Comey Indicted, China’s Robot Surge, Amazon’s $2.5B Prime Payout

Foreign. Secures an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, pushing through charges that career prosecutors rejected. China now has more robots in its factories than the rest of the world combined, while here in the US Delivery robots are colliding with people on sidewalks. Amazon agrees to pay a record $2.5 billion settlement after regulators said it tricked millions into prime subscriptions. Saudi Arabia launches what it calls the world's largest comedy festival, but drops Tim Dillon after his jokes about forced labor, even as stars like Dave Chappelle and Kevin Hart stay on the bill. And the US offers Argentina a $20 billion bailout, tying American money to the fortunes of the president of that country, sparking outrage from farmers and lawmakers at home. All that and more today here on Filtered. Welcome to filtered with TJ Walker. Hello and welcome. Today is Friday, September 26, 2025. Thank you so much for joining me. This is Filtered, where we look at the top business news, economic, technology, and culture news of the day, filtering it through the lens of communication skills. First, let's check in on how the market did yesterday. The S&P 500 closed at 6,604.72. That's down 33.25, a drop of 0.5%. The Nasdaq Composite closed at 22,384.7, down 113.16, also a 0.5% decrease. Important to remember, over the last 25 years, the S&P 500 has returned 7.47% annually, while the Nasdaq has returned 9.73% annually. Please think long term. Okay, we have a fun show for you today. Those of you joining us on the podcast, thank you so much for doing it. It's exciting to see the podcast growing every day on audio platforms all over the world. We're broadcasting to you live today as well on Tick Tock. We have a special feed just for our tick tock friends, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X Twitch, you name it. And we're trying to make this show as accessible to you as possible. So thanks so much for joining me. Today we're going to dive right in with the top story of the day. And it is a political story. Let me state right up front, the world is filled with highly partisan cable TV news shows. This is not another one of them. I'm really trying to focus on business, technology and culture, but unfortunately, sometimes the political news is so big it completely dominates every aspect of our culture and our economy as well as technology. So there's simply no way of avoiding it. I'M here not as a partisan today, but as a sane, sensible centrist. Everyone has biases. I have bias. But the number one bias I have is in favor of helping you become more successful by learning communication skills and personal development skills that already successful people are demonstrating. That is my pledge to you. If you spend a little time with me here, you'll not only know a little more about the news, but but you'll know a little more about yourself, how you can be a more successful communicator and have better health habits to be more successful. Let's dive into issue one. Trump loyalist secures grand jury indictment of James Comey Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Virginia. The charges are making a false statement and obstructing a congressional proceeding tied to his 2020 testimony. The move came after President Trump intensified pressure on the Justice Department. It was pushed forward by Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist with no prior prosecutorial experience. After career prosecutors objected and said, hey, the evidence is too weak, too flimsy. It would be embarrassing if we did this. The indictment alleges Comey lied about whether he authorized others to serve as anonymous sources in FBI matters. In a video statement, Comey rejected the charges, declaring, we will not live on our knees. I'm not afraid, and I hope you're not either. Trump celebrated on truth social writing justice in America. Senator Mark Warner warned the indictment was a dangerous abuse of power. If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison, though many legal experts believe the case will be too difficult to prove. Okay, what's the real message here? The federal Justice Department of the United States is rotten to its core today. It's no longer about a nation of laws. It's about a nation of henchmen and henchwomen doing the bidding of a dear leader. It's about criminalizing any dissent in America. It's about criminalizing anyone who. Who dares criticize the great orange one. Make no mistake about it, this is a sham prosecution of James Comey. Now, let's dig a little deeper here. It's hard to imagine as a layperson how extraordinarily unprecedented this is. Nixon, for all of his faults, and there were a lot of them, never even tried to do anything like this. You had career prosecutor after career prosecutor look at this and say, there's no they're there. There's no reason to indict Comey for these alleged crimes. Now I can think of a lot of reasons for putting Comey in prison. Nothing to do with these allegations, but with the way he perverted the 2016 election to aid Donald Trump. But that's not why Trump is trying to put him in prison now. He's trying to put him in prison because James Comey had the temerity to actually investigate the numerous facts, the numerous allegations, the. The numerous ties that Trump had with the Russian government. That is why he is being prosecuted. And Trump has made it very clear, folks, this is just not how America is run. You do not have the President of the United States saying, I don't like him. Hey, go lock him up. That's what thugs do. That's what happens in thugocracy. That's what happens in fascism. Oh, T.J. you're using hate speech. Well, it's pretty hateful to lock up and criminalize your opponents. And just because they have a different attitude and perspective on what's right and wrong, it's pretty hateful to take the United States Constitution and essentially tear it up and throw it in the garbage can, which is what this administration is doing. To see career prosecutor after career prosecutor walk off and say, I'm not going to be a part of this, to see the constant stream of resignations from our Department of Justice is a true black eye on this administration. Not that it really needed any more. But folks, this is serious because you may say, well, I don't like James Comey, and truthfully, I don't like James Comey. But if they're coming after him today, tomorrow it's going to be Senator Chuck Schumer, and the day after that, it's going to be your local Democratic candidate running for Congress. And then the day after that, well, it's election time. And what do you know? All of a sudden, Trump controls every single elected representative of Congress because if we could simply say someone who criticizes me is a terrorist or is a criminal, then it's not that hard to connect the dots and get to the point where all opposition is outlawed or criminalized. Or maybe they're not outlawed, but maybe instead of running for Congress, speaking out in the media, doing investigations, you have every centrist and left of center political figure in America having to spend all their time preparing for their day in court because they now have to defend their whole lives and