I think if you spend enough time telling young men that they are the problem and that they're predators, they begin to believe you.
How much of young men struggling today is them versus the system?
And the most frightening statistic is that if you go into a morgue and there's five people who have died by suicide, four are men.
I don't think we have enough voices of men that are good examples and challenging boys to become men.
If you reverse engineer to the single point of failure when a boy comes off the tracks, it's to one point and that's when he loses a male role model.
The far left hasn't been any more productive because their advice is to say, okay, you don't have problems, you are the problem, and my advice to you as a young man is to act more like a woman.
Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. The handshake is better than anything I ever signed, right here.
My son's right about that. I don't think I've ever said this before.
So, I've been looking forward to our visit today with Professor Scott Galloway. He's got a great podcast. When you speak on the topic of men, fatherhood, and finance, I think everybody's got to listen to it. Of course, you know, New York Times bestseller, done great work, made millions, very successful. I even think at one point you were a majority — was it a majority shareholder of New York Times or something about New York Times you were sitting on the board? But anyways, incredible, incredible voice for young men. Professor Scott Galloway, great to have you on the podcast.
Patrick, thanks for the kind words and I'm glad to be here.
Yes. So, a question for you if we can just get right into it because I don't think we have enough voices of men that are good examples and challenging boys to become men. And I love seeing the stuff you say. I have four kids, two of them being 14-year-old and 12-year-old. And a lot of things you talk about were aligned when it comes down to men. But I want to read you three stats and then I'll get into a question. And then today I want to talk about fatherhood, boys to men, and finance. So seven out of 10 high school valedictorians right now are girls.
20% of men 25 to 34 live with parents, up from 14% a decade ago. And 15% of young men have zero close friends, five times higher than what it was in the 1990s. How much of young men struggling today is them versus the system?
That's a thoughtful question. Let me just pile on with a couple more stats. 62% of men under the age of 30 are not even trying to date. 42% of men 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person. And the most frightening statistic is that if you go into a morgue and there's five people who have died by suicide, four are men. So, and if any other special interest group was killing themselves at four times the rate of the special interest or the control group, we would weigh in with programs. And one of the things that's really hurt this community and these efforts is there's a lack of empathy for this group because of what I think is a fair accusation or observation, and that is men of my generation have had a disproportionate amount of advantage, but we seem to be holding young men accountable for my advantage. Anyway, it's your point. Is it them or is it society?
I think it's both. I would say the majority — it's a complex problem. There's biology at play here. A boy's prefrontal cortex is 18 months behind the girls. You're going to see — you said you have two boys and two girls.
You're going to have — I don't know if you've already had this moment, but you're going to have your 15 or 16-year-old is going to have a party and boys and girls will come over. And the boys are dopes. Can't look you in the eye, they look like boys. And then there'll be two or three 15 or 16-year-old girls who will come who could be the junior senator from Pennsylvania. I mean, girls are just maturing faster than boys. And they're excelling and good for them. They're ascending. I think it's wonderful, but the gap between boys and girls — if two seniors, a boy and a girl in high school are applying to college, essentially the girl who's a senior is competing against a 10th grade girl. The boy biologically is 18 months behind the girl.
There's economic issues. A lot of the traditional on-ramps to the middle class were boys who don't get a college degree. Do you remember that guy, Patrick, in high school who was just never going to go to college, but he could fix your car?
And he was going to get a job. There was auto shop, there was metal shop, there was wood shop. Primarily it was sort of vocational programming such that men who weren't going to end up at University of Florida or Carnegie Mellon could still find an on-ramp into kind of the manufacturing sector. A lot of those jobs have been offshored, so there's fewer and fewer sort of on-ramps into the middle class economically. Also sociologically, I think if you spend enough time telling young men that they are the problem and that they're predators, they begin to believe you.
And so, you know, the way out here, the far right, I would argue, and I'm curious to get your feedback here, to their credit they recognized the problem before anybody else. They said, look, there's a problem with our young men. They're struggling, lack of empathy for them. But I would argue the solution was not the right solution, and that was to take non-whites and women back to the 50s. And I think a lot of people on the right have conflated or incorrectly correlated the ascent of women with the descent of men, and I don't think that's true. At the same time, the far left hasn't been any more productive because their advice is to say, okay, you don't have problems, you are the problem. And my advice to you as a young man is to act more like a woman. That's not helpful either. I went to the Democratic National Convention. I know you're conservative, I'm a progressive. And I saw a parade of special interest groups talking about the very real issues that still face special interest groups in the United States, but not one word about the group that has fallen furthest fastest in America, and that is young men. So it's a combination of economic, sociological, biological, political issues that have all converged to basically rob opportunity.
And the last comment I'll make on this is that our tax policy has effectively transferred wealth from young people to old people. The average 70-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. The average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy. Housing and education prices have skyrocketed. Those are the two primary means for getting ahead and for building economic security and finding a mate, and we've transferred wealth from young to old. The two biggest tax deductions, mortgage interest rate and capital gains — who owns homes and stocks? People my age. Who rents and makes their money from salary? Young people. So we've had just a series of kind of moons line up that have robbed opportunity and dignity and cultural standing from our young people and especially our young men.
Incredible answer, and I want to go a little bit deeper into it because I want to see what you're going to be saying about this because you went into politics. You said, you know, the numbers that we saw — young men shifted 18 points towards Trump in four years. And when you look at these numbers, it's not like they were sold on Trump. The article says they felt alienated by Democrats. But a part of it also, if you think about it, I'm sure you remember the great, the late Charlie Kirk. He played a very big role in talking about family, kids, faith. And these 16, 17, 18-year-olds are looking at saying, who would be my role model? So for you, I think you are a role model for young men. But if I was to ask you right now, you know, Scott, who would you say is a young liberal role model for young men? Who would that be?
Oh, I don't know. I think they're everywhere. Representative Talarico, a man who appreciates faith and family but also what are traditionally seen as progressive values. I think there's symbols of masculine good masculinity everywhere. I, you know, weird one — Kris Kristofferson just passed away. Army captain, Rhodes scholar, a poet, a great rock star, was known for being generous, married for 40 years, helicopter pilot. But more than anything, the roles of masculinity are next door. It's the guy who wakes up every morning who didn't dream of being a mechanic but every goddamn day gets up at 0 dark 100 hours because he wants to support his family. And he takes a lot of blows and he just kind of toils away in relative anonymity, but is very loyal to his wife, loyal to his kids, works hard, tries to stay in good shape, be a good citizen.
You know, I think there's examples of masculinity everywhere. I think we lack, generally speaking, good public role models across both aisles. But where I find great examples of masculinity is in everyday men who are loyal, who are very patriotic, maybe have served, and find themselves trying to serve in the agency of other people and see their purpose as raising — you know, you have four kids. I don't know for you, what happened to me? I was very selfish for most of my life and I finally found my purpose. My purpose is to raise loving, patriotic men. But I think there's examples of masculinity everywhere, but I would agree that there is a dearth of what I'll call public figures that demonstrate an aspirational form of masculinity.
That's interesting when you're saying that. I guess my question, the follow-up question for this would be — Jonathan Haidt, which I think you and him are either colleagues or friends, but you know, he wrote the book The Anxious Generation, right? And I love that book. Anywhere I go, I recommend every parent to read that book. We were a couple years ago, I don't know when it was when it came out, probably two years ago or so. What's the timeline? Yeah, two years ago when it came out exactly, March two years ago when it came out. I had everybody read it. And one of the interviews he did, I'm curious to know your thoughts. The interviewer is asking him a question and he's talking about how much anxiety young girls have, right?
