Since 2020, many of us have been aware of the digital component of the ongoing thefts of our elections and we’ve watched while Fox News and numerous individuals have been sued for billions of dollars just for talking about it.
A year into his second term, we’ve heard almost nothing from the Trump administration about the 20-year worldwide digital election theft operation.
While Trump has made side comments about the “rigged elections” over the years, no legal actions have been widely reported – and you can understand why, when you understand that Seditious Feds within our own government have been using the Venezuelan Regime to steal our elections on behalf of the City of London-Davos Crowd.
It looks like it’s all going to come out. A few weeks ago, video witness testimony emerged of technologists working for the Venezuelan government, who rigged the elections in 72 countries over the past two decades. Grand jury proceedings are reportedly underway and Trump’s Christmas litany on TRUTHSocial all suggest that the attack on our elections is about to take center stage.
The US Government was such a captured operation under the Biden administration that Patrick Byrne had to personally bankroll the investigation into Smartmatic by Gary Bentsen.
The Venezuelan government then put a $25 million bounty on Patrick’s head and he fled to Qatar. Gary’s colleagues warned him that the Seditious Feds would imprison him or worse if he continued his investigation, so he fled to Switzerland with his family.
Over the past year, as the two have gone public about their investigation, they’ve been falling all over themselves to avoid breaking their National Security Oaths and to avoid saying things that could aggravate the lawfare being waged against them.
In the beginnng, they seemed to be blaming the failed state of Venezuela for all of America’s problems and a lot of people weren’t buying it. Finally, last August, Patrick started teasing information about the CIA’s involvement in the election theft.
This was followed a few days ago by Juan O Savin revealing that the CIA was instrumental in helping Venezuela to develop Smartmatic technology:
VIDEO: “CIA Helped Venezuela Develop the Smartmatic Voting Machines” – Pub Dec 25, 2025 by ForbiddenKnowledgeTV.net
Juan O Savin: There is a component of the US intelligence system which has been working to install leaders in power using these fraudulent vote machines. And in fact, when Venezuela first developed the Smartmatic system, it was with assistance from CIA operatives, in order to overturn who was in control in governments all across the world, but especially in South America.
So there’s been a component of our CIA, plus MI6 and MI5, out of England, our FBI here and other agencies around the world, including German intelligence, Israeli intelligence, French intelligence, who have been assisting and it’s like a club to install their favored leaders in various places around the world, using these corrupted electronic vote systems.
So there is a divide within the American system between some of these people in the investigative agencies, including the CIA and FBI, who have been working behind the scenes to not let this be challenged, not let it be uncovered; their involvement in the vote fraud. And that’s why a number of these leaders themselves will go to prison for the rest of their lives, many of them, because of what they’ve done to overturn the elections in countries around the world, including Australia.
I’d first heard about how the CIA had set up Venezuela with the Optech-Smartmatic voting machines in the ‘70s or ‘80s in a 2018 podcast on AIM4Truth‘s now-deplatformed YouTube channel.
AIM4Truth researchers also found hard evidence that US intelligence/military had conspired with foreign governments, notably the British MI6/Admiralty/rogue CIA, to rig US elections:
“DoD formed Scytl USA, LLC in Tampa Florida in 2009, then transferred 100% of the ownership in 2010 to the Spanish corporation Scytl Election Technologies, S.L. Then, on Oct. 30, 2020, merged Spanish Scytl into the British Paragon Group Limited with 118 subsidiaries that support the British Pilgrims Society drive for world control by rigging elections.”
So, the latest revelations from Patrick and Juan confirm what I’d already suspected; that the US military operation in Venezuela is not about Venezuela, per se. It’s about the Trump administration’s war against the CIA and the Seditious Feds, so it was gratifying for me to hear people with the gravitas of Gen Blaine Holt and Ed Burlingame to confirm exactly this.
As Tore Maras said years ago in the video below, “Your own government has been rigging the elections.”
Now, for those wondering how Trump won 2016 and 2024, Patrick Byrne told Harrison Smith three weeks ago that he’d been planning a physical attack to disable Dominion’s Huawei server farm in Belgrade, Serbia to stop the steal of the of the 2024 elections but that at the last minute, US Cyber Command stepped in and cooked the machines. We still haven’t heard the full story about that.
In a June 8, 2022 podcast, Tore Maras made the bombshell announcement that it was she who had disabled the DHS’ 2016 digital vote theft operation, which was being run out of their facility in Brunswick, Georgia.
As a former CIA contractor, Tore was familiar with the software, because she had been hired to hijack elections in foreign countries in the past, including the 2014 election in Ukraine.
VIDEO: “Tore Says she Stopped the Steal in 2016…” – Pub Aug 28, 2022 by ForbiddenKnowledgeTV.net
She said:
Tore Maras: I admitted to making sure that the closet they had to rig the election was inoperable. And if you remember in Georgia, DHS, Homeland Security, CISA got caught getting in there.
Who did I tell you runs the f*ing elections? I know their name, I know the unit and I have the evidence – not in my possession, so don’t raid me, because you’re not going to find it…
Your own government has been rigging the elections. This is why they tormented President Trump, because they didn’t know where it came from. Everyone thought MOSSAD helped. Why would MOSSAD help? They do the same thing [steal elections from their own people].
DHS got caught. In Georgia, in 2016. Nobody asked, ‘What was Homeland Security doing in the election machines if they’re not connected to the internet?’
Because they’re the ones that rigged the elections and they got caught, because I set them up from West Brunswick, because they had to use that closet! And that was an unmasked IP, because it was migrated over to the one in Virginia. I set it and I did it!…
And every single time I go to court, so that I could put that evidence in there, I keep getting kicked out of there. And every single time, I keep putting it in, I get kicked out of it. And the thing is, I don’t want to give it to anyone, because no one is going to utilize it and showcase it but I’m going to make sure the f*ing world sees it.
