San Francisco’s Crime Miracle, The Numbers Fox News Won’t Show You

Foreign. The Internet's backbone buckles as Amazon's cloud outage freezes half the web, including my teleprompter today. Then a daring 4 minute jewel heist shuts down the Louvre and could make its treasures more valuable. San Francisco's doom loop. It's over. Crime is down, rents are up and the numbers embarrass so called law and order districts. Paramount Skydance slashes 2,000 jobs. Hollywood's latest victims of the streaming economy and chaos on a California freeway. Marines fire live artillery over Interstate 5 while ICE agents ram an American citizen's truck. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. All right, thank you so much for joining me today. This is Filtered, your daily dive into the top news stories that relate to business, economics, technology and culture. All filtered through the lens of, of communication and personal development skills. If you're new to the program, what we're all about is helping you be more informed on top stories of the day, but also building your own skills so that you're more successful in your personal life and your professional life. Let's dive right in with the first story. And this of course relates to the Amazon outage. This is a big, big deal for the entire, entire Internet. And specifically it's affecting me right now because I use my teleprompter. I'll show you what I do every day with this show. I create the scripts just to set up the top stories of the day, the first 60 seconds or so. I create a script, copy it, put it on a prompt, smart website, and then I put it right into my iPad, put it on a little shelf in front of my camera and then I'm able to read it and it's, it hears my voice and advances as I speak. So that's how we do that. Show this show. We're not doing it today. If you're listening on any podcast platform, it's not going to make any difference to you. But it's one of those things where you don't even think about it until it's gone. And that really does bring us to our top story of the day. When Amazon sneezes, the Internet catches a cold. According to the Associated Press, a massive Amazon Web Services outage early Monday morning knocked out some of the Internet's biggest platforms, including Snapchat, Robinhood, Fortnite, and even the McDonald's app. And yes, it knocked out my teleprompter app. The Trouble began around 3am Eastern Time and this is October 20, 2025. We are live to you today. It started at 3am Eastern Time, when Amazon's cloud division, AWS, reported increased error rates across its key U.S. east region. Engineers scrambled as users worldwide suddenly couldn't trade post or even order food. By sunrise, Amazon said most systems had recovered, but I can tell you, not all. But the dis show just how dependent the modern world is on just a few tech giants. As cybersecurity expert Patrick Burgess put it, quote, the world now runs on the cloud. When something breaks, users don't see Amazon. They just see that Snapchat or Roblox stopped working. It's another reminder that our digital lives, from banking to breakfast, now rest in the hands of a handful of servers in Northern Virginia and a few other places. Okay, so what's the real message here? You and I and the whole world economy is vulnerable. We're vulnerable to just a handful of big tech companies. We're vulnerable to the whole Internet working all the time. So if someone figures out how to pull that plug or put a virus in there, that shuts it down, life as we know it will end. Let's dig a little deeper here. I don't mean we're all literally going to die, but our normal existence is going to be radically different. Now, if this had happened when I first went on the Internet in 1995, or I guess I went on in 94, wouldn't have mattered much. Most of the world had not really migrated to the web. But now it is. I wish I could tell you here's a foolproof way of being prepared at all times so that you're not vulnerable, but the reality is you are. If you only invest in stocks that are restaurant chains and hotel chains, yeah, maybe you won't be hit as much if the Internet goes down. Although hotels get their bookings through the Internet and so do restaurants, maybe you're not as vulnerable, but you would have lost out on all the upside the technology stocks have brought for the last 20 years. So I don't have an easy answer for anyone on how we can prepare. It does make me feel vulnerable, and it should make you feel vulnerable. Now, what happened today? It seemed like Amazon got on top of it quickly. Most of the big important sites are back, and yes, the world can get by without me using the teleprompter for a day. But what if stock markets everywhere, what if all banking systems around the world can't connect on the Internet? We could see the entire economy grind to a halt. Now, if it happens for five minutes, probably won't be a Big deal. But what if it happens? As long as the US government shutdown happens, then we're talking about economic chaos, political chaos, cultural chaos. People are going to be walking around cursing at their phones, not knowing what to do. I've got really two suggestions for you. One is learn some skill that's useful in the real world. I'm currently trying to figure out how to change the tire on my bicycle. My own skills have gotten rusty and it's so easy these days, especially if you have a little bit of money to just get used to. Click, click TaskRabbit this, someone else for that. Uber for that. Not know how to drive, not know how to navigate. I mean, just imagine all the people if Waze goes down for a week and they're not gonna be able to drive to the grocery store three blocks away because they never bothered learning. Turn left, turn right, go straight. One of the things I would recommend is spend some time each day with your own head in the world, trying to figure things out. Periodically, I give myself a challenge of driving somewhere, driving home from somewhere without the GPS on to activate a different part of my brain. Yes. Now, I had no idea this was going to happen, but yesterday I decided I needed to spend even more time away from this. I'm pointing to my cell phone now, which I'm using to stream live on TikTok. So I went for a nice hour and a half hike in a nature preserve in Florida with my family. Left the cell phone in the car. I wanted to completely decompress and get out of the digital world. Yesterday I went and played pickleball