Bankruptcies Surge, AI Upends Culture, Duckworth Dunks Willpower, Trump Brands the State

Bankruptcies are on the rise in the United States. They are higher this year than at any point since the Great Recession. January 1st is coming up. That means a lot of New Year's resolutions. And one well known psychologist says willpower, believe it or not, is highly, highly overrated. And we'll check in on the Trump administration's tendency to put its name on pretty much everything. Some say it now seems like a parody of a third world dictatorship in terms of statues, names and glorification. All that and more today on filtered. Bankruptcies are going up, up, up. According to The Washington Post, US corporate bankruptcies surged in 2025 levels, higher levels than at any point since the Great Recession. It's driven by inflation, high interest rates and the high tariffs, higher tariffs than we've had in many, many decades. Data from S and P Global Market Intelligence shows 717 companies filed bankruptcy, and that's just through November. That doesn't count the last month and a half of the year. And it comes in the categories of manufacturing, construction, transportation. Consumer discretionary firms are hit the hardest. Big Internet companies, big tech companies. They're doing fine. Now economists say that trade policy is meant to revive industry. Instead of squeeze margins, it's weakened demand and pushed already fragile businesses over the edge. Now folks, I don't have to remind you, the new administration when they came in said we're the business people, we know about business. We're going to make business run well like we did in the private sector. Turns out that's true. Because lest we all forget, Donald Trump is no more for bankruptcies, bankrupting casinos and hotels than he is for really his financial acumen. So I guess he has kept that promise of bringing his know how from the, from the private sector into government because bankruptcy is spreading. Now, to be fair, the economy is not in horrible shape. We're not in a recession. Unemployment is not at dangerously high levels. It's certainly below 5%. Inflation is not at anywhere near historic levels. So I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist giving you accurate information. I'm not trying to spin anything one way or the other, but it is a concern to a lot of people that bankruptcies are up. They it's up 14% compared with 2024. Again, highest bankruptcy total since 2010. Manufacturing lost 70,000 jobs in the last year. Oops. Turned out all those terrorists. Maybe they didn't put the world into the economy, into a massive recession the way some liberal and conservative economists predicted. But it certainly didn't bring back manufacturing jobs. There were 17 mega bankruptcies and in the first half of 2025, more about that. That's typically defined as firms with more than $1 billion in assets. Now, it's harder to get accurate statistics on inflation these days. I've seen everything from 2.7% in November to 3.1. Inflation certainly has not skyrocketed during this administration, nor has it gone down to zero. Or certainly we have not rolled back prices to where they were four, four and a half years ago, which was the stated goal of the administration to roll prices back, which would actually be deflation. That of course, has not happened. And that's pretty much impossible for anyone to do, regardless of political party, unless you have an absolute complete economic financial meltdown. Now, U.S. according to the Post, U.S. solar duties cost $70 million million monthly. Tariffs added another $1800 annually per household. In terms of a tariff tax, that's the impact on people. According to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, those with pricing power will pass on the cost over time. Others will fold. Well, those who folded are the ones who've gone bankrupt because their cost went up. Here's what so many people don't understand. It sounds good. It sounds easy to talk tough. We're Americans, America first. Let's put an import on all these foreigners selling stuff to our country. And what most people don't realize is that so much of what comes into our country are materials then built by our manufacturing sector to make the final product. So if your inputs are higher for the product you're selling on the world market or just to the US Market, your prices are going to be higher. And if you can't pass those prices on to consumers, you can go bankrupt. That's in part the theory of what's happening to our economy. According to KPMG senior economist Megan Martin Schoenberger. We have an economy that looks strong on paper, but not in every industry, to be fair. I don't know that every industry always looks fair in any economy, but it is a bit concerning to see bankruptcies going up so quickly and so high at a time when we're not in a great recession. I mean, it's kind of understandable 2009, 2010 to see a lot of bankruptcies. What's the reason? Now we can guess, and we can really only guess. We can deduce and reason based on what serious economies economists put out. So one theory, of course, is that tariffs function as hidden taxes, disproportionately hurting workers, workers and consumers. But that of course, then ultimately Hurts companies that rely on consumers and don't have ultimate pricing power. If you're Facebook, if you're Google, it doesn't really hit you very hard. You're dealing with digital stuff, bits, zeros and ones for your ads and there's always going to be another advertiser somewhere. So those companies are a bit immune. Amazon certainly seems like they can pass on the cost to any customers. They are the, you know, they're essentially the logistics company in all of this. They