Me putting it on my podcast or on my website isn’t going to help. I want it on the record: CISA did it. They got caught in 2016. CISA sat on the Halderman Report. CISA, CISA, CISA, CISA!…
The only duly-elected president you have had in two decades is President Donald J Trump – and they had stolen millions of votes already, by the time that shifted in. Because I knew (laughs) it was so hilarious, when they tried to activate – they couldn’t! It was perfect! It was absolutely perfect!…
I am frustrated. So frustrated. We had Barack Hussein Obama’s transition team, in May, insert themselves in the highest positions. We have Federal Employees – Barack Hussein Obama-appointed Federal Employees – organizing and literally calling it a ‘coup’.
And he’s [Obama] going to sit there and say that the President [Trump] orchestrated a coup?
You guys orchestrated a coup for the patriots [J6], so that you could entrap them, so you can make sure this never happens again!
What’s the point? Sometimes, I actually think, ‘What’s the point?’ Yeah. So I’ve got half a million people that are awake. Half a million people that see. But then, I have a half a billion other people sitting there, talking sh¡t about me, when they’re bought, when they’re assets of Brennan’s and Obama’s, trying to choke the truth and they know they can’t kill me off, ‘cause that’s not allowed, ‘cause then, they’ll never get the keys…
They’ve been stealing elections for two decades. You didn’t like Bush? Well, that was rigged. You didn’t like Obama? Well, that was frickin rigged. Everything has been rigged! And the one time someone is elected, even though the chips were stacked against him – out of nowhere, some random person that no one who ran operations could even see coming – that’s what made it so f***ing perfect – that you would not be able to see it coming, because it was unexpected.
Not even JOB [John Owen Brennan] would have seen that coming. Not even Hussein [Barack Obama] would have seen that coming.
In the featured video at the top of this page is a 13-minute segment from Tom Luongo’s appearance on the Commodity Culture podcast about a week ago. In the full podcast, Luongo talks about how the Trump administration is about to unveil gold-backed bonds that could wipe out the Globalist agenda and give the City of London-Davos crowd a bad hair day and he talks about how Trump’s military build-up around Venezuela is not what it seems.
TRANSCRIPT
Jesse Day: Hello everybody and welcome into Commodity Culture, where we break down commodities markets, sound money principles, and geopolitics, all with the goal of making you a better investor in the commodities sector. My name is Jesse Day. Today is December 18th, 2025, and I’m thrilled to welcome Tom Luongo to the show, a former research chemist, libertarian, Austrian economist, and the publisher of the Gold, Goats & Guns blog and podcast.
Tom believes the US is going to be launching gold-backed bonds in 2026, but not for the reasons you might think. Tom outlines how these bonds would be devastating to the power brokers in London, the EU, and the Globalist agenda as a whole, and this financial weapon could completely change the geopolitical landscape and the global economy. He breaks down how, along with discussing why the EU is so intent on war with Russia, why Trump’s threats towards Venezuela are not what they appear to be on the surface, and so much more.
Do you like silver? I sure do, and that is why I created the Stack Silver, Not Fiat t-shirt, a shirt by a stacker for stackers. You can get one using the link in the description below. And now, on to my interview with Tom Luongo.
Tom Luongo, it is great to have you back on Commodity Culture. I want to start with the absolute tragedy that is the so-called peace negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Now, the US initially put out a framework that the Russians said they could work with.
Obviously, it contained some points that the Russians would never agree with, but nonetheless, there seemed to be a chance that they could hammer something out. The EU leadership then lost their collective minds and had their own private meetings with them and Zelensky, and decided to put forth terms that would be completely impossible for Russia to accept, along with attempting to essentially steal Russia’s frozen assets, an event that I believe is still ongoing. It’s interesting that Belgium is one of the countries stepping up and saying, “No, we can’t do this”.
When Belgium is saying not to do it, it seems a foregone conclusion that they’re going to be breaking international laws in a big way if they actually do go through with it. What it feels like to me is that the European leadership wants the war to continue until the absolute bitter end, no matter what. Am I missing something here?
Tom Luongo: No, you really aren’t, Jesse. I wish we were wrong about this, to be honest with you. I’ve been expecting this the entire time. What’s really funny, if you go back over it, we’ve known they were going to lose their minds over this when the first version of the 28-point peace plan was leaked, announced, whatever you want to call it.
I took one look at it and I went, “Oh,” I think it was point number 14, where Trump had pledged the frozen Russian assets to not only help pay for rebuilding Ukraine, but also joint US-Russian projects. That would be the Bering Strait Tunnel, Siberian oil and gas assets or timber assets or whatever, and that the European Union would have to put $100 billion into the fund. I was like, “Oh, that’s rich!”
If you read the subtext on this, this was Trump effectively saying, “Yeah, you guys aren’t stealing Putin’s money. As a matter of fact, they want their money back and they want you to pay for having stolen their money.”
Now, the subtext of everything you just laid out in your intro to that in the question to me is that they’ve already spent the money. They’ve already pledged Russia’s assets to whomever, creditors, whatever. They’ve already used that money as collateral for loan obligations to either keep Ukraine running or for the future, to keep Ukraine running, because they’ve always thought that they were either going to get Russia to capitulate or they were going to get the US to come in and force, or they were just going to win the war.
This is something that Alex Krainer and I have been talking about, I think, since the war started, that the whole purpose of the Ukraine war was to, in the broad sense of the term – Europe has a debt problem that they can’t avoid. They can’t avoid the fact that they’ve got trillions and trillions of dollars worth of debt they can never repay.