for two hours. Now, normally I'm ashamed to admit this, I would take my phone in my bag and then if I'm sitting at a game or it's a water break, quickly check email, text. That's a bad habit to do on a Sunday morning, or really anytime when you're exercising. I asked myself, what's the worst possible thing that could happen if I couldn't read a text message, an email, a notification for two hours on Sunday morning? And the answer was absolutely nothing. So I just left my phone at home for two hours. And the result is it was more relaxing, more invigorating, and it allowed my brain to go into a different place. Now, this doesn't solve the whole problem of if your entire business and livelihood is dependent on the Internet, as pretty much mine is. Doesn't solve that problem, but at least it can remove some of the terror you might feel if the Internet is down for a day, what I'm hoping you do. If the Internet does go down for all of us that you've got really two options. I'm hoping you pick one over. The other one is to sit around and fret and stare at your screen and hit refresh and wait for it to come back and stare at your phone and hit refresh and wait for it to come back and panic and get nervous, give yourself an ulcer. That's one solution. The other solution is to say, hey, it's a vacation. It's a free vacation, maybe it's not a paid vacation for you, maybe it is. But to say, look, it's a vacation day, let me go for a long walk, let me get a pad and pen and start handwriting a novel, let me start painting, let me fix something in the backyard, let me straighten out my garage, use it as an opportunity rather than a moment of terror. Long term, if there's no Internet, it's going to be a problem. I'm not kidding you. We're all going to have to become subsistence farmers, I guess. Although that's not what the world looked like in 1987, before there was a world Wide Web. So there would be some way of coping with it, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun or as lucrative for a lot of us. I'm TJ Walker. You are watching and listening to Filtered, if you are, thank you so much. If you're listening on any podcasting platform, we're relatively new. We're only in about our seventh week in the podcasting world, the audio only world. So please follow the show on any podcasting platform. Subscribe, doesn't cost anything. And please, please leave a review. If you're watching us on TikTok, on YouTube, on X, on Rumble. We are all across the political spectrum. We're on about a dozen different social media sites streaming live now, but the show is also available on demand. If you are watching the show anywhere, please just put a message right there. Say, hey, hi TJ, I'm on Rumble today. Or I'm on YouTube, just wanted to say hello, I'd like to hear from you. You don't have to have any brilliant comment if you don't want to. If you have a question, a critique, a fact check, happy to hear from you, but otherwise just say hello, I would love to hear from you. We've got a lot coming up in the show today. Stay tuned. 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 instant. And welcome back to Filtered. We're going to dive right into issue two, the Louvre Jewel Heist. According to the Associated Press, the Louvre will stay closed for at least a day after a lightning fast jewel heist stunned Paris and the art world. Thieves used a basket lift, scaled the museum's facade, smashed display cases, and made off with priceless Napoleonic era jewels, all in under four minutes. Someone's going to have a good movie to write here. I think the robbery happened in broad daylight, just steps from the Mona Lisa, the most famous and one stolen painting on earth. That theft back in 1911 turned the Mona Lisa from a respected portrait into a global obsession. Ironically, experts say history may repeat itself. The publicity from this audacious crime could send the value and cultural cachet of the Louvre's collections soaring. Actually, that's a misuse of the word ironically. I apologize. French officials admit multiple security failures, from unsecured windows to the ease of parking a lift outside the building. Eight items were taken, including diamond studded crowns and emerald necklaces once worn by Napoleon's queens. But as with the Mona Lisa's theft over a century ago, the world is now talking about the Louvre again. Not because of what's inside, but because of what was taken. In the strange economy of fame, even a crime can become priceless advertising. Okay, so what's the real message here? When it comes to art and stolen art, as human beings, we're predictable. You can take something that no one really paid that much attention to and say, oh, it was stolen and now, oh, we want to know more. It must be super valuable. That happened to the Mona Lisa and it's now happened to these Napoleonic jewels stolen from the Louvre. Let's dig a little deeper here. If you've never been to the Louvre, I highly recommend it. I've been a handful of times, most recently, I guess, a couple of summers ago when my family and I had the pleasure and privilege of living in Paris for a month. And it is what it's cracked up to be. Now, if you absolutely hate art, okay not your thing. I get it. But if you love art, this is the biggest, best museum in the world, in my opinion. I don't know if that's true in terms of actual square footage, but it's gigantic. It's absolutely gigantic. And its collection cannot be surpassed. I mean, it makes the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City look like a, you know, an extra classroom built at a school, a modular classroom. It's so big, it's so vast. And it is interesting those of you who are not familiar with the history of the Mona Lisa. Now, it was respected, it was considered a very nice painting, but it was only after it was stolen and all the attention that came to the Mona Lisa that it gained the international renown that it became the most famous painting in the world. So the creators of these jewels that were stolen are not going to benefit. And da Vinci didn't necessarily benefit, obviously, because it was stolen way after his death. But these jewels are going to be talked about. It's also, frankly, going to make it very difficult for a jewel thief to sell this on the open market anywhere. Now, they could always sell it to some reclusive billionaire who doesn't want to ever show it to anyone. They just want to be able to say, I've got it in my safe. And