keep themselves out of prison, it's going to be pretty easy to win elections. My dog, and I don't even have a dog, could win an election if all of the cats and all the opponents are too busy to bother running because they're trying to figure out how they stay out of jail or how do they keep from having more IRS investigations of every single thing they spent a pencil on or a pen on in the last 25 years? So this is very serious business, folks. Again, I can't stand James Comey. I think he's one of the most despicable people in United States history for the way he put his thumb on the scale in that press conference 11 days before the2016 election and essentially swung the election to Trump. But that's not what he's being tried on. That's not what he's being indicted for. He's being indicted on trumped up charges where no serious prosecutor would even touch it. And this, I'm going to say something. You don't see it in the mainstream media. It's not politically correct to say, but I'm just going to say it. When you look at the attorney, this Lindsay character that Trump brought in to now be the prosecutor, she was his former personal attorney, which these days the line between a personal attorney and a Supreme Court justice is essentially gone. She has no experience whatsoever. She's never prosecuted even a ham sandwich. And now she is trying to take down Comey because no serious prosecutor would touch it. So here's the part that's just not politically correct to say it. This woman was hired because she's incredibly good looking. Have you seen pictures of this woman? If you saw her on the COVID of Cosmopolitan magazine or Vogue, it wouldn't surprise you at all. Now, Trump has a pattern of this. He picked Pam Bondi because he thought she looked good on TV and he liked long blonde hair. He, he picked his press secretary because she's good looking. He picked Pete Hegseth because he has a great head of hair. So we're seeing this bizarro world in which the biggest decisions in our country's culture, our political culture, our economic culture, our legal culture, are being decided by people who are essentially good looking idiots. And it's, it's absolutely disgraceful. Even certain fascist regimes, I won't get into which ones didn't pick their top people just because they were good looking. And that seems to be the only criteria. Will you do everything I say and be my complete bagman henchman? And are you good looking? If the answer is yes to both of those, it doesn't matter how corrupt you are. You could be taking $50,000 bags of cash, I won't care. You could be running our military into the ground, I won't care. You could be so incompetent you bungle all sorts of investigations and announce you've caught killers when you haven't. I don't care. But basically you've got to be a henchman and do my bidding as Dear Leader. And not in every case Cash Patel. But in most cases you better be really good looking and have a great head of hair. That is the state of American well, I was about to use the word democracy, but it doesn't look like I can really do that again. It's the state of our society. 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. Go to tjwalker.com advertise want to become a better speaker, leader or communicator? Start with the TJ Walker Success Library. It's five of my most practical books covering everything from public speaking to media interviews and persuasive messaging, all for only $9.95. I've trained presidents and Fortune 500 CEOs, and now you can get the same wisdom in a fast, affordable format. Go to tjwalker.com books and download your copies instantly. China's Robot army and America's Sidewalk Robot Clash China now has more robots in its factories than the rest of the world combined, with over 2 million and counting. Last year alone, Chinese factories installed nearly 300,000 new robots, compared to just 34,000 in the United States. This is part of Beijing's long term Made in China 2025 strategy, which has fueled its rise as the world's manufacturing powerhouse. Analysts say the combination of government support, artificial intelligence, and a massive skilled workforce has made China the clear global leader in robotics. Meanwhile, here in the United States, not all robots are inspiring. In Los Angeles this week, a viral video showed a delivery robot colliding with Mark Cheney, according to the Los Angeles Times, a man with cerebral palsy in a mobility scooter. The clip has been viewed more than 26 million times, sparking outrage at Serve Robotics and even death threats against Cheney. He says he's standing firm. I didn't do this to sue anyone. I just wanted to get from one place to another safely and unpeded. Okay, what's the real message here? The robots are coming and the Chinese robots are already here. They're not necessarily coming to kill you, but they are coming for your job. They are coming to lift heavier things and do pretty much anything an actual human can do. And if you think that's another 50 years off, you are wrong. Let's dig a Little deeper here. For so much of what's happened in the last 35 years or so, as the Internet culture has taken off, there's been this huge divide. There's stuff in the cloud, stuff in Internet world, the world Wide web information superhighway as people used to call it. And then there's the so called real world of there's mechanics and there's real cars and there's things breaking down and plumbing. Those worlds always seem to be very, very different. Well, they're coming together. These robots are getting better and better. And what's going to happen just as, just as what chat GPT is a 10,000 times better than what Google used to do. What we're seeing is these robots are getting better when powered with, when fueled by artificial intelligence. Now it's still not great at the whole opposable thumb thing. If you say to a robot, take all the green pens out of this box and most of them are black pens, it's still not great at that. But it's getting better every single day. Now it's all well and good for people like me and others to say, okay, if you're an Uber driver, you're going to be put out of business. If you're a truck driver, you're going to be put out of business. Okay, but it's coming for everyone. Now you've heard me and others talk about how management consultants are seeing AI take their jobs. Computer software developers, certainly the lower level early career people are seeing their jobs disappear from AI. But now it could really affect every aspect of manufacturing. And forget manufacturing a minute, just imagine home health care. There are so many home health care workers in the United States and elsewhere. If you really could have a robot. Let's stop and think about this for a minute. If you could have a robot stronger than a human being that could cook, that could clean, that could wash dishes, that could change beds, and you could buy it for say $25,000 and all you need after that is a charging station and an Internet connection. And it never got angry, it never asked for vacations, it never asked for time off that would instantly put millions of people out of work. It also might dramatically enhance the standard of living for a lot of people who need home health care and who can't afford it. I mean, I know I have family