What did George Soros always talk about? He talked about, “Hey, let’s exit the debt currently. Let’s issue it all, reissue it all as perpetual debt, basically, steal the creditors’ capital, never pay the debt back, issue them perpetual bonds, and then reset the balance sheet and go forward.”
That plan was always predicated on winning the Russia-Ukraine war, breaking Russia up, stealing their trillions of dollars worth of mineral and natural resource wealth, and then using that cash flow to underwrite the perpetual bonds and any new debt that they want to issue under any new monetary system, which would obviously be some kind of digital euro, as in Lagarde, and all of that stuff. That’s what their plan was.
Clearly, Trump is like, “Yeah, nuts to that.” Putin was like, “That’s cute and all, but we’re going to bomb Ukraine into the Stone Age. No.”
Here we are three and a half years later, or almost four years later now, and they’ve now been forced into the maneuver where they have to literally say, okay, we have to fight this war, because they don’t have any other options. If they don’t keep the war going, and this was a great post I think I saw on Twitter this morning that I reposted.
This is kind of laid it out. You understand why I believe, and I think it’s very clear, that Trump is antithetical, or he’s aggressively opposed to the perpetuation of the war. It’s because he wants to bankrupt Europe, and he understands that a peace treaty ends the possibility of these loans ever being made good.
What does that mean? It means the collapse of the European banking system. You’ve got Scott Bessent. I think it’s pretty clear that Scott Besson has been running an operation to drain the European markets of their pricing leverage in gold and silver, copper, and everything else.
I’m sure you’ve talked to Vince Blanchi about this. Vince and I have been talking about this for months now, that you’ve got to get rid of the pricing leverage. If you want to be the industrial powerhouses of the world, China and the United States, well, you’ve got to take London’s ability to price commodities, especially strategic metals away from them.
You have to kill the LBMA. You have to kill the LNA. You have to move the pricing mechanisms, the leverage on that, to either New York or Shanghai or a mixture of both or to exchanges you control. That ties directly back into what I’m talking about, here.
The endgame for Trump against Europe is to force a peace settlement that they can’t abide by in order to detonate their banking system, after having drained the world of gold, silver, now copper, clearly copper at $5.45 or $5.40 a pound is clearly another operation to drain the LME.
That’s the way I see it from a geostrategic perspective. If I were Trump and Besson, this is exactly what I would be doing if I hated London, which I do. Literally, if I were the general in charge of this, this is how I would be running my operation against them.
I would go, “OK yeah, you want to do X, Y, and Z? You’ve already done X, Y, and Z? You’re not obligating us to that. Nuts to that, we’re still the preeminent military power in the world. We’re still the preeminent financial markets in the world. We still have the deepest and most liquid financial markets and the best corporate and tax policy of any major country in the world and the best rule of law – recent grandstanding by Democrat activist judges, notwithstanding.”
But with all of those things together, if you put all of that on the table and tell Europe, “No,” what are they going to do? Well, they have to go to war. And then we get to say, “Oh, that’s great. You get to buy our weapons for us. You want to go to war? That’s fine. We’ll sell you the weapons.”
The fun part is going to come, and this is what I think is on the table, is that we’re going to demand gold for that. Why wouldn’t we? Why would we take their euros? You can sell our treasuries and give us dollars, but maybe we don’t want dollars from you. Or fine, well, you’re going to sell our treasuries?
And that’s the other thing they’ve done is to say, “Hey, if you don’t go along with our plans for war, we’re going to detonate your financial markets by selling your treasuries.”
I mean, have you noticed this? And I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anybody thinks that framework is valid. Like it’s one of those things where it’s an announcement that’s designed to cow squishy members of Congress who don’t understand finance to then oppose Trump’s plans, right? Because that’s kind of the way these people operate. They always say to you, “Hey, if you don’t go along with what we want, we’ll kill your major industry.”
Canada will kill your oil industry. Zimbabwe will kill your, I don’t know, gold or your copper industry or whatever it is. In the United States, it’s our financial system.
So that’s why Lagarde has been running, part of the reason why Lagarde has been running this ridiculous yield curve control program, while the Bank of England buys ridiculous amounts of our debt in order to, well, one, keep a cap on their bond yields and two, create a war chest that they can then point at the United States and go, “You know, these are financial nuclear weapons.” But these are weapons that when they turn them on us, they’re really turning them on themselves, because what they’re saying is, “Oh, we’re willing to detonate the entire global economy.”
Well, that just turns you into the bad guy and everybody can then turn around and go, “Oh, I see, you’re at war with everyone. Fine, we cancel the Q-SIBs. We’ll just cancel the debt.” Not that I think that that’s what’s on the horizon, but that’s the, I mean, if you want to continue walking up this escalatory ladder, that’s ultimately the thing.
And the reality is, is that, you know, Martin Armstrong has made this point many, many times, and I agree with him completely on this point, which is that the US’s superpower, as a financial center is that we’ve never defaulted on our debt. But, you know, if you’re at war with someone, it’s your obligation to not honor debts that are, I mean, that’s what the Europeans are saying. Like, “We’re stealing, we’re stealing Russia’s money because we’re at war with them.”
Like, OK, well, with people like that, why would you honor the, why would you honor the debts with people like that who are known thieves? Like, when you get down to brass tacks, I don’t see Russia, I don’t see Russian or Chinese or Middle Eastern investors being angry with the US or, oh my God, they may, you know, get the vapors because we canceled Europe’s debt, right? I’m just playing this scenario out.
If you think about it that way, I don’t see them getting the vapors, I see them getting religion and going, “Yeah, finally, somebody finally told these people to stop blackmailing the world with, you know, with the vestiges of their old power, their soft power”. And so in that scenario, yeah, like that’s, I think, like the whole escalatory framework from a financial perspective laid out, laid bare.