when they have a dinner party for three or four other evil billionaire oligarchs that go, hey, come on, let me show you what I got. But things like that have a habit of getting talked about and being discovered. So that's one of the problems with stealing a thing versus money. Money's fungible. Now, I'm not here to tell you steal money or steal crypto or hack into someone's bank account, but if I were going to steal something, I don't think I would steal something this famous, because it does bring up the issue of how do you ever monetize it? How do you ever get rid of it? And then how do you not spend the rest of your life worried that people will talk and it comes back to you and you get in trouble. So the other reason I wanted to point out this show, this story on the show, is to reveal how we, as human beings like to think. We're completely rational and intelligent and sophisticated. We like to think, oh, I know this particular vintage and year of the Bordeaux is so much better than others. And quite often we're manipulated by media. We're manipulated by the bottle, the label, an advertisement. We saw where we think it was from research, we think we know the Mona Lisa is Obviously the best piece of art in the world. Well, it's good art, there's no doubt about that. But the fact that so many people can name it as the best painting in the world is not a function of its true artistic merit. It's a function of publicity, of media exposure, of the way human beings process story. It was an interesting story that in 1911 someone broke in, stole the Mona Lisa and they didn't recover it for something like a year later. It was quite a while. It wasn't like the next day they found it in an alley. So it generated lots and lots of media attention. My point here is all of us, when it comes to our likes, our so called tastes, our insights into the world, we're all affected by media messages, by stories by mass media we might think we are not. It was only a few years ago I didn't even realize the Mona Lisa had been stolen. But I of course would have said oh, the Mona Lisa is clearly one of the best paintings of the world without knowing why. So that's the real power of the news media is quite often it shapes the zeitgeist in such a way that you don't even know why you have a particular opinion. And that relates directly to what we're going to talk about in the very next story. Back in a moment. Filtered is brought to you by the following. Get the deeper takes. I don't post anywhere else. Subscribe now at the end 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 communicators. Check it out at tjwalker AI it's not just smart, it's personal. Okay, we are back. My name is TJ Walker. This is Filtered where we look at the top stories of the day. And we're going to move on now to San Francisco. San Francisco rebound according to the Wall Street Journal. Again Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch owned conservative publication but straight news. According to the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco has pulled off one of the most remarkable comebacks in recent urban history. Crime has dropped to its lowest levels in decades. Let me say that again because some of you are putting your finger in your ear saying well, that's not right. Obviously TJ messed up. Obviously. What he meant to say is crime is going crazy and spiraling out of control in sample. We all know that, right? Well, no, turns out that's wrong. Again, don't take my word for it. Listen to a respectable, by any definition, centrist, mainstream or even conservative media outlet like the Wall Street Journal. This is based on their reporting. So, according to the Journal, crime has dropped to the lowest level in decades. Burglaries are down 28%. Homicides are at a 70 year low. Let me say that again. When it comes to bang bang, you're murdered. In San Francisco, the rate is lower than it has been in 70 years. The city that once symbolized urban decay is now being revived by the AI boom. Salesforce just announced a $15 billion investment and companies like OpenAI and Databricks are expanding downtown. But perception hasn't caught up with reality. While conservative pundits still talk about lawless San Francisco, the numbers tell a very different story. In Shreveport, Louisiana, part of House Speaker Mike Johnson's district, the violent crime rate is roughly seven times higher than in San Francisco. Let me state that again in Mike Johnson, the MAGA Republican speaker of the House. In his district in Louisiana, the violent crime rate is seven times higher than in San Francisco. That's 700% higher. It's pretty significant. San Francisco's homicide rate is 3.1, which is too high. 3.1 per 100,000 people. But in Shreveport it's 21.7. 21.7 people are killed, are murdered for every 100,000 people in Shreveport. Now San Francisco's reality defies its reputation. Streets are cleaner, tech firms are hiring, and tourism is rebounding. The so called doom loop was really a data distortion. When facts replace fear, San Francisco looks not like a failed experiment, but like one of America's most successful urban turnarounds. Okay, what's the real message here? You have been fed a lie. The idea that San Francisco is out of control, dangerous murder everywhere. No, the homicide rate is lower than it's been in 70 years. You really want to avoid danger? You really want to avoid something bad happening to you? Avoid Mike Johnson's district in Shreveport, Louisiana. Violent crime is 700% higher there than it is in San Francisco. Let's dig a little bit deeper and look at the facts. Get San Francisco homicides, 27 projected lowest since the 1950s. Shreveport homicide, much, much smaller place 52 in 2024, seven times higher. Burglaries down 28%. Now there are Exceptions if you happen to be Speaker Pelosi's husband. Yeah, violent crime has been up. Can't exactly blame that one on the liberals or the Democrats, can we? Salesforce investing $15 billion into an A. Are the streets of San Francisco still. I won't kid you now, I haven't been in a few years. It is one of my favorite cities. And yeah, there are streets, especially in the Tenderloin district, where you do see more homeless than you do in a lot of towns. More so than in my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. If you're just on the main thoroughfares, you do see homeless, you do see needles on the street. I'm not going to tell you it's perfect, but it's