members who need home health care. If you don't yet, at some point you probably will. These robots could be the best thing that ever happened to a lot of people who need care. And it could be the worst thing that ever happened to people who need jobs. Like a lot of technology, it cuts both ways. Let's look at some more of the facts going on. China installed nearly 300,000 factory robots in the last year, more than the entire world combined. US only has 34,000. This is a part of their policy made in China policy. And it's all well and good to say, isn't it awful that these communist societies have a top down, authoritarian, non free market approach to running their economy? And sometimes it is. You know, I've been to China and sometimes you go through on this bullet trains and you see entire gigantic cities where there's like 14 different versions of the Chrysler building and the whole city's empty because central planning, top down said let's just spend unlimited billions of dollars building a new city. Sometimes it does screw up, but, but sometimes it works really well. Sometimes this nasty little world industrial policy, sometimes it works well. When you as a society decide this is a big industry, it's an important industry for our future, it's important for our national security, it's important for our overall economy. And short term the free market system won't be willing to spend enough money on research and development and losses to make it so we're going to have government push into it. That's what China has done with a lot of things. But it's one area where it is working is with their artificial intelligence and robots because they're becoming increasingly dominant now. Are we going to get to the point where we need robots as soldiers for wars? Will they look like what you think of in the science fiction movies where it's this big hulking thing or will there, will they be almost microscopic drones that can be a thousand times more lethal and more stealth like. We're already seeing a lot of drone activity in the war in the Ukraine and increasingly with incursions from Russian air into other European countries. So I don't, I'm not predicting the big what, what we think of as the robots that look like humans become the dominant aspect in future wars. But certainly have to think that could be a part of it could be extraordinarily intimidating for a bigger country with a bigger budget with a lot of robots to just have them come marching in knocking door to door saying we're taking over. And it's politically, it's going to make it so much easier for governments, especially authoritarian governments to launch wars because you won't have to worry about civilian casualties, at least your own. If you could do everything through a robot. One area that is prime for disruption is home building. When you look at the way homes are built and office buildings are built in many parts of the world, including the United States, it's really not that different from 100 years ago. It's slow, it's inefficient, it's lots of manual labor. And there are many who are predicting robots are going to completely take over that industry and in some cases reduce cost by 20, 30, 40, maybe 90%. And it's completely revolutionized home building and office building construction as we know it. I think my brain, frankly, is too puny to even grasp all the different ways every aspect of our culture, every aspect of our economy is going to be radically transformed as the power of AI goes from just sitting in a computer to sitting in something that can move and interact with the real world. That's really what a robot is. We're still in the early days, but it is coming now. You may have had a Roomba vacuum cleaner. I know I got one 10 years ago. I'll probably get another one. That's the low hanging fruit. It's going to be everywhere and it's going to have an impact on every aspect of our culture, our economy, and the way we live. What do you think? I'd love to hear from you. If you're listening on the podcast, whatever podcast platform you're on, if you see a place for comments, add comments. You can always go to my YouTube page and that's TJ Walker success on YouTube and go to the post section and post your comments there. We'll be back with more in a moment. Filtered is brought to you by the following. Get the deeper takes. I don't post anywhere else. Subscribe now@substack.com jwalkersuccess and stay in the loop. For years people have asked how they could get one on one coaching from me inexpensively. Well, now you can, anytime, anywhere with the TJ Walker AI clone. It's like having me in your pocket ready to help you prep for a speech, polish a pitch or calm your nerves before a big meeting. You talk to it. It responds like I would based on my real world coaching of thousands of leaders and and communicators. Check it out at TJ Walker AI. It's not just smart, it's personal. Want to support the show? Skip the ads and buy me a coffee. That's buymeacoffee.com TJ Walker. And we are back. Hi, my name is TJ Walker. This is Filtered. We're going to dive right into issue three. Amazon will pay $2.5 billion over prime dark patterns Amazon will pay up $2.5 billion to resolve claims it steered millions of people into prime and made cancellation needlessly hard. The deal ends a Seattle jury trial days after it began and ranks among the largest Federal Trade Commission settlements ever. Roughly $1 billion is a civil penalty and 1 to $1.5 billion will go to consumers, with eligible users receiving $51 each. Amazon did not admit wrongdoing. Spokesman Mark Blaflin said the company, quote, has always followed the law, adding the settlement lets it, quote, move forward and focus on innovating for customers. FTC chair Andrew Ferguson called it a significant outcome, saying, we got more than we originally told the Judge we needed $1.5 billion going back to consumers and a billion dollars in civil penalties. Former FTC chair Bill Kovich said the result shows the commission is serious about policing major platforms. Critics like Nidhi Hedjty argued fines alone aren't enough, saying corporations can write a meager check to skip their day in court. Okay, so what's the real message here? It is good news that at least one tech billionaire in the country can't do whatever he wants, anytime he wants, break laws, take advantage of consumers, and then just go to Dear Leader and say, hey, your orange hair is looking good and get away with it scot free. That's, I think the good news here. Let's go a little bit deeper now. I have mixed feelings about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. On the one hand, I think he's, he's done a lot of things that are anti competitive, fought taxes for years, the Internet and it really screwed over a lot of mom and pop stores who had an unfair disadvantage. The way he has pandered to Trump out of fear and trembling. And so, oh, you don't want us to endorse your opponent, we just want to endorse your opponent is frankly sickening. And he's certainly engaged in a lot of anti competitive practices and put a lot of smaller companies out of business saying, oh, you sell tissue, we're going to sell our own tissue and it's going to be just like yours and it's going to be a couple pennies cheaper and yours is going