Assassination of Conservative Activist Raises Fears of More Violence

A political assassination shocks the nation as Charlie Kirk is gunned down in Utah. Russia pushes NATO's boundaries with drone strikes spilling into Poland. South Korea warns it may halt new US Investments after a sweeping Georgia immigration rate. Scammers weaponize fake Google reviews to extort small businesses. And veteran recruiter Wendell Till explains why experienced workers keep flowing job interviews. All that and more right now. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hello and welcome. This is Filtered with TJ Walker. This is your daily dive into top business, technology, economic and culture stories of the day, all filtered by through the lens of communication and personal development skills. Here's my promise to you. After spending some time either watching or listening to this podcast, you'll not only know more about the world, but you'll know more about how to improve yourself, how to be more successful in your personal life and your professional life. That's really what we're all about. Let's dive right into story one sad story today. Charlie Kirk assassinated in Utah. Charlie Kirk, the 31 year old founder of Turning Point USA. And we're not going to show any footage here, by the way. You can find that elsewhere if you're looking. He was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University. Officials called it a political assassination. Thousands watched in horror as a gunman fired from a nearby rooftop. They think no suspects are in custody. After the FBI mistakenly announced and then retracted an arrest. President Trump blamed rhetoric from what he called the radical left, While Vice President J.D. vance eulogized Kirk as a true friend who shaped the conservative youth movement. Conservative Christians quickly cast him as a martyr, while experts warn this killing marks another sign that political violence is becoming dangerously normalized in America. Okay, so what's the real message here that we all unfortunately have to take away from this Charlie Kirk assassination? And that is this is going to bring out the absolute worst in everybody. Everybody on every side of the political spectrum is going to be guilty of confirmation bias. Those on the right will say, as Trump did, hey, this is the left, the violent left and their violent rhetoric. Those on the left will say, see, we told you. We told you you needed gun control and you didn't listen to us. Everyone is going to be guilty of confirmation bias. And here's the prediction. No one's going to learn anything new. There will be absolute zero progress. It's kind of like the Seinfeld episode. Zero growth throughout the whole series. Okay, let's dig a little deeper here. This is, this is troubling at many levels and frankly, this is, this is bad news for everyone. Because traditionally, anyway, regardless of who you were in America, we were all Americans who believed in democracy. The whole idea of democracy is you compete through debate, through arguments, through rhetoric, through communication. You do not communicate through bullets. You do not communicate through violence. Now, we've seen escalating violence in recent times. You know, everyone seems to forget another. Another martyr, the police officer who died as a result of the January 6th revolt in Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. in 2021. So everyone forgets that there's more violence around the country. Let's look at some of the facts here. Kirk was shot in the neck in front of 3,000 spectators while giving a speech. FBI Deputy Director Kash Patel immediately went on, said, we got our man. Isn't this great? He had to retract it. Everyone's quick to make a quick judgment here. The video does appear to show a gunman on a rooftop. But as of this broadcast right now, and I'm shooting this the morning of September 11th, nobody knows. No one's been apprehended. A lot of people are rallying around him. He was a leader for his cause. Even liberals like Ezra Klein have spoken very glowingly and favorably about Charlie Kirk, saying that he was doing what you're supposed to do in a democracy. Now, Ezra Klein and people in the center and moderates did not like his rhetoric, did not like his positions, didn't like his defense of all things Trump. But they conceded he was doing what you're supposed to do in a democracy. You're supposed to actually talk to people. You're supposed to debate people. You're supposed to talk to people who disagree with you. And Charlie Kirk had made it his life's mission to reach out to young people and talk to them where they are on college campuses. And he was doing that since he was 18 years old. He was only 31 years old, already married, two children, condolences to his family. But he got into this really young. He was kind of like the Anthony Robbins of the conservative movement. Anthony Robbins famously just announced at age 18, he's going to be a successful motivational speaker. No need for college, any of that. And it worked well for Anthony Robbins. The same with Charlie Kirk. No college. And I say that not in a disparaging way, but saying it in a positive way, in that he just dove right into his career and created a massive, massive organization, Turning Point, that at its, at the end, had a budget of nearly $100 million, successful podcast, speaking engagement, books, the whole deal. But unlike a lot of commentators and pundits, he wasn't