relative to where it was. It's getting better. That's all you can ask for when it comes to holding elected officials accountable. Did you make things better? It's better than it's been in 70 years. The rents are up, up 12%. Now, maybe you don't like that if you're paying the rent, but it's certainly a sign of growth and vibrancy in a city. What you don't want is a place like Detroit where you can't even give away buildings or you're giving away buildings for a dollar. Forget trying to rent them, you can't even give them away. So San Francisco is safer and richer and more resilient than critics claims. Now here's the fascinating thing. Rupert Murdoch is the guy behind the Wall Street Journal. He's also the guy behind Fox News and the New York Post. If you watch Fox News, if you read the New York Post, you're always going to hear about how crime is spiraling out of control in big cities controlled by Democrats. San Francisco, Chicago, New York City. Why are we hearing this again and again and again? Dig deeper. Ask yourself what's the ideological agenda? And the agenda is very clear. The Wall Street Journal is such a big, well respected brand, has so much of its reputation and mainstream business community. Rupert Murdoch, to his credit, has not given marching orders to the reporters to skew the news. The Wall Street Journal didn't just tell Americans that Donald Trump won the election in 2020, whereas Fox did basically and certainly implied it. So there's a difference there. The New York Post is kind of a rag and Fox News is basically a tabloid on TV screens. So he's happy to use that as a political instrument. He helps his allies, he helps Republicans who will cut his taxes and allow him to merge and acquire and do what he wants, and it's a way of attacking Democrats. Now, are there problems with Democratically run cities? Yes. Democrats, in my view, have done an absolutely horrific job of providing housing for people, especially young people. So I'm not here in San Francisco is among the worst. New York City is among the worst. So I'm not here as some Democratic apologist saying, wow, Democratic cities are always better than Republicans. No, I play it to you straight. I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist. So yes, Democrats do deserve blame for how they've handled issues of housing and permitting and letting developers build things in a way that it doesn't take 12 years out of their life and 159 lawsuit resolutions. So Democrats deserve blame for that, but they do not deserve blame for crime spiraling out of control when there's been almost systematic improvement not every year, but the trend line over the last 30 years. My goodness, New York City went from 2,000 murders a year in the early 90s and almost that many when Giuliani the Republican was mayor, down to a few hundred today. So if you consider yourself a sane, sentient human being who wants accurate information about deciding, okay, what politicians should we reward? Which ones should we punish, who's doing a good job? You have to have accurate information. And that's why I wanted to put a spotlight on this. Is crime too high? Sure. I wish we could be more like Japan. A lot of other countries where the crime is, you know, we have more crime in one hour in a big city sometimes than a country like Japan has in a year. So it's still too high. But that's not the same thing as spiraling out of control and getting worse and worse and worse and worse. It's just not happening. If you believe that there is a reason for it, you have been played the fool. You have been lied to by ideological actors who are trying to create a political landscape that supports their party, that will let them take over, not worry about antitrust and cut their taxes. And that really is the bottom line there. We're going to switch to our next topic in just a moment after this commercial word. Want a shortcut to powerful communication skills? Download the TJ Walker Success Library, five of my best selling books for only 9.95. Go to tjwalker.com books instant access big impact. I've had entire YouTube channels wiped out overnight, so if you enjoy this show, don't lose track of me. The Safest Way is my newsletter. Substack.com J WalkerSuccess Sign up for free and you'll get exclusive commentary, live session alerts and first access to new tools. Again, that's substack.com just search for TJ Walker or go to substack.com jwalkersuccess your direct line to Everything I do. Welcome back to Filtered. I'm your host TJ Walker. This is the show where we look at top business stories, technology culture stories of the day, and analyze them, filter them through the lens of personal development skills and communication skills. Let's dive right into issue four paramount Skydance to cut 2,000 jobs in massive October Layoffs According to Variety magazine, mass layoffs are coming to Paramount Skydance the week of October 27th. A new CEO David Ellison, brings a sweeping cost cutting overhaul. About 2000 jobs are expected to be eliminated with more cuts internationally as the company races to achieve $2 billion in savings following its $8 billion merger this summer. Jeff Schell, former NBCUniversal CEO and now president of Paramount Skydance, said the layoffs will be completed before the company's next earning report on November 10. The new management, backed by Ellison's father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is attempting to streamline operations and pivot more aggressively toward digital and streaming growth. Despite the layoffs, Paramount Skydance is still making huge content investments. It just signed a $7.7 billion UFC broadcasting deal. It acquired the Free Press for $150 million and locked in the Duffer Brothers from Netflix to produce exclusive programming. Industry analysts say the layoffs may please Wall street, at least in the short term. But for thousands of workers across cbs, mtv, Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures, the transition underscores an uncomfortable truth. In the streaming era, even success can cost you your job. Okay, so what's the real message here? If you work for Paramount or any big media company today, you need to be chewing your fingernails down to the quick. You need to be nervous because there's an excellent chance that you could be fired in the next week, the next month, the next quarter, or certainly the next two years. There is no safety working in any big media company