to be buried. There's been a lot of unfair practices. Having said all of that, I do think that Jeff Bezos is one of the most brilliant businessmen in the history of capitalism. He truly has done something extraordinarily innovative. And full disclosure, I am a member of Amazon Prime. I use it daily. I used it about 10 minutes ago, went to the we have a fly in our house, can't get rid of it. And we went to the grocery store yesterday. You would think a grocery store to have a fly sweater. Couldn't find one, forgot about it, came home where we now live. There's no other stores within 20 minutes. I went on Amazon and for an extra $2, they're delivering me three flyswatters this morning. I don't have to get in the car, I don't have to drive, I don't have to spend money on gas. Is that bad for the planet? As far as a truck coming all the way to my yeah, it is. And I have conflicted feelings about it. But this fly is driving me crazy. And Jeff Bezos has the answer in a way that no one in the history of the world has ever done before. I personally have spent, let's just say, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on Amazon through Prime in the last 15 years. Because it is a different experience. It's profoundly different being able to sit back in your own time in your pajamas or your underwear and look at virtually every product in the world available in a certain niche, to look at reviews, to pick what you want with one click and not have to get dressed, not have to drive somewhere, not have to worry about parking, not have to worry about traffic, not have to worry about getting to a store when it's closed on a holiday or after hours and having what you want delivered typically in two days. Now, there are a lot of companies that are really, really tricky about ever unsubscribing. I don't know if they've improved, but certainly one of the worst offenders in terms of reputation, and I've experienced it to the Bali Fitness Gym. I mean, there used to be a time where if you signed up to be a member of the Bally Gym, the Bally Fitness Gym, you practically had to change your identity or declare bankruptcy and change all of your credit cards if you ever wanted to get out of paying them a monthly fee. They were that bad. In my experience with Amazon, I have found them to be relatively easy as far as canceling things. Periodically I will sign up for the Kindle Unlimited and I just click if I want to stop, I do. I've started and stopped many times. I found it easy to do that. There have been times when I've signed up for their audible, their unlimited audible, their monthly subscription, and then I cancel it. The hard part I have getting my head around is once you've Used Prime. Why would you ever want to stop? I realize not everyone is me. I'm not expecting you to be like me. But it saves me so much money on delivery charges if I were to use other providers, other online stores. And it saves me so much time when they say it's going to be here in two days. It's not always there in two days, but according to at least my own experience, Amazon really does deliver about 99% of the time when they say they're going to. You may have different results, but that is Bezos true genius is he is essentially the greatest organizational genius in the history of the world as far as organizing logistics, delivery systems, trucking, it's really hard to do. And he figured it out and Walmart didn't and ebay didn't and Google didn't. Jeff Bezos did and deserves genuine credit. Does that mean he deserves a pass on everything else? No. Should there be more regulation? Yes. Should the FTC maybe crack down on things it does to, to harm smaller people selling their products on there? Yeah. But again, I want to be fair. I'm here not to grind an ideological axe. I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist. And while a lot of people in liberal and progressive circles 30 years ago, 40 years ago, even today talked about how awful it is that in order to publish a book, there's only a handful of book publishers. We're down to about five major ones based in New York City and one of them is owned by Rupert Murdoch. And it's such a consolidation of power and it limits voices. Well, I gotta tell you, nobody has done more to make it accessible to read a wide range of voices than Jeff Bezos. Because if you go to a typical Barnes and Noble in a mid sized town in America, if you could still find one, and you want to get all of the works of a left wing, a true left wing thought leader, Noam Chomsky. I don't happen to be a fan. You probably aren't going to find any of his books in a typical Barnes and noble that holds 30,000, 40,000 copies. But guess what? Jeff Bezos makes all, every single thing he's ever written available. And everything Karl Marx has written. And yes, every right wing thinker and every fascist thinker, it's all available on Amazon. That's a profound change in the world. That's a profound change in the way people can receive information. It's removing gatekeeping because anyone can publish a book these days. Now it used to be virtually impossible. And if you did self publish a book. Good luck ever selling a copy. But there are people every single day who self publish books and are able to find a worldwide audience. Please note, I'm not suggesting it's a get rich quick scheme, but I see Amazon is doing so many good things for thinkers, creators across the ideological spectrum because it's removed that gatekeeper function that a physical store has. And for that I'm eternally grateful. You may have different thoughts. Certainly if you loan own a local hardware store, a stationary store, or certainly a local bookstore, and you and your family owned it for 100 years and you went out of business 10 years ago or last month, chances are you don't like Jeff Bezos and you don't like Amazon. I feel for you. I do. But that is competition. I mean, that is the way capitalism is supposed to work now. It's supposed to be a level playing field. It wasn't level if you had to pay taxes. And for many, many, many years, Jeff Bezos did not. But still, he was an innovator. If your business didn't survive, by definition you didn't innovate quickly enough. And we've all had things that worked one time don't work. I used to do public workshops for my public speaking and media training once a month and it worked well for a while. One of my attendees is now a U.S. senator. And then it stopped working. Guess what? Things change. Competition changes. In that case, I tried to beat myself with other offerings in the form of online classes, so Amazon had to pay a fine. I frankly am happy even knowing we have an FTC that hasn't where everyone hasn't been fired. The idea that even the concept that trade should be regulated seems like it's under such attack in the United States. For that point and that point alone, I'm happy to see this decision. And frankly, for Amazon to pay a $2.5 billion fine, that's like you or me walking down the street and finding a couple of pennies and picking it up and throwing it in a fountain. It's that insignificant. More in a moment. Stay tuned. If you are listening to this on any podcasting platform, please follow it. Subscribe Leave a Review if you're watching on YouTube or any other social media platform, or