And it’s all down to that original peace plan that Trump put on the table, which said, “Oh no, Europe, you’re not only going to not steal this money, which you’ve already stolen, but you’re going to put another a hundred billion dollars on the table.”
And that’s, you know, I’m sorry if that sounds like, I know there’s a portion of the audience that just thinks I’m spinning tails here, but I’m like, you just don’t understand the situation, if you can’t play that scenario out in your head. Like, it’s not that hard. It really isn’t. You just have to accept the fact that Trump’s not a Neocon or a Neoliberal. That’s it.
That’s all you got to do. If you were, if you take that, if you take that idea out of your head and stash it somewhere else and just say, “No, he’s at war with the old European order first, before, so that he can then pivot to China – or the United States can pivot to China after he’s off the table, right? He’s, you know, no longer President and JD Vance, Rubio was President in 2028 and beyond. Then, we can pivot to China, but we can’t do that pivot geopolitically until we deal with our European “partners”, as Putin would put it.
So there you go. The sponsor of today’s episode is ARK Silver Gold Osmium. Owner Ian Everard is praised even by his competitors as one of the most honest and level-headed bullion dealers in the United States.
(Commercial break)
Jesse Day: Very interesting breakdown. A couple of things I just want to follow up on, there. One is you mentioned Scott Bessent and a strategy involving commodities in Europe.
I’d love you to expand on that and how you think that is moving forward. And then the second question is about war, because is Europe actually preparing to go to war or are they using the potential of going to war, the threat of a conflict to hang over the heads of their people? You know, they’re sending out pamphlets now, in places like the Netherlands and France to, you know, prepare for stock up on food because a conflict could be coming. Merz is on TV there in Germany talking about, “Well, we’re going to try to get people to volunteer for the military, but those who do not, we may have to introduce mandatory conscription.”
I mean, are they just doing this as a way to cover themselves as their economies collapse, as their surveillance state expands and as they prepare to roll out the digital euro to be able to say, “All of this is happening because we’re preparing for war with Russia.” So kind of a two-part question there, break it down for us.
Tom Luongo: I think that’s a very astute observation and it is exactly, I mean, it’s like you can have one policy, you know, cover multiple bases, right? So if you think about it, like from Europe’s perspective, hey, if you can somehow get the United States to help us go to war and go to war with Russia, we’ll rearm, right?
And if we don’t, and if the United States doesn’t go along, well, then we also have to deal with the fact that we’ve got a civil unrest at home as we, as the economy – you know, what’s, what’s the flow chart here?
If US doesn’t go along with it and we have some kind of peace agreement with Russia, at some point in the nebulous future, well, then we’re going to have a collapse of our banking system. Therefore, we have to rearm. You also are watching them de-industrialize.
So, that’s going to make the propensity for somebody to be willing to go on the dole because “Three hots and a cot” are better than, you know, working for the military, “Three hots and a cot” are better than starving to death and watching your children freeze in the wintertime, right?
This is how they effectively, in many ways, blackmailed a lot of Ukrainians to go fight against Russia, even though they didn’t want to, right? Because you first, you crash the economy, you destroy their livelihood, and then you offer them three hots and a cot, right? And a small stipend to send back to the family to be able to, you know, feed them.
Well, that’s clearly what Europe is setting up. And then, if they rearm significantly across the European Union, then that’s how you can have German troops stationed in Spain to keep the Spaniards down. And that’s how you have the Spaniards in Greece and the Greeks in the Netherlands and the Dutch in France and the French in Germany, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because men who are not – if you want to pacify people, using native troops to do so doesn’t work very well. They know this.
If anybody knows this, it’s the Europeans. You use men who are divorced from their homeland, they don’t have any skin in the game. Like a guy from, you know, Berlin has no skin in Barcelona.
But if a guy from Berlin may have family in Saxony, right? And so, you know, now he’s got divided loyalty. So this is how you pluck them out of their normal headspace into something where, “I’m just doing my job, I’m just providing for my family.” And men are really good at that kind of compartmentalization. And they understand this very, very well. These people are evil. I mean, at every level.
So, I mean, what you implied with your question, Jesse, is like, just how depraved are these people? Pretty freaking depraved, right? So there’s that part of the question. And then the other part of it is that they’re clearly setting up to destroy their own economy anyway, because they don’t have any other way out of it. Now, that’s the other interesting part about this.
So let’s talk about what your question actually implies. Because, clearly now we have this potential framework, multiple framework for why Europe would be willing to rearm, right? Well, the second thing is, what’s the reaction to that? I mean, again, like moves on the game board, you know, don’t happen in a vacuum, well, they’re doing this. Oh, yeah.
Well, then what’s our reaction to that? If we’re going to war against Old Europe, in order to end hundreds of years of colonization and chaos and slavery and everything else, which is what it looks like, so I posit Trump is actually doing, and I don’t just mean Trump, I mean, Trump and Putin and Xi and other sovereigntist forces, especially within Europe, like Viktor Orban and others, then you have to ask yourself, “How does he activate those people?”
Well, I know you didn’t miss this, and I know your audience didn’t miss this, which is Giorgia Meloni going out a few weeks ago and saying, “Look, Italy’s sovereign gold is for Italians.” And then, she follows up that statement by saying, “Italy’s sovereign gold is not the property of the shareholders of foreign central banks.” She used that phrase.
That is a freaking howitzer aimed right at Brussels. And so, you have that, you have Viktor Orban actively trying to stop the European Union from openly stealing Russia’s money, which supports Trump’s desire for peace, which falls back on everything I said previously in the first 15 minutes of this podcast.
