the new Top Gun.

47:45James Li:Oh, I blame Miles Teller for that. And he knows it. I'm just joking, Miles. Oh, you mean the original one, you mean the original? Oh, the new Top Gun. The new Top Gun with Miles Teller, yeah.

47:56Theo Von:Oh, so you're saying that - Because that was a strike on a uranium facility in Iran. That was the plot of the movie. Oh, wow.

48:02James Li:And do you think that they knew? Like, okay, hold on, there's a couple rabbit holes here that we're kind of burying eggs in here. But first, you mentioned Venezuela, right? What do you think happened in Venezuela? Because here are things that just a regular person I heard. There was minerals that we wanted over there. They were one of the few programs that had their own financial system, so they weren't on the world financial system. And then that they had done something with voting machines. That was something I kept seeing online, that they had some part to do with the voting machines. In hindsight, what did you see about Venezuela or what were some of the conspiracy, the ivermectin holes you were in?

48:44Theo Von:Well, I think Venezuela is really interesting in the sense that, yeah, like you said, there weren't a part of this system, but they were kind of forced into that position. But they weren't a part of what system? The financial system? The Western financial system because they've been sanctioned by the United States for like 20 years, roughly. And I only learned about this when I was digging into this because I don't know much about Venezuela, but I wanted to learn about the history. So I was like, okay, let me do some searches on the internet and see what they're telling us in the news versus like what the history books are saying.

49:13Theo Von:And so it was like, well, I can't remember what year, but like Hugo Chavez came to power as like the socialist party in Venezuela. And he started nationalizing the oil and he started doing programs to improve, you know, life expectancy and other important metrics in the country, like making people like earn more money, all this stuff. So like people's life, what do they call this? They call them - Quality of life? Quality, sorry, yes. People's quality of life was improving in Venezuela, but the US didn't like the fact that they were, you know, socialists, so we don't want socialism. So then the Obama administration actually deemed Venezuela like an enemy to America.

49:52Theo Von:So then we started sanctioning them. So once we started sanctioning them, they had to start doing deals with other countries that weren't a part of the US system. So they started doing deals with like Russia and China. And now fast forward 20 years later, we're like, these guys are selling oil to China. They're selling oil to Russia. We don't like this. But then you look back like, well, you forced them to sell them to those countries. Those are the only countries that aren't a part of your block. So then those are the only countries they could sell it to. So then they're like, oh, the Venezuelan economy is so bad.

50:20Theo Von:They've, you know, everybody lives in poverty. Part of the reason for that is like you don't allow them to trade with any of our allies. Right. We cut them off at a time when they were growing. Yeah, exactly.

50:30James Li:Why would we want to stop them from growing stronger, do you feel like?

50:33Theo Von:Well, because their government was socialist. So now all of a sudden you have a socialist regime. That's doing well. Doing well right in sort of your backyard area, which is not ideal for sort of our capitalist kind of style. Like you don't want an example of that here. That's just my opinion. So then they started sanctioning. So it's a bipartisan thing. It's not just Trump government. Obama government started this, right, with the sanctioning. Trump added on made it more robust, the sanctions, and then all of a sudden, wow, we got to get this guy out of power because he's smuggling drugs or something like that.

51:08Theo Von:But also, he was very open about the oil. He's like, we got to get the oil, but then part of it also, too, I think is, the Israel part is a side piece, but it does play an important piece. What do you mean the Israel part? Basically, whatever country that opposes Israel, they basically tell us, we got to take that country out. We got to do a regime change. So a lot of that is in the Middle East, but there's some other countries, for example, in Venezuela, they are very opposed to the Israeli government. Maduro was very open about calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide. And so they're like, we got to get rid of this.

51:41Theo Von:And this is something I learned 20 years ago. There was an opposition guy, I can't remember his name, but he was running for president. And the media kind of slandered him or they smeared him as a homosexual and a Zionist. So to me, that's like, okay, that means within the Venezuelan culture, Zionism is a bad thing. They're ascribing to this guy. So I think Israel will come in and say, this is a country that doesn't really support our existence. We should do a regime change.

52:11James Li:I see. So you're thinking that part of this was that Israel wanted to come in and have some effect on a country that doesn't support them.

52:18Theo Von:Exactly. And you see that happening with other countries that are not, I mean, Iran is probably the main one right now. That's like the last of their list. I saw you talking to Dave Smith about this, right? There's like a list of seven countries in the middle. From like the neocons and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

52:30James Li:Like wanting to take over.

52:31Theo Von:Yeah, exactly. So then Iran is on that list. So it's like, that's why we got to take it out. Even though we have no nuclear weapons at this point, supposedly. They told us.

52:41James Li:They did. Well, I mean, one of the things is Henry Capriles. Yes. Thank you.

52:46Theo Von:Yes, this is the guy I was talking about.

52:48James Li:Enrique Capriles Radonsky is a Venezuelan politician who served as the 36th governor of Miranda. He ran against Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela's 2013 presidential election. Maduro and his supporters spread rumors about Capriles homosexuality as a smear tactic, including public slurs. Enrique Capriles Radonsky was labeled a Zionist by Venezuelan state media and Chavez-Maduro allies. these accusations framed him as tied to international Zionism, often alongside his Jewish heritage. Oh, so he was a Jewish guy, despite his Catholic faith. Huh. Well, it seemed like they shouldn't have done that to him, but I guess that's how the media works, right?

53:26Theo Von:That's how the media works, yeah. It's a state-controlled media, which we have a lot of nowadays with CBS News is sort of, I would say, state-controlled media since it was sold off to Larry Ellison.

53:37James Li:Yeah, Barry Weiss started controlling over there. How do you feel about that that's been since she took over kind of?

53:43Theo Von:Well, it hasn't really worked out. I think once she took it over, it was very overtly clear what they were trying to do, right? They were doing pieces that were saying good stuff about Marco Rubio. They're hailing him as some kind of genius guy. They were also doing pro-Israel propaganda. So it was very – I think it's very clear to people who consumed the news what was going on. And it's actually, I think that's a playbook that's maybe a little bit outdated because not that many people get their news directly from CBS News anymore. Right. There's like, that crowd is decreasing. It's like old people.

54:18Theo Von:I don't want to say. Yeah, no. Well, a lot of people don't even have a cable anymore.

54:21James Li:I don't even know where you would find it. Some of it is, I don't even know where you'd find it. It's like, it used to be you knew where the news channels were.

54:25Theo Von:It used to be like, you knew who the nightly anchor was at all these, you see like the Walter Cronkites or the Peter Jennings.

54:31James Li:Now you have like Don Lemon like tickling some guy in a church or whatever, you know? just trying to like tickle the holy water out of some honky or whatever. And you're like, what is even happening anymore?

54:39Theo Von:So I think just an outdated strategy. They think, oh, I want to buy the news so I can control the news. Got it. But it turns out people don't really like that. People know that. And that's the same thing that happened to Washington Post too, right? Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. He thought they were going to be able to do kind of pro Bezos propaganda for him. Turns out all his viewers or readers hated that. They canceled. And now, you know, they're doing, I think they just laid off like a third of their staff. Wow.

55:03James Li:and a lot of that media it's just older media yeah so it's just kind of like leave you know some of that realm is changing it's just like not a changing the guard but it's like you know people want to come and just listen to something in a place where they uh feel like it's not being

55:15Theo Von:controlled anyway yeah and i think there's so there's that way is old so then there's other ways they're trying to subversively control independent media as well and we can get into

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58:08Theo Von:There's other ways they're trying to subversively control independent media as well. and we can get into that if you want later on.

58:15James Li:Well, yeah, I mean, you got deplatformed, so that was from TikTok, you said, and it was from something that was...