on TikTok. Thanks for watching. Please leave a Like Leave a comment, Leave a criticism if you want, but be specific. I may talk about this at the end of the show. Lately there have been people who just all they want to do is say fail. You're sick. You're insane. Okay, maybe. But make your case. Don't be so lazy. That's. That's. I don't mind criticism. I do mind criticism. That is extremely lazy. So please be specific with your criticisms. Back in a moment. Like what you heard. Don't let the algorithm bury us. Subscribe now@substack.com J WalkerSuccess want direct access to me live? Want to unlock bonus episodes behind the scenes takes and full access to my premium courses? Then become a member today. Just go to TJ Walker.com members and choose your preferred platform, YouTube, Patreon. Whatever works for you. This isn't just another subscription. It's a full access pass to the tools, coaching and content that can transform your communication and career. Tjwalker.com members, I'll see you inside. Before we dive in, quick question. Are your communication skills helping or hurting your career? Fix that in 20 minutes a day. Visit mediatrainingworldwide.com Real skills, real results. Welcome back. The Saudi Comedy Festival Sparks backlash after Tim Dillon drops Saudi Arabia is preparing to host what it calls the world's largest comedy festival in Riyadh. Running through early October, the event is part of a broader push by the kingdom to bring in Western culture and sporting attractions alongside ventures like Liv Golf. But the festival is already stirring controversy. American comedian Tim Dillon says he was removed from the lineup after jokes on his podcast about Saudi Arabia's alleged use of forced labor. They heard what you said about them having slaves. They didn't like it. Tim Dillon talked about this, he recalled his manager saying. He added, I addressed it in a very funny way and they fired me. The bill still includes some of the biggest names in comedy Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Bill Burr, Louis CK, Sebastian Maniscalsko, Whitney Cummings, Tom Segura, Andrew Schultz and Jim Jeffries. And I love almost all of them. Human Rights Watch criticized the festival as an effort to whitewash Saudi Arabia's human rights record, urging comedians not to be complicit in covering up the abuses of a repressive regime. Okay, what's the real message here? These holier than thou types attacking comedians for taking money by giving a comedy show in Saudi Arabia are off based. We want people in Saudi Arabia spending more time laughing, not bombing. We want them spending more time and actually hiring gay people, which some of these comedians are not stoning them to death. We want them spending time learning about Western culture, not plotting another 9 11. So let's dig a little bit deeper here. I'm all in favor of people saying let's scrutinize who you do business with and what you're doing for them if a part of the con. And I've not seen the contract of these comedians, but it's generated a lot of controversy and a lot of criticism. But I take a different tack on this. I too am concerned about Saudi Arabia and the fact that they hack up and kill journalists and put them in a suitcase and their own embassy is not something I'll ever forget. So yes, there are terrible things. If they were hiring these comedians to say, here are our messages we want you to read on your social media and in front of our people saying this is the best country in the whole world and we treat people better than anyone. Fine, let's criticize them for that if they are going to be absolute propagandist. But that's not what's happening now. I'm imagining in what I've heard. I haven't seen the contracts. They are, they are supposed to avoid directly criticizing the the kingdom and the leaders of the kingdom, but still this is a crafty group of really rich, powerful people. Now Tim Dillon said that he reported on his show and I do, I do listen to his show. He is very funny. I don't agree with him on a lot of things, but Tim Dillon is extraordinarily funny. And I actually heard the show that got him kicked out of this festival because he was try. He was basically making fun of himself saying, look, I'm greedy. I love money, I love buying more Rolls Royces. Will I take money from people who love slavery? Absolutely. He was playing that up and I think he had to know he would probably get canceled. Whether he got any upfront money, I don't know. I hope for his sake he did. But here's the thing. This is not a clear cut black and white issue. If you say a particular country is doing awful things and they have backward ideas about how women should be treated, how gays should be treated, how you treat enemy, how you treat journalists, how you treat people with different ideas, then why wouldn't you want them exposing themselves to more people with more ideas from different cultures? I mean these comedians, there are a lot of different comedians there across the political spectrum. Some like Tim Dillon associated with and someone like an Andrew Schultz associated with a far maga right. Others, Whitney Cummings and others associated with liberal and centrist and democratic values. So they're exposing their society to a lot of different perspectives which why is that not good? Now we criticize this culture for being closed. Now they're opening up. Isn't that what we want. So I think the critics of these comedians going and taking them and doing anything for money, I think they're off base. First of all, do we want comedians to think more and more like, oh, I'm now the secretary of state and everything I do has to be looked at through a geopolitical lens? I don't know if I want my comedians doing that. I would like my comedians to focus their time, their energy, their talents, making people laugh. And as I said at the outset, if people are busy laughing, maybe they're too busy to go bombing or killing if they're laughing at a gay comedian. And some of these people are gay comedians and Tim Dillon and these are all outed people. I'm not outing anyone. They've publicly declared their sexuality, but someone like Tim Dillon gay. If Saudi Arabia people are saying, we want to give money to this gay person, bring them in as a respected guest, applaud them, laugh them, isn't that what we want? Do we want them saying, no gays allowed in our country. Let's continue stoning to death gaypet. Is that what we want? I don't think so. The whole point of saying, here's a country, or for that matter, here's a person doing things that we believe are immoral, bad, harmful to the world, despicable in some way, the whole point of pointing that out is to try to get them to change. Now, am I suggesting that just because a bunch of comedians go over to Saudi Arabia and make a lot of money and people get some chuckles that the next day everyone in Saudi Arabia is going to say, hey, you're right. Let's open up. Let's be a western democracy. Let's have elections. Let's give women full equal rights. Let's not have slave labor. Am I thinking that? No, I'm not suggesting it's some radical panacea that's going to instantly transform this culture. That's a tiny little piece. I'm all in favor of exposing more people in the world face to face with more ideas from