So then, now you have to start thinking about what does that mean? Right? Does, um, you know, what Trump has spent 2025 doing is building an alliance or building a network of friends internationally by ending conflicts all around the world, by effectively giving Japan their independence, for example, trying to end Cambodia-Thailand, which is a British proxy war.
Um, you know, Congo, Rwanda, blah, blah, blah, all of them. Right. What is he trying to do? He’s trying to build friendships.
I mean, did anybody not notice that Israel and Egypt assigned the biggest gas deal in either country’s history yesterday? How does that happen? If, if Trump doesn’t forge the peace plan over Gaza? I mean, regardless of, you know, the fact that the, the, the shelling and the killing hasn’t fully stopped, but it’s down significantly. I mean, that’s just the nature of these conflicts that they don’t turn on a dime overnight. Right?
Um, that that’s a big deal. So there’s Trump’s influence creating allies around the world, Saudi Arabia, right? All of these things.
So he’s got all those people activated. They’re all effectively stating quite explicitly, they want to be out from underneath this Davosian, you know, Sword of Damocles that they always held over people’s heads.
The EU does not stand without the tripod of France, Germany, and Italy. Take out one and the tripod falls, right? This is why I’ve been, you know, focused for so long on French, Italian, and German politics, to watch the process. Since the moment Marine Le Pen entered the space, back in like 2014, 2015, and then Matteo Salvini and five-star movement, and then the rise of AfD.
I’ve been watching these very carefully because without those, without those three, those three legs, the European union falls apart, especially in the wake of Brexit with no UK, but the UK is now a shot shell of itself. And it’s only literally just the square mile of the city of London, right? In terms of actual honest-to-God power.
So I think Trump is activating all of his assets around that he’s garnered around the world to, you know, add to the pressure necessary to, to say to Europe, “Look, if you take this route, if you decide to, you know put on your Joker makeup and burn the world to the ground and light a big pile of money on fire, literally, you know, feeling froggy, take that leap, but no one’s going with you and no one is intimidated by it. And it will have these consequences.”
So that’s what I’m seeing. And that’s clearly what’s happening with when you watch like Gazprom move their JV for Europe out of the Netherlands and and move it to Budapest for Budapest, for example, when you watch all of these little moves happening around the, around the region, people are shoring-up gas and oil supplies. They’re preparing for Eastern Europe, meaning basically the Balkans and Hungary and Romania and Bulgaria, and all the way to Poland, the Visegrads plus the Balkans basically walk away, because if Italy walks away, then the whole of Eastern Europe walks away. And then, Ukraine security guarantees don’t matter.
Again, when I read that 28-Point Peace Plan, I’m like, “Oh yeah, look at all the guarantees. They’re all Europe and NATO for Ukraine. Like, neither the EU nor NATO are going to exist in their current form in five years.
So there was no reason for Russia to, to not sign most of that, agree to most of that and, you know, freeze the conflict there, take the four oblasts that they’ve effectively taken. And then they’re like, “Well, we’ll get to Odessa in a couple of years. And we’ll do it. We’ll do it the same way. We took Crimea; without firing a shot and having a referendum. And there’ll be nobody to oppose us at that point because the European union won’t really exist. City of London won’t really exist. And America’s OK with that, because we’ve already tacitly agreed to that happening anyway.” Right?
And so that, to me was, you know, that plan was the signal of all of these things coming together at one in one, basically one document and it should be. And then, of course, the reaction to that has been histrionic on the part of people who don’t want to admit that Trump isn’t a blithering idiot and a malignant narcissist.
I’m sorry. You’re just sorry. You’re just wrong. I mean, he may not be the smartest guy in the world or the smartest guy in the room, but he’s neither of the other two. He’s not the other cartoon figure that you think he is, either. That’s just nonsense.
Jesse Day: And speaking to what you said here in Serbia, I believe for the first time in 14 years, Serbia is withdrawing from the EU Western Balkans summit. They are not attending, perhaps a sign of things to come back. Got me pretty pumped when I read that, because I want, I want –”
Tom Luongo: Oh, I forgot yu’re in Serbia.
Jesse Day: Yeah, I love this nation and I, and you know, I, I identify with Serbians much more than my fellow Canadians. So, I really want them to stay away from the EU as much as possible. But just quickly to follow up on that second part of the question, Scott Bessent cutting off commodities from the EU. Walk us through what’s happening there.
Tom Luongo: Well, I just think that this is one of those things that is pretty obvious since Q1 of last year that, that Bessent is just selling dollars to buy gold. Like his whole, the whole weak dollar policy that we dealt with in the first half of 2025 was, you know, Besson basically selling dollars and buying gold and draining and draining the LBMA.
And again, I can, I think he’s continuing to do this. Um, there are more and more signs that the United States is getting ready to change the way the monetary system is going to operate. Trump even said that this morning after his fire breathing side chat that he gave last night.
I, I was not, so I don’t know if you watch it, but I was not surprised at all that he went in there with like both guns blazing. It wasn’t going to be the “Hi, I’m Donald Trump and I’m, you know, teddy bear. And he’s like, he’s like Patton haranguing the country. It was hilarious.
Um, I didn’t agree with some of it. And I thought some of it was ridiculously overstated, but I’m like, “Eh, whatever!”
What all I heard was “We’re supporting the military. Come and get us. Molon Labe. Like, no, uh, we’re going to recapitalize the middle class.” So that’s, that’s a great sign.
But, Bessent and it’s really not all that complicated that Jessica, I would just say, look, it’s very clear that there’s an, a multi-stage operation being run either through the treasury directly to pursue the weak dollar policy, the weakened the dollar significantly. They did in the first half of last year to set up the tariff negotiations and the trade deal negotiations and then back off effectively. And then turn that operation over to the bullion banks.
