AI Voice Scams, Vaccine Chaos, Fed Drama & Trump’s TikTok Power Grab

AI voice clones are now fooling banks, bosses and even parents. We break down how scammers are using frighteningly realistic audio deepfakes to pull off high dollar heist and why it's only getting worse. Then measles is making a deadly comeback as RFK Jr keeps questioning vaccines and the FDA's top vaccine official just quit public trust is crumbling and kids are paying the price. Next, Trump's Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant mocks the Fed's tariff blindness, saying I guess the tariff derangement syndrome happens even over at the Fed. Then if Trump bullies the Fed into slashing rates, future presidents might do the same. Rigging the economy before elections and wrecking long term stability. And finally, Trump's TikTok end game. He wants a billionaire led buyout and. Well, you'll have to stay tuned for that. We'll be talking about that at the end of the show. All that and more today on commuters. Hi, I'm T.J. walker. This is the show where news meets personal development. For decades I've been a top level media trainer and communications personal development coach to CEOs, Wall Street Wizards, billionaires, plus presidents of countries, prime ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners and Ms. Universes. I've helped them figure out how to face the news, shape the news, communicate with the news. Now I'm going to teach you what really happened on the other side so you can be more astute in understanding what's going on in the world and so you can improve your own ability to communicate when you have an opportunity to meet a newsmaker or influence people in your world. So that's what we're all about. Thanks for joining me today. Story 1 AI voice clones are coming for your identity. Now scammers aren't just spoofing emails anymore. They're spoofing you and me. In a chilling new report by the New York Times, AI generated voice clones are now being used to fool banks, defraud employers and emotionally manipulate loved ones. One woman received a call from what she thought was her adult son, sobbing that he was being held hostage. It was fake, but convincing enough that she wired $15,000 before realizing the truth. The tools are shockingly accessible. Voice samples pulled from social media, podcast interviews, or even voicemails are now being fed into AI programs that mimic your voice within seconds. This is truly some scary times going on here. Unlike traditional fraud, this isn't a Nigerian princess. It's your daughter's voice asking for help. Now the the latest wrinkle and that is being talked about in this Hollywood Reporter article I just flashed up is that celebrities are being brought into this. Not the actual celebrity is not doing the scam, but people impersonating kids, Keanu Reeves, Kevin Costner are scamming people. One woman at Profiled gave a couple hundred thousand dollars to Kevin Costner. She thought the real Kevin Costner was reaching out to her, asking her to be an investor in one of his films, being a co producer. This was a woman who'd given TED talks, was a woman of substance, and it was a little bit exciting in her life, I guess. Her marriage was falling apart, and she was on her way to meet what she thought was the real Kevin Costner. And it was all a complete fraud. It was all a complete scam. So what's really going on here, folks? We've talked a lot about the problem of AI digital fakes. Not just voice fakes, but video fakes. And like any technology, there's a positive side and a negative side. I'm a big believer in. In the positive side of interactive video clones. When the person, the expert, the celebrity, the athlete, whoever it is, is in charge of it, it's theirs, and it's done with their consent. And everyone knows who they're dealing with, that it is an AI. So, for example, IFTJWalker AI, it's a digital clone that can rehearse with you, your speeches, your. Your presentations, your media interviews, but it identifies itself right out of the gate is, hi, I'm TJ's clone. When the Keanu Reeves fraudsters are calling up people they're not identifying, this is a clone for a fraud. No, they're making it seem like it's the real person. Now, what we haven't seen yet, but I think we're going to see is completely lifelike video interactive clones of celebrities. Because as much as it might be fooling to hear Kevin Costner's voice on the phone, wow, that really does sound like Kevin Costner. And he's telling you all these things. If you see someone who looks exactly like Kevin Costner and on your screen, whether it's FaceTime or Zoom or anything else, and you're asking him questions about his career and his next movie in Yellowstone, and he's talking to you, and he seems completely real and he's responsive to you and calling you by name, that's a prescription for unmitigated disaster. We're going to see, I predict, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of fraud committed that way. Now, before I get all holier than thou and say Everyone should be as smart as I am. Back technology. I've been fooled. As recently as six months ago, I had somebody impersonating a not a well known YouTuber podcaster, but someone kind of in my niche who didn't have a huge one. Say, hey, we want you to be our guest. Our tech will call you to hook up so we can simulcast on each other's Facebook pages. Okay, I've done that before. Before I realized it, boom, my Facebook page had been hacked. And as recently as yesterday, my Facebook page was gone. Thankfully it's back. But I did not do enough due diligence either. I put in trust because everything seemed to check out. Now I get pitched on a daily basis by people saying, oh, Joe Rogan would be happy to have you on his podcast and he's going to pay you $5,000. Well, I know that's a scam and if you get any pitches like that, please just hit delete. But this was a podcast you had never heard of similar niche. So we all checked out. So it's a warning to you and to me. We all have to be a lot more vigilant when it comes to who we give access to, certainly before we send any money to anyone. Because I hate to say the ultimate sort of black mirror reality is not just a voice fake, it's not just a picture fake, it's not just a video interactive