just a guy giving opinions, he was organizing at the grassroots level. That's what you're supposed to do in a democracy. You're not supposed to say I don't agree with you and I can't convince you I'm right, so I will just end your life. That's not what you're supposed to do in a democracy. And unfortunately things like this feed on each other. This is another example of a fundamental pillar of our democracy being destroyed. Democracy simply does not work. If people believe that if they voice an unpopular opinion, they will be assassinated. It just doesn't work that way because then everyone, then you're just a constant civil war. You're not a democracy, you're not a stable government. And I'm not the only one to see like this is yet another danger sign that our very concept of democracy is crumbling. Now I will make a few more predictions. As I mentioned to you, I think we're going to see a gigantic example across the political spectrum of confirmation bias. That's the bias where something new comes up and it simply confirms your already deep rooted belief. So let's say for example, that it is discovered that the person who committed this atrocity, and make no mistake, it was an atrocity, was actually someone who is on the political right, further right than Charlie Kirk and thought that perhaps he was becoming too liberal and becoming too squishy. I'm not alleging that I'm just stop for a moment and have a hypothetical moment with me. Let's assume that that is the killer evidence, the person is indicted, tried, convicted and it's a clear cut paper trail. This person was more extreme, further to the right than even Charlie Kirk. Here's my prediction. Everyone on the right, the Cash Patel's of the world, the Alex Joneses of the world, will simply say that that's a false flag, that that's disinformation from the government. Even though Kash Patel is the government. They will simply say they no, this was the far left, that the guy was secretly a leftist because the left hates America. So it will do nothing but confirm their belief that the biggest problem in the world is radical leftist. Even though any fair minded observer of America, especially if they have an international perspective, would say we essentially have no left in America. We have a center, we have a right and we have a far far, far right. But sure, can there be extreme left wing kooks in America? Yes. Far more likely is a kook of varied ideological tendencies who happens to be mentally ill and happens to live in A society where guns and machine guns are handed out like candy, like party favors, where if you walk into a drugstore, into a gun store, yeah, Freudian slip, I guess it makes sense. It's like a drugstore where you just put things on the counter. I'll take some gum, I'll take some mouthwash, some dental floss. Oh yeah, and a bunch of machine guns and a bunch of bullets. Those of you watching from Western Europe, Japan, other places are thinking you Americans are crazy. Well, you're not wrong. But that is the situation we live in. So we're also going to see people on the so called left and center and progressives and moderates not using a lot of tact in these situations, kind of rubbing it in people's faces. They will throw back the quote that Charlie Kirk himself said that hey, in our democracy the right to a gun is so important, it's going to be worth some people dying each year, some people being killed each year. That's a paraphrase, but a pretty direct paraphrase of what Charlie Kirk himself has said about why we really don't want to have gun control in America. And there are going to be a lot of Democrats and centrists and gun control advocates who are going to be trotting that quote out again and again and again and they're not factually incorrect, they're not wrong, but it certainly doesn't do anything to persuade someone who maybe was on the fence, who is maybe open to the idea maybe we need a little bit of gun control in America. Just possibly this idea that anyone, anywhere, anytime can go out and get guns and commit atrocities like this, maybe not the best idea to run a society that many Democrats and liberals and gun control advocates I predict are going to go about. They're going to use this moment the wrong way and they will mockingly say, oh, thoughts and prayers with a sort of ha ha ha undertone to this, implying he got what he deserved. Well, no, he didn't get what he deserved. If you believe in democracy, as I do, as all centrists do, as all right of center people do, as the Republican Party used to, as the Democratic Party still does, if you believe in democracy, then you believe in the idea of articulating unpopular ideas, advocating unpopular ideas and not getting shot, that's democracy. And as far as I know, Charlie Kirk was never guilty of committing acts of violence and yet he died by an act of violence. And that, that is a shame. That is a problem. And I wish I could say this will be a learning moment for Americans the way when there was a mass shooting in Australia, Australia said, you know what? We can change as a society. And they passed massive laws restricting free access to guns and their gun deaths plummeted. They used it as a learning moment. I unfortunately, while I am an American and I believe America does a lot of things really well, they do not learn from crises like this. More in a moment Filtered is brought to you by the following Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements.