And, you know, and then we start talking about what’s happening in silver and how, you know, we then moved off in the, we moved off of gold effectively in October to a, you know an operation in silver that’s began in August and is continuing. And it’s probably not going to stop anytime soon.
And I was listening to something that Vince put out recently, Vince Launch, he put out recently, and you know, he’s just, he clearly believes that JP Morgan is, you know, running a squeeze, a massive squeeze.
And if so, then, you know, great. And, um, and I don’t think that, uh, Vince is wrong about that. Um, and if so, then it could be explosive for the entire industry, but you know, like none of us should be complaining about $65, $66 silver at this point, either.
Right. So, but everybody takes their, you know, so, but that’s what I think is, is, is part of the, uh, is, is the, the fundamental thing. I, I really do believe – and I may be wrong about this – but I really do believe that what they’re both setting up with, but what Trump is setting up with what he stated, the, the old global monetary system doesn’t work for us and we’re going to change it.
And what Bessent been doing and all the rumors and everything else, I don’t see how we don’t go to some kind of gold back treasury bond issuance sometime this year. I just don’t see how that doesn’t happen. There’s too much smoke so that if Europe thinks that they’re going to, cause that’s the perfect counter move, right? The perfect counter move is the bank of England thrives, tries to threaten us.
I just talked about the Q the canceling the Q-Sips, but why, why not just make them worth 30 cents on the dollar by offering a gold back treasury? And then, “Oh, go ahead and sell them.” You’re not going to get any money for them. You know what I mean? I something like you, you set up a two-tiered, um, us treasury system and all of a sudden, you know, the world changes.
I mean, I don’t think that there’s – now, when I say that there’s two things that I want to see with the gold back treasury and maybe I’m wrong about, again, maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe I haven’t thought it through completely, but the first thing I would say is if we’re going to do something like that, those should only be offered to us citizens and to countries or foreign actors that are buying, you know, that are investing directly in the United States infrastructure, meaning it can’t go, this cannot be a means by which to extract gold and have it go overseas. It’s got to be ring, but not that I think that’s going to happen.
Anybody who will, these will be 50, 100-year bonds that will, that will never, um, will never call in or we’ll never, uh, we’ll never honor the gold. It’s just going to be, you know, the value of the bond will be, we’ll have a gold cover cause on it. This goes all the way back to Jim Sinclair like, when I had hair, like seriously, Jim called this thing 25, 20 years ago. And, uh, he was right. You know, he said, it’s going to end with a gold cover cause. And, um, with the US treasury with a gold cover cause he always thought 5%, but it may be more than that. Um, we’ll see, but it’s clearly what’s coming.
And then you, you do something like that. And all of a sudden you’re talking about a massive capital inflow to the United States. We don’t care about, you know, these things will, everything will trade at a discount versus the other. And, you know, that’ll serve as some kind of market access charge in order to get your dollars.
Cause then you won’t be able to go to the swap. You won’t be able to go to the fed for a swap line of par. You’ll, you know, the fed’s only going to give you 30 cents on the dollar or 60 cents on the dollar.
And we were already at that book. Could you imagine that? Actually that’s, I’d maybe not. I think about it. That’s probably exactly the mechanism by which you do. You blunt that weapon, right?
Why would they do something like that? Why would Europe or the more England or anybody else dump our treasuries in order to try and, you know, create a bear steepener on the yield curve and force our borrowing costs up and force our interest rate costs up and everything else. OK?
That’s cute and all, but if those bonds are selling it, you know, but if you need dollars that bad and then, and there’s no market for these things, then you’re not going to get any money for them. And then, if that’s the case, then the fed will also, or the year of the American banks will refuse to repo them at par because we have a different par, right? We have a different par value, which at this point would be the gold-backed market.
I don’t know. I’m just like, I’m just vamping here to be honest with you at this point. So just throwing stuff out there for people who know this stuff better than I do to like think about, right?
Jesse Day: So, well, what you, you, you mentioned gold back bonds, you expect them this year. Is that literally in the next two weeks or you mean in 2026?
Tom Luongo: No, I think probably I, everything, I think is setting up for July, right? I mean, unless Europe decides that they want to accelerate the timetable further, but I don’t think we’re ready for that yet, but it’s clearly that Trump is setting up a whole rash of things to, you know, for July 4th, like let’s, you know what I mean? Like it’s all coming to that. So let’s watch how he plays out the time between now and the State of the Union Address. And I think that that’s going to be the pivotal time.
That’s going to probably tell us everything we need to know about where his head is and where he’s and where things are heading in Q1 and Q2 of 2026. And, you know, the big thing for him is, can he pull any of this off? That’s obviously I’m sure that I can hear the audience like asking the question, “What are you [saying]? I don’t know if Trump can pull any of this sh¡t off.”
Well, and it’s because of the Congress, right? Congress is in full revolt against him. We’re going to watch Congress very carefully, to see if he and Vance and, and, and can ride herd over everything and actually force through what needs to be forced through. It’s, that’s the big question. You’re going to have to just watch the machinations in the House.
I’d watch, honestly, I would watch Speaker Mike Johnson far more than John Thune. But if Thune, for example, finally rams through all of the DA appointments, for example, that they’ve been, that Grassley has been sitting on, or they get rid of the filibuster and they change the rules of the Senate. That would be amazing because it needs to be done, OK?
And then the same thing on the House side, if, if, you know, Johnson keeps pushing forward, you know, reforms to Obamacare, you know, codifying all of Trump’s Executive Orders into law and then forcing them, the Senate, the Republican Senate to vote against that. That’s a, that’s putting them in a box.