because every day AI is making things more efficient and corporate overlords are trying to reduce cost. If you want a media job, there's only one solution. You've got to be your own media company. Work your way up from day one. Get your own YouTube channel, your own substack, your own podcast. Let's dig a little deeper here and look at some of the facts. As I mentioned, 2000 jobs are going to be cut. Really? In just the next week, they want to cut $2 billion out of operating costs. That's a fancy way of saying, I want to fire a whole bunch of people. And if we have to cut quality control, so be it. I mean, you look at just how they've essentially destroyed cbs. Those of you who haven't followed it, I would urge you take a look at John Oliver on HBO and one of his recent pieces where he analyzed exactly what happened with the history of the Free Press and Barry Weiss. So CBS a part of this major acquisition of Paramount, and it was done by supporters of President Trump. Larry Ellison, big fan of Donald Trump, big fan of the Trump administration, saying, hey, acquire anyone you want. There's no such thing as anti reg or anti trust anymore. Do whatever you want. He likes that. That helps him line his pocket. So they've essentially installed a right wing henchwoman, a propagandist, to be the editor in chief of CBS News, which is appalling considering the Tiffany reputation this network had. This the network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, people I grew up with, and now their editor in chief, who really only has two ideas in her head. Now, she's never managed a single TV network or a TV show for that matter. She's never really been a reporter. But she knows two ideas. And sometimes knowing two things is enough to be rewarded by people if they have a huge incentive of promoting that idea that helps mask political problems they have. So here are the two big ideas that Barry Weiss and the Free Press have. One is here's another example of how the far left has gone too far. Story after story after story of the Free Press is about one thing. It's about how the far left has gone too far. Now, does the far left occasionally go too far? Sure. But we live in a time where right wing extremists control the United States government, specifically the White House, specifically the House of representatives, specifically the U.S. senate, specifically the Supreme Court, specifically the administrative state. And I would argue they really control the media and the media narrative in the country as well. So when one extremist faction that is actively shredding our Constitution, actively destroying norms about separation of powers in our country, when that's what's happening every day, when American citizens are being knocked to the ground, when American ministers are having gas balls shot at their head, and Bari Weiss thinks the only thing we got to talk about is the far left has gone too far again, my goodness, someone said the word Latinx in a faculty lounge in 2017. Let's do another story on that. It's totally bizarre. So that's her one big idea. Her other big idea is Israel can do no wrong. Anyone who ever criticizes Israel is an anti Semite, far left extremist. That's her other big idea and that is appealing to certain political factions as well. It's not news, but it meets an ideological agenda. Okay, well, so what's the real message for you and for me? I think the message is don't waste time sending resumes to big media companies or don't put all your eggs in one basket. The beauty and here's where I will give Barry Weiss credit. She famously quit the New York Times and she just said, I'm going to create my own thing. She started with a newsletter, unsubstack. She then started with podcasts. She then hired other people. She did bring in investors. You don't have to get that fancy. But she built her own media company from the ground up using basically free tools. Substack is a free tool. YouTube is a free tool. TikTok that I'm on right now is a free tool for the most part. It's free for distribution. You're not buying time the way a TV preacher buys time on the local ABC affiliate on Sunday morning. It's a free tool. So that's really my advice to you, is spend time using media tools that are free. Now, it's not free in the sense that you can snap your finger and it's done. You got to invest your time. And you might want to invest in a nice microphone, as I have here, and lights. And you may want different cameras from time to time, but you don't have to. You could simply use your cell phone. And yet no one's going to give you a nice paycheck day one. But my big advice to any young person today who comes to me and says, well, tj, I want to be a talk show host or I want to be a news analyst or I want to be on espn. My advice to them is just start today, pick a niche, report on that, do commentary on that, interview guest in your niche and create content on a daily basis. And meanwhile, have a day job, work at Amazon Warehouse. If you have have a day job to pay your bills and then spend evenings, weekends, free time creating content, building a community of people who care about what you do. And whether it takes a month, five months, six months, or six years, at some point it could get to the point where you can pay yourself a living wage, maybe more. Now, we're not all going to be Joe Rogan and get quarter billion dollar payouts. We're not all going to be Alex Cooper, call me dad. We're not going to all make hundreds of millions of dollars. But rather than kill yourself sending resume tapes and demo tapes to every single network affiliate in every small town in America with the hopes of getting that first job as a sports reporter where you have to move across the country to get a job that pays $27,000 a year and you're going to be fired six months later when they just shut news down. Start right now. Build your own media empire. This is the age of empire. I do believe that I'm trying to do it right here by doing a daily show that I then turn into 14 pieces of content, 14 editorial pieces of content, seven days a week. Now am I making billions of dollars from it? No. I mean, I have a legacy business of I've got 12 million online student enrollments, but it took me a long time to get there. And that's another example of I didn't wait for a university to hire me as a public speaking and media training coach and a personal development coach. I just started making courses and I lost