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Russia testing NATO Russia is crossing Western red lines slowly, not all at once. Over the past three weeks, strikes have hit US Owned factories in Ukraine, Europe, diplomatic compounds, and now Poland, where NATO jets shot down drones. Analysts call it a strategy of escalate slowly and see if anyone pushes back. Ukrainian and European officials argue Putin feels emboldened because the west answers with statements, not consequences. History shows dictators often start small. Hitler in the Rhineland, Sodom and Kuwait, Mussolini and Abyssinia. The danger is that hesitation in the face of small probes paves the way for a larger crisis. Okay, what's the real message here? Putin is sending a message to NATO, to Europe, to the U.S. hey, I'm poking, I'm prodding. I'm seeing if you're going to continue rolling over and let me get away with what I want, because if I get a little today, I'm going to go for a whole lot tomorrow. Let's dig a little deeper here. Now, I have no conclusive evidence that Putin has some dirt on Trump that has him in his hip pocket, that Trump is an agent of Russia. I have no evidence of that. I'm not going to further perpetuate things that don't have a lot of solid evidence. I mean, there's certainly a lot of people who've been around Trump and former aides and assistants who've had falling fallings out who do believe that, in fact, Putin somehow bailed out Trump 30 years ago in real estate deals. And there's some, there's some sense of complete Fealty from Trump to Putin. Because the most bizarre thing perhaps in American politics in the last 10 years has been the complete flip of the Republican right in its relationship with Russia as personified by Donald Trump. Going from historically the party a, we're more anti Russia than anyone, to him seemingly sucking up to Russia at every single level. And this so called summit that now everyone's forgotten about it seems like 10 years ago. But it was only a few weeks ago where Trump literally rolled out the red carpet to an international war criminal. Vladimir Putin brought him to the United States, which Alaska is, treated him as an honored dignitary and helped really rehabilitate Putin on the international stage. And how is the United States paid? With a slap in the face with being spit in the face by Putin being more aggressive, more emboldened. I mean, drones going into Poland, accidentally bombing other things that are a part of US Interest. It really seems like, let's test here, let's test here, let's poke, let's prod. And maybe, just maybe the US NATO will be too cowardly. They'll all have their Neville Chamberlain moments and saying, okay, okay, Putin, you did this. Shame on you. Naughty, naughty, naughty. But promise not to go another few inches and we'll just let you keep what you have. That appears to be what Vladimir Putin is hearing from the west right now. And that does appear to be the message we are sending. And I'm here to tell you it's a dangerous message. Those of us in the west often think, why is Putin doing this? His economy is a basket case. A million people have either been killed or seriously injured in this fiasco of a war in the Ukraine. What does he even need more land for? He's got 11 time zones. It's a giant, giant, giant country. And the entire economy is only the size of Italy. Here in the west, where some of us are still used to thinking of Russia as the former Soviet Union, one of the two great superpowers in the world, they're Italy. In terms of their economy, they're small, they're almost insignificant except for the fact that, yeah, they got a million nuclear warheads and they probably still work or at least they have the capacity to do a lot of damage. And that is why we have to take them seriously. And that is why we can't just send our drones to Moscow and do whatever we want because of this threat of newts. Let's look at some, some more of the stats from this story. Russian drones cross into Poland, prompting NATO's jets to respond this is very dangerous. Putin's forces frame the attacks. Oh, those were accidents, misfires. Okay. The EU ambassador Mather Nova feel says Putin feels emboldened. And I think the ambassador is on to something. Look at what dictators have done in the past. Hitler going into the Rhineland felt emboldened, went for more. Saddam Hussein said, oh, I can get Kuwait. Let me see, let me test see where I can go from here. The US has provided long range weapons, but with usage limits later relaxed. Russia has a long history of using denial and misdirection. Western experts warn that escalate to de escalate could shape future talks. So let's make no mistake about it. These are dangerous times. And I well remember a lot of people made fun of Mitt Romney and I may have done it too in 2012 when he said Russia was really kind of the top of the list of countries the United States should be worried about. And Barack Obama, you know, his response was, hey, the 1980s called they Want their their enemies back. And there was some mockery there. But it turned out that he was on to something because Russia continues to be a major source of international mischief. Mischief. It sounds like I'm calling him a cute little boy kicking sand in someone's face. They're causing wars. They're causing massive death. They could cause World War three. And unfortunately, here in the United States we seem to have a leader who I won't say he's bought off by Putin. I don't have evidence to that. But he certainly has shown a greater ability to roll over and pander to Putin and forget about atrocities that any president. The United States has seen in, well, forever. More to come in just a moment. 