He asks, he says, so which philosophies raise more peaceful kids and which one raises kids with higher anxiety? Liberal parents or conservative parents? Without hesitation, Scott, he says conservative parents. And then he says, so then why are you a liberal? And he says, because I'm academia, I can't change my philosophy. So the guy's integrity, the way he answered, I respect the hell out of him. Why do you think even he says that conservatives raise more calm, lower anxiety kids than liberals do?
You know, it's a good question. I'm not sure I have a good answer for it. The two primary drivers, according to Jonathan and Jean Twenge, who did breakthrough research on this. And by the way, Jonathan's a friend and a scholar. He's probably the most consequential scholar in the world. And you know, there's entire countries banning phones in schools because of Jonathan's work. But generally speaking, the two drivers they think of an increase in anxiety amongst our children are: one, some of it is our fault. When I say our, I mean parents. And that is what you call concierge or bulldozer parenting. And that is we use so many sanitary wipes on their lives that they don't develop their own immunities. And I struggle with this. I keep wanting to save my kids from themselves and every, you know, I know my more rational stuff goes, let them fail, let them fall down, otherwise they're never going to learn to pick themselves up.
Now, if you wanted to — if you were looking for a thesis, you could argue that maybe progressive parents make too many excuses for their kids and think they're loving them and being more understanding as opposed to being more kind of trad dads or letting them fail, if you will, because what we see at NYU is we've seen an increase in self-harm because a lot of kids get there and it's sort of a princess and the pea syndrome where they haven't faced much adversity. Their parents have cleared out every obstacle and then they get there and they get their heart broken or their first D and they literally freak out because they haven't known any failure up until that point. So I guess the argument, if you were trying to bridge it, would be maybe more progressive parents in an effort to do what they think is right end up overprotecting their children and not preparing them for the real world.
The second thing that appears to have driven anxiety is about the time social went on mobile, about 15 years ago, you saw a spike in depression and anxiety, especially among young girls. And the reality is we are every day up against this indomitable foe of the deepest-pocketed, most talented organizations in history that are all trying to do one thing, and that is sequester you from the most meaningful thing in your life, and that is your — and young men seem especially susceptible to believing that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. Why go through the pecking order of friends when you can have Discord and Reddit? Why put on a tie trying to navigate the corporate world, which is difficult and hard, when you think you can make money trading crypto or stocks on Coinbase or Robinhood? And why on earth would you go through the pain, perseverance, rejection, showering, working out, the expense, the resilience of trying to find a romantic or a sexual partner when you have life-like porn? So I think big tech plays a bigger role than progressive versus conservative parents.
But I can see, you know, if I trust Jonathan — one of the things I love about Jonathan, I would consider myself center left. I think Jonathan doesn't like to talk about politics, but I would consider him center right. But he has incredible fidelity to the data. So if he says that in general conservative families are raising less anxious kids, I'm inclined to take him at his word.
Yeah, I think both of you guys are fair in where you're at. So I think the two voices, center left, center right, there's at least reason in there when you're having conversations. When it's the far left or the far right, that's when you're going to have some issues there that kind of pushes everybody away. But why does this topic matter to you so much? I'm curious because to me being a father matters to me a lot and I love hearing other men — you have two boys. I believe you have two boys. You're married. You got a family. You know, you're doing your thing. Why does this topic of being a great father matter to you so much?
Well, I mean, so there was a moment, kind of the aha moment for me was a kid named Alex Kearns in fall of 2020 was trading stocks on Robinhood, sophomore at Oklahoma State. And you know, you see this kid, Patrick, and you just see your son. And he got an error email from Robinhood saying he was down $60,000 and that he needed to transfer 60,000. Of course, it ended up that was an error email, was a mistake, and he furiously all night sent emails to customer service saying I don't understand what's going on because they don't have humans involved. No one got back to him and in the morning took his own life because he left a note saying he didn't want to end up in debt to his family.
And I started going down this rabbit hole of teen suicide and young men. And just the data was so incredibly stark, I thought people aren't talking enough about this. This isn't — young men, it's clearly — it was just so clear we don't have a homeless or an opiate problem in the US. We have a male opiate and a male homeless problem. Three out of four addicts are men. Three out of four homeless are men. You know, you just — men, we might have two to one female to male college graduates in the next five years. Only when you're walking down the Avenue of America, one in three of the men haven't had sex in the last year. And you hear the word sex and your brain fires a bunch of different ways. But if you think of sex as a key to the most important thing in life, and that is an intimate relationship with a partner, a lot of men just aren't having access to that.
So I started going down this rabbit hole. I was really interested in it. I reached out to the Kearns family. And just on a personal level, I relate to it because I could have been one of those guys. I didn't have a lot of economic and romantic opportunities when I was a young man. And also I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived in the shadow of the Secretariat. And just you'll relate to this as a dad, you start to see the difference between boys and girls. And also you see boys getting mixed messages. At universities, unfortunately, we've created this zeitgeist of oppressed versus oppressor. And I think it's gotten better because we realized at universities that it was damaging what we were doing. But one of the ways we immediately identified the shorthand for oppressor was how white and how male you were. And I think a lot of young men have started to get confused messages around mating, around their role in society.
So as a dad, as someone who worries a lot about their sons, as someone who likes to think of themselves as willing to wade in dangerous waters, as being data driven, and as someone who quite frankly just relates to young men who don't have a lot of opportunity at the moment, it just was something I got fascinated with. And I've been on sort of this five-year journey. And what I'll say is that the dialogue, Patrick, has gotten so much more productive because when I first started talking about this, if five years ago, if you brought up or in any way advocated for men, I was called Andrew Tate with an MBA.
Or they're like, oh, you're one of those guys. And there was an immediate gag reflex, especially from the left, that, oh, this is another guy who's going to blame women for men's problems. And I've never done that. I think we should celebrate our mothers, our sisters, and our daughters' progress. I think it's amazing — if women hadn't gone into the factories in World War II, we wouldn't have won the war as quickly. If we hadn't protected women's rights in the workplace in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, we'd be a second-rate economic power to China. We have benefited enormously from the progress of women. But it's not a zero-sum game. We can walk and chew gum at the same time and recognize that if our young men are flailing, our country and women aren't going to continue to flourish. And when I speak to young women, you know, who wants more economically and emotionally viable young men? Women. So we all have a vested interest in our youth and our young men. It's not a zero-sum game. We can have empathy for everybody.
And I think it's a common sense message, you know, that this is, which is great. But Scott, what was your relationship like with your father growing up? What was that like?
Well, I'll answer and then I'll put the question back to you. My dad was married and divorced four times as far as we know. My mom was his second marriage. He started his third marriage while married to my mom.
You know, not a very sophisticated person. When they got divorced, he moved to Ohio. So he wasn't very involved in my life. Wasn't a bad father, never abused me, but wasn't as generous with his time and affection with me, and also made my life difficult because my mom and I struggled economically and he could have been just a little bit more generous and would have made our lives much easier. So my relationship with my father was pretty distant. And then as he got older, a big unlock for me, Patrick, was I said, okay, instead of having a scorecard and thinking, okay, he was this good or not good a father, that's how good or not good a son I'm going to be, I thought, I really enjoy time with my father. I want to think of what kind of son do I want to be? I want to be a loving, generous — so that's what I'm going to be, and I'm not going to put away the scorecard. And when I did that about 20, 30 years ago, it was a huge unlock for our relationship.