fake. At some point we could see full fledged robots that are actually walking and talking and looking like and I guess they could get temperature on the fake skin to seem like a human and then who knows what is going to happen. But we're going to keep you updated on these issues of deep fakes. I'm a huge, huge believer in the positive aspects of AI, but I'm not simply an AI optimist who says, oh, it's going to solve all the problems and alleviate all poverty hungry misery. No, it could kill us. I'm not necessarily an AI doomer, but it could go either way. Anyone who tells you they know with absolute certainty the ultimate impact on artificial intelligence in our society, I think you should be highly, highly skeptical of them. I don't think they really know what they're talking about because no one can really predict the future. That's what's fascinating about the future. No one really knows the complete future, so we have to monitor it every day. I do think we need more regulation and thankfully one of the things that did come out of recent legislation. I won't refer to it by its silly name, but recent Legislation coming out of Washington, D.C. attempted to say that no state could regulate artificial intelligence for the next ten years. Well, that just struck too many US Senators as bizarre. Fortunately, that was stripped out, so we don't see that anymore. Thankfully, there is going to be need for regulation. Europe is regulating artificial intelligence. It can be done. Anyone who tells you, oh, oh, you completely stifle innovation, if there's any regulation, doesn't know the history of every other innovative industry. We've had a nuclear industry. It's been heavily regulated. We've had an automotive industry. Guess what? Cars are heavily, heavily regulated. Highways are heavily, heavily regulated. So the idea that no industry can ever thrive without a lot of regulation is complete and utter nonsense. Although that message has worked for a lot of people on the Internet and for decades kept Internet sales from being taxed. So sometimes that argument is persuasive. You're watching the Community with TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me today. In this show, what we try to do is look at top business, technology and culture news, decode it through the lens of communication in order to boost your personal development and make you more successful. That's what the show is all about. Let's now switch over to story two. This is about measles. RFK Jr. Doubts vaccines. Measles sores and the FDA collapses, or at least appears to be collapsing. To a lot of people, measles is back and not by accident. More Americans have caught the disease in 2025 than in any year since it was kind of eliminated in 2000. According to the New York Times, 1,288 confirmed cases have spread across 38 states with 92% of those infected, unvaccinated or vaccine unknown, completely preventable. And now the US Is on the verge of losing its measles elimination status. Public health. That's right. We're kind of like a third world or developing nation, I guess the proper way of using the term. These days, public health experts are pointing squarely at one cause, the collapse of trust in vaccines fueled by the new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. According to the Times, Kennedy has downplayed the outbreak, fired CDC vaccine advisors and gutted the fda, replacing science based regulators with political loyalists and alternative medicine ideologues. The result, a dismantled FDA surging. That's right, surging preventable disease and a government that now questions proven vaccines while pushing untested stem cells and things like raw milk. Kennedy calls this radical transparency. But a former FDA commissioner Robert Califf put it the FDA as we've known it is finished. Okay, let's unpack this story a little bit more. You know, vaccines have been getting bad PR the last five years. Let's go back in history and put this in some perspective. Vaccines are among the top drivers of human longevity, adding 10 to 30 years of additional life expectancy in developed nations. Let's go back in time. In the year 1900, which is a year after my own grandmother was died. We're not talking about caveman days. And the year after my grandmother was. Was born. I should say born, the average life expectancy in the United States was 47 years. Now, 47 today. To me, it seems like a child. I mean, that was a long time ago in my own past. Today, the average US life expectancy is 76, which is, shamefully, a lot lower than a lot of countries in Europe and in Asia. But that's a 30 year bump up largely because of vaccines. It's not because people are drinking more raw milk. It's not because people are taking more supplements. Okay. Measles vaccine alone cut global deaths from over 2 million a year in 1980 to under 100,000 per year. Pre Covid, that's a substantial, substantial savings of life. In the United States, measles deaths dropped to zero after the vaccine mandates, but they're rising again. Kennedy fired 20% of the FDA staff. He revoked expert vaccine guidance and endorsed proven health misinformation. He has replaced career scientists with vaccine skeptics, experts, and conspiracy theorists. And let's just be blunt with a bunch of kooks. So what does this mean to you and me? What it really means is if you want to be a healthy person. And part of the premise of this show is you want to be successful. You want to live a long, happy, fruitful life, a productive life. I'm not saying you got to become a billionaire, but you want the. The wealth that you want to live the life you want. You want the health you want. You can't do that if you fall for every con artist out there pushing a bunch of garbage. And unfortunately, that's what is reality when it comes to anything science related these days. We live in a world where AI and the algorithms on all social media reward engagement. The easiest way to get engagement is to say the elites, the establishment don't want you to know this, but they're secretly killing you by doing this. And, you know, if I really put my mind to it, I could probably convince half the world not to brush their teeth anymore, because I could just come up with a whole social media Campaign. The elites