don't seem to be. No one's suspecting that Amazon's going to go out of business anytime soon. But smaller companies, mom and pop companies are in fact going out of business because, you know, if your margins are 10% and you're selling, I don't know, let's say a million dollars a year of product, let's say 2 million, your margins are 10% and you're making a couple hundred thousand dollars for you and a couple of people, all of a sudden your inputs have tariffs at 18% even. Well, boom, you're now trying to support four or five people off of maybe $20,000 a year. It doesn't work, you go bankrupt. That is what's happening again and again and again. So here's the big problem. We're so used to a political discussion where liberals and Democrats and so called progressives, the Chuck Schumers of the world, are attacking what President Trump has done with his tariffs as anti consumer, not good for the left, progressive viewpoint. What doesn't get enough attention is how everything Trump is doing regarding tariffs, managing our economy, is antithetical to what conservatives believe. It's big tax. A tariff tax is a tax. They might not call it a tax, but a tariff is just another fancy word. It's what fancy insiders use to cover up the fact that it's a tax. And it does slow down economic growth. As we're seeing it, the government is picking economic winners and losers and it's favoring certain sectors like AI, big tech, they're not getting their taxes increase. Oh no, they're doing fine. And when you saw the big boys and it was boys sitting behind Trump at the inauguration, the ones who had often given him hundreds of millions of dollars like Elon Musk and collectively all the funds from Google and Amazon and Facebook, they're not crying now, they're not hurting, things are looking pretty good for those guys. It's the smaller mom and pop companies that this administration picked and said, okay, we're going to try to use our brilliance to manage the economy to say that this country's bad because we don't like their products. This country's good because they're letting us build a hotel or something. This country's bad. So we're going to tax them a lot because they said they don't like me. This country's good because they like me and they want to have one of my golf courses. So that's not free market economies, that's not capitalism, it's feudalism. It is socialism, it is authoritarianism. It's version, it's little bits and pieces of all of those things. The one thing it's not, it's free market capitalism. And you don't have to be some libertarian, pure market purist to have a problem with what's going on now with so many decisions about our economy because being Decided by Washington D.C. now, trade wars historically fail to revive broad based manufacturing employment. Look it up. Don't take my word for it. Do some research. They haven't worked in the past, they're not working now. It is true that many of the naysayers said when all these tariffs were imposed it's going to put us into a massive, massive worldwide recession. That hasn't happened. But many economists believe we would be in a recession if it weren't for the massive, massive AI spending boom that's perhaps bailing out the economy right now. The other thing's going on is our economic growth is skewed now toward affluent households. Almost all of the spending in our economy right now is done by the wealthiest 10%, bottom 90% are like we're just trying to pay for groceries. We're just trying to keep a roof over our heads. So the economy does seem to be extraordinarily fragile. What that means is businesses that sell to the bottom 90% are often the ones going bankrupt. I'm not seeing a lot of Mercedes, Benz or BMW dealerships going bankrupt in America. They're doing fine because wealthy people are doing fine. And perhaps you're doing fine, I'm doing fine. But a lot of companies depend on a lot of customers, business and money where they were never counting on my business, maybe not counting on yours and they are going bankrupt. This is a big, big problem. Now let's look at some other issue. Bankruptcy cycles often lag inflationary shocks by 12 to 24 months. Similar post policy collapses followed the Smoot Hawley tariffs which most, not all, but most economists believe that's what caused the Great Depression. High interest rates historically expose weak base balance sheets. Consumer retrenchment signals late cycle economic stress and we are seeing consumers retrench. So is it time to panic? No. But it is interesting that the consumer sentiment right now is lower than at almost any point since the end of the Carter administration, beginning of the Ronald Reagan administration When inflation forget 3%, it was like 13, 14%. Unemployment was high, stagflation was horrible. That's really the last time we've had consumers so down on the economy. And news like this, bankruptcy statistics being higher than at any point since the Great Recession, it doesn't help. What is the solution? Anyone who tells you they know exactly what's going to create economic nirvana you should be skeptical of. But there is an old saying that if you're in a ditch, stop digging. These tariffs certainly appear to be a ditch and it's time to stop the digging. 