58:20Theo Von:Well, I think it was related to me being named Anti-Semite of the Week. Okay. And I think they have, like, tight connections because TikTok's moderation team is run by an IDF soldier. Is it? Yeah. She was hired recently to run moderation at TikTok. She's an American who moved to Israel, then got Israeli citizenship.

58:43James Li:There it is, Erica Mindell. That's a pretty name. IDF soldier, public policy manager of hate speech at TikTok. Well, did you say something that was hate speech?

58:54Theo Von:Well, according to them, yes, because I've been really critical of the Israeli government, the genocide, all these subversive tactics. They've, you know, they lied to us about all kinds of stuff. So I do report on that. And that is now considered hate speech at TikTok. So I'm criticizing the Netanyahu government, right, for what they've done. That is now considered because of the definition. Now they're basically saying anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. That is the definition that they're all adopting, including like the ADL. So if I criticize the government, that's sort of a proxy for criticism of Jewish people.

59:30James Li:Well, to me, that seems bizarre. I mean, I'm at the comedy store last night and people are having jokes that are anti-Israel and the crowd is going nuts, right? The entire crowd is cheering in those moments. you know it seems to be a very popular sentiment that people aren't going to support a government that's doing um what i believe is largely believed by most people these days to be a genocide or to be um you know some people will call it a new holocaust or whatever people call it different things right right uh but that most people believe that it's wrong right people saw it you can't you can't trick my heart you know i'm saying it's just like if you've been if the media has been telling me for years with a Holocaust definition that this is wrong, then you can't show me the same thing and say it's now it's not wrong for some reason.

1:00:15James Li:Um, but also to not attach that to my Jewish friends, like I had Jewish friends who are in the audience this weekend and I make anti Israel jokes and they don't have a, none of my friends have a problem with it, you know? Um, so I think, I don't know how one really connects to the other, you know? And I don't know if that's a problem of someone who's just trying to have a voice? Or is that an Israel's problem that they need to figure out with their own behavior? Does that make any sense to you?

1:00:45Theo Von:Yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you're saying. I think part of it is too, it's kind of a little bit dark, I think what I'm about to say, but I think part of them wants to create more anti-Semitism. That's like sort of the goal is like you are not anti-Semitic at all. You don't have any hatred towards Jewish people, you think everybody should be treated the same regardless of their creed or color, race, immutable traits, whatever. And they want to make it so that you actually don't like them. Because part of the Israel project is getting Jewish people to move to Israel. This is what I've been told.

1:01:15Theo Von:This is what I've been researching for the last couple of years. That's part of their strategy. There was a very famous Israeli podcaster who was like, oh, I love Mamdani. And they're like, why do you love Mamdani? He's like an anti-Semite. I don't believe that's true. But they're saying, hey, Mamdani's really anti-Israel. He's like, this is great because this is going to get people to move to Israel. That's what I want. And so I think that's part of the strategy. There's also another thing too with a group like the Anti-Defamation League that their whole job is to reduce anti-Semitism. Their job is combating anti-Semitism.

1:01:49James Li:Well, that makes sense. I mean, I think you want to be able to protect people.

1:01:52Theo Von:So the crux of that is then you get into sort of -

1:01:55James Li:Has the ADL spoken out against the Israeli government? No.

1:01:59Theo Von:They're pretty much run by the Israeli government. So that's the problem with the ADL.

1:02:02James Li:But that would seem like something they should do is speak out against the leader. No, the ADL has long been - I did a whole mini documentary. But does that make sense what I'm saying? Like, why wouldn't you speak out against the bad guy?

1:02:14Theo Von:Because the ADL is acting on behalf of the Israeli government as sort of a spy organization in America. I mean, you could look at it as ADL.

1:02:23James Li:So they're not a free-thinking group. They're a group that is a -

1:02:25Theo Von:Yeah, they call themselves a civil rights group. But what they're actually doing is trying to create more anti-Semitic behavior in the United States. Because if you think about it this way, you have an organization. Your whole thing is combating anti-Semitism. So let's say one day there's no more anti-Semitism. What happens to this organization? You're out of work. You're out of work. So then they've got to create more anti-Semitism. Oh, that's crazy, dude. Every year the ADL has published the anti-Semitism report. It's gone up every single year. The same guy is still there. I'm like, if you were the CEO of a company and you're doing shittier and shittier job, wouldn't you get fired?

1:03:01Theo Von:Wouldn't somebody else go in there? You would need that number to come down. But every year the number is going up. The donations are going up. They're in a very nice building in New York City on Park Avenue. So there's a whole industrial complex. Same thing with the homeless. I make the analogy of the homeless industrial complex in California where so much money is pouring into homelessness. But what happens if we actually solve this problem for all these organizations? Like you need this to continue. So then nothing gets done.

1:03:26James Li:It's the same thing. You need all these things to continue, right? You need the racism to continue. You need crime because then you have people living in fear, right? Like you need all these things, right? Because it does start to feel like we're living in a theater that's sort of controlled. Yes. Well, let's get into some stuff that's kind of current. Okay. And do you feel like an anti-Semite? Did you feel like that was fair that they said that?

1:03:48Theo Von:Well, no, absolutely not. You can go to that article. there's nothing in there that I said I don't, well first of all speaking personally, I don't have any problem I have a lot of Jewish friends, I went to school in New York so I'm very sort of connected in that community and the bagel belt I mean I wouldn't never I try to be like I'm like so scared of even saying anything like that what the bagel belt? that's funny dude

1:04:14James Li:who doesn't love good bagels anyway? my friend Max is opening a bagel shop in Florida right now No, I love it. I mean, every time I'm in New York, yeah, I'm eating bagels like every other meal. Dude, what I don't like is when you go there and they don't have cinnamon raisin bagels. Is that your thing? Well, I just like to have it as an option. If you're not giving that as an option, it makes me question you. It's like, what if a kid comes in here? What if somebody who wants to have a little bit of a sweeter day comes in? Well, they got the blueberry for that. Yeah. I don't believe in that one.

1:04:41Anyway, what do you say?

1:04:42James Li:James Lee is a conspiracist who brands himself as a champion of the independent thought. He uses his persona to spread longstanding anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories. His commentary distorts the nature of anti-Semitism and vilifies Jewish communities. Damn, James.

1:04:59Theo Von:Well, I challenged him to find an example of me vilifying a Jewish community, you know?

1:05:04James Li:Yeah. Well, it says right here, they aren't even hiding it anymore. Israel owns America. Well, I mean, they do. Well, let's talk about that for a second, man. um you know because so so much now there's like why are we giving money to Israel you hear that all the time right it's not even you know something that people are scared to even talk about anymore it's like what are we sending all this money to Israel for and really just why is there the connection right like it's and and there's not like a clear answer sometimes it's never like hey this is our ally this because you know this is um but yeah you're like we can't pay our nurses.

1:05:41James Li:We can't, you know, I'm saying we don't have like, we have issues in our public schools. More people are choosing to homeschool than ever, which is just another burden on the family really. Right. Um, you know, our food supply has been deemed, uh, toxic, toxic, right. That's something that we're battling right now. 70 % of young men can't serve in the military because of, uh, the physical shape that they're in. Right. Like, um, so you start to wonder, why do we have this extra money to just send to a place, right? So that I think is a very fair question. And I've been thinking about it a lot. And I do think, I don't think we're just sending money to a place.

1:06:19James Li:I do believe that our country is owned by Israel. And that, so you just give the money to the boss. So it's not us, they're just getting the money that's theirs.

1:06:31Theo Von:That's theirs, yeah.

1:06:32James Li:That's what I started to realize. Because I'm like, yeah, because if you do this for so long and it doesn't make any, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's no answer. It's like, oh, well, that's the boss coming and just getting his money. And so, yeah, I just think that that's kind of where we're at. And I don't mean that in an un-American way. I think there's still a lot of strength and heart in the idea of America. But I've thought for a long time that we're just like an LLC, like we're a shell company that's owned by Israel. And that's honestly just what it feels like more and more.

