even need my privacy that much. They win. Yeah, they win. Exactly, they win. When I looked at how much work it would take to secure my phone and then what is secured, let me just give you a hint. Once your phone is secured, the only way it could ever stay that way is if you never click on a link again on your phone. That's the only way. If you click on a link, even if it comes from your best friend, you don't know if your best friend got taken by the same link, right?

So if your phone can't be used to click on a link, it's almost useless because I use my phone mostly for work-related stuff, and it's just people sending me links all day. It's basically the only thing I do with my phone: look at links. If I can't do that, I don't even need the phone practically. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but they actually got to the point where we're actually at a point where there are two things that I assume to be true. Number one, I'm definitely compromised just because I do political things in public. I just assume somebody's in there, maybe more than one entity, I don't know. The other thing I assume is that if somebody wanted to find out something about me, there's nothing that would stop them. So I mean, I don't really have anything I can think of to hide, but if they wanted to find out more about me, I don't know that I could stop anybody.

And the other thing is that the moment I cleaned my phone, wouldn't I have to do the same thing with all of my devices, from my iPads to my laptop? And if they were in any one of them, they're going to be into everything, right? So it's basically a situation where it's not actually practical to keep hackers out of my private information. It's actually not possible. I don't see any practical way I could do that. I mean, I could do it for a minute. I could get a burner phone that would have no utility, but I wouldn't be able to just do my business and also maintain my privacy. Those two things I don't think can happen. Two phones? Yeah, that's just too much trouble. Yeah. So I don't know. I think we're all hacked.

All right, I'm going to talk about a story and I'm going to try not to lose my shit. I'm really going to try hard. I'm just going to tell you the story and try not to lose my shit. So this is, I believe we're coming up on the five-year anniversary of China killing my stepson along with the cartels. So my stepson died of a fentanyl overdose five years ago. Now in 2018 I said I was going to destroy China in revenge. And if you believe Peter Zeihan, it's pretty much almost dead. It's going to fall apart any time.

However, this I'm sure that my feelings about China also influenced my feelings about TikTok, because TikTok is, as many people said, digital fentanyl. So to me the TikTok issue and the fentanyl issue are just two ways that China is killing Americans and destroying America. So in my head, even though they're very different topics, they're not. They're not different topics. So this is all by way of telling you I do not have an objective feeling about this topic, and I'm just barely containing myself right now. I'm just barely holding on.

I'm going to tell you what the story is in the Wall Street Journal today about TikTok. I'm not sure I could even get through this. Honestly, God, I think I'm going to lose it, but I'll do the best I can just to tell you the story. So this is a Wall Street Journal. I think I'll just read it. Washington: TikTok has hardly any friends in government. Earlier this year, as the Biden administration, Congress, and state legislatures were threatening to ban the Chinese-owned video giant. Now, would you agree that I was part of the push to ban TikTok? I mean, I don't know who was talking about it harder than I was. In some ways I feel like I might have actually been the main influence. I'm not sure, but there were other people.

All right, so here's the background. Congress was against TikTok and it looked like there was going to be movement to ban it. And then do you remember it didn't happen? And you kept wondering, well, what's going on? Like why is it not happening? It's so obvious. And then did you notice that every time the politicians talked about it, they wouldn't say that there was an influence risk, which is actually the big risk. They would say there was a data risk. And I kept saying, why do you keep saying data risk, although that is a small risk, when the big risk is the one you're not mentioning? Like why do you keep doing that?

Now the only thing I could think of is that some members of Congress, enough of them had been bought off by TikTok, because it looked exactly like somebody had been bribed, and probably a lot of people have been bribed. So that's what I thought at the time, and I think many of you can verify that I said it publicly and probably a whole bunch of times, right? Can you verify that I said publicly Congress must be bought off because there's no explanation for this observation? All right, now let me read on. Let me continue reading on from the Wall Street Journal.