money for years, but ultimately it paid off. I can't tell you the best thing for you to start making courses or to make a YouTube channel or a podcast or focus all your energy on really entertaining 14 second TikTok video. I can't tell you what's right for you, but I, I can tell you the future, I believe is about individuals who create their own media companies, build an audience and then maybe CBS doesn't give you $150 million, maybe Spotify doesn't give you a quarter billion dollars, but more opportunities flow your way, more income flows your way, and when you own your own show, nobody can fire you. That's what I like about my show and that's what I think is really meaningful to people in the long run. So please, if you have an interest in media communicating or just if you have a muffler repair shop, you need to think of yourself as a media company because that's how you communicate with customers. Whether you're trying to sell more mufflers or you're a full time journalist or commentator, you're trying to sell your ideas to the largest audience possible so that you can then sell to advertisers and sponsors and partnerships. So I want you to really develop that entrepreneurial mentality. Even if you don't think of yourself as an entrepreneur, even if you think I just want to be a straight, serious journalist. And work for the Financial Times one day. Okay. But I'm convinced that five years from now, the number one way to get attention from an editor at the Financial Times or any other publication is when they see your writing in a substack, a newsletter or some other platform and they've been reading it for a while and they like your ideas and they see the massive following you have created. That's how you're going to get jobs in traditional media in the future. It's pretty much already happening. You don't get a job from the traditional media anymore unless you already have a huge following that you have built for yourself. So thank you for watching me, but I hope that more of you will spend time creating content and then pitching me saying, hey tj, come watch my new show. I will happily take a look at it. Let's check in and see if any comments have come in. I do see a number of you have written and I do want to encourage you. You can always write leave comments here when we're live or when it's on demand. If you are listening on a podcast platform, some of those do have places for comments. Leave them. I try to check on those. You can always go to my YouTube channel @tj walkersuccess on YouTube. Hit the post tab and that is where you can leave a comment for me. And I will always, always see that. So we're going to be back in just a moment with our last big story of the day and then we'll go to the grab bag section. Back in a moment. We'll be right back after this break. Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to tjwalker.com advertise Most people can't afford a full time coach and even if you could, good luck finding one who's available when you need them. That's why I created the TJ Walker AI clone. It's built on my 40 plus years of real world coaching and training. You get my exact advice, style and frameworks instantly. Ask it how to handle a tough question. Get feedback on your elevator pitch. Rehearse your next big talk. This is the next generation of communication coaching. It's smarter than an app, more personal than a course, and always ready. Start using it today at tjwalker AI. You'll wonder how you ever did without it. Want to advertise to ambitious, upscale professionals who actually care about communication success and Results? Go to tjwalker.com advertise and no, we don't Take ads for crypto supplements or junk food. Welcome back to Filtered. I'm your host, TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. Let's hop right into issue five. Marines, ice and a double standard of outrage when the military and ICE go off script and the media stays silent. According to NBC News, a California Highway Patrol vehicle was struck by shrapnel after United States Marines fired live artillery over Interstate 5 during a 250 anniversary demonstration at Camp Pendleton, an event attended by Vice President J.D. vance and Defense Secretary, excuse me, War Secretary Pete Hegseth. No one was hurt, but the blast ripped through a patrol car's hood and rained debris on the freeway. Governor Gavin Newsom called it, quote, an absurd show of force that could have killed someone. At the same time, CNN aired video of ICE agents in California ramming the truck of Leo Martinez, a US Citizen and immigration rights volunteer, before arresting him. He was hospitalized, then detained. Here's the irony. Under President Obama, when a fictional military training exercise called Jade Helm was announced in Texas, conservative media lost its mind for months, screaming about martial law. Now with real shrapnel hitting highways and ICE trucks ramming citizens, the silence is dead deafening. It's not about politics. It's about accountability. When power acts recklessly and the media looks away, democracy becomes collateral damage. What's the real message here? Over the weekend, American citizens were attacked by a military force in California. Shrapnel was hitting their cars. Unfortunately, it was an American military outfit doing this. This is an absolute outrage. American citizens are under attack and it's getting too hard to deny. We are essentially living under martial law and our democracy is ending without a peep from conservative media. This is particularly galling because I absolutely, there's few guarantees in life, but I'll give you one guarantee and you can say, well, T.J. it can't be proven if during the Biden administration or the Obama administration, if a conservative American minister had been shot in the head with a gas ball, there would have been instantly a call to impeach President Trump or President, excuse me, President Biden or President Obama. If shrapnel from a U.S. marine had been fired on U.S. soil, taken out a car, almost killed someone. If that had happened under Obama or Biden instantly, I mean, within 24 hours, articles of impeachment would have been drawn up. This would have been declared a constitutional crisis, an egregious abuse of power. And it would be the only thing Fox News, all the right wing pundits, the Wall Street Journal, Newsmax, Sean Hannity, the only thing talked about and it'll be the only thing every Republican member of Congress would