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Want to support the show? You've come to the right place. If you want to support the show, I'd ask you to do a Couple of things. Whatever platform you're consuming this on, if you're watching it on YouTube, Facebook X or whatever, leave a comment that's always helpful. Like it? Sign up for notifications if you're watching on YouTube, subscribe if you can't. If you're listening on an audio podcast, thank you so much. We are only one week into our podcasting audio journey, so every kind of, like every kind of follow, every kind of subscription is extraordinarily helpful. So please, please, if you get any kind of value out of this, please interact with us in some way. And of course you can always send me a message right on the community tab of my YouTube page. And that is the TJ Walker Success YouTube page. You can also YouTube channel. You can also just type in filtered with TJ Walker on YouTube and find our community page there as well. Okay, let's dive right into issue three. South Korea versus United States after Georgia Raid South Korean President Lee Jae Men has warned Washington that billions in promised investments could be at risk. After a US Immigration raid in Georgia, hundreds of Korean technicians working at a Hyundai LG battery plant were detained. Seoul sent a chartered plane to bring home more than 300 of them. Li said the workers weren't permanent hires, but specialists sent to install equipment, roles that cannot be easily filled in the United States. He warned that unless visas are fixed, Korean companies will hesitate to invest further. The backlash comes as Trump also strong armed Japan into a $550 billion deal where he controls how investments are allocated. Allies in both Seoul and Tokyo now openly question what alliance with Washington truly means. Okay, what's the real message here? If you are a leader in Seoul, if you are a leader in Tokyo, when someone in America says, hey, let's form an alliance, let's form a partnership, no, they mean you do what I want and I can screw you over at any time anyhow, any way. Just because I'm the big bad America now. How do you like me? Let's dig a little bit deeper here. So there's so many atrocities going on here. First of all, for a government that purports to believe in the free enterprise system, free markets, Adam Smith, capitalism. That's what the United States has traditionally said until about eight, nine months ago. And now it's this idea of, okay, we kind of want to be like Fidel Castro or Peron of Argentina from 60 years ago, controlling all the chess pieces around the world in some master plan to make us brilliant. Well, we see how well that worked in Cuba. Not very well. We see how well that worked in Peron's Argentina? Not very well. And now we're seeing the United States trying to do that. I mean, the. The audacity of the United States government telling Japan how they can have. How they have to invest in United States businesses and factories. It is literally spin. Well, it's figuratively spitting in the face of Adam Smith and free market principles, by the way. I hate when people literally misuse the word literally. And I almost did it there. So apologies. But I did correct my. And the idea that we're telling Korea, you have to invest, you have to build factories in the United States, come here, spend money on us, or we're going to prevent you from selling your great cars, which, frankly, are better than a lot of US Cars. We're going to prevent you from selling cars here unless you come here, build factories. And the Korean says, okay, we don't really think this is the best idea, but if that's the price of admission, we'll do it. Okay, we'll do it. So they come here and they try to set up more factories, and they bring their specialists here because we Americans, we're too busy trying to become crypto billionaires to actually learn a real skill like how to build an automobile factory. So the Koreans brought their own specialists in to do what we asked them to do. Invest in America. And how were they repaid? Raids on their factories, at people being deported. Oh, you don't have your proper paper. You're not a U.S. citizen. Well, no kidding. If U.S. citizens were so good at it, they wouldn't need to send people here. Let's look at some more of the facts. Over 300 South Korean workers were detained at a Georgia plant. Seoul had a charter plane to bring them home. President Lee says visas are blocking investment. He's trying to invest in the United States. He's trying to do what we asked him to do. And we're sending very contradictory messages. And it's just really, truly mucking things up. Some more of the facts now, Trump told Seoul workers might be allowed back temporarily. Believe me, South Korea is a fantastic place if they're highly paid engineers and executives away from their families, away from. They want to get back as quickly as. They don't really want to live in Georgia. Don't flatter yourself. America. South Korea compares this to Americans easily teaching English abroad. Yeah, there's some things. If you want to learn how to speak like an American, you got almost any country in the world. Americans are there to teach you, and they get paid. And I have a bunch of family members who did this for years in Europe and Europe let them do it easily. They weren't deported. They were treated like honored guests. Japan also was forced to accept a Trump controlled investment terms. Major editorials in Soul Media are now questioning the meaning of alliance and President Lee of South Korea rightfully saying, quote, we will not make a decision against our national interest. Well, why should you? We don't expect an American president to make decisions that are against the interest of the United States, although that does seem to happen every day. Why in the world would we tell leaders of other countries to do that? So the United States is sending wildly, wildly mixed messages to countries all around the world. Come invest with if you want to play with us, you got to pay. You've got to give us the money they'll pay to play scam, which is what mafiosa do and other extortionists. By the way, Extortion relates to our next topic as well. And then we're surprised when people are like, well you say I have to do this, but then you kicked me out doing the thing you said I need to do so I can't win. That is the message Korea is sending us. Tokyo and other countries is that we are forcing them into the impossible and putting them in a position where they feel like they just can't win. And when they can't win, we can't win either.