And the learning and the advice I would give anyone is instead of keeping score on your marriage, your friends, you know, ask yourself, what kind of husband do you want to be? What kind of member of the congregation of your church do you want to be? What kind of business partner do you want to be? What kind of boss do you want to be? And just be that man and put away the scorecard because you'll naturally inflate your contribution to the relationship and accidentally diminish theirs. And if you have a scorecard, you're always going to be upset or angry or feel like you're not getting the better end of the deal. So what the unlock I got from my father was just be the person in that relationship you envision and put away the scorecard. And that was a huge unlock for me and made my relationship with my father much more productive. What was your relationship like with your father, Patrick?
My dad and my parents got a divorce twice to each other. They married each other and divorced each other twice. So married, sister's born, divorced. Remarry, unborn, divorced. So in Iran I would see my dad once a week. In Iran, Friday was the Sunday here. So we had one day off. So I would hang out with my dad on Friday, was the best day of the week for me. When we went to Germany at a refugee camp, I didn't see my dad for a year and a half. And I didn't have a male role model. Then we came to the States, I would see my dad once every other week. And then of course I joined the military. But he was my hero. Since I was 6 years old, I wanted to be him. The guy was a cashier at a 99 cent store, regular guy, eighth grade, dropped out to support his parents in Iran, came from a very, very loving family. I mean, these guys have each other's back and it was very weird for him to get a divorce. But they had each other's back, his side.
But you know, a part of this, Scott, for me is like, you know how you're coming and you be like, you know, I wish you did this and I wish this and I wish that. How much of him do you see in you now or at what point maybe you were critical and now you're like, you know what? He used to sell and I learned how to sell I think from him. You know, he used to — is there anything that you look at now the way you raise your boys that maybe you picked up from him?
Well, okay. So, a couple. First off, it sounds like you had a strong male role model even though maybe just logistically he wasn't around as much. If you reverse engineer to the single point of failure when a boy comes off the tracks, it's to one point and that's when he loses a male role model. When a boy loses a male role model through divorce, death, or abandonment, at that moment he becomes more likely to be incarcerated than graduated from college. And what's interesting is that girls in single parent homes have similar outcomes to girls in dual parent homes. They're a little bit more promiscuous because they're looking for male attention in the wrong places, but they have the same rates of college attendance and the same income, same rates of self-harm. It ends up that while being physically stronger, boys are neurologically and emotionally much weaker than girls.
So, one thing we need to instill into our society is that the moment there's a divorce or a death, the community needs to weigh in and the mother needs to recognize that boys need men in their lives. And even just saying that five years ago triggered people, especially on the left. What, women can't raise boys? No. Lied to my life, my mother. But boys need men in their lives.
As it relates to my dad, the biggest lessons I took from my dad around fathering, quite frankly, he tried. He checked an instinctive box around evolution and that is he was a much better father to me than his father was to him. His father was alcoholic and actually abusive of him. My father was never abusive to me. So he checked the primary box. The thing I have taken away is my father was not physically affectionate with me. I have gone the exact opposite way. I kiss my boys. I, you know, read with them. I, you know, I constantly hug them. Unfortunately, when my oldest turned 16 he no longer wanted me to hug him, but now he's come back a little bit. You know, I try to be just physically affectionate. I tell my boys every day, and if I can't get a hold of them on the phone I text them, that I love them and I'm proud of them, and I try and give them a reason why, because I didn't hear that and I realize how important it is.
But on the flip side, I, like you, I make my living storytelling. And I make an exceptional living telling stories, finding data, creating a narrative arc, and then getting on podcasts or writing books, or getting in front of a corporate audience. I do a lot of speaking gigs. And I got that from my father. It's through no fault of my own. I practiced a lot because when you teach, you get a chance to — it's like being a comedian doing stand-up. You get to practice your stuff. I get to practice my stuff, or at least I used to, twice a week in front of 160 kids paying a lot of money vis-a-vis tuition. So I had incredible practice, but I think 51% of it I inherited from my father. My father could hold a room like no one's business.
Oh yeah, he's fantastic. So he was a great storyteller.
Yeah, and he had this Scottish accent, he was handsome. So that was probably the reason why he was married four times and divorced four times. But there's no reason why you can't be grateful even if your parents didn't intentionally give something to you. You know, I'm tall, I have broad shoulders, and I'm a decent storyteller, and all of those things I got from my father. So there's no reason I can't be grateful for those things.
I'm looking at a picture. I don't know if you see it or not. This is your Berkeley graduation. Can he see it, Rob, or no? Is it shared with him on his end? Okay, so I see a picture of you, 1992 flashback, Berkeley graduation, Dad in the background, big smile on his face. You got your smile with the whole — I wish you could see this here. What a cool picture this is. You posted it 27 weeks ago.
You know, to me, my father showed up. I'm at boot camp at South Carolina. And they say, so David, who's going to come and visit you? I said nobody. I don't have any family coming. They live in LA. They don't have the money to fly. So I'm upstairs in the barracks, and then a guy named Wiggins, he says your dad is here. Come on, big David. I said there's no way my dad is. I'm telling you, your dad is here. I said my dad can't come. He says there's a man with a sombrero on. He's downstairs. He's telling everybody he's your dad. I said dude, you got — he's not going to come. He told me he's not going to come down. I go downstairs, Scott. My dad drove 2,500 miles. He rented a car, didn't ask him how many miles he was going to put on. He returned the car 24.99 a day with 5,000 additional miles. He was at graduation. It was priceless to see the guy there with me at the military.
So the role is a very important role. Let me ask you a different question. I saw a stat the other day about birth rate. We used to be at 3.57 birth rate in 1950. We're now 1.58. And as we got deeper into it, three times in the history of America we went on a run of making 4 million babies a year. One time it was five years, another time it was seven years, another time it was 11 years that we made 4 million babies every single year. And I think the biggest year ever was 4.3 million. And one of the stats that came up, and I'm curious what you think about this, is in 1950, where the birth rate was a higher birth rate, workforce — women in workforce was 35%.
Today it's 70%. How much of an impact do you think that has made in raising kids, of women now competing with men saying, I don't know if I need you. I can go make my own money. I don't need you, you know. I can make my own money. I'm an independent woman. There's no need for me to have a kid. I don't need to go out there and make kids. You know, women in the '50s used to have kids at 20 years old. Now it's 28, 30 years old. How much do you think it's getting women into the workforce that impacted what we have today?
Oh, it's complex. So first off, I don't think there's any doubt that if women are in the workforce and it's more difficult to — or they're not as focused, or their quote-unquote purpose, they find purpose somewhere else other than having children, is going to result in lower birth rates. But I also don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. And I think corporations — the reality is men and women have largely equalized their income. And women and men under the age of 30 in urban areas make about the same money now. Where you do see some impairment professionally is when women decide to have children.
Now the issue is, has women's ascent professionally resulted in lower birth rates? And I think the answer would be yes, but I think some of that is a good thing in the sense that women have leveled up economically and are no longer as dependent upon a man for their economic independence.