1:07:00Theo Von:Yeah, well, part of it is because we're supposed to be like allies. So then we're supposed to have like cooperation. You get something out of it. We get something out of it. But then I recently was listening to a podcast with that CIA guy. I don't know if you've talked to him, John Kiriakou. The long guy with the curly hair? No, John Kiriakou looks like that, yep. And is he a good guy? He's a good, so he was the one that, he was the one that whistle blew the torture program after Iraq and in Guantanamo and those places. Like, and he went to jail for two years because he violated some statute or whatever for telling us about that, that we were torturing people.

1:07:38James Li:Oh, he told it?

1:07:39Theo Von:Yeah.

1:07:40James Li:CIA whistleblower John Kirikou, who exposed the treatment of al-Qaeda suspects held in secret prisons, told the Bureau today it was now down to journalists to tell the full story about the intelligence agency torture program because politicians did not have the will. Okay, got it. So I just wanted to get some clarity on who he is.

1:07:57Theo Von:So anyways, so he was asked, is there like one particular intelligence agency that you just did not trust? He was like, yeah, it was Mossad. And he was telling the story about how every time Mossad comes into the CIA headquarters, they try to drop off some GIF that has like a bug in it, so the listening device. And every single time they would catch them, like, guys, you have to stop bringing these bugging devices into our headquarters. And eventually, I think the Mossad is no longer allowed at CIA headquarters because they keep trying to bug our conference rooms.

1:08:26James Li:But they have access to our conference rooms. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, do you think that that's, oh, this was in the past? do you mean a recently past okay got it yeah so he was the one who was kind of he was just saying

1:08:36Theo Von:that those were some stories from yeah so i'm like this is not how an ally should act right because we're supposed to be partners like why are you trying to bug our you know spy on us right right that's one thing i think tucker was talking to ted cruz like should israel spy on us like is that something that they should do as an ally so that's what i'm saying is like this relationship is like a little bit like i think it's monitoring their employees yeah a little bit of an abusive relationship is what is going on right that's that's kind of how i would view it in like a more or just like a layman way of putting it, is I think this is an abusive relationship.

1:09:07Theo Von:They keep kicking us, and then we keep going back to them and saying, please, well, we'll do better next time, and we'll help you, and this and that. Well, what spurned this, I mean, the thing that spurned this

1:09:15James Li:is the stuff in Gaza. That's what spurned so much of this people looking at Israel and being like, what is going on here?

1:09:23Theo Von:That's what it broke for the regular American public. I was definitely not looking at Israel before. The only weird thing that I saw that kind of got my sort of red flags raised was about a year before that, Israel had killed a journalist, an Al Jazeera journalist, who was, I believe, an American-Palestinian. And they said, no, they were caught in the line of fire or something like that. But then it later came out that, yeah, they just executed her. And I'm like, what's going on here? This is very bizarre. Like, why are they able to just kill journalists without any kind of international condemnation or anything like that without any accountability?

1:09:56Theo Von:So there's something weird going on here. And then October 7th happened, and that's when I think everybody started looking in. And you do one search and like, oh, this is, you know, this is what, and Charlie Kirk was one of the first ones. I think two days after, he was like, this is one of the, you know, why was, why did this even happen? Like, was there a stand down order kind of situation? Like, how are they even able to come across the border? This is one of the most secure borders in the world. How did it take them six hours? He's like, it takes 45 minutes to fly from Jerusalem to the border.

1:10:26Theo Von:why are you, you know, what's going on here? Was there something to then create this excuse to then now launch like a counter-offensive, quote unquote counter-offensive and basically turn Gaza into rebel?

1:10:40James Li:And do you think that that's what happened? What do you feel like about it?

1:10:43Theo Von:Well, I mean, this is based on my conjecture is that, yeah, I do think that - What does conjecture mean? Conjecture is like just me sort of coming up with a claim without knowing all the information because of course I'm not in the security briefing. So guessing or whatever. I'm guessing a little bit.

1:11:00James Li:But Asian guessing has got to be better than just regular white guessing, yeah?

1:11:04Theo Von:Some would say that. Like when you guys guess, dude, I bet it's, you know. Look, I got a pretty good track record of my conjectures. I'll just put it that way. Got it. So there's no other explanation. It would at most take one hour for them to respond. It took them six hours to respond. It doesn't make any sense. So then it's kind of like 9-11. It's like we kind of knew some shit. Like somebody knew something, right? There was like the shorting of the airline stocks. There were people taking insurance out on the building. Somebody knew something. In this situation, it seemed like there were people in the Israeli government who knew that this was about to come.

1:11:37Theo Von:And they just kind of let it happen, therefore creating the pretense to then destroy Gaza.

1:11:43James Li:Well, there was interesting that there was allegedly plans to like build buildings and that sort of thing in Gaza years earlier. I don't know if that's true or not, but I've heard that somewhere. Allegedly.

1:11:54Theo Von:And that's not the new thing with Jared Kushner and the new like Gaza.

1:11:59James Li:Well, yeah, it was like, let's do the mall over there. We're going to build a five guys, you know, but who's going to go eat on top of a haunted burial site of hundreds of thousands of people?

1:12:09Theo Von:That's what I'm saying. And it's like, do you really want a vacation there with your family? Would you take your kids? It's like, oh, we're going to go to, you know, I mean, I guess good real estate, but. But what if you're playing on the beach and there's just a bunch of bones in the thing?

1:12:21James Li:You know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, I wouldn't want to go there.

1:12:23Theo Von:Oh, God.

1:12:25James Li:Let's go down some of the rabbit holes, because these are things you like to investigate or get curious about. Let's start with Epstein and the files release. What do you think is happening with the document release? Because it seems very odd as a regular guy that we're getting documents, right? They're coming this years later. Both parties have been in Democratic and Republican have been in office since then, right? More than ever, it seems like both parties are just the same party with a different name.

1:12:57Theo Von:That's literally my shirt.

1:12:59James Li:Oh, yeah. Different brands, same ingredients. Oh, that's hilarious. So true. Oh, it's almost like that Coca-Cola Pepsi war a little bit. That's what I'm saying. Oh, that's great. And so it's just an interesting time. And the names that are redacted aren't the names of the victims. It's just like there's so much going on there. What do you think about it?

1:13:16Theo Von:Well, I mean, they tried. I mean, I don't think they thought these files would ever come out. Neither party. Really? Yeah, I don't think they thought, I think they were going to bury this forever.

1:13:25James Li:So you don't think it's a strategic release right now?

1:13:28Theo Von:No, I think right now is like, this is what we're going to offer because they were forced through that vote that Thomas Massey and Roe Connick, big credit to them to have the political courage to keep going.

1:13:39James Li:And we had them both on here. Shout out, bro. I will say that shit. Pull up. But anyway, go on. So take us into some of that. Yeah, what are some of the things that you feel like? Yeah, so you don't think it's strategic?

1:13:49Theo Von:I don't think it's. I think this is a release. So you think it's an effect that they didn't want to do?

1:13:55James Li:They didn't want to do this. They didn't want to do this.

1:13:56Theo Von:And so that's why you have all the names of the perpetrators being redacted. They're only supposed to redact the victims' names. A lot of the perpetrators' names are redacted, and now they're forcing them to unredact them. There's a whole process here. But I think this is like, here, we'll put something out because we're legally compelled to do it by the vote. It was like past unanimous. I think there's one person who voted present because they were forced. You don't want to be on the record voting against putting pedophiles in jail. You don't want to be that guy or gal. So then they were all forced to vote for it because they did not want that to get to the House floor or the Senate.