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Issue 4 Google review extortion Small businesses across America are under siege from scammers who post fake one star reviews on Google Maps and then demand cash to take them down. Contractors, movers and roofers are among the hardest hit. One Los Angeles owner saw her business rating crash from 5 stars to 3.6 overnight after paying scammers from abroad. Another moving company in Georgia faced a wave of elaborate fake complaints. Watchdogs say Google system is overwhelmed and artificial intelligence tools are making the fakes even more convincing. The FTC can levy fines, but enforcement is rare. Business Owners say a single wave of false reviews can kill calls and bookings instantly. So what's the real message here and the mess? The message is fake reviews and extortion are killing a lot of small businesses and that's a problem for everyone. It's a problem for consumers, but it's really a problem for mom and pop shops, movers, contractors, roofers who are doing a good job making their customers happy, getting good reviews. And some extortionist comes and gives them a one star review, says nasty things and say pay up. Google and other online companies have got to do a better job of responding instantly to these extortionists. Let's dig a little deeper here. So I have a lot of sympathy for small businesses with these reviews because truth be told, you know, Google was the best thing that ever happened to me. What really made my media training business skyrocket a quarter of a century ago was I got to the top page of Google for media training. Now this was before the reviews had as much play and as much relevance. And for many, many years, I was number one. And that generated clients, customers, business for me from all over the world. So you always have to adapt to the marketing communication tools of the time. And these days, there's no doubt about it, the marketing tool of here's what my customers say is profoundly important. I know this firsthand. I recently had to find a mover. My, my family and I moved from one part of Florida to another. You know, in view of incidents happening yesterday in the national scene, I'm not even going to say where I live. So I had to select a mover. And I was heavily, heavily influenced by reviews. Any company that had less than a 4.4 review, I didn't consider. I know when I'm shopping for products on Amazon, if a product doesn't have I look for a 4.5 and preferably at least 5001000 reviews. If I see fewer reviews than that or a lower number, I don't buy. So these extortionists are smart. There's no doubt about it. What has to happen is Google and some of these big tech companies that control these review functions, the review apparatus, the platforms where the reviews are, they're going to have to spend more money hiring actual real people to take complaints from a small business who says, look, I just got this email from someone extorting me. Here's the email, here is the review. I can prove this person is not a customer. They're making a claim that doesn't even affect me, but I'M new on Google reviews. I only have 10 reviews. So when one person gives me a one star reviews, it tanks the whole review. Google has got to spend more money hiring real human beings. The reason Google and Facebook, YouTube, all these companies are so wildly profitable. They don't have to have any employees. It's all on automation, it's all on algorithm and it works really well for them. It is absolutely destroying a lot of small businesses around the country. And there, there's going to have to be some form of regulation because it's so easy for YouTube, Facebook, any of these big companies to say, hey, thanks for bringing it to our attention. You're right, this is a problem, by golly, we're going to do something about that. And they don't hire a single additional person, they don't spend any more money on it. And the problem just continues and continues and continues. And Google makes lots of money. Sorry, we're still making as much money as ever. So it's going to take some regulation and the media people like me and others are going to have to spotlight good, honest businesses, mom and pop businesses that have been destroyed by this and, and making them visible faces. If you're a big company and you have millions of customers or hundreds of thousands of customers and you have thousands of reviews, you're not susceptible to this manipulation, this extortion. Because if you already have 2000 reviews, a handful of one star reviews are not going to really affect your overall average. In fact, I know when I'm looking at reviews, if I see everything as a five star review, to me that's a red flag. Whether it's a book or any other product or service. I