And so they are demanding more from men. And they're demanding more — quite frankly, fewer women just feel trapped. Divorce rates have gone up, one, because I think my generation is more selfish and doesn't see marriage as a commitment but an enhancement to their life. Also, women have more economic freedom. I do think that — you asked before how much of it is men's problems with society versus their own problems or their own issues. I do think men need to level up.
So just to your question, there's no doubt about it. Women's entry into the workforce and their economic independence has resulted in lower birth rates. But I think some of that is a positive. I think that women deciding that they have other options than just being tied to somebody and necessarily, you know, I think women having more freedom around the choices they make is good, and that it's incumbent upon men. No one has the right to reproduce. Only 40% of men have reproduced throughout history. So if women have more economic independence and don't feel the same obligation to reproduce, I think that's probably a good thing and it should be a motivator for young men to level up.
There's a cartoon, and this is where I sort of — I think I disagree with some of Charlie Kirk's philosophies. And that is there's this cartoon of a woman in her 30s who never found romantic love. She pursued a career and now she's alone and depressed. Okay. There's probably some examples of that — of women who said, I was totally focused on my career. I didn't spend enough time trying to find a mate and I missed out on a family and I'm really bummed out about it. Let's just be honest. I think that happens. At the same time, when women don't have a relationship, a romantic relationship, they tend to pour that additional relationship energy into their work and into their friend network.
When a dude doesn't have a relationship, he oftentimes pours that energy into video games, conspiracy theory, and porn. It ends up that men need relationships more than women. Widows are happier after their husband dies. Widowers are less happy. A woman in a relationship does live longer. She lives two years longer. But a man lives four to seven years longer. It ends up that men need relationships more than women.
And something I've said that upsets people on the left, and what I tell my boys, I think men should pay for everything in the company of women. And people say — my dad's like, or my 18-year-old is like, dad, that's so boomer. I'm like, look, a woman's fertility window is shorter. Men benefit more from relationships than women. The downside of sex is greater for her than it is for you. And if you're on a date, you're in the back of your mind hoping maybe at some point you'll have sex.
So the asymmetry in risk, value of the relationship, her fertility window means that there's asymmetry. And every mammal has a courtship process. And when you're dating, you're courting and you want to demonstrate valor. And one way you demonstrate valor and recognize the asymmetry is that you pay for everything. And if you can't pay for everything, you don't go out and you don't go on the date. And I've gotten pushback from the left, that's so boomer. And I've just said to my son when he says, dad, that's not true, I'm like, just keep in mind, any woman you split the check with is never going to kiss you. Let me just say that. That's just real.
So while I do agree that in the US, if you look at us demographically, we're actually not as screwed as many other nations because of immigrants and because there are certain populations that are having kids. We demographically look challenged, but not — you know, in South Korea, it's like one out of 17 people are going to have a grandchild. There are some places that are really demographically —
Yeah, we keep hearing about the whole sexless society concept.
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So I think the notion that women going into the workplace has resulted in a lot of unhappy women and a decline in birth rates — there's a kernel of truth there, but I also think women getting economic independence has for the most part been a good thing for them. As somebody who came from a family where my mom not being economically independent, but being independent — in other words we didn't have anyone else to rely on —
— was a huge source of stress. So, I would never tell a woman, discourage women from pursuing economic independence. For me, the big message is that as women ascend, it's a challenge to men to level up. And the movement I hate, and I would love to put this back to you, Patrick, I hate the incel movement. And that is there's a group — there's this movement that says, okay, women aren't interested in men. 80% of women want 20% of the men. I give up. And it's like a badge of honor to say I'm involuntarily celibate. Well, okay. I was involuntarily celibate the first 19 years of my life.
I wanted to be uncelibate in high school, but no one would participate in my plan.
And 99% of men for 99% of history have been involuntarily celibate. There are a few men who wouldn't rather be having sex right now than whatever it is they're doing.
Yeah, they have issues, but I get it.
Right, something. So, I leveled up. I started working out. I took Accutane. I went to UCLA. I made friends with girls such that I could learn what women wanted. They could introduce me to their friends.
And what I coach a lot of young men, I have something called the rule of threes, and that is if you work out three plus times a week, if you work at least 30 hours a week outside of the house, and at least three times a month you're in the company of others in the agency of something bigger than you, whether it's church, temple, a nonprofit, a sports league, you are immediately in the top 5% of men. What does that mean? If you are in the top 5% of young men for long enough, you are going to be voluntarily uncelibate, which is awesome. So, what I would argue is that the vast majority of men who claim they're incels aren't incels, they're v-cels. They're voluntarily celibate.
And that is it is up to them to level up. So while I think there's a lot of obstacles facing men, they have more agency than the majority of men throughout history. Only 40% of men have reproduced in America. It's now 75%. So you have more agency than most men throughout history. For most men claiming to be incels, it's like, boss, this is on you. We've all had to level up and you probably have to level up more now because women are kind of, you know, doing it for themselves now and that's a wonderful thing. But level up and you will be voluntarily incel.
No, I agree. And I think also there's the other — the Playboy model, which is like, look, go get what you can, smash them, run, you know, never get married. If you're going to have kids, have a structure in place that you can have kids with a bunch of different women. There's also that messaging that's very strong today that the women, all they want is money and if they — they'll leave you for a guy with more money, with better looks, with better this. So screw women. All you want to do is just take advantage of them. There's that as well. That's become very attractive. I think both of those arguments — the one on the far left which is, hey, feminism, you know, equal power, we're the same. That's a lie. And on this side, you know, hey, you know, just screw everybody, you know, the women, all they want to do is take advantage of — that's also a lie, you know.
You know, I like the rules of three. I guess maybe let me ask you this question. I know you're an atheist yourself. You can correct me. I read that you're an atheist. Maybe you're not. I just — okay. So how big of a role do you think faith plays? Because you know, I had a guy on a podcast. His name is Dr. Taylor Marshall and he's a YouTuber. He's got a podcast himself. He does very good. And I said, how many kids do you have? He says, I have eight. I said, you got eight kids? He says, yes. I said, wow, how many marriages? He says, no, I've just been married once. I said, to the same woman? Yes. I said, your wife has given you eight kids? Eight kids? Yes. Wow. Why? We're traditional Catholics. Go look it up. Nobody has more kids than traditional Catholics. I pull it up. It says it was either 3.9 or 4.9. More than Muslims, more than Mormons, more than anybody else. I was blown away.
The other day a guy comes in, one of the lieutenant governors, he was running for governor himself. So with his team and one of his right-hand guys, very successful guy, Jewish guy in Miami. And I said, so how many kids do you have? He says, I got 11 kids. So okay, you know, yours? No, me and my wife. How old are you? 46. How long you been married? 20 years. How many twins did you guys have? None. How many adopted? None. Wait a minute. Your wife had 11 kids? Yes. Jewish, traditional Catholic. How much of a role do you think faith plays in us, you know, kind of getting men and women to realize they need each other, kind of getting this whole concept of women not competing with men, and also to be able to increase the birth rate we have now down to 1.58 to the 2.1, 2.2 number?
So first off, Patrick, are you religious?
I think that the church attendance at an all-time low, or religious attendance, or attendance at religious institutions being at an all-time low is not good for America. And your faith, I won't say I'm jealous or envious, but I respect it and I would like at some point — I, you know, when I was younger I considered myself a scientist and I was somewhat derisive or disparaging of people. You know, I used to say I don't have an invisible friend or I believe in one less god than you. I really do respect and admire people of faith.