talk about is we have to impeach President Biden or President Obama attacking Americans on American soil. And yet with so much going on, this isn't even getting noticed. Certainly the people who seem to care about jack booted thugs coming to take over or martial law in the past are very silent here because they happen to like the dictator taking over. It's somehow okay. If officials who worked for the Biden administration or Obama administration had rammed a car that had a Trump sticker on the back, slammed an American citizen to the ground and arrested him for someone who had committed no crime, was a US Citizen, there would be absolute pandemonium again. Articles of impeachment would be drawn up, hearings would be held. They'd probably cast the vote for conviction within about 24 hours. But all of this gets absolute no attention from conservative the mainstream media is kind of burying it because there's so many other constitutional atrocities going on on a daily basis. So I don't want to play that game. I want to report news to you and then analyze again. I'm not here as a reporter. I'm analyzing news through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills because I want you to be as successful as you can be. And you can't do that without getting accurate information. Now everyone has a bias. I have a bias, you have a bias. And if you think you don't have a bias, you're suffering from self delusion bias. Sorry to tell you that, but. But some biases are so strong and they pervert our entire culture to the point of skewing and even destroying democracy. Democracy is based on a premise that free information can flow back and forth so that citizens in general can have a shared sense of reality and then make decisions votes about who should have power running that society. But if all you ever hear is one team is 100% awful and one team is 100% great, you're not getting the full picture. And I'm certainly not here to tell you the Democrats are always great. They have plenty of falls. But right now, other than a few cities, the Democrats aren't running anything in America. So if you're concerned with power and abuses of power, it is going to focus you on the people who actually hold the power. So this is a travesty. But you know, there's a lot of travesties going on. That leads me to the first grab bag story of the day. You've heard me talking about this the last couple of days. George Santos had his. He was the fraudster criminal guy who lied about everything all the time. I mean, he's like a Saturday Night Live character, the inveterate liar that if you wrote what he actually said in real life into a comedy script, it would seem over the top and ridiculous. This is a guy who just lied about absolutely everything all the time. No, not all politicians lie about absolutely everything all the time. Not all the politicians steal money and defraud people and are guilty of wire fraud the way George Santos was found and convicted to a seven year sentence. All of that changed when Trump commuted his sentence. Trump basically said, here's a guy who says nice things about Trump and he's a con man and a fraudster. Kind of like the guy seems like me, seems like we have a similar worldview. So he wiped the site clean. That's not even what I'm upset about today. What I'm upset about today is CNN and Fox News are having him on tv. Good Lord, can we just get this guy off tv? His whole claim to fame is he'll lie and say anything to get attention. He wanted to be a congressman and if he had to lie and say his parents were killed in the Holocaust and were, then, you know, he was the star of the college softball team or volleyball. No lie was beyond the pale for this guy to say they got him more attention, got him votes, got him support, got him in Congress, got him in the spotlight. He's loving this. So I'm begging, Fox, I have different standards for you. If some guy says I like Trump and everything's a conspiracy, I kind of understand why you want to have him on your show. But cnn, please, let's not give this guy more oxygen, let's not give this attention whore more of what he's craving. I really wish we could just all ignore George Santos. I can't put him back in prison. I certainly hope the people who he defrauded, who he was supposed to pay back the $300,000. I certainly hope they can find state charges or local charges or some other way of going after this guy because they were defrauded and Trump's computation only affects federal crimes. So I hope this guy has hounded the rest of his life in the legal system. He might not ever get solitary confinement again, but those of us in the rest of society can at least not look. I've tried not to look at this guy. I'm tired of looking at his face. And it's not because he had too much or too little botox I'm tired of the idea that any lie is okay if it gets you attention and you say the dear Orange leader is a great one. I'm tired of living in a society where that is, you know, those are the two main principles. So please, if you're watching this and you're a booker at CNN or Bloomberg or any mainstream news organization, please, I'm begging you, don't book George Santos. Do not give him more time. Also in the news, there's simply more and more gambling going on everywhere in our culture. The New York Times reports that Robinhood now lets users gamble on sports and stocks on the same app. Donald Trump Jr. Is advising the firm. Look, I'm a big boy, you're a big boy, big girl, whatever. You should have the right to gamble in a free society. But systematically we are changing law after law after law, making it easier for people to spend higher percentages of their money just gambling. Let's not forget the most Americans have basically no money set aside for their own retirement. Now I'm not one of those trying to spread hysteria that Social Security will be gone and bankrupt. I don't think that's the case case. I think Social Security is going to continue longer than roads and highways and airports will. But that's a separate issue. It is a real problem that so many Americans have either no retirement, no savings whatsoever, or they have such a paltry amount that it could be spent in their first two years of retirement. That's a huge, huge problem. And now making it so easy that with the push of a button, rather than investing 10% of your income on an index fund, a broad based index fund, which on average, as we talk about on this show almost