typically like to see that there's a 4.5, maybe a 4.6 rating and some one star ratings. That makes me realize it's real, it hasn't been gained. But what I've not thought about before much until now is the system can be gained the other way. Someone can just write a one star review and say now pay up or I'm not taking it down. And that has to be devastating for a small company. Now I've been fortunate in the sense that my businesses have basically always been international and I have online courses with students in every country in the world except for North Korea. I mean I'm talking the Vatican. I'm talking about obscure. Even though Antarctica is not a country, I have students from Antarctica who are there on mission. So for me, I have such a diverse base and I have hundreds of thousands of reviews on for example my online courses, that I'm not susceptible to that much, I don't think. But for any kind of local a local restaurant, a local roofer, a local mover, you just maybe you started your business 18 months ago, maybe you only have six reviews and they're all good. You're doing good work. It only takes one person saying nasty things, giving you a one star review, and all of a sudden you're behind everyone else in your community. It's not fair and it shouldn't really be allowed to stand. So if this does affect you, I urge you, you've got to fight it. I would contact your members of Congress because this is going to require putting political pressure and I believe the power of big government on these tech companies because they've shown time and time again that when it comes down to what's good for their customers or what's good for their bottom line, it's an easy choice for them. And it's always going to be their bottom line that takes precedence. Unless the government is putting overt, overt pressure on them. Otherwise it's not going to happen. We'll be back with issue five in just a moment. Filtered is brought to you by the following Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements.

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Wendell Tull on Job Interview Mistakes Veteran recruiter Wendell Toll, who worked at Nvidia and Slack and now runs an interview prep firm, says experienced professionals are sabotaging themselves. This according to a recent interview he did with Business Insider. So I want to lay out some of his key points to help you. First, he says, ego is a killer. Some older candidates dismiss questions from younger recruiters, forgetting that fit matters as much as skill. Second, interviews should be short and sharp. A 30 minute call is an elevator pitch, not your whole biography. Third, you must look tech savvy. Comfort with tools like Zoom Asana or Expensify shows that you can keep pace. Finally, Research Matters. Tel says seasoned workers should study company press pages and come prepared to discuss the latest products and challenges. Humility, focus and relevance outweigh decades of seniority. So hang on one minute. I want to make sure our friends on TikTok are still with us. We're doing a couple of different streams here, and I can't say except to you right there, but I do read all comments. Okay, so let's dive into them. What's, what's the real message here? If you are going for a job interview, leave your ego at home. Forget the fact that this person doesn't really want to know your entire biography. Instead, focus on what's relevant to them to figure out whether you're a good fit for their company. The number one thing you need to do is practice your interview in advance on video to make sure you like how you're coming across. Okay, let's, let's go a little deeper here. A part of what this show is about is really equipping you with the communication skills and personal development skills you need to be truly successful. So I do like to spotlight some issues like this that are maybe not the the lead story on CNN or the BBC or the top of the fold on the London Times, but are important nonetheless. We live in a world where so many people oh, I need a job. Let me just update my LinkedIn. I'll get a job. Let me update my resume. Get a job. That's only one step. You have to do well in a job interview. And these days, more and more companies are worried about being scammed by AI bots and being fooled. And so they are putting even more importance on job interview face to face interviews, but also preliminary interviews through things like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. So you may want to check out this article in Business Insider, but I also want you to start preparing yourself for any type of interview you do. And the number one tool I recommend is to not think about the job interview, but to actually practice on video using your cell phone. But tj, I don't