1:14:33Theo Von:But they had to vote for it because once it was there, you don't want to be voting against it. Like what, you're trying to cover up for billionaire pedophiles? You don't want to be on the record doing that. So I think this release was a result of that. And in terms of the Epstein stuff, what we're going to get into, I just want to say, like, there are a lot of people that have looked into Epstein for decades. Like, if you want to do a whole episode on Epstein, you've got to bring in somebody like Whitney Webb or Julie Brown. You know, she's from the Miami Herald. She's been covering Epstein since, like, 2005 or something.

1:14:59Theo Von:Yeah, yeah, we're trying to get her in, actually. So I'm just prefacing, like, hey, we're going to look into this Epstein stuff, but I want to give credit. Those are the people that are, like, the Epstein experts. I'm just the regular dude that's looking at the files.

1:15:08James Li:Yeah, they've been digging.

1:15:08Theo Von:You just came to kind of till the soil a little. Exactly, exactly. So then one big thing that I wanted to start out looking at was to answer the big question. Do you remember when Kash Patel went in front of Congress and he said, we have zero evidence that Epstein trafficked any young girls to anybody? 100%. Right? And everybody was like, what? How is that possible? You were railing about the Epstein files for years, and now you go in and say you found nothing? And so that was one of the first things like, hey, do we have – do you want to play that first?

1:15:33James Li:And this is my boy out of Louisiana right here. Shout out.

1:15:35Theo Von:You've seen most of the files. Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to besides himself? himself there is no credible information none if there were i would bring the case yesterday

1:15:51James Li:that he trafficked to other individuals and the information we have again is limited so the answer is no one for the information that we have in the files in the case file okay all right dude i believe i'm not joking i there's people that say that that created like a fake office and everything for Patel and we're only giving him certain information.

1:16:17Theo Von:Oh, so he didn't see the stuff that was -

1:16:19James Li:Even what he said, if you listen there, from this limited, did he say limited stuff I've seen or from what I've seen, which has been limited? So who knows if he even saw everything?

1:16:30Theo Von:Right, so he's, well, you're saying that somebody's even hiding something from him. That means another person above - A hundred percent. A shadow figure that's like -

1:16:37James Li:Right, like he goes into an office and has this perception that everything is a certain way. and he doesn't know. So then, of course, he's going to show up and what he's saying is the truth to him. Right? Because he even said from a limited... What did he say, Nick? For the information that we have.

1:16:56Theo Von:Well, they have it.

1:16:58James Li:But he's denoting that, you know what I'm saying, from the information that we have. I bet he didn't even see all of this stuff.

1:17:03Theo Von:Well, I bet he saw some of this because the stuff that has been released, some say it's half, some say the Channel 4 News in the UK say it's 2 % of what the total is. We don't know what the real number is. But so one of the things I want to look at is, is there anything in the files that suggests that Epstein trafficked young girls to other people other than himself, right? That's a big question that we should all have answered. And I'm not even looking. So there's, within the files, there's the emails, right? Between Epstein and a bunch of other people. But there's also like FBI tip stuff where people are saying crazy.

1:17:34Theo Von:This is where you see a lot of the Trump stuff is like people calling the tip line saying, I saw Trump do this. I saw Trump do that. So I'm like removing that stuff. I'm just going off the emails to say, look, does it look like? And there's one email chain between Epstein and Steve Tisch. And Steve Tisch is the owner of the New York Giants. Is he really? Yeah. Shout out Jackson Dart. And so let's start at the bottom because this is the, let's do it in chronological order, right? Okay. I don't know if you want to read or you want me to read.

1:18:01James Li:You be, I'll be, I don't know who to be. I'll be, I guess I'll be Tisch.

1:18:06Theo Von:Okay. All right. All right. Okay.

1:18:08James Li:And you'd be Epstein. Yeah. Hi, Jeffrey. I just had lunch with your assistant's friend, blank, who I met at your house Wednesday morning. Very sweet girl. Do you know anything about her? Thanks, Steve.

1:18:18Theo Von:And then Epstein says, no, but I will ask blank. All confidential. I will get all info. Did you contact the great fake ass tit blank? She's a character short term, has an older boyfriend, going to acting school, a 10 ass. I am happy to have you as a new but obviously shared interest friend.

1:18:38James Li:thanks jeffrey curious to know about redacted i will contact redacted pro or civilian so that probably means sex worker or just a regular non-sex worker right and then the next

1:18:50Theo Von:thing send me a number to call i don't like records of these conversations obviously oh

1:18:56James Li:310-779-8969 i wonder if i already have it in my phone dude if i already have it in my phone bro somebody's gonna win a winter coat that's what we're giving away this year dude if they allow us to have it is this stupid that i'm looking if you call tell them we're live to tape okay nope nothing okay close call oh okay sorry um so then tish writes 310-779-8969 nine. I've reached out to blank. She's not on this trip.

1:19:33Theo Von:Okay. Um, thanks. Yeah. And this is Epstein report just in. You did very well. She wants to go to the play. She's a little freaked out by the age difference, but go slow and wait. I will try to convince her not to return to Ukraine. Having her crying worked. Okay. Nice report.

1:19:51James Li:Funny comment on crying. So trying to seem like he's not involved. Totally.

1:19:55Theo Von:Well, I don't know. It seems like, okay. So, I mean, it's a little bit disturbing with the crying. It's like, why were you having her cry? Was there some pressure involved? Right, but it could have just been that she was upset about something as well. Could have been, yes. There are, I guess, innocent explanations for this, but at the very least, this looks like he's trafficking somebody to somebody else. The subject line is Ukrainian girl.

1:20:14James Li:Oh, that's a good point. That's a good point. So it doesn't say that she's an adult in this? It says that she's younger? It doesn't say the age. Got it. But it says she's young. Got it. But it says she has a boyfriend at some point, too, but that could still be anything. I'm not defending. I'm just trying to look at things openly. Okay, so you're saying that this justifies some form of trafficking.

1:20:36Theo Von:Well, I think it justifies some form of investigation at the very least. You should look into what the hell this was. Got it. And is it being investigated? I don't know for sure. I think the NFL hasn't done anything yet. There are people who are journalists writing articles who said this should be looked at. I think Steve Tisch should be investigated. because there's probably because you imagine this is just an email and then in that email it says i don't like talking about this over email so there's probably more conversations that are

1:21:03James Li:through text or something right yeah yeah and also i mean watch them just end up making them kick off from the five yard line or something like that like you know i'm saying like things are so merged and weird these days who knows so i think there's some other there's some other emails that i sent to zach that was like evidence of this kind of thing um there were can we look at some of those here we go some other ones here yeah let's look at some other ones here organize blank place for you blank each girl nice will do so this seems like he's organizing

1:21:34Theo Von:some meetup with some women with this redacted person we don't know who that is got it right so this is i feel like this isn't to me from the outside looking in because you're obviously not going to write in there yes i am trafficking young girls to you ages five to you know you're not going to say that you're going to probably be a little bit more for sure subtle about it

1:21:52James Li:do you know any girls that are into girls who might be into me and that's from someone epstein going to dancing again starting tuesday let me know if you're in town next week and i'll try to see if some of the girls are interested and what does dancing mean any news oh i see what you're saying going to be dancing again starting thursday so to me these are just you know

1:22:15Theo Von:cursory searches from a nobody i'm just like hey is there something here it seems like at the very least there should be some investigation happening i mean you're seeing in other countries people are getting arrested like prince andrew's getting arrested lord mendelson just got arrested lord mendelson did yeah oh my god who is it who is lord mendelson yeah he's like some british you know peter mendelson sorry yeah peter lord mendelson the british are popping off on him

1:22:45James Li:Watch him get Paddington Bear for something, dude. He always looked a little suspicious, you know? What are some of the other most suspicious things that you've seen from Epstein Files?

1:22:56Theo Von:Well, so the other thing that I wanted to look into, too, was the big conspiracy is like, oh, Epstein was running a blackmail operation. He's a spy running a blackmail operation on behalf of Israel, right? You probably heard that.