don't want you to know this, but brushing your teeth is killing you. I mean, that kind of nonsense, if you package it the right way, ladle on the conspiracy theories, say the the former head of the FDA and the CDC secretly are applauding to get you to brush your teeth and it's all been a scam. All could probably convince half the world to throw their teeth, their toothbrush away. Well, obviously that would be pretty stupid, I hope you would agree. But equally stupid is this idea that vaccines are bad, that vaccines cause all sorts of health problems, and that vaccines are causing ADHD and autism. Again, there is no clinical evidence, there is no testing evidence, there is no research saying that vaccines cause any of these problems of autism, adhd, other things. There have been some tests that the preliminary evidence suggested that, and then he went back and looked at it wasn't true. So that's really the problem. And what I want you to do is to be skeptical. I want you to be skeptical of me, but I also want you to be skeptical of the loudest voices you're seeing in your own Facebook feed, your own Google algorithm, your own news feeds, the sites you go to, because they want you to watch more, they want you to spend more time because that's how media companies make money. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with that. That's not a conspiracy, that's a business model. Hey, I want you to spend more time on the TJ Walker channel and the Community show and all my social media platforms. But unfortunately, the smartest minds in the world are all now working feverishly over time. I won't say conspiring, but they're working together, trying to figure out how they can push your buttons to get you angrier and angrier so that you can retweet and put nasty comments and tell someone you were owned. All of this. And the easiest way to do that is not by telling the truth. The easiest way to do that is by telling lies, especially lies about how the so called establishment is trying to ruin your life. Now there are plenty of times when the establishment does bad things. I would argue the establishment for big food in this country, the agribusinesses, the food processors, the junk food makers, the candy makers have as a group, publicly, legally conspired in a way to make the average diet of an American complete garbage. And that's why most people are overweight or obese or have diabetes or all three. So it's not that the establishment always does the right thing, but if you're Going to blame the establishment for when things go wrong. You need to give the establishment credit for when things go right. Having an average life expectancy of going from 46 to 76, almost doubling, that's an accomplishment. That's a good thing. Nobody really wants to go back to the days when you're 46. Okay, you've had your time, time to kick the bucket. Nobody really wants to go back to that. And of course, if you look at most of human history going further back even a few hundred years, the average life expectancy was like 30. I mean, I feel like I barely started my life at age 30. And that's when most people's life ended. So you gotta, if you're gonna be fair. And I like to think of myself as fear. You're a rational person. I know you're hard working, ambitious. You want to learn to get the most out of your life, your career and your personal life. You want the truth and you're not going to get it if you simply listen to the loudest, angriest voices. Especially listening to those who want to say everything in life that doesn't conform to people they like in their team is somehow a conspiracy. Because that simply is not the way the real world actually works. Let's talk about a few other things in the real world, or things that at least used to be in the real world. I'm talking about the world of the Federal Reserve. Trump wants a loyal Fed chair Besant's audition begins. President Trump is pushing to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell again. This time he is considering Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who's made no secret that he'd cut interest rates if given the job. And if that's what the boss tells him to do. Dissent has gone public with unusually sharp attacks. Unusually sharp attacks on the Fed. On Fox News, he mocked its inflation warning, saying, I guess the tariff derangement syndrome happens even over at the Fed. Now, a little context. There's a long standing tradition in America that the Secretary of the treasury and the President don't criticize the chair of the Fed. It's long standing, bipartisan, that's all, of course, changing. And on cnbc, Bessant hinted the central bank is politically biased, saying, there seems to be a big dispersion in the dot plot between the Trump appointees and the non Trump appointees. If you read into that what you want. Now, of course, the irony here is the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell is a Trump appointee. He was appointed to the position when Trump was in his first term. This kind of partisan audition for the Fed chair is deeply dangerous. The Fed's independence is one of the cornerstones of a stable economy, and in particular the US Stable economy. Undermining it to win favor with the President could destroy market trust, politicize monetary policy and, and trigger inflation or worse. As one strategist put it, if the criteria is loyalty, then anybody who comes in is going to have that stain. So this is a big, big potential problem. Let's dissect this in a little more detail. When Besant said tariff derangement syndrome happens even over at the Fed. Now that's not the meanest burn in the world. I get it. It's not calling somebody a pedophile. I get it. But by the standards of United States Secretaries of the treasury, those are loaded terms. Those are harsh criticisms. He's lobbying towards the Fed chair. Again, this is not the sort of thing that makes investors around the world have confidence in the United States economic system or our ostensible rule of law system here. And it's troubling to a lot of people all across the spectrum, not just the democratic opposition or the so called left in America, but centrists, right of center, economists, economic players, investors find this Trump, this troubling. Now, Trump