like the sound of my own voice. Guess what? Nobody cares. Nobody's going to hire you until they hear the sound of your voice. If they have to hear your voice, then you might as well hear it as well to know how you're coming across. Now, I do work with a lot of executives, preparing them, prepping them before they go on job interviews, before, you know, major CEO positions. And I could tell you, most people after they see their first rehearsal and they hear themselves, they watch themselves. What they conclude is, gosh, I'm kind of boring. I wouldn't really want to hire me. I wouldn't want to have to be on an airplane to a business conference with this person. And I have to say, you're right. How can we make this more interesting? So you've got to really think about how you can come across as an interesting person, engaging person and relevant. And you got to think about every aspect of how you look, how you sound. If I'm going for an interview for a job at Apple, for example, I wouldn't wear this. I wouldn't wear a business jacket at a tech company interview. And if I'm going for an interview at a white shoe law firm, I'm not going to wear just a T shirt. You've got to know how to dress the part. Now, in this particular article that Wendell Tull talks about, he had a lot of good advice. I'd recommend you check it out, he says, you know, read the press clippings on the company's website. I think you need to go beyond that. I would Google the company and find what everyone else is saying about it. I'd get a chatgpt or some AI and ask it to summarize what's everything that's being talked about in this firm. What's the most exciting new product or service they have, what other people say is the greatest vulnerability here. Give me a summary of any negative publicity, even if it's a small blog post in the last 90 days. The more you know, the better when you go into a job interview. Now, full disclosure, I do have online courses on how to prepare for job interviews. So if you want to check them out, you can. You can get free access to a number of the lectures. You can go to my website, mediatrainingworldwide.com and check out the online courses. You can check them out on Udemy and other platforms too. And you can always watch, typically up to half an hour without paying a penny and starting to get some value. So you may want to check that out. My number one predictor or my number one tip for people who want to get job and are in a job interview is to go in not cocky or arrogant, but to go in acting like you've already been hired and you're coming in with tons and tons of ideas of how you can help this company make more money, improve their products, improve their services. Half of your ideas may be wrong, some of them may be dumb, but it distinguishes you right out of it. It positions you as someone who's already trying to help someone who's already thinking about them, who's someone who's already on the team. And by giving ideas about how you think you can help this company advance its mission, you're demonstrating how you think. You're demonstrating expertise. You're making it concrete. Will it work 100% of the time? No. But let's keep in mind your number one challenge. The number one biggest problem most people face in a job interview is not that they said too many ums or uhs or that they wore the wrong thing. The number one problem most people have in a job interview is they don't say anything. The recruiter or the HR person or the executive remembers five minutes after the interview happens. So if they're interviewing five other people, they don't remember anything you said. So this helps distinguish it A couple more facts I want to bring out from the article. This recruiter or this expert on job interviews says Focus. If you're a mid level professional or beyond, focus on just the last 10 or so years of what you've accomplished. Don't go back talking about college if you're 41 years old. Focus on the last 10 years of so is exactly what you did. Remember, contract roles can still open doors to full time jobs. So don't thumb your nose and say oh, I'm only looking at full time jobs. Be open to contract work, consulting work, even part time work. And go in with humility. Especially if you're older and the person interviewing you is a lot younger. Sometimes it can be a threat to people both ways. So go in with some humility. I do want to wish you luck with any job interview you do. The whole premise of this show is you can spend some time learning about the news, but not just doom scroll. You can learn about the news, what's going on and continue to learn new skills. Communication skills, personal development skills to help you become more successful. Back with our grab bag section in just a moment. Like what you heard.