If Mike Johnson does that and he’s able to ride herd over his thin majority in the house, getting thinner by the day, thanks to Marjorie Taylor, Drama Queen, then yeah, it becomes a very interesting, if that happens. That’s, that’s telling you that, that all rumors of Donald Trump being a lame duck coming into the midterms are way overblown. And he’s got at least two or three other things that he’s going to drop on everyone in January. So we’ll see what happens.
Jesse Day: I got to follow up on one point, because people have already jumped to the comments and, and, and said this, I’m sure, because you mentioned Trump wants to end wars, he’s, he’s forging new alliances, etc. But yet, it looks like we could be on the verge of a war with Venezuela. Now, at first, there was a lot of talk about drugs coming into America.
Obviously, there have been boats struck and people killed. I do not believe the US government has provided any hard evidence to the public that these were actually drug-smuggling vessels, which to me is a little concerning. But then also now Trump going on camera and saying this is about oil now and that Venezuela has stolen its oil or taken its oil, he wants to take it back. What is going on there?
Tom Luongo: Venezuela is Trump versus Langley.
This is not about any of those things. I know this is a commodity podcast. I know that’s why you’re coming at it from this perspective, Jesse, and that’s what you should do…
But this is about the military going after intelligence assets and about organized crime.
I, you know, the other day, for example, when they – I heartily recommend a lot of people sit down and listen to guys who have this kind of experience. I don’t have this kind of experience. Almost everybody in the audience doesn’t.
But my friends, Blaine Holt and the EM Burlingame have been doing great work to explain what’s actually going on. They did a thing with my friend, Crypto Rich, um, a short video by 18, 19 minutes. I absolutely recommend everybody listen to about what was actually on the boat that we seized the other day.
I’m going to, I’m going to walk some people through this. This is going to sound like a digression, but it’s not. It’s really kind of important. So supposedly, it was an oil tanker, right? Well, then why did we not find out what country it was flagged under, what we took off the boat or anything else? We learned nothing. All we heard was that if they were, if there were trafficked children and or women on that boat, we would have seen them, right? Because they would have been happy to show the world that we stopped, you know, human trafficking. I mean, that’s a, that’s a political win.
So the fact that we had nothing come out about what they actually seized, who they are, who and or what they actually seized and where this thing was either headed. We knew nothing. That’s a tell. And the tell is it was something they did not want anyone to know about.
Meaning it was – EM happens to think it’s leadership of like Azov guys that they were trying to get and getting ready to smuggle into the United States to start kinetic operations on the ground. It could have been a dirty bomb trigger.
It could have been nuclear material. It could have been any of these things, but it certainly wasn’t Venezuelan oil, because if it was, they would have mentioned it. It’s that simple.
And they would have said it was flagged on. No, the ship was flying flagless and that’s that. And the kicker – and this was the best part about this: It says that there were six other oil tankers, five or six other ships moving through the area. They weren’t stopped. Right?
So what Trump is doing is what Trump always does, which is that he, he says a lot of stuff that is absolute strategic misdirection, but these are all signals to the intelligence services: “If you think you’re going to start a civil war in the United States, because that’s your only move on the board,” which everything I’ve laid out already this morning tells you that at the end of the day, what is Davos is big move against the US? Start a civil war on the ground, start a race war, start something. You got to start something. And that’s what the Seditious Six video is all about.
That’s why Hegseth is going hard after Mark Kelly, right? That’s why these things are happening. This is the military and the President against the intelligence services.
Let’s go back to Trump’s statement during his fire-breathing side chat the other night. What was the big centerpiece? Giving a Christmas bonus to the entire military. That was the most powerful thing in the speech. Everything else was boilerplate, you know, stuff that the administration has been saying for months, but it was good for him to say all that and say it that way.
But that was the signal to me, out of all the other noise. That’s what stuck out to me. “Oh, by the way, you think you’re going to, you’re going to take the military out while I’m telling the entire country, they’re the most important people right now. They’re getting a bonus check.” That’s a huge signal. So that’s what this is about.
Venezuela is kind of like the – if Zurich is the center of the gold trade in Europe, right? And money-laundering and all that other stuff. Well, Venezuela is the Zurich of the global organized crime trade in the Western hemisphere. And it needs to be removed.
Now, I don’t think that he’s actively moving Maduro out of, he just wants Maduro to knuckle under. Same thing with Zelensky. And what’s the problem with Maduro, just like Zelensky, is that he’s getting told from, he’s getting pressure from Trump and getting told by Davos, “Hey, don’t worry about it. We’ve got this taken care of. We’re going to take out Trump.”
And then Trump is going, “Uh, no, I’m accelerating the timetable on you.”
Same thing with Zelensky. They’re doing the same. It’s the same dance, right? You don’t see the hand, the open hand of Davos on Venezuela, because they can’t really talk about that, because it’s below ground. It’s below the headlines. It’s organized. It’s their organized crime. It’s their drug and human trafficking. It’s all that other stuff. It’s all the dark money that gets moved around. It’s intelligence service stuff.
Whereas obviously in Ukraine, it’s an open, we’re an open warfare, right? So that’s above board. The other one’s below board and that’s kind of what, why it’s different, but you can see the reflection of Davos’ influence there by the histrionics of everybody, all across the political spectrum as to why this is, this is “wrong”, including so-called Libertarians, like Rand Paul. And the fact that Tucker Carlson went out there yesterday and told Judge Napolitano, “Oh, I’ve been briefed by various members of Congress. We’re going to war with Venezuela and Trump’s going to announce it tonight or, you know, on Wednesday night.”