more people in the world. And as an American citizen, I also like the idea of countries that have been hostile to us opening their doors and actually employing more Americans, which is happening here. Now, full disclosure, I've not, to my knowledge, worked directly with anyone in the Saudi Arabian government, but I can tell you I get inquiries from them regularly. And I do work with leaders in that region, in other countries right nearby. Some of them are essentially theocracies. And my attitude, and you can say it's self serving, you can say, tj, you're this horrible sellout. But my whole point is I want people communicating by speaking. That's what I do. I teach people how to speak. I don't want people communicating by sending a bomb, which is another way of communicating. So I look at it as anytime someone wants me to teach them how to communicate more effectively, that in general, that's a good thing. Have I turned down some clients because I just find them personally so ideologically distasteful? Yeah, I have. But that's not some great virtue. That's just a personal preference of how I like to run my business. But if the Saudi Arabian government calls me and says, we want you to teach media training and public speaking training to our top leaders, our top government officials, I would say yes. Now, if they asked me to craft a message on how they can lie, I'm not going to do that. But I do think in general, the more the world communicates by speaking, by talking to the media, by having open media, which is something traditionally not very popular in Saudi Arabia, the better off we are. I want to train people how to answer a tough question from a reporter in a skillful, strategic way. Not saying, hey, I don't like your question, why don't you go over here, this room, and my goons will be in with a hacksaw, and you'll never ask anyone another question. That's what we don't want. So that's why I personally take the attitude of it's good to go to countries where people don't have your values. If you can be an evangelist for your values and if you can practice your values. And these comedians, by all accounts, were going to tell jokes. That's what they're paid for. They're not there to read propaganda scripts. Now, should they be willing to not talk about certain subjects? You know, that's. That's a questionable line, but I gotta tell you, that's a part of the deal with a lot of things. You know, if you get a sitcom on ABC News or ABC network and you work blue and you use a lot of profanity, normally they're gonna tell you, okay, we're gonna give you a sitcom that you can't curse. And that's a deal most comedians are willing to take. So I don't see that is as much difference. Here's the other big point I have. Again, I call it like I see it. I'm not here as a pure ideologue. Sometimes I do think conservatives make a lot of good points like the fact that the US Government shouldn't be trying to support other countries economies, which we'll talk about in the next issue. Sometimes I think those on the on the left and the liberal side of things make good points. And in this case I do not think that the the dominant liberal and left wing message of this is awful because these comedians are making people forget about the fact that Saudi Arabia has slavery. No, they're not making anyone forget. I'm talking about it. I've seen more talk about how repressive the Saudi Arabia regime is in the last couple of months since the announcement of this comedy show than in the previous year or so. So I'm not buying that argument that it's whitewashing human rights abuses. If nothing else, it's starting a conversation about their human rights abuses, which is a good thing. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. Thank you so much for watching. We got another hot segment coming up in just a moment. Hey, if you're enjoying this kind of take and want to hear more stories filtered through the lens of communication, make sure you're following the show whether you're watching or listening. New episodes drop every single day in it. There's a little notification option where you are now. Go ahead and turn it on. It helps you stay in the loop. Issue 5 Trump bets big on Argentina with a $20 billion lifeline the US treasury announced plans to extend a $20 billion loan to Argentina, a move that ties Washington to the financial fate of President Javier Milli's embattled government. The goal is to stabilize Argentina's plunging peso and backstop president of Argentina, who President Trump has described as a political ally. But the bailout is politically charged. American soybean farmers, already squeezed by China's tariffs and Argentina's surging exports, see the support as Washington aiding their competitor. Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean association, called the frustration overwhelming. Top Democrats also blasted the plan. Senator Elizabeth Warren warned it was deeply troubling to spend emergency funds abroad while Americans struggling with rising costs at home. Some Republicans echoed concern with Senator Chuck Grassley asking why the United States would bail out Argentina while they take American soybean producers. Biggest market economists caution the loan could be risky. Argentina has defaulted repeatedly and analysts say the US May have no exit strategy if the crisis deepens. Okay, what's the real message here? Donald Trump is saying, I don't care about American farmers. I don't care about free enterprise or capitalism. Here's a president, this guy in Argentina who says he likes me and uses some of the same kooky ideas I have and has kooky hair. So I'm going to give $20 billion in tax money to this guy as a buddy. That is sickening. Let's go a little bit deeper here. This is so bizarre at so many levels. If you are a conservative, this is wildly offensive. You're supposed to believe in the free market enterprise system. If Argentina wants to do incredibly stupid things with its economy and radical experiments as it's done for the last 70, 80 years, then they deserve to fail. The other thing is Argentina is just not that significant to the American economy. Nothing compared to Brazil, where we are trying to turn the screws on Brazil, trying to alter their own democracy. I mean, that's a country where Trump is saying, we're going to punish you. How dare you commit acts of democracy by holding your last president accountable for fomenting an insurrection and trying to destroy democracy. He's punishing Brazil for doing the right thing. And he's giving aid and comfort and a lot of your money if you're an American, to this president of Argentina because he happens to say the right things. He says he likes Trump. He's all into deconstructing the government. The problem is their economy still isn't doing very well, and there's a whole lot of experimentations. The ties between Trump and Argentina are also fascinating because I've talked about this on the show before. The person that Trump really seems to be modeling after, whether he realizes it, it's not really Adolf, okay? It is Peron, General Peron of Argentina. That really seems to be the role model for Trump. And it's a scary role model for those of us who live in America. When Peron took power in the last century, Argentina had 80% of