And I think that young people — I really, like I said, I coach a lot of young men. I mean, go to a church group and they're like, well, I don't buy into that stuff. I'm like, okay. When you say that stuff, it's a group of people getting together that want to be in the presence of other good people who are, you know, want to love the poor, want to shake each other's hand, want to figure out how to help their community.
I was exposed to a lot of religious institutions growing up because my dad was married four times. I went to temple, I went to church, I went to Unitarian church. And generally speaking, I benefited from all of it. I generally think religion is a bad brand right now because of some unfortunate actions, mostly in the Catholic church. And what gets reported in the news is basically sometimes people from the extremist side of religions. But I think we're better off for religion. And I encourage young men to find community in religious institutions.
So what you have in religious institutions is similar to what you have in in-office work. And that is going back to the mating crisis, right? If you talk to people who have been married longer than 30 years, 80% of them, four and five, say one was much more interested in the beginning than the other. And it was almost always the man.
Men have millions of sperm, women have one egg. So we've been taught for millions of years that our job is to spread our seed to the four corners of the universe. And women are taught to put up a much finer filter to pick the strongest, smartest, and fastest seed. And that's the reason why every generation is taller and smarter than the previous generation. Although Jonathan and I would argue we're getting stupider.
But what men need is a place to demonstrate — a venue to demonstrate excellence. And when you interview these couples, you hear stuff like, yeah, I didn't like him, but we went to church and I loved how nice he was to his parents. I hung out with him and his friends and I found out he was a great dancer and really funny and I started getting attracted to him. I worked with him and he was so good at what he did, I found myself drawn to him. Where do men demonstrate excellence right now? Most people are now meeting through online dating, which distills down to a number of anodyne metrics, specifically your height and your ability to signal wealth. And everyone else gets shut out and doesn't have an opportunity to demonstrate excellence.
And traditionally, when people met each other at temple or the mosque or church, it was kind of like, okay, here are the eight single guys, here are the eight single women. And they kind of paired off based on, if you will, their attractiveness weight class. But they had the opportunity to demonstrate excellence. Or men need venues to demonstrate excellence. And when they're not going into work — remote work is a disaster for young men. When they're not going to religious institutions, when they're not connecting through school because fewer men are going to college, where does a man have an opportunity to demonstrate excellence, and not only demonstrate excellence, but to fail and learn?
And if a man hasn't been in a relationship by the time he's 30, if he hasn't cohabitated with a woman or been married, there's a one in three chance he's going to become a substance abuser. So men being in the company of others — friends, mentors, and potential mates — and quite frankly falling flat on our face and then getting up and maybe learning a little bit about...
How to approach someone and express romantic interest while making them feel safe, developing a sense of humor, developing a kindness practice, having a plan. You don't have to be a baller. You don't have to show up with a Range Rover and a Panerai, but you have to have a plan. I'm planning to go to junior college and to vocational school. I want to learn how to install HVAC energy heaters. This is a great job. You have to have a plan. Even if you don't stick to the plan, every young man needs a plan. You have to demonstrate economic viability because, distinct of what The Atlantic and The New York Times will tell you, 75% of women still say economic viability is central or key to a mate. It's only 25% of men. Men effectively don't care. You know that?
It's that Chris Rock joke that Beyoncé could work at McDonald's and marry Jay-Z. The opposite is not true.
So when I've gotten pushback for this, but I say to young men, you have to have a plan to be economically viable. And by the way, part of that plan, maybe you end up with someone who's working at Goldman, and for a certain amount of period you're going to take more responsibility for the household. Fine. Maybe you're more supportive and get out of the way of your wife who's better at that money thing than you, but at the outset you have to assume that at some point you need to take economic responsibility for your household or society's going to judge you harshly, you're going to judge yourself harshly, and you're going to have a difficult time finding a mate.
See, my concern isn't for guys like us, you know, and I love when you said in one of your interviews. By the way, I saw a clip yesterday. It could have been you. It said sometimes all women want is a man that's got a vision, selling a vision. One day we're going to do this. One day we're going to be this. They need to have a man be in pursuit of a vision and a dream, whatever that may be. But going back to it in regards to this with, you know, the idea of faith and all that stuff, I'm assuming you're a big reader. Have you, because I was an atheist for 25 years of my life, and for me, I didn't believe in God. I lived in Iran. I saw the war. I saw people dying. There was nothing for me to say, if there is such a loving God, why the hell is he allowing this stuff to happen? That was my biggest disconnect. I'm like, listen, I got kicked out of Bible study. I'm like, don't even bring me any of this stuff. So I was the opposite. I didn't like going because I didn't believe any of it, and I thought it was BS for weak people. And then I read two books. One was by C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. I don't know if you've read it or not. If you've never read it,
C. S. Lewis wrote a book called Mere Christianity. And by the way, I don't know if you're a fan of Anthony Hopkins, one of my favorite actors of all time. Anthony Hopkins played C. S. Lewis in a movie called Shadowlands. I think you would enjoy watching the movie Shadowland. Phenomenal love story and what happened to C. S. Lewis. But Mere Christianity, great book to read. The other side, if you're a math guy, I'm assuming you are because you went to, I think you went to UCLA, right? You got your MBA in entrepreneurship and, yeah, I think you went to
family. I like math. Yeah, yeah.
So if you like math, Case for Christ was written by an atheist who's a mathematician. I think those two books for you, consider it if you said I'd like one day to be open to it. I think you would enjoy those two books because C. S. Lewis came from an Oxford professor atheist who eventually is like, I don't know, man. I think there may be something there. You may enjoy those two books. But I want to ask you something. So you know, I was like the teacher, you know, I was a student that teachers couldn't control. It's like, oh my God, I'm going to do this. I was always hard charging moving. I was selling something. I came to school with two backpacks. And you know, I'm like, hey, one backpack was books, the other backpack was hats. I would buy the hats for 99 cents and sell it for seven bucks. And that was my way of making money when I was 14, 15 years old.
How the way I saw Iranian.
Let me just say, I've been getting a ton of because I'm one of the 10% of Democrats that's supportive of military action in Iran. I grew up in Los Angeles. Largest concentration I think of Iranians outside of Tehran. And my roommate, my sophomore year Iranian, I've said this before, Iranians are the only immigrants I've ever met who are more American than Americans. Love education, super into capitalism. And I say that in a good way. Like they're traders. They love making money. They love to have a good time. I've always thought for me, and I've been saying this, I have this vision and it's probably a bit of a naive vision. I think Iran and America someday are going to be outstanding allies.
Iranians in my life, my mentor Hamid Moghadam, Behtash Basiri, a friend of mine, Alex Dehghani, my roommate David Asael, more American than Americans. And I've always thought if that culture, and I believe it does, still exists in Tehran and everything in Iran, everything I've read about it, it's more non-secular than people believe. It's less anti-West than people believe. I think that the unlock of the 21st century could be an incredible alliance between Iran and America.