2025 is coming to an end and somebody had a really big year that somebody was AI, Artificial intelligence. It affects almost everything these days. The Times did, I thought an excellent survey of sort of the, the top eight, eight ways that AI really had an impact on our culture. Some of them just culturally, some of them economically. Let's take a look for one Oscar season was affected by artificial intelligence. It's moving big time into the post production award spotlight. The most prominent flashpoint was the use of artificial intelligence tools to enhance actors accents in the movie the Brutalist. It's a story historical drama about Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivors rebuilding life in America. I've not seen the movie. It's supposed to be good, but they used AI to sort of tweak some of the actors accents. Now on the one hand this does intrigue me. On the other hand, it kind of seems like cheating. Well, if you're an actor and you can't get your accent right, why not just use an AI actor? Which believe it or not, that's also being used too. That's one of the trends that's coming up. So this was a movie with Adrian Brody, Felicity Jones, their accents were tweaked. Now Adrian Brody has won Oscars, I believe is is an outstanding actor or he's certainly been nominated. Oh no, he won best actor many years ago. So he's a good actor. It also almost makes me wonder, why not go back to all the movies Arnold Schwarzenegger was in and give him an American accent if he's supposed to be playing an American rather than an Austrian accent. Now the controversy forced Hollywood institutions to clarify their rules. In April, the Academy formally stated that AI and digital tools would neither help nor harm Award eligibility. Now this had some controversy to it because there are many in the Hollywood community saying no, stop it, we don't want any AI. If we, if we let AI in the back door here, it's going to put all of us out of business for now anyway. They're saying if you want to use it to do some enhancement, we're not going to penalize you come award season. The next thing. Music AI has really dramatically had an impact on the music industry. AI crossed from novelty to commercial success in the music industry, producing chart topping artists in quotation marks that had no human performers. Something called Velvet Sundown revealed to be a fully synthetic project, racked up more than a million Spotify plays. Within weeks. Walk My Walk from AI project Breaking Rust topped the Billboard country digital song sales charts. Solomon ray is an AI act led iTunes Christian and gospel album rankings. And producer Timbaland unveiled an AI pop singer Tata Tactumini I think is how you pronounce it, calling it artist development re engineered. So you know, as if the music industry didn't have enough trouble with album sales tanking and DVDs, CDs, so many revenue streams that traditionally supported musicians gone. And now musicians are seeing some of the last jobs eliminated by artificial intelligence. So there's a lot of panic going on in the music industry. And now the successes of these AI musicians, if you want to call them that, force platforms like Spotify to confront questions of disclosure, authenticity and what constitutes AI slop versus legitimate creative output. So lots of turmoil going on thanks to AI in the music industry. The next one, classic films are being engineered with artificial intelligence at the Las Vegas sphere. I've not been there yet, but I'm looking forward to it. In my next trip to Las Vegas. The wizard of Oz, one of my favorite movies, was transformed into a 75 minute spectacle. It was using artificial intelligence. It put in unusual visuals, it expanded off screen characters, reframed scenes to wrap it around in this giant sphere. Now they spent $80 million using AI, which is supposed to save you money to re engineer this movie for this unique setting of a Sphere. I mean, $80 million is more than most movies have to make them, much less to tweak them for a particular venue. And it outraged some people. Others said, hey, this is a new adaptation. This is creativity. This is a different experience in a sphere. And apparently people are going and a lot of them are liking it. The next clone, if you're, if you're keeping track, this is number four of the big trends as documented by the Times. Podcast hosts began cloning their own voices. Now I'm one of those. I'm not using my cloned voice in my podcast, but I have a podcast host and I've. I've cloned not only my voice, but my face. TJ Walker AI is around to help people practice their speeches, their media interviews, get personal development advice. You can check it out at TJ Walker AI, but that's become more mainstream. I actually did mine in 2024, but it became more and more popular in 2025 and some people are using this in their actual podcast. The voice cloning technology allows host to automate narration, to translate episodes into other languages and even replace studio recordings entirely. Now I am using AI to make some of my online courses on personal development and communication skills available in other languages. I let people know I'm transparent about it. It's my voice, but it's AI translating it into other languages. If you want to see how that works or see if it's any good, you can go to tjwalker AI. It won't cost you anything. And just click at the top right what language you want. It's available in 32 languages. You can check it out now. Some people are upset about this when it comes to podcasts. Podcasts are, are built on intimacy and trust. Critics argue that synthetic narration undermines the core appeal and what one host called a window into someone else's consciousness. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, there, there are people who. I mean, I'm guilty of this. I took my daughter to a kid's pop concert once. That was just people dancing around in synthesized music and like a real concert, but it kind of isn't a real concert. So I think the market will decide for people who like Joe Rogan, who's currently the number one podcaster, at least in the United States. I think they're going to listen to him. They're not going to want to listen to a Joe Rogan AI clone or a digital version of him. But if someone simply wants to listen to perhaps the weather update and they don't want to read it on their phone, they just want to listen to it, latest updates on a podcast while they're driving, maybe AI is plenty good for that. Okay, next trend. Deceased celebrities reappearing as viral deep fakes. Again, this could be neutral. This could be good or bad, depending on the situation. AI generated videos of dead celebrities, flooded social media, blurring the line between homage, exploitation and outright disrespect. OpenAI released Sora to and users were able to relate to create realistic videos of Tupac Shakur, Bob Ross. Zelda Williams has condemned this. She is the daughter of Robin Williams, the famed comedian. She said it's a grotesque distortion of their real lives. There are a lot of ethical issues here. If, if at some point when I'm gone you see video of me or you hear my voice promoting my own courses, my own books, any, my own intellectual property, there's a good chance that it's supposed to be happening because I've authorized, I've actually authorized in my will that my heirs that my estate can monetize my artificial intelligence, digital video, audio, voice, any aspect of me, of my intellectual property can be used, can be monetized because I want certainly my daughter and perhaps grandchildren if I ever have any, to benefit from my creativity. So. But for people who are dead and didn't authorize it, that gets much, much murkier. Okay, the next big one, number six, a full synthetic actress, if you want to call her that, entered Hollywood's talent debate. AI generated actress Tilly Norwood was unveiled as screen ready, complete with promotional materials and discussions with talent agencies. I remember this handful of months ago, it was the number one rated video I did of that month. People were fascinated by learning and most, most people were appalled frankly at this idea of a so called AI actress. The Hollywood unions are not pleased at all. SAG AFTRA warned that the character was trained on real performers work without permission or compensation. So I think we're going to see some ongoing battles there in Hollywood. But the real danger to actors and the Hollywood Studios is some 17 year old is going to come up with a great concept for a movie and the whole thing is going to be created on a laptop in some 17 year old's bedroom and it's going to take off like wildfire. Whether it actually gets into movie theaters, I don't know. But if someone puts it on YouTube and puts a paywall and they make $100 million a year or for the movie, you can kiss traditional Hollywood goodbye. It's not going to come back after that. And I do predict whether it's this year, within the next calendar year or the next handful of years, at some point that's going to happen. We're already seeing comedians say I don't need Netflix, I don't need Amazon prime or hbo. I'm just going to do an absolute great comedy show in a comedy club, hire a couple of videographers, edit it myself, put it on YouTube and maybe have the second half of it for sale on my website. And it's making some stars out of people like Matt rife. So the cat's kind of already out of the bag there. Top directors have publicly drawn lines against generative AI. Again, they're, they're the incumbents. The incumbents never like change. James Cameron emphasized that AI was not used in Avatar Fire and as framing his stance as pro actors rather than anti technology. Okay, it is a fine line because so much technology is used in making any science fiction movie or for that matter action movie. We don't literally see hundreds or thousands of people bombed or shot or killed. There's technology in all of that. So where is the line between this technology is fine, we like it, this technology is bad, it's a murky line. And I think a lot of people are going who are incumbents and they make their living want to draw a line one place and consumers want to draw it another. The final big trend is commented on by the New York Times. Disney formally partnered with OpenAI. This is something we commented on here at Filtered with TJ Walker because it did seem like a big deal. Disney announced a one billion dollar investment in OpenAI, allowing its iconic characters to be used on now for anyone who's followed Disney, this was a big deal because Disney was the kind of company that was so jealous of its intellectual property they would, they were known for going to small towns, finding a non profit, barely making a daycare center and say, oh, you have a picture of Mickey Mouse on your wall that someone painted. You better take it down now, we're going to find you. And now they're saying basically the whole world has access to its characters, at least some of the characters. Users will be able to generate AI videos featuring characters from Toy Story, Frozen, Marvel and Star Wars. Big, big difference from Disney. And many people read this and I, I put myself in that camp of okay, this is dignity. Disney throwing in the towel. They're saying, wow, this open AI thing, this generative AI, this AI thing is so big we can't fight it. It's going to take over the world at some point. So we might as well place our bet with the front runner, which appears to be OpenAI. That's what they've done. Whether it was smart, I don't know. But a big, big year for artificial intelligence. Is it going to be as big or bigger in 2026? I have no idea. I can't promise you I can look into a crystal ball and see it, but the rate of change with artificial intelligence seems to be growing faster and faster. It's a cliche at this point, but it is true to say that today's artificial intelligence is the worst the world will ever see