Like, no, didn’t happen. He got punked or was he, then you have to ask the question, “Is Tucker Carlson out there being a disinformation agent for the administration?” I don’t know. I can’t figure out Tucker’s role in any of this anymore, to be honest, OK?
So like, this is all what we’re dealing with now. We’re now into the, into the realm of signaling pre-kinetic action on US soil and it’s happening on both sides. And so, that’s the way you’ve got to read all of this.
Is Trump going to put boots on the ground of Venezuela? Like, why? He’s got enough. Eight naval and air assets in, in the region to like force, you know, force whatever he wants. You don’t need to put boots on the ground, declare war with Venezuela.
The fact that that feckless a**hole, Thomas Massey’s up there, grandstanding in Congress about this! They’re not going to war with Venezuela!
We’re taking out non-state actors that have no rights, under UNCLOS and everybody who’s b¡tching about this knows it. Every one of them, including the lawyers in the Commentariat, period.
They’re all lying. They’re all untrustworthy. I don’t know what the truth is, but I can tell you that the truth ain’t what they’re peddling, OK?
So, it’s self-consistent with the behavior that we’re seeing with Trump over Ukraine and over Israel, Gaza and everything else.
So now I’m going to bring up a vector that you haven’t touched on, yet because it’s absolutely germane to all of this, which is Japan, right? On the same day that the BRICS announced the unit is going live or they’re working on it or whatever they’re doing, which is fine.
The BRICS and unit are basically a hedge against Trump and the United States losing their current war for independence against Davos.
Trump goes to Japan and basically sets Japan free. I know everybody thinks I’m crazy for this, but I’m like, I’m watching that ceremony and that does not look like your average state visit to me.
That looks like a people that are absolutely over the moon, overjoyed that their liberator has stepped off the fricking plane, because they’ve been under the thumb of the British and British economic system forever – or, you know, or have we all not watched ‘Princes of the Yen’, right?
BOJ is about to raise interest rates again. They could start raising interest rates hard. That would be hilarious. They’re unwinding the yen carry trade. They’re slowly but surely unwinding their QQE, their, their, their ETF and equity portfolio. Yeah. It’s going to be over 50 or a hundred years, whatever. It’s all nonsense.
They announce X and they’re going to do whatever they want. What’s important, here is to understand that at some point, Japan is going to be allowed to rearm, because we’re setting up for the next war, which is the one where we stop Chinese aggression, but we have to deal with Europe, first. So, you deal with Europe and then, you move to China.
And Japan is the pivotal piece in that, because who has benefited more from the Japanese yen carry trade, the United States or Europe? We all watch the dollar-yen cross when you should be watching the euro-yen cross.
So, I throw that out there. I think that that is the biggest issue, here. I think the Fed is setting up, I think Trump and Bessent and company are setting up for a day and you know, you’re seeing it from Christine Lagarde.
You’re seeing it from all the European Central Bank, you know, big waves, Bank of England, you know, Andrew Bailey, that slovenly pr¡ck, I can’t stand that guy. Oh my God. He’s like the height of Limeydom.
And like, very clearly saying that they’re worried that the Fed is not going to provide them dollar swap lines. Yeah. I wonder why.
I mean, they were, they were prefacing this three months ago, four months ago. Clearly, they know what’s going on. And if Japan detonate finished, you know, starts the process of, at any moment detonating the rest of the yen carry trade, like they did in August of…2024, was it 2024 or 2023? 2024.
Yeah. It was right after the Biden-Trump debate. You know, that Black Monday in April on August 5th. That was warning.
That’s what it looked like to me, so that’d be funny. And so there’s about six different ways of what I’m getting at is about six different ways that Trump and Bessent could catalyze the breakdown of the European banking system.
So, “Hold that sort of Damocles over our head all you want and we’ll destroy you and we’ll maintain and we’ll mitigate most of the blowback onto us.”
That’s why the Fed stopped QQT. That’s why they lowered interest rates. That’s why they’ve announced, you know, quote unquote new QE, which is all bullcrap.
Like the Fed stands ready to provide our banking system with the backstops, if necessary, because that’s the Fed’s job, when this goes kinetic, in a financial sense. And then clearly the, the counter side to that, the counter move to that would be for Davos to activate their physically kinetic players on American soil. Be it, you know, a mixture of, you know, ISIS and Azov guys and, you know, Black Lives Matter and blue governors and all those, you know, all of it, every bit of it, they can act, you know, they can activate all of it. So we’ll see.
And that’s why Trump coming out and saying, “Oh, we love our military. We love our military so much that we’re willing to share our tariff revenue with them, because that’s how we protect our country.” OK? Message received.
Jesse Day: Well, Tom, you’ve thrown so much information at us today. Always appreciate your point of view. I always come away from our interviews with new food for thought. That’s why I love talking with you. For people who want to follow your work, you’ve got the Gold, Goats & Guns podcast. You’ve got a blog, you’ve got a Patreon. Tell us all about that.
Tom Luongo: Sure. So the podcast is an audio-only podcast, because I’m kind of a purist that way. And it comes out very intermittently whenever I, you know, can remember to actually put one out. But I always try to make it as much signal as possible.
You can find those over at the blog over tomoluongo.me or goldgoatsandguns.com. You can follow us and support us, over on Patreon/goldgoatsandguns with the monthly, where we put out the monthly newsletter, which is a retail investor style, you know, portfolio, you know, standard newsletter, as well as my twice-weekly private podcast for the, for the patrons as well, and a private chat service and all the rest of it.
So that’s how we make our bones. And you can follow me on Twitter where I’m, I try breathing fire every day @TFL1728.
Jesse Day: Great. Well, I’m going to put links to all of that in the description below. Always a blast talking with you, Tom. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Tom Luongo: Thank you, Jesse. Thank you.
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