the GDP per person, as the United States did. It was one of the top 10 economies in the world. By the time the whole Peron clan left, it was down to about 20%, which is kind of where it is today. It destroyed its economy. What did Perrone do? He took the attitude of, I control everything. I give my friends contracts. I shut these industries down. The government can control anything. We can control our own version of the Fed. We can just say whatever we want, do whatever we want. And it was fun to be prone. Wasn't fun for anyone else who lived in that economy. So it is fascinating to me to see the way Trump gloms on to certain leaders in countries, even when they've demonstrably destroyed their countries. I mean, even look at someone like Viktor Orban. People think of conservatives in America, think of Hungary as this great role model. Oh, they've got, you know, white Christians running things, running the economy. Isn't that great. Their economy is worse than Mississippi, which is one of the poorest states, if not the poorest state in the United States. So why this guy continues to sort of idolize people who are demonstrable failures is bizarre. But I'll tell you what else is bizarre. These soybean farmers in the upper Midwest who pretty much all voted for Trump. Let's be candid. Now, if you're a white farmer in America, a white male farmer in America, there's a good chance you don't even know anyone who's voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter, okay? And they voted for this guy and he absolutely screwed them with these tariffs. And now you see the president of the soybean association that I referenced in the news read, they are panicking because they are seeing billions of dollars of soybeans not being sold because the Chinese bought them. And the Chinese says, we don't need you anymore. You're going to attack us. You put a lot of tariffs on us. Okay, two can play at this game. So very troubling to see how American dollars are squandered. Now it's popular among the right to talk about, you know, wasteful government spending. I've been hearing that my entire life. And wasteful foreign aid. This truly is wasteful foreign aid. It's possible propping up a political crony of Trump and he deserves to sink or swim on his own. I'm all in favor of reducing tariffs for Argentina and other places, but the idea of a $20 billion bailout just because the guy has bad hair and says nice things about Trump, that is bizarre. Okay, switching gears, we're going to go down to the grab bag section of the show. Typically on this show, if you're new to the show, welcome. We look at five big issues of the day and then we have sort of a grab bag section where I look at other stories of where I know I'm not going to be going into as much depth, but things I still think that are important. This next one is bizarre. AI boyfriends go mainstream. More women are building romantic relationships with AI companies on apps like Replica and Nomi, seeking creativity, validation, and safer intimacy. Researchers and ethicists warn the bonds can be therapeutic short term, but raise manipulation, censorship, and blurred boundary risk long term. Talking about platforms like Replica Nomi, they will create partners for for You. I gotta tell you, this is bizarre. And full disclosure, I have an AI clone. You can talk to it. Go to tjwalker AI. No, it's not for romance. No, it's not for dating. Please don't date my clone. Not that there have really been any offers. My clone is designed to help people communicate more effectively. You can practice a speech. My clone will give you feedback just as I would. You can practice a YouTube video. My clone will give you back feedback on your backdrop and what you're wearing, if you want. That, I think, is a positive, constructive use of artificial intelligence and clones and replica. It's essentially a replica of me. But I have to tell you, this is profoundly distressing to see so many people essentially opt out of the data, the real world data dating market to eliminate chances of having what some point history may say. I'm just biased because I put a favor bias in favor of real human beings over bits and zeros and ones. But I do, I do think it's okay to have a bias when you have a relationship with a bot. It's not a real relationship. Oh, but it knows me so well. It's comforting. It's telling you what you want to hear. There's something profoundly stunted and frankly, pathetic about someone who's given up on trying to have real relationships with real human beings. Now, let me put a caveat in there. I understand there are some people who have developmental disabilities, other serious problems, and this may be better than nothing. If your choice is literally no other human being other than a paid caregiver will speak to me versus one of these AI clones, then I would say, okay, if that's giving you aid and comfort and nurturing you in some way, it certainly is better than nothing. But for other people who have dated in the real world, had their heart broken, guess what? So have I. So has every single human being in the world who's ever gotten married or had a real relationship. You don't have to get married to have a relationship. You have kids, you don't have to have kids. But if you want to be a part of the real world, you have to be open to someone telling you you're wrong to telling you you're stupid, to tell you you're selfish occasionally, because we're all selfish occasionally. And that's the big problem with these AI clones. They're going to tell you you're right, you're wonderful, you're sweet, you deserve the best. And here's the problem. Maybe you don't. Maybe you're not the sweetest. Maybe I'm not the most handsome, even if my clone, my replica, tells me I am. And by the way, my clone will not tell me I'm the most handsome. It's programmed to be honest and give honest feedback. I would urge you, if you're using one of these, be careful because it can seem like, okay, I'm still dating, I'm out meeting people, I'm socializing. You know, let me just spend five minutes a day on this app. Five minutes becomes 10 minutes becomes an hour, and next thing you know, it's long work week. You didn't go out, it's Friday night. It's when you would normally socialize and you're thinking to yourself, well, gosh, I'm just tired. Why don't I talk to AI boyfriend here? AI girlfriend. They get me. It's relaxing. I don't have to switch out of my bathrobe. That's the real danger to go down that path. So I'm urging you, don't do it if you have children or if you have young people in your family who've not started having real human relationships. With all the mess, the bus, the drama, the heartbreak. And you see them on these things. If it's, if it's a cell phone you're paying for, if you're paying for the Internet connection, take the phone, hit delete on the app. I guarantee you your, your 16 year old kid, when they're 30, they're not going to be saying, wow, you really ruined my life when you deleted the replica app on my phone 14 years ago. That I feel pretty confident is not going to happen. Also in the news, Oklahoma schools chief resigns. Ryan Walters had to resign his position. He was the Oklahoma superintendent. He was pushing Bible instruction. He was part of the culture wars there