compared to the future. It's only getting better, which means its rate of change is going to get faster and faster, I predict. One thing I'll be talking with you a lot about artificial intelligence in 2026. January 1st is around the corner for many people. That means sign for New Year's resolutions, maybe take off 10 pounds, maybe become more disciplined, maybe get to the gym, workout more. All things that many people associate with willpower and grit. Interestingly, the New York Times today featured a front page op ed piece by psychologist Angela Duckworth, author of the book Grit and Somebody I Admire, I Respect. I've read that book and other writings of hers. People often associate her with having more willpower. The difference between wildly successful people and those who just sort of amble along and end up in the middle or lower middle classes or absolute failure is grit. It's not iq. And people think of it as just self discipline and willpower. So fascinating that in her column today she points out that no, it's not about willpower. Willpower is wildly overrated. It's often ineffective. She is drawing her conclusions based on decades of behavioral research that shows successful people don't really rely on willpower. They redesign their environments so that temptation never has a fair fight. This is such an important in fact, it's something I do stress in all of my personal development courses online and in person. The real secret to lasting change isn't trying harder. It's changing the situation. It's changing context. She does point out the Americans cite lack of willpower is the top behavior change barrier. She's saying we're looking at the wrong thing. I agree with her. Self control ranks lowest among positive traits worldwide. That people have willpower feels psychologically averse. The research shows most New Year's resolutions fail by February because people have not changed their environment, they haven't changed the context. And if all you do is rely on willpower, it's not going to work. So she gave examples such as, you know students who have their phone nearby. If you have your phone right next to you while you're in the library reading, you can focus, focus, focus on your willpower. Don't pick it up and check text. Don't pick it up and check Facebook. Don't pick it up and check email from friends and family. It's the wrong way of doing it. The solution? Put your cell phone further away. Put it out of sight, put it in another room. That was the association that was most connected to higher grades. Just keeping your phone away. This is on the one hand, counterintuitive to a lot of people, but also simple. And it just kind of makes sense too. Randomized trials confirm distance reduces unhealthy choices. Let's face it, if you live anywhere other than the absolute poorest places in on earth right now, and if you're not one of the unfortunate few who have to the 800 million people who live on $2 a day or less, if you're above that, you probably have access to every kind of Coke candy junk food imaginable. If you're relying on willpower to avoid eating junk food all day long and becoming wildly obese, that's not a good strategy. The single this was not mentioned in her article, but I think she's mentioned in her books before. It's certainly based on her theories, which is if you want to not eat junk food, the biggest factor in that is not letting it into your house. Don't put it into your grocery cart. That's where the decision is made. That's going to have an impact. So go to the grocery store, perhaps on a full stomach, buy healthy food and just tell yourself, I'm not going to buy that bag of Snickers bar and bring him into my house. Because if they're in your house, it's late at night and you're watching a great show and there's that little bit of rumble in your tummy at that point, willpower just doesn't work. It is not effective. Now, I often have people say, tj, you seem so disciplined. You have such great willpower. And I can see that. No, I don't have great willpower. I have a great desire to have good habits because I want to live a long time and be successful. So I specifically try to design every aspect of my life to make it easier to make good decisions. So, for example, I know, I've read all the research that it's not a good idea to be watching TV late at night, to fall asleep watching tv, to have that stimulation of noise and sound and images and text going in front of your brain as you're falling asleep in your bedroom. So how do I do that? It's not that I have so much discipline to turn that remote off. No, it's I don't put a TV in my room. I do not have a tv. And I have one in my house, but I don't have a TV in my bedroom. And I haven't in many more than a decade because I want to stack the deck in my favor with habits. I want more time to think my own thoughts and be creative. But I also love checking text and checking email and asking questions to ChatGPT. If it were up to me, I would just be on this all day long if I had it in my hand. That's why I specifically literally power my phone off as I'm doing right there and put it away for certain parts of the day. Certainly when I go for a walk each day, I'm going to play pickleball. If I'm doing other things, I literally power the phone off, put it away. That way I don't need any willpower to keep from checking it obsessively. I don't need willpower to focus on my own thoughts. It's the only. This is the only thoughts I have. So what Duckworth points out in this article I would recommend you read it is that successful people minimize temptations proactively. You've heard atomic experts or atomic habits expert James Clear talk about this. You want to go to the gym, put your gym shoes right next