1:23:08James Li:Yes. Do you think he was a spy or do you think he was just a guy that was like, you know, obviously perverted, pedophile type of dude who was just like, you know, just a bad dude into some dark shit and had a lot of money?

1:23:23Theo Von:He was definitely a spy. I mean, if you could pull up, he was issued in the 80s an Austrian passport. So I don't know how you can get an Austrian passport. Well, this is OK. So fake Austrian passport. Right. So you have his name. Go up there to the top. Right. morius he looks like a little bitch look at him right so then how do you get one of these things

1:23:44James Li:marius robert was his name first of all that's cultural appropriation i'm gonna go ahead and say that right now bro shout out all the real marius is out there um and he said he was saudi

1:23:57Theo Von:arabian yeah this is a real passport that was used so it's fake in the sense that epstein obviously was not austrian right so he got a passport from somebody he got a passport from somebody in the 1980s and this is before he even met les wexner okay and um so to me this is some indication that okay so he maybe was tied up with the state department or intelligence right he was an asset of some sort that they wanted to issue this to so you could travel around europe using an alias

1:24:23James Li:right there could have been thousand a hundred different versions of him and he's one that over time just worked well enough you know that or that had enough success i think that you know because with anything you do like a c kind of program you would do like let's see you know let's see what's going on here

1:24:37Theo Von:based on my historical cursory historical knowledge this is done by the CIA so the 1970s there's a thing called the church committee have you looked into the church committee at all but that's when all the crazy shit came out with like Cointelpro and MKUltra where they basically exposed the CIA for all these covert operations regime change in the Middle East and in Iran all this stuff came out because prior to the 1970s the CIA would be just doing this stuff on CIA records they're doing this stuff. And then after the church committee, they basically had to go through various channels of like mobsters or like seedy characters in order to still continue to do what they do.

1:25:14James Li:I see, but have it off the books.

1:25:16Theo Von:Have it off the books. So then they need guys like Epstein to carry out some of the stuff who's not officially a CIA agent. Before they just had agents going in.

1:25:23James Li:Was it coming out of Vietnam that that energy just started to change things kind of?

1:25:27Theo Von:I'm trying, I don't exactly, yeah. You know what I'm saying?

1:25:28James Li:People started to not just believe in what we were doing was good.

1:25:31Theo Von:I think it was like the JFK assassination was a big thing, right? everybody was like this is really bizarre like how did this happen there was the bullets that went in these three directions and then there was you know the rfk assassination was also very bizarre mlk if you looked at every single one of those they're all very weird i think people started losing trust in the american government and then on top of that you had this massive war in uh in in vietnam like you were saying so then then there was that political will to like hey we need to expose similar right now i think with epstein's like hey we need to expose some of these billionaires that are running the country, right?

1:26:03Theo Von:It's gone too far, right? It's not like, you know, we're supporting Israel, but like, we're still building nice bridges and we're fixing the roads and the hospitals. It's like, if they did some, I mean, this is a little bit cynical, but if they did some of that stuff, I think people would probably pay less attention to Israel. Like they'd be like, okay, sure, whatever. Do that over there. Why don't they do that stuff in addition to it? Then I wonder. That's the big question. It's like, why? I think it's because everything is so, this is my take going to business school, just my background is everything is so like siloed in the sense that you're only thinking about your own company.

1:26:32Theo Von:So it's like, I just want to maximize everything for myself. So they're not really thinking about the collective like, Hey, if we do this in conjunction with everybody else, like we could, you know, take over the world. They're just like, everybody's kind of getting their own piece of the pie. They're trying to just get their cut. And there's not, there's like, I think there's like less collaboration than people think in terms of the conspiracy world, but there's a lot of various conspiracies out there that are very real. That's my take. As a normie. Yeah. Do you, you mentioned Lex Wexner is the guy's name?

1:27:05Theo Von:So, Les Wexner, so he was the - Who is he? He is the billionaire owner of L Brand. So, he owned a bunch of retail stores like Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Bath & Body Works. And he signed over. So that's when Epstein went to another level. But then he was actually just deposed because he didn't speak about Epstein for a very, very long time. He always said it was, I regret my association with Epstein. And he didn't say nothing much. He just recently got deposed by the US Congress. And he gave this long, I think it was like six hours. But there's some really interesting clips that came out of it.

1:27:47Theo Von:Because people ask him, why did you trust Jeffrey Epstein with all your money? because he literally signed over power of attorney of his entire financial estate. Is that true? Over to him, yeah. Hmm. And people were asking, what gave you the confidence that you could trust? It's like, how did you meet him? He's like, oh, I was introduced by a friend of mine. And then so like, what did he tell you that he did to like have you give over, basically control of all of your money? And he said that Epstein was working for the Rothschilds as their money manager. So I'm like, this is even before Wexner, which is where we think he got all his money.

1:28:26Theo Von:So even before that, somehow Jeffrey Epstein, like a high school math teacher, was working for the Rothschilds. Like, how did that happen? Yeah. Which is then to me, it's like back to the spy thing. It's like, was he some sort of intelligence asset that was positioned within these, you know, people who are pulling the strings, like powerful families, institutions around the world? That's my hypothesis around it.

1:28:50James Li:Got it. So that's who he is. And we don't know any crimes that he did. He's just associated with them, right? There's no accusations against this Mr. Wexner, is there?

1:29:00Theo Von:I don't think there's any specific accusation. I do know there's a famous documentary that came out where the CEO of Abercrombie was using Abercrombie to recruit young men into prostitution.

1:29:14James Li:Oh, really? Yeah. The CEO was of Abercrombie? Pull that up. Yeah, Mike Jeffries. Yeah, let's get a ganner at him.

1:29:21Theo Von:Mike Jeffries, sex trafficking. Right here. Former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO charged with operating sex trafficking ring.

1:29:29James Li:Mike Jeffries, former CEO of U.S. clothing company Abercrombie and Fitch, has been arrested for alleged sex trafficking and interstate prostitution following weeks of speculation or allegation of professional misconduct. Jeffries' romantic partner, Matthew Smith, who is also a man, and association James Jacobson were arrested for alleged role in the Enterprise. Did they ever convict him or was it just alleged?

1:29:52Theo Von:I think he's in jail.

1:29:54James Li:Let me see. U.S. Attorney Breon Pierce said, Powerful individuals for too long have trafficked and abused for their own sexual pleasure young people with few resources.

1:30:04Theo Von:Is he in jail? I'm very curious if he's in jail. Like, where is he right now? This is a perplexity question.

1:30:11James Li:It is, huh? Leave this open and scroll down for a little bit and go look at perplexity separately so I can keep reading. I just want to see what they're... It describes sexual botch annals spanning from New York to Morocco in which a recruited men were given drugs, lubricants, condoms, costumes, and sometimes erection-inducing penile injections that cause painful hours-long reactions. Boners, probably. Oh.

1:30:37Theo Von:I looked it up. He's not in jail. He's set to go on trial. They just found that he's fit to stand trial. This was in December. Oh. They're trying to go with the insanity plea.

1:30:45James Li:Well, I mean, that's...

1:30:47Theo Von:It's not ideal. I mean, yeah, so... He's set to go on trial. So the thing about Wexner, Les Wexner, hard to say his name, Les Wexner is that he's also involved in that whole Israeli-Zionist, you know, money-moving operation from Israel to the United States back and forth to support various Zionist causes. Like, he's one of the big funders of the birthright trips to Israel, right? I don't know how much you know about that, but I've talked to a few people. The purpose of that, they're describing, like, That's another crazy sex party type of thing. Really? Yes. I never heard that.

1:31:19James Li:I have heard that.