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Now for our grab bag section. Republicans blocked Senator Schumer's effort to force a vote on the Epstein files. The GOP blocked Chuck Schumer's move to force a vote 51 to 49. Only Josh Hawley and Rand Paul siding with the Democrats. The measure failed, 51 to 49. Now, what's really going on here? For years and years and years, it's been an article of faith among Republicans, MAGA lovers, Trump lovers, that the entire. This is going to sound crazy to some of you in other parts of the world, but it's been an article of faith that there's this worldwide conspiracy of elites, liberals, leftist, socialists, extremely wealthy people who form this cabal of manipulating the world. And they do everything for their own benefit economically to get rich half the time. The other half of the time, they are involved in pedophilia and running pedophilia rackets. I know it sounds crazy, but that's the theory. And in the case of this Epstein fellow, it actually appears to be true because he was in fact rich. Whether he was a billionaire or not, there's some question about that. But he lived a billionaire lifestyle. He was certainly worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he was flying around jet setting and hobnobbing with the Bill Gates of the world and the Bill Clintons of the world and yes, the Donald Trumps of the world, and yes, he was committing acts of pedophilia constantly. So the right has been very agitated for this because they were convinced that he didn't actually commit suicide. The official report is he committed suicide while in prison in 2019, which was when President Trump was in office his first term and his team was managing the entire legal justice system. So their theory was that it was a cover up. He was murdered to protect the powerful. And among the MAGA crowd, they conveniently forget that no one has publicly been proclaimed to be Jeffrey Epstein's best friend more than Donald Trump. They're still thinking in terms of, oh great, this must have, he must have been killed somehow because Bill Gates wanted it to happen, or someone like that. And they always neglect to think, well, who might benefit more than his best friend who was perhaps involved in some of these things. So now we've had a, a switch. The files have been mostly kept under wraps in part out of privacy concerns for teenage girls who were sexually abused, because it's considered across the political spectrum unfair and illegal to destroy their privacy. So most of these files have been kept private, but there's been such a clamoring to release these files. Release, release, release. Now we see the politics of this switch. We have Democrats saying, okay, let's release the files, let's do it. And now you have Trump, who when he is out of office saying, release the files. It's going to show how evil Democrats are. Now he's saying, nothing to look at here, folks. Dead story, not a story. It's all fake news and bizarre for him to act guilty. I'm not saying he is guilty, but it is bizarre for anyone who's followed him in public life for certainly the last decade, but for numerous decades. Here's someone who sort of relishes the bad boy reputation. This is the guy who proudly brandishes his mugshot everywhere, suddenly seems so embarrassed and guilty and not wanting to talk about this Jeffrey Epstein. So now you've got Chuck Schumer, to his credit, saying, okay, let's release the files. And the Republicans are saying, nope, nope, let's, let's cram it back down in the hole. Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing to see. And they're doing the bidding of Trump because they want to protect him. Protect him from what? I don't know, certainly more embarrassment. But this is a different issue from, this is perhaps unique among all major controversial issues in America today because there are so many people on the right side of the political spectrum, the MAGA lovers, the Alex Joneses of the world, the people who are seen as very independent, like Joe Rogan, who are saying, no, we really want this. We don't care about making you look that. We want to know all the information about Jeffrey Epstein, who's in the files, who did what? Were there other famous men involved with having sex, with children, being pedophile? We want to know, and sure, it's human nature to want to know that. And now we see the Trump administration and its stooges, its henchmen in the, in the Congress doing everything they can to zip it up, clam it up, wallpaper over it, sweep it under a rug. It doesn't seem to be working. Now, this issue is still an issue worldwide. It's not just the United States, because this guy, Jeffrey Epstein, say what you will about him, this guy knew how to connect with a lot of different interesting people at every level, at every age, at every level of government, at every level of wealth, every level of education attainment. He wasn't just making money 9 to 5 and then every other second rolling around with 12 year olds on Epstein Island. No, this guy was really, really connected. With interesting, powerful, influential people all over the globe. And now there's another scalp. UK Ambassador to the United States, Peter Mendelsohn, is forced out over his Epstein links. Britain fired its envoy after emails showed that he defended Epstein in 2008. The Foreign Office called it materially different from what they had known. So here's what happened. They found a bunch of emails from this guy after Epstein had been convicted of his atrocities, his molesting of children. And the British ambassador is on record in emails saying, well, here's how you'll defend yourself and here's a good legal strategy. And may have even been giving advice on what lawyer to use. So he definitely seemed like he was buddy buddy and trying to give aid and comfort to not a rumored pedophile, but a convicted pedophile. And for the British government, that was too much. So this guy lost his job. It does bring up the issue of should other people be losing their jobs because of entanglements with Jeffrey Epstein? Should perhaps Jeffrey Epstein's best friend lose his job because of the taint and the association with something all human beings across the political spectrum can agree on, that pedophilia is just something that should be disqualifying for not just high political office, government office, business office, but just any position in society that people expect you to have some esteem and responsibility. You should no longer be qualified. That's it for today's show. I want to thank you for spending time with me on this journey again. I hope what you takeaway is we don't have to just doom scroll. We don't just have to look at the news and get depressed and bothered. We can look at the news and actually learn things to make ourselves more successful, improve our communication skills and improve our personal development skills so that you and I and this community right here on Filtered can collectively improve and be more successful. Thanks again for watching. Don't forget to like subscribe, follow leave reviews on any podcasting platforms. Much appreciated. See you again tomorrow.