to your bed so when you get up you're practically tripping over them. It just makes it easier to do it. Better yet, rather than going to the gym, why don't you find an activity you really enjoy, a sport you enjoy? Now I do try to go to the gym to lift weights every day, but that's not my primary source of exercise. Why? I don't really like going to the gym and I don't like using my willpower to do that. But today, this morning at 8:30, I went and played pickleball for an hour and a half. So I got exercise, I went running, I got cardio, I was sweating. Guess what? Didn't take any willpower because it was fun. So I urge you, try to figure out a way to build fun into your life so that you're doing things that are good for you rather than trying to force yourself into having willpower because it just doesn't really work. One of the quotes she mentions is successful people rarely rely on inner fortitude to resist temptations. So I'll give an example. She did not bring this out. And forgive me if this offends anyone, I'm not saying this based on personal experience, but if you want to remain faithful to your spouse, for example, it's not about going to the house of ill repute, shall we say? It's not about going to a house of prostitution with all of your friends and just sitting there on the couch saying, no thank you, no thank you, no thank you. That's not the time to use your willpower. Time to, your willpower is just, you don't go to places like that. You don't have the temptation. That's the decision that's really significant. Now a couple of other things to think about. Willpower centered morality ignores structural behavioral science. The entire world is structured now to get you to do things that are not good for you. Every day on the Internet you're being besieged with ads saying please gamble your money away instead of saving it and investing it. Please eat lots and lots of junk food. Please go into massive debt buying junk you don't really need. So how do I avoid the temptation of going to the mall and buying tons and tons of stuff I don't need? It's pretty easy. I just don't really go to the mall. I'd rather go for a hike. If you're not around stuff and getting constant bombardment, it's not particularly tempting. Certainly when I was a kid, I went to the movie theater. I would like to get a popcorn and a Coke. And look, I don't want to sound like a Grinch. Occasionally that's fine. But when I was a kid, a box of popcorn, a bag of popcorn was tiny. It was about the size of this glass. Now you go and it's the size of a barrel. There's no such thing as getting an 8 ounce coke anymore. It's a 64 ounce or a swimming pool worth of coke. So what do I do to avoid that? I realize this may be breaking the rules. I try to bring in with me. I go to the movie theater a bag of nuts, a bag of trail mix, some healthy snack, perhaps an orange and some water. And that way I'm not tempted to go stand in line. Because hey, I'm like you. If I see a giant box of M&M's or Nestle's crunch, wow. Yeah, I want to be there. So willpower is overrated. What's a lot more important is the environment you're in, the advertising you accept. Now we're all bombarded with advertising constantly. It is one reason why I do believe that if you can afford it, you are much better off paying for ad free versions of things. Whether it's on Netflix, whether it is hbo, whether it is Apple tv. There's a million streaming platforms out there. Some of them have ads and some are thinking about adding ads. I try to spend money on things where I am not subjected to advertising so that I don't have the impulse to buy more junk that could harm my investment portfolios and harm my savings so I'm not constantly bombarded with more ads to drink sugary beverages. Now, it is true if you go to the movie theater, you are going to see a lot of ads for Coca Cola typically. But if you time things to go right when the movie starts, not when the ads start, you can bypass that. And unless it's a product placement in the middle of the movie, you can typically avoid ads within the movie. So listen to Angela Duckworth. She's an esteemed psychologist, best selling author and realize that Just telling yourself I have willpower, I have grit. I'm about hustling harder. I am better than other people. It doesn't really work. Figure out the design. I'm here today. Sometimes people say, tj, you're the hardest working pundit out there. And podcaster, you're there seven days a week. Well, why is that? It's not because I really have any more willpower or discipline than anyone else. It's because I took the time to design a system that works for me and my preferences and what I like. I like talking about the news and analyzing business stories and technology stories and personal development stories through the lens of communication skills and personal development. So to me, it's as easy as breathing. It's kind of hard not to opine and pontificate on these things. So that's my challenge to you. Figure out a way to make it easier for you to eat healthy, an easier way for you to move and exercise, an easier way for you to create and generate value. If you do that, the rest of the world will see you as someone full of grit and self discipline and you will see yourself as someone who's simply living a productive, fruitful life. Question how much longer Will Benjamin Franklin's face be on the front of a $100 bill in US currency? Answer I don't know, but I give it about six months at the current trend of of how things are getting Trump names splattered all over it. The New York Times did a major survey in today's publication about all the things President Trump is sticking his name on, his image on. And look, it's been out of control for a while, but