And by the way, you know, I watched your entire interview beginning to end with Fareed Zakaria, was a phenomenal interview you posted. And I heard you say that there as well as him, and it was interesting to see where both of you got. It was a phenomenal, phenomenal conversation between the two of you guys. I watched it this morning. It was great. But going back to it, you know what the question is? So, you know, one of my sons, sports guy, if you see him, he's like a Little Bo Jackson. He'll play all sports. He plays soccer travel, he plays football, basketball, and straight A student. Just one of those kids that cannot sit still, right? But then I look at the, you know, education system. You almost, you know, rigged against boys. Boys develop slower but start school at the same age as girls. You kind of talked about that a little bit at the 20-minute mark. Schools reward sitting still, following instructions, pleasing teachers, behavior traits more natural to girls, okay? All right. So then when I'm looking at the stat that my guys gave to me this morning, Humberto, I said, can you pull up what percentage of public school teachers in elementary are women? 89%, okay? Only 11% are men. So what do you do when your kid gets in trouble and it's like, hey, go to detention. You're going to sit there for 1 every day and you're not going to go out there and play for one week. That may work for punishment for a girl, but it may not work out for a man. And by the way, K through 12, it's 77% women, 23% men, but specifically public elementary is 89% women. How do we fix that? How do we fix, you know, women teachers understanding young boys better?
You've just zeroed in on one of the problems and that is, like the K through 12 primary education system in America is biased against boys. A boy is twice as likely to be suspended for the exact same behavior as a girl.
Two kids, two kids both cheated on a chemistry exam, exact same infraction. If it's a boy, he's twice as likely to be suspended when he leaves the office. If he's a black boy, he's five times as likely. And it's understandable if you're a young woman in teaching, you're naturally going to champion the people that remind you of yourself at that age and you're going to feminize the culture around you. And so seven of 10 high school valedictorians, when they have boys-only schools within a year of their founding, they have twice as much recess. Even if you think about what are the natural advantages of a boy? A boy has greater gross motor skills. He's faster and he's stronger. A girl has greater fine motor skills, writing and oral skills. What do we ask kids to do in primary school? Push around a pencil and answer and ask questions. So our education system, once we leveled the playing field, and quite frankly it wasn't level, women girls just blew by boys. So what do we do? I think one, we redshirt, and this is one of my Yodas here, Richard Reeves, the American Institute of Boys and Men, we redshirt boys. I think boys start school at the age of six, girls start at five.
still be ahead of girls. We need to get more men involved in K through 12. And I'm not suggesting affirmative action where we pay men more than women. What I'm suggesting is that small fixes. Men are more inclined to be coaches after school, but that's unpaid. We need to start paying men and women who stay after school to coach athletic teams.
So there's I think a series of little tweaks to try and get more men. My male role models growing up were coaches. I was a decent athlete. I became quite close with my baseball coach. He bought me my uniform. He came over for dinner a couple times. He was a nice role model for me. So we need to get more men involved absolutely in K through 12.
Yeah, that's a very good point about six and four, right? Redshirt them and keep them and then put them in their, I like that. But to me it's what do you do to get because if my son is being coached, he's played sports with a lot of different organizations. Never once has a coach called and said, hey, we have an issue with your son. Never. Not one time. And he's a very, very feisty competitive strong personality guy. But thank God forbid they sit him down in school, you get a completely different side of him. We have a few minutes left at the end. I want to focus on the topic of creating wealth. You made a lot of money. And the part I like about how you made your money is you started with nothing and you ended up, you know, getting into schools that you probably shouldn't have gone into, right? You went into school with a 2.2 GPA and I think you told a story at your TED talks which was phenomenal. And you also told the story how you got into college and how at first they didn't look at you, but then you're like, no, you got to give me a chance and you went and sold yourself on how to get in there. And now created wealth. I saw one of the stories about you invested into Apple and Amazon in 2009 and today it's worth $40 million. So you've made some very good investments as well. I'm 22. I'm 25. I want to marry a beautiful girl. I want to be a stud. I want to be a father, but I also want to make a lot of money. What advice can you give me about creating wealth?
First off, have an honest conversation. If you expect to be in the top 10%, much less the top 1%, from an influencer and economic standpoint, you're going to have to work your ass off. I just don't know anybody who has attained a certain level of economic security or influence who hasn't spent 20 or 30 years doing nothing but work, but if you keep using the word balance in your objectives, fine, but move to a less expensive place and recognize you're probably not going to be that wealthy. From the age of 25 to 45, I did pretty much nothing but work. And by the way, my way isn't necessarily the right way, but if you're looking to be economically secure as I was as a young man, buck up and get ready to work really, really hard. So the first thing is I kind of have an algorithm for wealth and that is the first is focus. Your job in your 20s is to find something you're good at where maybe you could be in the top 1% that you could be great at it. Like your job isn't to find your passion. I thought I was going to be an athlete when I was in high school and when I went to UCLA I found out what real athletes were. So but I found out I was pretty good with numbers. I found out I was a good storyteller. So I went into academia and I started writing books and I started speaking and I started, you know, I started an analytics company, a business intelligence company where I take data and I tell companies essentially a story on what their strategy should be. Find something you're good at and go all in on it. I hate side hustles. If you have side hustles it means your main hustle isn't working. Find something
Find something you're good at that you could be great at. And then if you get to the top 1% of something within a decade, the accoutrements of being in the top 1% — relevance, economic security, camaraderie, prestige — will make you passionate about whatever that thing is. And here's the key thing. Find something you be in the top 1% that has at least a 90 plus percent employment rate.
You want to be an actor, a model, design jewelry, be an athlete, be in sports, open a nightclub or restaurant, fine. But now you got to be in the top 0.1% because there's an overinvestment of human capital. The top 10% of tax lawyers get to fly private and have a much larger selection set of maids than they deserve. The top 10% of actors can't even get health insurance. So be clear. If you're picking a romance industry, you got to be in the 0.1% not the top 10%. So have a sober conversation, find a focus. Then stoicism. And what I mean by stoicism, and it might be the wrong word, from the age of 22 you got to start putting 10, 50, 100 and if you can a thousand bucks a month aside in low cost index funds.
Because I was always waiting for the big hit, a best selling book, going all in on things. Someday I'll sell my company. If I had just, I bought my first bonus from Morgan Stanley went out and bought a $35,000 BMW, hung swim goggles from the rearview mirror because I thought that would make me more attractive to women. If I bought a Hyundai for 12,000, 23,000 into the market, I think it'd be worth 1.9 million now. You do not realize — take advantage of the fauna species. We do not realize how fast time will go. Like I mean literally Patrick, we were 22 yesterday.
It will go like this. So if I said to you there's a magic box and for every 100 bucks you put in this magic box, I'm going to give you $4,000 back in an instant. That's called investing in index funds when you're young.
You want to have some stoicism and find a way whether it's not having that Starbucks every day, not taking Uber as often, whatever it is, find a way to put 10, 50, 100 then 1,000 bucks a month away while you're young and by the time you're my age, you're younger than me, you're going to be set. And it doesn't matter if you don't have go double platinum or you ever make a million bucks as an investment banker. If you just have that discipline, you'll be fine. The third thing is diversification and that is don't be like me and go all in on things. I went all in on things, technology, my own companies, and I've been wealthy three times, which means I've gone broke twice. I went broke for the first time in 2000. I was looking at jets in 1999. By 2000 with the dot bomb implosion, I was broke. Crawled my way back 2007 money again, 2008 again not diversified, all in tech. Wham, broke again. And that was about the time my son had the poor judgment to come marching out of my girlfriend and it was a hugely insecure and anxious time for me. Diversification and then let time take over. Put stuff away, ignore it, low cost index funds. Take 30% of your portfolio and have some fun and things where you think you can pick stocks or crypto and then you'll figure out a lesson that you do not know how to pick stocks that you can't beat the market. But if you do those things, focus, stoicism, diversification, and let time take over, by the time you're our age, even if you don't hit it big, you're going to be economically secure. And that's the key such that you cannot have the economic anxiety in your life and you can focus on what really matters, and that is relationships.