1:31:20Theo Von:Yeah. There's this one as well. Epstein, yeah, Israel and the CIA, how the Iran Contraplanes landed at Les Wexner's base. So they're running some kind of CIA operation using Wexner's airport in Ohio, and Jeffrey Epstein was facilitating something within there. Very complicated, but it's like, okay, So these guys are not just normal people.

1:31:44James Li:Got it. So we're just saying that that guy is an example of somebody that worked under Lex Wexner at one of his companies.

1:31:49Theo Von:Well, that Lex Wexner hired him to run Abercrombie at Fish.

1:31:54James Li:Who's Howard Lutnick? That's a name that you hear a lot.

1:31:57Theo Von:Well, Howard Lutnick is the Commerce Secretary right now. Okay. The Commerce Secretary, you're not US Commerce? Yes. Okay. And he was on record. He gave this whole melodramatic interview where he said he lived right next door to Jeffrey Epstein, by the way, literally next door neighbors. Nine and 11. That'll come back later. East 72nd Street. 9-11. Yeah. So he was right next door to Jeffrey Epstein. And he was asked, you know, what was your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? He said, well, I went over to his house once with my wife. I saw a massage table on the counter. I turned. I was like, oh, what is this disgusting man?

1:32:35Theo Von:And we left immediately. we never spoke to him I was never in another room with him ever again because this is a disgusting human being and then the emails come out and there's like all kinds of correspondences with Jeffrey Epstein about like visiting the island there's emails about them investing in a company together so they were very much closer than he let on so he just basically straight up bold face lie to the American people so is he being held on charges or anything No, but he should be held on charges for another thing, which he just did the other day, which is, you know, the Trump tariffs.

1:33:13James Li:Right, they just voted against him. SCOTUS just voted against him, right?

1:33:16Theo Von:So then he was out there publicly telling the American people prior to the SCOTUS voting saying, oh, yeah, I think SCOTUS will side with President Trump on this one. But his firm that's run by his sons now was like shorting these tariffs. Basically, they're buying insurance against the tariffs. Where were they doing that?

1:33:34James Li:Like on some of these like polymarket sites and stuff like that?

1:33:36Theo Von:No, it's through some kind of financial instrument that's way more complex than I can probably explain. Wow.

1:33:41James Li:So Howard Lutnick's family firm bought up the rights to tariff refunds for 20 to 30 cents on the dollar after Liberation Day last year. Today, the Supreme Court struck the tariffs down for every$100 invested. Lutnick's sons just made three to five X. Welcome to crony corruption, America.

1:33:56Theo Von:So that's like, that's just classic insider trading. He's basically, he probably knew that they weren't gonna. Right, but he says that But he says that on TV Saying, oh no, I think they're going to side with the American people Allegedly I don't feel like I used that word enough today But there's another connection with him And 9-11 So he was profiting off of Trump's tariffs

1:34:16James Li:So then allegedly he would have known That the Supreme Court was going to do that

1:34:20Theo Von:So basically he's creating Buzz in one direction But then he's trading in the opposite direction Because if he felt that They were going to um vote in favor of president trump why would he be executing the trades on the opposite side right doesn't make sense unless it doesn't make sense right so that's classic insider trading yeah

1:34:41James Li:that's the thing about like so many people like look at the leaky faucet and they're like who's causing this leaky faucet but what they don't realize is the true player is the or the people that bought the stream up yeah yeah yeah up from the city up from the water department and they're doing things there that eventually years later will cause the leaky faucet. And they've set up all these businesses and things along the way. Like some people don't realize the strategy. Sometimes it goes into things, right? Absolutely.

1:35:09Theo Von:Well, he is the, so there's, there's some great, we got to get into this because he is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, which is, they were the tenant of, you know, I think the floor 105 to 107, the World Trade Center building. And he did not go to work that day because his wife, this is Trump said this last week. There's a clip of him like, Hey, your wife begged you not to go to work that day. You never missed a day of work in 20 years. Aren't you glad that you didn't go to work that? So he, like most of his employees died. And then he did this whole thing where, I don't know if you want to play this clip or I could just talk through some of the stuff where he basically took all the insurance.

1:35:42Theo Von:So the company was paid insurance money from the airlines. And then he pocketed most of that money instead of giving it to the employees. Yes. Really? Then you get past. Okay. So it's like, did he know something like what was going on? So play this clip, though, the clip that I sent. Zach, there's a lady like how he got his home right next to Epstein. It's insane.

1:36:04James Li:Tell me what are the odds that the notary to the deed of what was both Epstein and Howard Letnick's property at 11 East 71st Street, because yes, Epstein owned that property before Letnick owned that property. It was transferred to Epstein for just$10 in 1992. Epstein passed the deed to a Comet Trust in 1996, again, for just$10, of which a Guido Goldman was a trustee, the son of one of the founders of the World Jewish Congress. And then it was passed to Lutnik in 1996 for, again, just$10. who notarized the deed transferring this property from Jeffrey Epstein to the Comet Trust in 1996? A Gary Pollard.

1:36:56James Li:A Gary Pollard just so happened to be in the perfect spot at the perfect time to record the perfect shot of the South Tower collapsing on September 11th, 2001. Is it just a weird coincidence that Jeffrey Epstein and Howard Lutnick owned 911 East 71st Street? Oh. Wow.

1:37:29Theo Von:I mean, kudos to her. She's like digging up like fucking documents.

1:37:32James Li:Yeah, she's petting a cat too at the same time, which heavily reminds you of the person from Inspector Gadget. Remember that guy?

1:37:39Theo Von:I've never seen an Inspector Gadget.

1:37:40James Li:Was it Inspector Gadget, the bad guy or the person who was like the dark guy who'd always be petting the cat? Dr. Claw. Yeah. So what was she saying there, executives, to sum it up?

1:37:48Theo Von:I think what she's insinuating there is that there's some kind of foreknowledge of 9-11, that these things that, how did Lutnick even get this property in the first place right next to Jeffrey Epstein? There's some kind of collusive action taking place here. There's something shady happening behind the scenes. Obviously, all coincidences, as she's saying. Yeah. But it should be examined a little bit further, especially with the context that if you look, somebody like did timestamps and all the emails that were in the Epstein files. And there's like a huge chunk that's like missing between 1999 and 2001.

1:38:18Theo Von:That's like all not there. So it's like, was something. And Ghislaine Maxwell's also asked to be on the 9-11 shadow commission. Like, why was she asked to be on the 9-11 shadow commission? Like, did she know some stuff? Like, she was reached out to. She said no. So like, it seemed like they knew. It's like, yeah, here it is.

1:38:33James Li:this is from at Chris Martinson it's just a complete coincidence that the DOJ has completely withheld all the Epstein documents immediately before during and after 9-11 is that right? wow the gap 25 ,000 missing serial numbers I mean how much do you believe we talked about this a little bit earlier that some things feel like theater right it almost feels like you hear all these things like the Simpsons and they predicted this and every week now it's like it was written here and look at this do you believe and then it starts to like what do you believe about that like how much like stuff like this like they lived at 9 and 11 and this was next door do you think any of that's real or we're all just reading into this stuff have you seen enough things where you're like there could be something here

1:39:17Theo Von:I think so okay so I think some of it is coincidence but some of it is like predictive programming and that they want so for example the Top Gun example I would say is they want the American public comfortable with this kind of attack this style of attack it's going to be awesome look how great the firefighters the fighter jet pilots are going in bombing the uranium site pulling out great stunt

1:39:38James Li:so that top gun was in Iran that's where that happened it was a uranium site in Iran so you're saying let's put it in a movie before we do it so that it'll feel more comfortable to people

1:39:46Theo Von:exactly so some of that stuff I think is predictive programming where they do that some of the stuff is coincidence and then some of the stuff I think is like full psyop stuff where they try to get you distracted with another issue so they can maybe brush this real stuff because I do believe the Epstein stuff is real stuff. There's real crimes taking place behind the scenes. People should be investigated, all that stuff. I'll give you an example, which may be controversial, maybe not. But for example, I think the ICE riots are a little bit of a psyop. That stuff is, I don't know how much you've talked about that, but I think it's purposely created to be a divisive issue.