now it's reaching the point of parody. The growing list of federal institutions, programs, public facing items while he is still in office. It's not just that it's unprecedented in the United States. It's starting to make third World African dictators blush, and that's hard to do. It's starting to make certain dictators infamous in history seem almost mild mannered and self effacing in comparison. Let's take a look at some of the things going on here. So he's renaming institutions, new benefit programs, official government portals, public building displays, even the military naming of things is putting is getting the Trump name on it. Now, it's one thing if you slap your name on an airline or stakes and it goes bankrupt a few days later, but the check clears and okay, you made some quick cash as a celebrity, there's not a lot of harm in that. But when it comes to major cultural institutions in America and the precedent it sets, how it sullies everything it touches, I mean, I could easily see the winning message of a Democratic a candidate running for president next year saying day one, I'm not doing anything in this government until I've scraped Donald Trump's name off of everything. And that certainly might be a winning message and it might be an important thing to do, but it kind of sidetracks all the other important issues, all the other big problems our society needs focus on. It's creating a problem. We have enough real problems not to have to deal with with other problems. Now, look, I'm a fair, sane, sensible centrist. If President Trump finishes out his term and leaves office without having to be escorted out by the military, and let's say, for example, the economy grows and there's some foreign policy accomplishments, and he lives another 10 or 15 years past life expectancy, he then passes peacefully in his sleep at, say, 95 years old, then, then if Congress wants to create memorials for him, put his name on things, fine, I've got no problem with that. That's how it's traditionally been done in America. So I get it why liberals and Democrats are disgusted by this. They hate Trump for many obvious reasons. What I don't get is why so many people who consider themselves conservatives, who profess to be conservative don't see this as a destruction of conservative tradition, of conservative morality, of a sense of perspective, of humility, of a sense of, hey, we're trying to conserve democracy here, not recreate the British monarchy. I don't know why they're not so more upset about this. Because it really is more like a monarchy with what's going on with King Donald these days. I want to spend a little time looking at some of these things again. It's typically after you've left office, you get a library and you have to go out and raise the money yourself. President Obama's doing that. Former President Bush did that. Former President Clinton did that. You go out and you raise the money for libraries. Maybe a highway is named after you. But now we have Trump using his power of the office or sing his name on everything. We have the Trump Institute of Peace. It's no longer the Kennedy center for Performing Arts. It is the Trump Kennedy Center. We have Trump accounts for children, Trump gold card residency, trumprx.gov for gov pricing. Trump portraits on federal buildings. Trump image slated for the 2026 national park passes. Now, you don't have to be an historian to spot a real pattern here. When leaders stamp their name on the nation itself, they're not just selling policy, they're selling permanence. They're saying, hey, I'm the permanent dictator here. You see it a lot in places like North Korea, but I thought here in America, both conservatives and liberals and Democrats and Republicans were united in that. They don't want this to be North Korea. But this constant naming, statues and portraits and the mandatory iconography, it's sickening, it's despicable. And it's going to really put a lot of pressure on whoever the next president is to waste a lot of time and, yes, a lot of money, a lot of taxpayer dollars scraping the name of this individual off. Now, it's one thing to be a popular, beloved and deceased leader and have been out of office for 10 or 20 years. And public approval ratings show that 80% of the country thinks that you did a good job to get awarded your name and posterity for various memorials. I don't think anyone's really against that. But right now, we have a president that is frankly despised. By depending on what poll you look at, as many as 65% of Americans do not support him. And to be putting his name on everything as if he were the founder of our country, it's bizarre. In fact, it's not like even the founder of our country, George Washington, did everything he could to avoid the trappings of monarchy, most notably turning down an opportunity to have a third term again. Let's look at these things. The Trump Institute of Peace. The Trump Kennedy center. The Trump counts. It goes on in a Trump class Navy battleships. The US Mint has unveiled a 250th anniversary coin design. But at least one detailed federal workforce outlet explicitly noted Trump isn't getting a coin. That's good, but I've seen, I've seen designs that have his face on it already. So where would he get the Idea to do something like this. Let's look at history. Joseph Stalin certainly like naming things after him. There was Stalingrad. It does make you wonder, well, will Washington D.C. be renamed Trump D.C. if it works for Joseph Stalin. He's a good socialist, communist, authoritarian. A dictator seems to be the role model for President Trump now. Stalingrad later changed his name. It's no longer Stalingrad. Napoleon changed the name of the Louvre museum to the Musee Napoleon