I love that. And what year did you work at Morgan Stanley?
Oh god, I'm old. I joined there when I was 21 right out of UCLA. I was there. It was my first job, 87 to 89 I was in the analyst program.
So I worked at Morgan Stanley at 21. I'm the only kid they hired without a four-year degree. I got my Series 7, 66, 31, 26, life and health. A day before 9/11 is when I started with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in Glendale. A man named Dave Kirby hired me. I'll never forget that. And
Glendale. Glendale, California in the New York Life building. I think it was eighth or ninth floor.
So you were just smiling and dialing?
I was just smiling and dialing is what I was doing. And then later on I went to insurance, Transamerica, and then built my own insurance company from 66 agents to 60,000 agents in 50 states and we sold it to an aggregator where the money came from Silver Lake and Harvest three years ago, three and a half years ago. So
But you just brought up, I wish I had a fifth thing and it's called the spoon. And what I mean by the spoon is the following. 99% of people aren't willing to get out a spoon and eat. When you called people at 21, I bet what 98, 99% of them didn't want to hear from you. Hung up on you.
And you develop resilience. And if you aren't, if you want to be really successful, if you see a guy who's got real money and a mate that's more attractive and higher character than him and doesn't appear to be a genius, here's what that guy has. He has a spoon. He's willing to endure public failure. He's willing to call people that don't want to hear from him. 99% of the public isn't willing to start calling strangers and say, have you thought about single premium variable life?
Which you were doing at the age. Most people just don't have that resilience. I don't know if it's you played with the wrong toys or the right toys. But the people who really punch above their weight class all have one thing in common. No. You know, Patrick and Scott, I can guarantee you have heard millions of noes to get to a couple dozen really important yeses. And there's no way to short circuit it to the yes. You got to be willing to endure the noes. You got to have the spoon.
No question about it. I'll tell you a funny story and then we can wrap up. So I called, I would call clients and I'm like, yes, this is Patrick Bet-David from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter office in Glendale, CA. You know, you have to give the address and where you're from like, okay. And then I went to a couple clients, they're like, wait a minute. You said your name is Patrick and last name is Bet-David. I said yes. You don't look Irish or Jewish. What are you? I said I'm from Iran. My mom's Armenian, dad's Assyrian. I thought you were Irish or Jewish. You know, listen, so it worked in some instances and I had to learn how to break the ice very quickly just like yourself, you got a sense of humor. Scott, I wish we had a couple hours together. I know you're in London, it's tougher for you. Next time you're in South Florida, I'd love to do a couple hours with you here in house. I have so many questions to ask you and we barely touched the surface, but for the hour that we had together it was phenomenal. The audience that's watching this, do yourself a favor, go order the book Notes on Being a Man: What Scott Teaches Young Men Need and Fathers You Need to Read It So You Can Raise Stronger Men as Well. Scott Galloway, thank you so much for your time.
Patrick, thank you. And I just a shout out or just a recognition that center left, center right, we're all Americans. My parents are immigrants. It sounds like you're an immigrant. We have more in common than separates us, so I really appreciate the opportunity to come on.
brother. Appreciate you. Take care. Take care everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye.
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The bottom line is there was a civil war going on in the White House.
What do you think is really the motive behind closed doors?
Venezuela is to the United States what Ukraine is to Russia. Let's cut through all the narrative. He's trying to secure it for a possible escalation of war with Russia, China.
Even if you look at the way he's handling it right now, it's very public. They're flying over Venezuela, they're blowing up boats just to say, here's what we're doing.
But I was recruited to do this to facilitate the capture of Nicolas Maduro.
If you're doing this, you're essentially doing a business deal with CIA. You know the track record what it is and you know you're playing with fire.
The highest office asks you to do something, you do it. Just like when my commanders tell me to do, I do it.
Where would the payment come from? From whom?
It was told to me that the United States
The contract that he signed is public with you.
$212.9 million over the course of the term. What's the closest you ever got to Maduro?
I was getting reports on the type of soap that he used. That's how close I was, Patrick.
As close as you got, did you ever have a chance where if you wanted to take him out you could?
I want to preface a few things before you watch this interview because it's going to be weird. You're going to see a man in the parking lot outside of a homeless shelter who's about to go to court wearing a nice suit that could be facing jail time because of the leader he was on Operation Gideon that was supposed to go and take out Maduro. When I asked him, take out, does it mean you got to kill him? He says no, I'm not a mercenary, I'm not this. Although a lot of people say he's a mercenary. I told him if he's got a PMC, private military contractor, which a lot of places claim that his company, that Iran was a private military contractor. He says no, I'm not. But he, you know, he allegedly was supposed to go out. He puts a group together of 60 guys, eight of which get killed by Maduro. A couple of guys end up doing time, they were supposed to do 20 years, end up doing three years in prison in Venezuela. And there was a lot of weird questions, you know, back and forth of things that happened, the names he dropped, the involvement of Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence knew about this. The CIA knew about this. You know, multiple handlers that came up, multiple meetings. He's got a contract that was signed by Juan Guaidó and others where he's sitting there in a room with the former president of Colombia and the former president allegedly for a minute of Venezuela and they agreed to pay him $212.9 million in multiple payments of finding a way to eliminate Maduro. And eliminate to him didn't mean to kill him. Like I said, very, very weird interview. They approached us. We thought about it. We agreed to do it because I believe everybody's innocent until proven guilty and if the court thinks he's guilty, then he's guilty. But at least let's hear him out. It is a very, very, it's such an entertaining, interesting story that a documentary even just came out about him a month ago. I think the executive producer is Adam McKay that did the documentary. So having said that, I want you to know this before you watch the interview with Jordan Goudreau.
Did you ever think you would make it?
I feel I'm so blessed I can taste sweet victory. I know this life meant for me.
I don't. What's your point? The future looks bright.
That table handshake is better than anything I ever signed right here.
You are a one of one?
My son wrote that better.
I don't think I've ever said this before.
I'm one.
All right. So we got a special show for you here today with Jordan Goudreau. If we can see Jordan Goudreau's video. Jordan, if you don't mind before we even get started on why you're outside in the video doing this interview, you haven't been the person that did Operation — let me just kind of tell the audience so we know. Operation Gideon, which in October of 2019, Venezuelan opposition reached out to you, Juan Guaidó at that time, with an offer of $212 million, $213 million for Silvercorp, which was I believe a PMC, private military contractor, to go out there and help them provide services in doing so to eliminate Maduro, which at the time even, you know, the US had recognized Guaidó as a new president of Venezuela. All this stuff was taking place. And then you had to put a team together to go out there and do this. And then eventually we all saw this on TV. Multiple people caught. The Venezuelan government announced that they had killed quite a few of them. They tried to go there on I believe a couple different boats. But today now we were supposed to do this live. Jordan, first of all, welcome to the podcast. But can you share with the audience why you're doing the podcast from a parking lot?