said at a recent Cabinet meeting, I like you better, referring to Bessant while criticizing the incumbent, Jerome Powell. Firing or coercing a Fed chair for political reasons undermines global confidence in the United States government system. Now, independent central banks are vital to keeping inflation expectations anchored. Interference raises borrowing costs for everyone. That means it cost you money. It costs me money. No major democracy allows its executive branch to dictate central policy, central bank policy. Doing so erodes the rule of law and investor trust. So it's a big problem. Now Bessette float is some people are talking about Bassett actually having both roles, which seems crazy to be a secretary, treasurer and Fed chair, not a good idea. So why, why is this a problem now? If you're like a lot of people and you don't feel like you know everything about the Fed, okay, you're in good company. It is decidedly, sometimes purposely kept in the dark, kept in the shadows. That's why people have all these conspiracy theories about the Fed. What they're doing, what they're not doing. The problem with letting a politician act, any politician of any party pick the Fed and fire the Fed chair at will and tell the Fed what to do is once you're heading into a reelection time, the President can tell the Fed, hey, I want to look Good going into reelection. So lower the interest rates. Let's juice up the economy. Let's, let's let everyone go to the punch bowl and drink, drink all they want and there'll be happy times. Unemployment will be low. Everyone's going to get a bigger paycheck, there's going to be lots of more money sloshing around and I'll look great for reelection time. That's the problem. And then whether six months or 18 months later, if it's destroyed the economy, the politician gets a, well, I got mine, I got reelected, who cares about you? People sound like anyone, you know whose attitude that might have described. So that's the real problem. Again, this is not a partisan thing. What's happening out of Washington right now is extraordinarily different from what we've really ever seen in Washington with respect to trying to have the President decide and every aspect of our economy. It strikes many as extraordinarily authoritarian, as something a little closer to what we see happening in, for example, Hungary. Now, a lot of people in the United States on the conservative Republican right side, the MAGA side of things I've heard personally tell me, oh, we like Hungary, we like what Orban's done. And then you remind them, well, you look at the economy of Hungary and that country's per capita income is lower than the poorest state in America. You look at the average income of somebody in Mississippi, the Deep south, they have a wealthier lifestyle and income than people in Hungary. Why in the world would we want to take over a political economic system from another part of the world to bring our average lifestyle and income down to the poorest people in our entire country? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Now, the Fed chair is supposed to be independent. It's specifically designed to have a five year term, that it's not supposed to be someone who comes in and the President just says, oh, I want my guy. Now, it's not supposed to be like that. But as we've seen with Trump unceremoniously getting rid of his FBI director, which was supposed to be a 10 year term, sometimes you get whatever you want if it's not nailed down. And Trump is definitely someone who understands that unless it's specifically written down that I can't do it, I'm going to do it. And even then, sometimes he holds up a magnifying glass and there's a little exception here, it doesn't apply to me. Will he change a Fed chair short term? Could it possibly boost the economy so that going into the 2026 elections. It helps Republicans. It's possible. Is that really going to help the country in the long term? I don't know of any serious economist who believes that it does. I see maddav has joined us today saying hello, Maddo, thank you so much for showing up and I'm glad you like this suit. So thanks so much, Matt. By the way, since you do pay attention to fashion, this will be the last week. You see these glasses. I'm getting new glasses and you'll be seeing those next week. I hope you like them. The problem with these glasses is they're a little too big. I happen to have narrow eyes and even though I have a big long head, it's a narrow head. So glasses that are a normal size sort of stick out too much. So I am going to want your opinion on that. And by the way, let's make that a quick learning moment. When you look at the most successful people in the world, presidents, CEOs, they get feedback from people on their appearance. They just do. Ronald Reagan would have someone on his staff look him head to toe and make sure no hair was out of place, no dandruff was on his jacket top leadership does require paying attention to your image. Now, I don't want to obsess over it, but it is something that leaders of every era did. George Washington himself was known for always being seen in fine, regal white hoes. When he went to a city for the first time, he had made sure to go in on a big white horse the last mile in a town. That's not how he he was transported throughout. He would be in a stagecoach a lot of times. But when it came to how he entered a city for the first time, he put a lot of attention to it. So, madam, thank you so much for stopping by and saying hello. Okay, other big news going on and this time it is out of Washington. Again, not necessarily an apology, but just a disclosure to all of our friends in India, Pakistan, Asia, Europe, Africa, South America. I do try to cover stories that have a universal appeal and I do try to pull stories from around the world. I do have a bias. Everyone has a bias. I'm based here in the United States and I do see more US News. But if you have stories you'd like to see me cover in the community, then please let me know. Again, you're watching The Community with T.J. walker. This show is about business, technology and culture. News decoded through the lens of communication skills in order to boost your personal development, help you become more successful. Whether