1:40:22James Li:It reminds me of the stuff of the Portland in the park, those Antifa in the park riots and stuff. and you had renaissance fair people battling bernie sanders activists and right some of that shit and it was like what the hell is even you know a star wars versus game of thrones characters someone we're like what is even happening here um i could see some of that because there was there's videos of them like finding a guy who like started up like on put like a maltaf cocktail on the street or something yeah and they follow him like who are you know interviewing and the guys like obviously was just stopping by to do this not really involved i could i think there's more of that that happens than we even know, right?

1:40:57James Li:I think a lot of the videos you see like, oh, look at this. This seems real. But you don't realize somebody could stage that, put the video out or it could be AI and you don't even know.

1:41:05Theo Von:Right. And they particularly pick this issue where there's like no, it's not going to be any agreement because immigration is one of those issues like abortion. There's really not a right answer. It's like based on your morality. Like some, you know, like some countries are great. Like Japan's great because they're all Japanese. They have their own customs and cultures really cool or Scotland or whatever. America just happens to be like kind of a melting pot. That's kind of what we're known for, but there's no like right answer to the amount of immigration you should have. So they pick this issue that nobody can really come together on.

1:41:30Theo Von:And then they send people on the streets. Cause I'm like thinking, why aren't you sending people on the streets for like Epstein? Why are you sending people on the streets for like spraying pesticides and all our food? Why is that? Cause that's a unifying issue. People will actually demand something out of it. This is like, there's no answer. Cause you could look at the same video that's happened with the Renee good and the other guy, Alex Petty, right? People look in the same video and they're seeing different things. And they're like, oh, perfect. Let's amplify this more. Let's send more people out there.

1:41:55Theo Von:And now also they create – because I think there's something weird happening here where I don't think Trump is that serious about deporting people because there's like a business interest in keeping them here because you have like depressed wages. A lot of them work in hospitality. A lot of them work in farm. And Trump said, oh, those are exempt. I'm like, well, those are where all their – those are where a lot of illegal immigrants are at. So why aren't you doing that? Well, because your donors don't want you to do that. So then you create this nice show for people, a show of force on the streets.

1:42:23Theo Von:I think the MAGA people really love the ICE agents going out there and having that presence. It gets them fired up. And then on the other side, then the Democrats are sending their people on the streets. And all of a sudden, both sides have created sort of a pretense to like now we've got to surveil people. We've got to go to the police state. And so you get the best of everything. You still get the indentured slavery for the corporations. Now you have chaos in the streets, so then you can bring about the Palantir mass surveillance stuff. That's what's heading.

1:42:53James Li:Yeah. That's the big thing I see. Yeah. For me, I believe that even like, well, it's also funny that one political party lets a ton of people in the next, and they're the bad guys. And then the next political party is, they're the ones who are trying to get everybody out, and they're the bad guys, right? It's like, don't you see that we're just watching the show? Don't you realize that at a certain point, you're just watching?

1:43:13Theo Von:That's what I've been trying to get people to wake up. I've been shit on for the ICE thing because my audience is pretty split. Because a lot of times I focus just on corruption and just, you know, this guy is doing something bad. I don't really do party politics and stuff like that. So I have people on both sides, depending on the issue. Because I went hard at the COVID issue, which is a right-leaning issue against the vaccines. I'm like, these pharmaceutical companies are very corrupt, and that's a right-leaning issue. But then there's other issues that people side with more on the left, which is the pro-Palestine stuff, anti-Israel.

1:43:42Theo Von:that's like more of a left issue. So then whenever I comment on something that's like really, I think, divisive, like I get hate on both sides. I've been called like a communist and also like a libtard to like right-wing Nazi.

1:43:59James Li:But if you're getting called both things, you're probably doing a good job.

1:44:02Theo Von:So I've been called everything, like a CCP spy, which obviously, you know.

1:44:06James Li:I've been called a couple of times and wigger. So, you know.

1:44:11Theo Von:Well, I think once you're in the game long enough, it's not possible to not be hated by somebody.

1:44:17James Li:Yeah. I think it's like, yeah, then you're probably doing something right, I feel like. And you just have to do your best. It's like you don't know what the fuck you're doing.

1:44:23Theo Von:But neither do those guys that are wearing the suits and everything. That's my thing. It's like those guys don't know what the fuck they're doing either. They just look like they know what they're doing. And I'm very open. It's like, hey, I'm just giving you as I see. I'm reading one chapter ahead. My job is to inform you of what I found, and then you can take that for what it's worth. I mean, that's like, I think that's the tie back to what we talked about in the beginning. It's like, that's the role of a teacher is like, I'm trying to just give you information. And then I, hopefully that inspires you to do something that you want to do, right?

1:44:50Theo Von:A teacher's not supposed to say, Hey, you need to become X, Y, and Z in your life. It's to give you information to then sort of let you then go out there and explore the world that can inspire you to do something else.

1:45:00James Li:That's what I get from your content. It's just like, um, you know, when I see stuff, it's like, that's interesting, you know, or that, Hmm, that's curious. You know, I think I just get a curiosity about it. and this is kind of one of the first times where media has been open and be able to kind of say what they want. Like media has been vastly kind of controlled by a couple of corporations over the past, what, 50 years, 100 years maybe?

1:45:23Theo Von:Yeah, and you're gonna see a co-op, they're gonna try to co-op people like myself. I'm already seeing it happen, right? Because now they can get people to say exactly what they've said in mainstream media, but then through the lens of like a TikToker who's just wearing regular clothes. So you're gonna see that battle, like an information warfare will continue. And that's why for me, I've always stayed very, very, you know, diligent about making sure that I'm not taking money for anybody that I don't want to, you know, like I'm basically fully independent. I want to say that's why I got in the game.

1:45:50Theo Von:Like I could have made a lot more money doing consulting work. That was easy, you know, straightforward. But here, you know, I'm just hopefully here on like more of like a spiritual mission, you know?

1:46:00James Li:Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, you want to live like if Earth exists and we're all going to live here and America was this thing that you believe in or that you knew your grandparents believe in. a lot of people are like, you know, I'm trying to believe in what America stands for the best parts of it, the most moral parts of it, or that being a human stands for, because like, you know, I had a family member that died for these goals, right? A family member that, you know, who sacrificed their life to work here in this country under these rules so that I could go to school in a place that was, you know, free Democrat, you know, it's like, I think people just want to have a life.

1:46:36James Li:They want to have a chance to live and their children to do so. And if you start to think that there's all these dark controlling forces out there, which mostly are probably elites and people that are like extreme capitalists or power hungry, that's very scary. And you start to realize, oh, there is a battle of good and evil at a certain point.

1:46:57Theo Von:Absolutely.

1:46:57James Li:You know, and that we're in that maybe, you know, sometimes you don't want to think like, hey, maybe I'm a character in something, you know, but maybe you are, you know, maybe this is a battle of good and evil and you are you are supposed to have a role in it not you know you and everybody you know it's like um sometimes we sit at home we're like man i wish i'd have been picked to be like a hero or something it's like maybe you got to fucking tap yourself on the shoulder you know i'm saying because i do feel like life is a bad i do feel like there's there's good and evil in the world right now and um i don't know how it plays out uh but it feels scary and it It feels alarming.

1:47:33James Li:And I just feel like a lot of people feel that.

1:47:36Theo Von:Yeah. I mean, I completely agree with you. And I would just, you know, to kind of spin it on a positive note, there's a lot of times through history. I don't think we're living through like the worst of times by any stretch of the imagination. I think it could feel that way sometimes with maybe social media and things like that. No, not at all. Right. But I think there, even in dark times, like people really struggling out there, I think there definitely can be happiness found in dark times. Dark chocolate.