Thanks, Patrick. Yeah, no, I think the, I mean, people talk about lawfare all the time. I think this is the epitome of lawfare. I have been relegated to a homeless shelter, a VA homeless shelter. When I was in a hearing yesterday, the judge looked over to my attorney, Marisel Descalzo, who's incredible by the way, and asked, why Mr. Goudreau, why can't he just stay in an apartment? Why do I have to stay at this homeless shelter, which I've been here fighting to stay here for the last, I don't know, five months? And my attorney turned to the prosecutor and said, because they won't let him. They won't let him stay in just an apartment like a regular individual. The prosecution lost the very first bond hearing. The lawyer who was in charge at the time, she had joked about putting, you know, Jeremy Brown and bragging about how she got Jeremy Brown in jail and another Green Beret and they laughed about how I would be their third Green Beret that they would put in jail. The very first prosecutor, he actually stabbed the guy in Tampa. His name was Patrick Scruggs. You can pull the video up. It's absolutely insane. And then after that, four prosecutors wouldn't touch this case for four years until a Williams and Connolly prosecutor under one of the Clinton prosecutors who happened just to be in the Middle District of Florida, decided to take the case right before the run-up to the US election. How convenient. I am essentially a Trojan horse for the Trump administration. And I think, listen, let me roll back to the intro and what you said about Operation Gideon, which was never Operation Gideon. It was always Operation Gideon Mont. But what I'll say about it is that's a beautiful CIA narrative. That's a beautiful CIA narrative. The CIA has spun a tremendous narrative with the help of the AP, with the help of Rolling Stone Magazine, Vice, this documentary movie that came out. If you read all of that, all those articles from back then, and the Wikipedia page, I think that's a pretty tremendous narrative. The truth, however, is encapsulated in all the documents that are in the discovery, which me and my legal team have been pouring over for the last, oh I don't know, over a year now. Interestingly enough, there's a journalist named Ryan Morgan who works at the Epoch Times, and he wrote an article about 9 months ago that they won't publish because it's too damaging to, I guess, institutions in the United States. But the discovery speaks for itself, Patrick. And let me just thank you for having me on. Thank you for the courage to have me on.
Yeah, Jordan, if you don't mind, just do me a favor, if you don't mind, just take it from the top. Assume the audience has no clue what we're talking about. I have all your stuff that you've sent. I've read all the timeline. I've read all the names being involved. I got everything with Pompeo, with Pence, with Juan Guaidó, with everybody. I've read everything you've sent over. Anything I can get my hands on, I've read. But take a moment and tell the audience who you are, what you did, and how you got into the situation that you're in right now.
Right. So I'm not a mercenary, right? Everybody wants to say I'm a mercenary. I'm a strategist. So let me give you the 30-second brief on my career. I've been a soldier since I was 17. Started in the Canadian Army. Came to the American Army, went through several selections till I got to, you know, I was in the CRIF, I was in JSOC units, the highest level. Half of my training is intelligence, however, so human intelligence. And while I was doing all this, I'm so insane and such a crazy mercenary that I was able to build three, you know, fairly profitable real estate companies, one in Germany and two here in the United States. I did all these things because I was capable. I'm a capable person. I work hard and I have a very strong work ethic. Fast forwarding to when I leave the military, I get out and I start my company because at that time there's a lot of school shootings. I want to mitigate school shootings. It's a national problem, still is. And so I opened up a, it's more of a strategy company. I'm not a PMC. I don't take contracts like Erik Prince. I solve intricate problems. And I did this when I left the military. For instance, you know, I had a team in Hurricane Maria. Maria hit Puerto Rico, half the island. And we protected essentially AT&T personnel who were trying to reestablish communication through the island. And so I used negotiation skills with local cartels and gangs to just basically help them not attack my people and reestablish these communication networks. Fast forward a little bit, I get recruited by the Trump administration under Keith Schiller, who's a good friend of Donald Trump, as you know, and worked in the White House as head of White House operations. Now here's the macro of it. This is the pond that the Trump administration was swimming in at the time. The Trump administration was embattled, as we're seeing now with all the documents with Christopher Wray and the FBI who's bugging congressmen like or senators like Holly and so on and so forth. I think there were eight. That Russia collusion hoax was on, this was on the heels of the Russia collusion hoax as well as the Mueller report, which the FBI agent who built my case, she was part of the Mueller report investigation. So all of this is connected. But the bottom line is there was a civil war going on in the White House. You had National Security Council, Mike Pompeo, Abrams, Gina Haspel, who were undermining the commander in chief's intent, President Trump's intent. And we see this today. It's still playing out. But back then, the CIA would do just enough to not, I guess, come under the ire of the president, especially in Venezuela. So, we see this. I think the most definitive piece of evidence is when Mike Pompeo closes the embassy in Caracas. As you know, the CIA can't operate and can't do advanced intelligence operations without an embassy, without embassy support. And so, when this embassy is closed, it greatly restricts the CIA's ability to do anything in Venezuela. This is my design, right? And so, I am approached by the administration to facilitate the removal of Nicolas Maduro and the facilitation of fair and free elections. I did my due diligence. I go down to see if it's okay. And might I just add, I mean, when you're recruited by the highest office in the land, it's not like you're going to say no, right? And so, yeah, of course I'm going to do this. They did at some point want me to meet, and I want to make this very clear, they wanted me to meet with the president of the United States, and I refused. And it was kind of strange to me that they would want me to meet the president because one of these guys was a very astute human intelligence operative. He was part of Task Force Orange, which is the Army's advanced, it's a special mission unit. He knew what he was doing. The other individual was a Green Beret also, and he should have known better. They asked me to meet with the president. I needed to deny the president deniability, and that's exactly what I did. So, I denied their request to meet with the president, and you know, I don't meet with generals when I do operations. I just do the operation, and I believe the people that are at that echelon. I of course did my due diligence with Keith Schiller. I did my due diligence with other individuals that I was dealing with and who were making representations to me. And as a product of that, I decided, okay, I have the, they had given me, they had really the full authorization.
Who is they that wanted you to meet Trump? Give me a specific name of they that wanted you to meet Trump.
So this was Drew Horn and Jason Beardsley.
So Drew Horn, obviously back that time, was very connected. We didn't know how connected he was until we started reading his emails from the discovery. Same as, you know, obviously Jason Beardsley, he's a TFO operator, but these guys were both Green Berets. I had no reason to think that a fellow Green Beret would, you know, would burn me. And so I believed what they were saying. I believed Keith Schiller when I was given these representations. And so I went forward. I also did my due diligence with the recognized Venezuelan opposition under Juan Guaidó. I had a signed contract Juan Guaidó, which, let me just put it this way. I was in the room with two presidents for this. How does a crazy lunatic mercenary get in the room with presidents, diplomats, strategists, geopolitical strategists, and other members who are working in the US government and the Venezuelan opposition government and the Colombian government? How does that happen?
This is the president of Venezuela at the time. And you're saying the president of Colombia is who you're talking about, who is now I believe a DJ somewhere in South Florida.
At the time, yes. At the time, it was Ivan Duque. There's actually a really funny video where he lies on air. I went on W Radio, which is a prolific radio station all throughout South America. And I went on W Radio and I said, yeah, no, he met, you know, I can't remember the specifics, but we, you know, I had him on a cell phone call with another one of the Venezuelan opposition and we discussed terms. And so I had the go-ahead from the US, the Colombian government and the Venezuelan opposition government under Juan Guaidó. So we were clear to do this.
Is this the meeting where they agreed to $212 million and then they ended up saying they're going to give 1 and 1/2 million up front, but they only gave $50,000? Is this that meeting?