that means make money, get a job, get a promotion, communicate more effectively in social situations. We're trying to learn from the news. It's easy just to watch news, consume news and get bummed out, get depressed. I want you to learn about news and figure out how to get better yourself, how to improve from that. And the real lesson from the story I just talked about with what's going on in Washington is sometimes you have to do what's the good for society. Long term, you cannot simply say this is what's good for me. Short term, I'm going to break every single norm, every single rule just because I can, just because there's no one here to handcuff me or take me off to jail. Sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture. Sometimes you have to look at precedent, tradition and say, well, if everyone else did this a certain way and now I'm changing the rules that benefit me, is that really a good idea? Is that how I want to be perceived in the world, as someone who just doesn't care at all about anything else anyone needs? So let's head on to our next story here. Story four, block four here on the Community today, criminal investigations of Brennan and Comey raise alarms about political retaliation. Two of the most prominent former US Intelligence officials, John Brennan and James Comey, are now under criminal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI trying to get fancy here, not using acronyms, forgive me, their charges, potential false statements and misconduct tied to the 2017 Trump Russia probe. The source, a criminal referral by CIA Director John Radcliffe to FBI Director Cash Patel, both Trump loyalist. Let's be blunt. This isn't about the rule of law. It's about the rule of loyalty. According to Fox News Digital, Brian Brennan is being investigated for allegedly including the discredited Steele Dossier in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, while later testifying to Congress that he opposed it. Comey is also being criticized, though the charges are still vague. But here's the real danger. Prosecuting political opponents not for crimes but for disagreement with the president sets a terrifying precedent. This is how autocrats consolidate power by turning intelligence agencies into tools of revenge. In Russia, Vladimir Putin jailed opposition leaders like Alexei Navalny under trumped up charges. In Turkey, Erdogan purged thousands of judges, generals and journalists. In Venezuela, Nicolas Moderna criminalized dissent under the guise of rooting out traitors. And in Hungary, Viktor Orban reshaped legal institutions to go after civil society. Critics now imagine the US Going down the same road. Well, you don't have to Imagine it. It's happening right here. If every incoming administration uses the Department of Justice to prosecute those who question their legitimacy, democracy collapses into a permanent state of place. Political warfare, trust in institutions, especially law enforcement, it evaporates. Criminal referrals need to be based on real evidence of real crimes, not on which side of the aisle someone stood during an intelligence briefing. Anything less is not justice, it's vengeance. Now, this is, this is interesting for a lot of reasons. First of all, James Comey, as much as I think what's happening to him is a horrible injustice, there's a part of me that says, wow, could not happen to a nicer guy, because I do think James Comey essentially delivered the first Trump administration campaign or the first election results to Trump, resulting in his first administration. By coming out at the last minute essentially attacking Hillary Clinton. He raised her negatives to the point, I mean, people forget she did get several million votes, more than Trump, but she lost in the Electoral College. But just a few days before the election for Comey, coming out and saying she did horrible things but we decided not to prosecute was certainly enough to change the vote total to swing the election from Hillary Clinton to, to Donald Trump. So I think for that reason alone, he'll go down in history as the worst FBI director of all time, interfering with elections. Having said all that, that's obviously not why the Trump administration is thinking about targeting Comey with a criminal investigation. They want to target him because Trump has basically said, this guy is my enemy. He didn't do what I told him to do. He didn't act as my personal henchman in the first term, he has dared to criticize me publicly, therefore he must be a criminal. Now, let's be very clear. When a leader of a country says someone who's critical of being is now a criminal, you no longer have rule of law, you have a dictatorship, you have authoritarianism. You have things that are very similar to what happened under fascist regimes throughout history. Again, look at what happened to Navalny. Being labeled a foreign agent in Russia, eventually died under odd circumstances in prison. Erdogan has arrested so many thousands of critics in Turkey, Hungary, Orban, the dictator there. All these people have in common is they get elected and then they say bye bye elections, or they rig them to the point where it's impossible for anyone else to win because they take over the media, they take over the people who count the votes. And this is why, frankly, I think many of Democrats in the United States, many in the so called left, many so called Progressives, certainly all centrist, are delusional right now. They're not reading history correctly. Dictators, certainly in the last hundred years, didn't just pop up out of nowhere. They got elected. And then as soon as they got into office, they started chipping away, moving the line just a couple of inches every day. You didn't just wake up one day and have death camps in Germany in the 1930s. It happened after about a decade. It happened because someone was popularly elected or their members of their party were, and they chipped away and chipped away and chipped away until nothing was keeping them from doing whatever they want. And free elections as we know them essentially ended. So I'm extraordinarily worried that that is what's happening. And the conventional wisdom is, well, this is going to weaponize future presidents to go after their. I'm not