1:47:59James Li:Look at that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. There you go. So, well, I noticed for sure. It's like, if I need to, like, if I want to get my head out of like some of the rabbit holes, cause your algorithm will take you down some crazy, it'll take you down some spots where it just repeats information. And you can feel little bits of indoctrination coming in. You know, you feel the fucking, you smell a little indoctrination smoke. Sometimes you're like, I got to quit doing this. Um, but if you separate yourself from your phone sometimes and any, and any of the things that are kind of edgier in the world or darker in the world, then things get light again pretty quick.

1:48:33James Li:I feel like.

1:48:33Theo Von:I think so. I mean, yeah, you have to like step away from this kind of stuff from time to time. It's like, you know, your own body better than everybody else. If you think you need to turn it off, you got to turn it off. And that's why I try to do that with some of my content is like the, the natural path. If you start looking down these like conspiracies to get darker and darker and darker. And some people are okay with that. For me, it's like, I still want to provide videos for people where they can still take action. Right. Cause some of those things like, okay, there's some like dark lizard family that's running the world.

1:49:03Theo Von:Like there's nothing you could really do about that. But if I give you information on like, hey, Amazon ring cameras are like spying on your family through this whole dog thing at the Super Bowl, like you should probably get rid of your ring camera. That's something that you can actually do. It's like, I don't want to be a part of that ring camera thing. Do you feel like they're doing that? Yeah, they are. They were connected to that company Flock, which is giving the footage to - Police information? Exactly, to the police. And they thought the dog video would work. They honestly did because I looked into it and they thought the dog video was a good video.

1:49:30Theo Von:There was this whole PR campaign pre-Super Bowl, but then people saw that weird thing in the Super Bowl with all the lights going out. And it's like, oh, hold on a second. And they said 10 million dogs are lost a year. This is going to find 300 dogs a year of like 300 out of 10 million dogs. I don't think that's a worthy tradeoff. Right. It seems like a scam. It seems like a scam. So then that is a video. It's like that video went decently viral. And I think that's something that people can gravitate to because they can actually do something about that. Right. And that's why I'm trying to play sort of a line with my editorialization, which, yeah, some videos are going to be about more of the conspiracy digs, but some of it's going to be things that you can do something about.

1:50:07Theo Von:Right. It's like what banks are good, what banks are bad. You can choose your bank. Right. You can't choose like, you know, whether we're going to bomb Iran tomorrow or not. Right. That's something that's totally out of your control. Right.

1:50:17James Li:Yeah, I agree. And like keeping stuff that's in your control. What is a good bank, man?

1:50:22Theo Von:What is a good bank? I mean, I'm not, I mean, I don't, I mean, local bank. Honestly, like credit unions that are in your local community, like small regional banks are probably the best banks because they still, they're tied to the community and they're not some kind of giant conglomerate like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, that kind of thing. So that's what I would look for in terms of like who you should go with. There's some like new fintech stuff. I'm making a video about this company named Chime, which has been sponsoring a lot of content creators that are like, you know, the ones that are all about like giving money that they find some homeless person they're like oh let me you know help you out for the day that kind of thing like really like heartwarming content but it's like sponsored by chime which is like pretty nefarious i don't have all the information quite yet because i'm still starting to dig but it's like oh this is seems like kind of a semi-scam that you're running here but then you're you're advertising through all these good content creators that are making heartwarming content so it seems like that's kind of you know there's a little bit of susness to that.

1:51:17James Li:Well, maybe he's trying to rebrand themselves too. Well, it's new.

1:51:20Theo Von:It's a fintech. It's a new company.

1:51:21James Li:Interesting.

1:51:22Theo Von:So that's something I'm still digging into. Allegedly, I'm not insinuating that they've committed crimes or anything like that, but I just think that people, those are things that people should know. It's like, oh, because they could see that video and like, oh, I should sign up for Chime to do my banking. But then they could be taken advantage of because they're not under the regular FDIC protection, all the regular banking authorities because they're outside of that. Got it. So that's the kind of stuff that it's like a bit a bit of a balance for me of, of digging into conspiracies, digging. So I'm, I'm like a very much like a generalist in that sense of like, maybe it's just like my brain, like ADD, ADHD kind of thing.

1:51:55Theo Von:I'm not diagnosed or anything like that, but I, I see something. I was like, Oh yeah, I'm going to do that for a little bit. And then I'm like, Oh, I got to stay on this. But then something else has caught my eye. So that's a little bit of a weakness of mine, but also it could be a strength in that I do videos about a lot of different things. Yeah. Well, I think we got to have a gopher.

1:52:09James Li:You got to have something that goes in there and digs over here. And like, you know, He chews on this vegetable and then goes over there for a radish and then goes underground and looks at the roots. I think that that's something we need more than ever. And it's interesting. And it's just freelance. It's like, you know, you're trying your best to work in freelance. 51-49, that's your podcast. How often is it out? And do you still have a co-host on it?

1:52:32Theo Von:So, yeah. So I do a show called 51-49. That's when I do more of like the investigative digs on my YouTube channel. Okay. and I also host a show called the today ish podcast with my cohost Danny love. And we, that's sort of like more of like a fun podcast where we're just having conversations about like what went on during the week. She's like much more of like a 10 head than I am. So she's, you know, I'm having a conversation. I'm like talking about Peter Thiel, Palantir, you know, they're taking over, um, you know, surveillance. And then she'd be like, I think Peter Thiel is a lizard. Right. I'm like, okay.

1:53:00Theo Von:All right, cool. So then, so she, we, she gets a little bit more weird than I do, but it's like a fun dynamic of like, Like we're trying to give you like important stuff, but like packaged in more of like a fun and lighthearted way. So I also do that show called The Today. So it's more of like a two hour live podcast that we do every single week. And then if you want the digs, that's on my channel, 5149 James Lee. You can also find me on Instagram still, as well as Facebook, RIP to the TikTok. Then we'll get you back on there, huh? No, not as of right now. I think they're fully under the Israeli regime at the moment.

1:53:33James Li:You think so, huh? Yeah. I know, yeah. A lot of our stuff got shadow banned on there. It seems like we've had stuff go down.

1:53:38Theo Von:But they can't ban you because you're so big, right? Because me, I was, you know, I think I was around 300 ,000 followers. So I was like, some of my videos would be popping off into the millions, but I'm not so big. It's like, oh, James Lee is deleted. Like there's going to be a huge outroar. Like if you got deleted off of TikTok, there'd probably be a huge, huge backlash. So I'm in that perfect place. Like, let's get rid of this guy because he has enough influence. It's pissing us off, but he's not so big that we have. They find other ways to deal with, I think bigger people like from what I heard this guy Guy Christensen he goes by your favorite guy on TikTok so they basically said they just demonetize him or they'll do like weird shadow banning stuff where he still has his account but they limit the reach in other ways

1:54:16James Li:yeah yeah I think that that happens man I think it happens a lot James Lee thanks for coming in man I'm sorry we got caught up on time you know I gotta get to the airport so that's reason why we're kind of caught up on time

1:54:28Theo Von:thank you for you know giving me a chance to like speak yeah dude speak the truth things like that or my truth at the very least, I'm just trying to help. Ultimately, I'm just trying to hopefully provide like a voice out there that people, you know, can maybe turn to. Maybe they don't like me, then you can go watch something else. But like at least provide that media alternative to what's going on with the world, you know?

1:54:49James Li:Yeah, well, we've always been able to be curious. I mean, it would be wild if we couldn't be. And I think more than ever, it's like, yeah, there's, yeah, people are trying to figure things out and just want to feel okay, you know? James Lee thank you so much man have a good one brother now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone oh but when I reach

1:55:17Theo Von:that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones but it's gonna tell you