TikTok now has many more friends. How did TikTok get so many friends in Congress? With something in common: backing from billionaire financier Jeff Yass. They've helped stall attempts to outlaw America's most downloaded app. Why would this billionaire care about this app? Why does a billionaire care about a TikTok app? Well, here's why. Yass's investment company, Susquehanna International Group, bet big on TikTok in 2012. Boy, that was a good time to bet on it. Buying a stake in parent company ByteDance, now measured at about 15 percent. So he owns 15 percent of ByteDance, which owns TikTok. That translates into a personal stake for Yass of seven percent in ByteDance. So he doesn't own everything that's invested in it. He owns part of the investment. It is worth roughly 21 billion dollars. That's one guy, one investor, one person is worth an extra 21 billion.

Now he's already a billionaire, but that's most of his net worth. The vast majority of his net worth is TikTok. His whole valuation like the billionaire is worth 28 billion, but 21 of the 28 billion of his net worth is just TikTok. Okay, that's because TikTok did so well. Let's go on. Yass is also one of the top donors to the Club for Growth. The Club for Growth, well I wonder who that is. There's a Club for Growth. It's an influential conservative group that rallied Republican opposition to a TikTok ban. Yass has donated 61 million dollars to the Club for Growth political spending arms since 2010, or about 24 percent of its total, according to federal records.

The Club for Growth made public its opposition to banning TikTok in March in an opinion article by its president, at a time when sentiment against the platform among segments of both parties was running high on Capitol Hill. Are you ready for this part? Oh, it gets worse. This gets worse. Days later, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky stood up on the Senate floor and quashed an attempt to fast-track a bill by Senator Josh Hawley to ban downloading of the TikTok app. Senator Rand Paul said, quote, "We will be acting like the Chinese government if we ban TikTok here," Paul said around that time in June. That's just a few months after Rand Paul said that. Yass donated three million to a political committee backing Paul. Including that contribution, Yass and his wife Janine have donated more than 24 million to Paul or committees that support him since 2015, according to federal records. Club for Growth has given Paul and supporting political committees 1.8 million since 2020.

It was exactly what it looks like. It's Rand Paul. Now let me give you a little bit, you know, I want to show both sides. Rand Paul is unique in that he's more libertarian, right? Libertarians don't like governments interfering with their business. Do you think that's what's going on? Do you think Rand Paul is simply being a good libertarian and he's just being true to his belief that the government shouldn't get involved in banning stuff? Yeah, well let's look at his statement. "We will be acting like the Chinese government if we ban TikTok here." Well that's correct, isn't it? Isn't that correct? We would be acting like the Chinese government if we ban TikTok. Do you know why that would be like the Chinese government? Because the Chinese government bans TikTok in their own country because it would be damaging to the children. So yes, we would be acting like China because China is acting correctly. They're protecting their children.

Does this sound like a real opinion that Rand Paul has? Do you believe this is his literal opinion? Well to me it looks exactly like what it looks like: that he has been bought, that China owns, China indirectly through the billionaire owns Rand Paul. And Josh Hawley we should conclude is not owned by China because Josh Hawley tried to kill it and Rand Paul stopped it from being killed.

Now why did it take so long for me to learn this? Why did it take so long for you to learn it? And by the way, big props to the Wall Street Journal for doing the article. I should have noted the authors but I recommend it. Just go to the Wall Street Journal and click on it. See what's up. So why do you think we found this out now? I don't know, but I would hate to think it's because Murdoch, who owns the Wall Street Journal and is a billionaire himself, may have some problems with this other billionaire. Like maybe it's not even news for all I know. It could be just one billionaire's mad at another billionaire and found a way to take him out. So you can't really trust anything, can you? But at least we know more than we knew before.

Somebody said give Rand Paul 48 hours to respond. No, no, nope, absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no, no. He's not going to get 48 hours to respond. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about the fact that Rand Paul is selling your kids for money? Yeah, he's selling your children for money. I mean not physically him, but he is destroying their brains and their lives with TikTok apparently for money. Now isn't it convenient that it also matches somewhat his political opinions that the government shouldn't be involved? But you know, you don't have to be much of a mind reader to know that's not what's going on here. Follow the money. It's very predictive. It's exactly what you thought it was.

All right, now let me change topics. This was a situation where it was very clear that the right thing to do was to ban it. Very clear, right? It's very clear. Is there any other situation where it's very clear what the right thing to do is but for some reason Congress isn't doing it? Can you think of another one like t