even sure, frankly, the United States is going to have future presidents. If we continue down the road as we've gone for just the last five months, it certainly looks like we are sliding pretty quickly into pure authoritarianism. And any election we have will be about as meaningful as the elections they have in Russia. Yeah, there'll be an opponent. There'll be things that look like elections. There'll be voting booths, polls at voting. But it's not really going to amount to anything because you already know in advance who will win. The winner will have the name Trump in it, maybe Trump Jr. Maybe Trump slash something else, because it's a daughter. But you'll know in advance. And this, this does lead me to my next story here. And I'm going to go out on a limb here. You're going to say your initial reaction is going to be, well, T.J. this is, this is crazy. And I want you to bear with me, hear me out with what I have to say. As you may have heard, TikTok has been in the news because last year the United States Congress passed a law saying TikTok must sell to a United States owner. It was supposed to take place earlier this year, and the Trump administration, as it typically does, just ignored it because it happens to believe Congress, when they make laws, it doesn't apply to the president. So the issue is what happens to TikTok? President Trump was initially very anti tick tock, said, yeah, let's get rid of it, let's ban it, let's propaganda. And then one of his largest contributors said, hey, I'm a big investor in TikTok. Why don't you go easy on them? And that's exactly what he did. And since then he has snuggled up to Tick Tock. They've said nice things, they've been pushing nice things on the feed. So we have a situation now where Trump is saying, okay, I don't necessarily want to get rid of them. We're going to force them to sell to America. That's the context. Okay, let me give you a few more facts. TikTok is once again on the brink of being banned or forcibly sold in the United States. The new law passed in April gives the Chinese parent company ByteDance until early 2025 to divest or face removal from US app stores. President Biden signed it. But Donald Trump, who once led a similar charge as president, has taken a U turn, publicly claiming he's now against the ban. Why? Because it would benefit Facebook, a company he hates. But behind the scenes, things are getting strange again. Trump insiders are reportedly floating a US based buyout coalition of billionaires, billionaire allies of Trump's with names like Steve Wynn, Peter Thiel, and maybe even if they patch things back up and get their love affair going again. Elon Musk. Now, the chatter is early, but it's real. And if you think this is about national security, think again. Here's the prediction nobody else is making. But you heard it right here first on the communiverse. Donald Trump will try to orchestrate a U.S. buyout of TikTok and demand a majority stake for himself without putting in a single dollar of his own money. Sounds crazy. Hear me out. Let's review the pattern. This is a man who tried to personally claim a finder's fee for any sale of TikTok during his first term, publicly stating that the treasury should get a very large percentage of the sale. Well, that's the treasury, but I'm talking about he's going to put it in his own pocket. He charged top dollar rent at Trump Properties to his own campaign donors and Secret Service. He's used to cashing in. He's funded millions of dollars into his own business. During his presidency, Mar a Lago became the Republican hangout. He's pressured foreign governments, including Ukraine, to dig up dirt on his political opponents. He created a truth social not as a speech platform, but as a direct money funnel from SPAC investors, with the Trump Organization holding massive upside despite him putting no actual infrastructure into the company. And don't even get me started about the Trump perfume using the office of the White House prestige to sell stuff like that. His phones, his crypto, various cryptocurrency scams, the memes he's cashing in at the level of billions of dollars. It used to be huge scandal when, you know, the Vice President of the United States during the Nixon administration finally got caught with an envelope with, you know, a few tens of thousands of dollars in his pocket. We're talking about billions of dollars. Now Trump's talking about, as we mentioned in the previous segment, putting in his own personal Fed chair to give him what he wants. Loyalty only cabinet appointments. The number one criteria is you've got to support me regardless. So the Overton window is shifting on what is permissible. To even talk about this as a Hollywood screenwriter 10 years ago, even six months ago, frankly, that a President of the United States would try to enrich himself with billions of dollars by using the power of the government to force a foreign government to sell a company to a bunch of investors where he gets majority ownership. That would be seen as so over the top. I would be kicked out of any Hollywood movie six months or any Hollywood production studio meeting room six months ago. Now, I think you have to take it very, very seriously because Trump has shown that he is a good student at some level, whether it's intuitive or not, of how autocrats, how tyrants, how dictators slowly inch along the way. They don't just grab everything at once. They don't start death camps at once. Although Alligator Alley has been started as a form of concentration camp. Only 100 or so miles of where I sit today in South Florida. They don't just brazenly say, everyone, all the taxpayers have to send me a billion dollars. They just slowly change the rules, erode things, corrode things, and before you realize it, I just realized I've completely forgotten about the fact that Trump essentially soliciting a bribe from the qataris, getting a 400 million dollar plane for him and his library use when he leaves. What Trump understands is if you overwhelm people every single day and you bombard them with something that you want to do, but previously would have been considered insane beyond the illegal, unconstitutional, something you could impeach, get impeached with, if you just overwhelm them every