every day, an S&P 500 index fund has gone up about 10% a year for the last 25 years. Rather than spending money on that, you can gamble at all on whether it's going to rain tomorrow or what the temperature will be tomorrow or who's going to win or lose a football game. Here's the one thing I can predict about the future, and that is most people cannot predict the future. If anyone could really predict the future beyond mere random chance luck, they would already be a multi trillionaire. They'd already own everything. They'd already be fabulously wealthy and there's no one around there. Yeah, Elon Musk, pretty rich, but he cannot predict the future and everything. He didn't predict what would happen to Twitter when he took over, did he? So you might get lucky, you might get some tip From a friend who said, oh, this quarterback was out partying late last night. We all saw him coughing, he has a cold, and bet on the other team. You might occasionally get lucky, but what all these gambling apps have in common is they understand in the long run, you're not going to be luckier than they are because they stack the odds in their favor. Between crypto, which is a speculation, it's not investing in a real business. It's speculation. With the idea that there's going to be a bigger sucker tomorrow to pay more for this crypto than I pay for it today day, it's speculation. I think the Giants are going to win by 10 points and everyone else thinks they win by seven points. So I'm going to place a bet that way. It's all speculation. I'm not smart enough to see the future. The only thing where I am really smart is I'm smart enough to realize I'm not smart enough to really see the future. And if you think you're smart enough to see the future, you're deluding yourself. Now you can say, well, T.J. that's not fair. When you're buying money or when you're buying stock in an index fund, in companies, you are essentially predicting the future. You are predicting that the value of those companies go up. Okay, fair point. But at least you're investing in real companies who make real products and have real customers. That's traditionally what an investment is. A speculation is just hope. Oh, tomorrow might rain. I don't know if it's going to rain or not, but I'll bet that it rains. I'm speculating the price of gold is going to go up or down. Buying gold is not an investment. Has it worked out recently? For some people, yes. But it's not an actual investment in a business. So I'm urging you, and here's a message, especially to young men. Stop looking for the quick fix. This idea. Oh, I'm going to double my money this weekend because I know, I just know who's going to win these games is a fool's errand. Yeah, you might make $10,000 this weekend, but I'm pretty confident anyone who makes $10,000 this weekend, betting on sports by the end of the year is probably going to be down 100,000, because that's what the numbers show. The house wins in the long run, whether it's a casino, whether it is an app, whether it is a prediction market, because they know they only have to change the odds just a smidge and they're going to make billions in the long run and you are going to lose. You might be lucky short term, but here's the thing about investing in actual businesses in a broad based way like AN S&P 500 Index Fund is in the long run, you don't have to be right about any one company going up. In general, the markets have gone up, if not every day, not every month, not even every year, but decade after decade the market has gone up because these are real business. So that is where I would argue you should spend your money. And we've just got to get away from this idea that everything is a scam and everything's about get rich quick. So let me buy crypto and let me bet on the football game and let me bet on this and I'm going to use my retirement money. I could tell you you don't have to have $5 million or $10 million to be a legitimate person in retirement age 70. You know, you don't have to be rich. That's not the secret to happiness. But having absolute no money and not enough money to travel, take care of yourself, take care of family and to be just be hoping for that Social Security check is not exactly a luxurious way of living. It's not a great lifestyle. And I want a great lifestyle for you. So that's why I'm urging you, let's get rid of the gambling stuff. I don't mean legislatively. I mean you and me personally, the lottery tickets, the football games, all of the apps that let us bet on anything and everything. It could be gold, but it's really fool's gold. Our final item, I didn't even really want to talk about this because it's playing to the guy's ego. But as you know, we talked about extensively, Friday, Saturday and even yesterday, there was the huge no Kings rally at thousands of locations around the country. Millions of citizens who are absolutely sickened by Donald Trump's imposition of tyranny in our country are speaking out. So how did Donald Trump respond to this? He. He responded by posting a fake video showing him flying a jet labeled King Trump dumping brown sludge on protesters at no Kings rallies. Certainly fitting with his brand of no matter what happens, I will up you by going lower, more in the gutter and more in the sludge, by doing a cheaper shot than you. No matter how low you go high, Donald Trump will go lower. I'll demean the office even more. I'll be cheesier, tackier, nastier, more vicious. And I'll get the final word. And unfortunately, well, at least the day he did that, it did get a lot of attention. And and that does seem to be the number one thing the great orange one the Dear Leader craves. Okay, I may have missed a comment or two if I missed your comment. Thank you so much. Mary writes in in my opinion, George Santos is a shame for America. He certainly is an embarrassment. I have no doubt about that. All right, I want to thank you for joining me today and we'll try to get our technology back better for tomorrow for the audio folks listening on podcast. I'm hoping you enjoyed it and it was a pretty solid show for the video. You may have noticed my eyes roll around. Our teleprompter website was down today because I assume a part of the big Amazon AWS Internet problem. So we'll try to be back at full steam tomorrow. Thank you so much for watching the show and for listening to the show. Please do me a favor. Take a moment. 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