during his rule. They scraped his name off after he left. Mao Zedong. The giant Tiananmen Gate portrait is a sustained state symbol. It's repainted, replaced regularly. Do we want to be like communist dictatorships? North Korea, the Kim Dynasty, long time running state driven personality cult. Monuments everywhere, shrines everywhere. Saddam Hussein, again, not typically a role model for most Americans, but he loved having big statues all over him. Who can forget that? The toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue. Perhaps we'll have similar topplings of Trump statues if enough of them are erected. Some people go beyond that. The leader of Turkmenistan has renamed months and weekdays after himself and months for his mother. So imagine if instead of January, it's Trump. So instead of, hey, New Year's Day, it's Trump Day. New Trump Day. If your birthday is January 16th, you would say, oh, my birthday is Trump 16th. Sounds stupid, sounds crazy. Guess what? We're not that close or we're not that far away from that. We're pretty close to it right now with what Trump is doing, between slathering everything in his vision with gold and slathering his name on everything. Other perhaps role models. Gaddafi, Muammar Gaddafi. Extensive state linked personal imagery, culture photos were everywhere, statues everywhere. And who can forget Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator. He had one of the strongest personality cults in the Eastern bloc. That didn't end up too well. Mobutu Sekou of Zaire and the DRC renamed the country and had his name and face absolutely everywhere. So there's a lot of tradition here, folks, of a leader building statues for himself, renaming himself, putting his image everywhere. And it's really not a good look for a democracy. And you're certainly seeing centrists, liberals, Democrats, progressives, stand up and say, enough already. But they don't have any power in our society. Let's be honest, they are irrelevant. The President's party controls the Senate, the House, the White House, arguably the courts, certainly the Supreme Court. And in terms of most viewed and most influential media, Fox News, they, they control the media as well. And no one's willing to stand up to Dear Leader and I. It used to be you people referred to Trump as Dear Leader as kind of a joke, a little bit of an exaggeration, but kind of a joke. It's not a joke anymore when you continue to do things that dictators from North Korea do. Not really a joke anymore. It's just an accurate description. The saving grace in all of this, though, is the president is falling so far down in the popularity polls and the opposition is growing. We saw it with the no Kings movement earlier this year. The percentages of the populace out protesting in the streets didn't quite get to the historic norms associated with, with toppling a regime, getting a regime to flee or run or abandon the seat of government. It wasn't that far. And we've already seen in just the last month or so, whether it's the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, whether it is the Republican state legislators in Indiana, we're starting to see a number of people who are no longer afraid to say the emperor, the king, our king, our maga king is wearing no clothes. Question of the day comes from Johnson. He's a student in my course, the complete storytelling course for speaking and presenting. The question is, in what ways can procrastination reduce a presenter's ability to connect with the audience? Well, the worst of all types of procrastination comes from people who say, oh, you know what? I'm so much better if I just wing it. I'm not going to write a speech, prepare a speech, rehearse a speech, prepare my stories. I'm just going to get up and be me and wing it. Wrong. The best speakers in the world, the best comedians in the world can create the illusion that they are just here thinking and being spontaneous and thinking on their feet. But they're not. They thought about it, they've planned it, they've rehearsed it, they've respected their audience. If you get up and you just say, well, I didn't have a lot of time to think or prepare today on my way over here, preparing, preparing for this speech, or I was thinking about what I want to say, it's going to be a bunch of mumbo jumbo. It's going to be a mess. You're not giving people respect. If you are presenting to an audience and you haven't prepared, you're showing your audience disrespect. That's why it's crucial to figure out what is your goal for this presentation? What does your audience really want? Then think about what messages will resonate with them. The most, then think about what stories you have to make it come alive. Then rehearse. Now you can do that the night before. I'm not suggesting you have to plan six months in advance, six weeks in advance, or even six days in advance. But if you're waiting till you're walking up to the stage, by then it's too late. That's it for this edition of Filtered. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time. Hoping you're having a great holiday time this time of year and spending time with family, friends and spending some time doing some fun things. I know I have fun with you right here every single day. I enjoy it. And if you get any joy out of this, if you learned anything, if you felt like anything here was informative or useful, please leave a comment. Leave a Review if you're listening on a podcast, leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform. Make sure you're subscribing and following. And if you're watching on YouTube or any social media platform, please like the video. Please sign up for notifications and subscribe. Thanks so much. See you tomorrow.