in Oklahoma. It's been announced he'll step down by the end of the month and he's going to lead something called the Teachers Freedom Alliance. Here's the thing, he was basically forcing people to buy Bibles and to use Bibles and to share just biblical messages in public schools. Here's the part I wish more people would put a focus on. Ryan Walters. Why are you so insecure about your own religion? Why do you think your own religion is so weak, so pathetic, so lame that no one will be attracted to it unless you use the force of big government to ram it down their throats? Because that's essentially what you're saying. There are hundreds if not thousands of religions in the world and you don't see, if you want to criticize Islam, you can criticize any religion. It's not going to offend me. But you can't criticize leading Muslims for coming to your cities in Oklahoma saying, we want you to use your tax dollars to buy the Quran and we want you to spend time every day preaching the message of the Quran. You don't see that they realize they have to compete in the marketplace of ideas. And it's just bizarre to me that so many people who think, oh, my religion is so great and it's the one true religion, but I still want to force it down your throat using your tax dollars. They don't really believe in separation of church and state. And the odd thing is, these are the people who are. They're beating their chest the loud, I believe in the Constitution. I believe in America, I'm patriotic. And yet they do not believe in the separation of church and state. They do not believe our Constitution when it explicitly says we don't have a state religion here. The government is not supposed to support any one religion. I'm sorry, if you're buying the book, the sacred text of any one religion and putting it out here for all to see, are you putting 10 commandments from any one religion and not putting all the others? That is the state trying to put its thumb on the scale and influence people to pick that one religion. It means you do not believe in separation of church and state. It means you do not believe in the US Constitution. It means you do not believe in the American experiment. You believe in theocracy. And hey, maybe you should go over to the Saudi Arabia film festival and you can talk shop with theocrats over there. You probably, you have, frankly, have a lot more in common with the people who run theocracies. Okay, final issue on our grab bag today. The US May bar foreigners over Kirk remarks. This is truly distressing. The State Department says foreigners who celebrate or trivialize Charlie Kirk's killing could lose basis, part of a broader posture of online speech. Security supporters call it common sense. Former diplomats warn of an ideological litmus test for entry. This is troubling at many, many levels because it's yet another sign that we are moving down the road towards an autocracy where it's not about hate speech anymore. No serious person, left, right, center, truly believes you should be able to stand up and call for taking the life of another human being. I haven't seen anyone advocate that who is a prominent member of the Democratic Party or the media or the left or anything like that. Haven't seen anyone calling for atrocities, assassinations. No one thinks that's defensible. But now we're talking about something profoundly different. We're talking about, wow, if you criticize a conservative, a MAGA supporter, somebody likes Donald Trump, if you say something that hurts our feelings, we're not going to let you into the country that is profoundly un American. That is exactly what is an ideological litmus test. And the federal government is empowering its now we do have a deep state, essentially empowering people to go through what someone tweeted, what they wrote, what they said in social media last week, last month, last year, maybe 30 years ago. And if you said something offensive to dear Leader, oh, you can't come to the United States. This is a pattern and it is why it's I wish it had gotten more attention. But when Stephen Miller, by many accounts the most powerful member of the Trump administration not named Trump, said this past weekend that the Democratic Party is a violent organization, is essentially a terrorist organization, he's laying the groundwork to do not just what the State Department is talking about, of banning foreigners who criticized Charlie Kirk, he's laying the groundwork to ban Americans who ever say anything critical, not of Charlie Kirk, but of Donald Trump. And then it's logically follows, why not just ban the Democratic Party, why not just officially label the Democratic Party a terrorist organization? And then we don't have to have elections, we don't have to deal with these debate things, we don't have to bother counting votes. It's just, hey, we won because the other guys are terrorists. Now, if you know anything about how fascism works, how the right wing mind works, how authoritarians work, this is what happens in every single authoritarian nation ever. Authoritarians simply decide and label anyone who disagrees with me is a terrorist threat. And we're in a state of crisis. It's an emergency. We've heard that time after time after time on every issue. It's been the phony context for tariffs, for sending our military into American cities that have some of the lowest crime they've had in 30 years. But when it comes to the right wing mindset, the authoritarian mindset, it's always about you declare an emergency, you then say anyone opposes you is a terrorist. If they're a terrorist, we don't have to debate them because they're such an immediate threat. All we have to do is eliminate them. Now, it may not be that the Democratic Party is officially outlawed by 2026, but if you can indict James Comey on absolute utter nonsense that no one who's ever prosecuted a case in their entire career was willing to prosecute. If you could do that, why not indict the head of the Democratic Party for Trump? Trump charges. Why not indict Chuck Schumer? Why not indict Jeffries? Why not indict the local Democratic mayor? Why not indict anyone who criticizes you? That is, in fact, where we are headed. I hope it stops there. There are some green shoots occasionally of rationality in America. I'm glad to see Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air, but it's not slowing down all the other assaults on our democracy. Hey, I want to thank you for spending time with me today. Today was a little more political than I like to be. I'm here not as a political commentator. I'm here as someone to analyze top business news stories, technology, culture, stories that I filter through the lens of communication skills, personal development skills to help you become more successful. If you spent time with me today, I want to thank you, but I also want to urge you, speak out yourself. Yes. Thank you for listening to me. Yes, I want to thank you if you leave a comment or a question or a disagreement, but also speak out yourself because the barriers are gone. As we talked about in the Jeff Bezos story. The barriers are gone to publishing a book. The barriers are gone to having your own TV show, radio show, podcast. So speak out on issues of your concern. Thanks so much. See you tomorrow.