day, their heads will explode after a while. They'll never be able to point at one alleged infraction, one ethical infraction long enough to get anyone else to care about it, and that is the brilliance, if you want to call it a brilliance, evil genius, if you want to call it that, of what Trump is doing by coming up with essentially a new scam, a new cryptocurrency, a new meme some new deal every day. The critics never gain traction for any one thing. And he gets away with it now. He can get away with it right now because he controls the United States House of Representatives, the United states Senate, the U.S. supreme Court, all of the administrative state, many in the media. So he's able to get away with what he wants right now. He's essentially unaccountable. What does this really mean for you and me? I want you to not lose perspective. And this show is not primarily about politics. It's about understanding business, economic, technology, cultural news through the lens of communication in order to improve you. Now, I'm going to go way out on a limb and assume you're not aspiring to be a dictator or an authoritarian leader or someone who is shutting down democracy. So in this particular case, what I'm trying to do is equip you with the tools you need to spot these things, because they're not easy to spot. When you look at most fascist leaders, authoritarians, dictators, whether it is recent times of Turkey or Hungary or in the 20th century with people in Italy and Germany and other authoritarians who've taken over, it was never all at once. It was one gradual thing at a time. And it was all done under the guise of democracy as a starting point and doing things from a starting point of being elected and having the will of the people. So back to my original prediction. Let me be very specific here. So Trump had trotted out the idea a while back that if a deal is put together, well, the United States government should get a slice. He now has said so many times, he is the government. What he does, he speaks the will of the people. Now, this is what all dictators, this is what kings do. This is what people who believe in divine providence, establishing kings and rulers and and potentates, that's what they believe in. And Trump has said on numerous occasions that is essentially his belief that he now embodies America. So he is the government. The government is Trump. So I don't think we're that far away from him simply saying, okay, I put together a deal, and we're going to value. These are not the accurate valuation, but we're going to value TikTok at $100 billion. And I'm gonna get Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel and let's say, Jeff Bezos, let's get him in on the mix. They're each Gonna put in $33.3 billion, and we're gonna divvy this up the following way. I, Donald Trump, will get 51% and the others will get the rest. They're putting in all the money, doesn't matter. But you're the president. You're acting on the part of the United States people. What's best for the people doesn't matter. Let me ask you, who's going to stand up to them? Is the House going to start impeachment proceedings for this, for what is clearly corruption? No, they're not. If they did, is the United States Senate going to convict him? No, they're not. Let's not forget a broken clock is right twice a day. Donald Trump does occasionally tell the truth. And he said during his first campaign, he said, my supporters are so devoted, I could shoot someone and kill them in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue, I wouldn't lose a single vote. I think it's the most honest thing he's ever said, and I think it's accurate. So what Trump has realized is that he's got a couple things going for him, that the people who love him, love him, number one. Number two, when people show doubt, he's done this extraordinarily well with Republicans who would be considered conservatives and stalwarts of the party under any other circumstances. What he's shown repeatedly is if they don't support him just by attacking that person, his followers will so inundate that Republican with threats, personal threats, showing up at their house, threatening their family, threatening their kids, basically torturing them. And yes, death threats are very much a part of that. What happens to anyone Trump criticizes that they give up. And we saw it just the other day with Senator Thom Tillis, the Republican of North Carolina, one of my home states where I grew up, saying, okay, basically, you got me. I'm not even going to run for reelection. And this has happened time and time again with Republicans who do not bow down to him and give him exactly what he wants. So what is the real message here for your career? I'm not here to teach you how to be a dictator. I'm going to assume you want to do well on your own, based on dignity for others, a respect in capitalism, rule of law and democracy, because those things go together. And that's ultimately, in most cases, how the richest people, most successful in the people world, how they thrive, is embracing this combination of democracy, rule of law and capitalism. But I think it's important to realize that not everyone agrees with that. And you've got to analyze exactly what people are saying and don't be swayed just because maybe all of your friends or everyone at the country club, you know, says, oh, well, that's a good guy. And the other people are so awful. Well, are the other people really so awful, or have you simply been brainwashed because of a media messaging machine? Now, I'm not here to brainwash you. I'm here to give you my perspective. You're going to have to filter in with everyone else's perspective, too. But we all have to learn from history. And the problem is, for a lot of people, history is boring. So part of what I am going to be talking about from time to time on this show is in fact the history of how authoritarians spring up from democracies and how they slowly chip away and corrode at norms. Initially, it's social norms, it's customs, but eventually it's actual laws. If you chip away and chip away and chip away long enough, what you'll find is you're unconstrained. And that's against the whole concept of democracy. When our founding fathers set up this country, they believed that too much power in any one person would be corrupting. They didn't want a king. So they put all these checks and balances. Congress gets to write the laws, the President has to implement them. It doesn't say the President can ignore any law the Congress passes if they don't like it. But unfortunately, there's no system in place that if a president ignores what Congress says, but Congress doesn't have enough backbone or they're too afraid of nasty tweets, they cower away and they're too afraid of being primary and they can't win reelection, so they let the President do whatever they want. The founding fathers didn't plan for every contingency like Twitter and X and TV talk show host and reality TV show host who were so good at getting people angry and attention that they could use fear to mobilize an entire political party. They didn't envision that. And that is where we are today. I'm TJ Walker, this is Communiverse. I hope you've had some fun with me today. I hope you've learned some things that can not only enlighten you, but benefit you personally. My final message to you is don't just be a consumer of ideas and content. Be a creator yourself. I'm certainly happy you're watching me and reading other news sources, but put your perspective out there. Because unfortunately, we live in a modern social media world where the angriest people, often the least intelligent people, are the ones screaming the loudest. And it crowds out sane Rational people like you and me. So please speak out. You don't have to do an hour long daily podcast, YouTube show like this, but do something where you're trying to make the world a little better place. Not just by attacking, but by enlightening people of what you do and how the world can be a better place. Thanks so much. See you next time. See you tomorrow. In fact, this is so much fun. Thank he's ever said, and I think it's accurate. So what Trump has realized is that he's got a couple things going for him that the people who love him, love him, number one. Number two, when people show doubt, he's done this extraordinarily well with Republicans who would be considered conservatives and stalwarts of the party under any other circumstances. What he's shown repeatedly is if they don't support him just by attacking that person, his followers will so inundate that Republican with threats, personal threats, showing up at their house, threatening their family, threatening their kids, basically torturing them. And yes, death threats are very much a part of that. What happens to anyone Trump criticizes that they give up. And we saw it just the other day with Senator Thom Tillis, the Republican of North Carolina, one of my home states where I grew up saying, okay, basically, you got me. I'm not even going to run for reelection. And this has happened time and time again with Republicans who do not bow down to him and give him exactly what he wants. So what is the real message here for your career? I'm not here to teach you how to be a dictator. I'm going to assume you want to do well on your own, based on dignity for others, a respect in capitalism, rule of law and democracy, because those things go together. And that's ultimately in most cases how the richest people, most successful in the people world, how they thrive, is embracing this combination of democracy, rule of law and capitalism. But I think it's important to realize that not everyone agrees with that. And you've got to analyze exactly what people are saying and don't be swayed just because maybe all of your friends or everyone at the country club, you know, says, oh, well, that's a good guy, and the other people are so awful. Well, are the other people really so awful or have you simply been brainwashed because of a media messaging machine? Now, I'm not here to brainwash you, I'm here to give you my perspective. You're going to have to filter in with everyone else's perspective too. But we all have to learn from history and the problem is, for a lot of people, history is boring. So part of what I am going to be talking about from time to time on this show is in fact the history of how authoritarians spring up from democracies and how they slowly chip away and corrode at norms. Initially it's social norms, it's customs, but eventually it's actual laws. If you chip away and chip away and chip away long enough, what you'll find is you're unconstrained. And that's against the whole concept of democracy. When our founding fathers set up this country, they believed that too much power in any one person would be corrupting. They didn't want a king. So they put all these checks and balances. Congress gets to write the laws, the President has to implement them. It doesn't say the President can ignore any law the Congress passes if they don't like it. But unfortunately, there's no system in place that if a President ignores what Congress says, but Congress doesn't have enough backbone or they're too afraid of nasty tweets, they cower away and they're too afraid of being primary and they can't win reelection, so they let the President do whatever they want. The founding fathers didn't plan for every contingency like Twitter and X and TV talk show host and reality TV show host who were so good at getting people angry and attention that they could use fear to mobilize an entire political party. They didn't envision that. And that is where we are today. I'm TJ Walker, this is Communiverse. I hope you've had some fun with me today. I hope you've learned some things that can not only enlighten you, but benefit you personally. My final message to you is don't just be a consumer of ideas and content. Be a creator yourself. I'm certainly happy you're watching me and reading other news sources, but put your perspective out there because unfortunately we live in a modern social media world where the angriest people, often the least intelligent people, are the ones screaming the loudest. And it crowds out sane, rational people like you and me. So please speak out. You don't have to do an hour long daily podcast YouTube show like this, but do something where you're trying to make the world a little better place. Not just by attacking, but by enlightening people of what you do and how the world can be a better.