Doug just got back to the U.S. from Argentina, and he opens this week’s episode with a real-world inflation report you won’t see on the BLS website. Two tiny breakfast sandwiches and drinks at Wendy’s: $15. Dinner for two at an ordinary sushi place in Virginia: $175. As Doug puts it, “I’ve lost all contract with what’s the value of the dollar anymore. I don’t even know. I don’t think anybody knows.”
The government’s official CPI number, of course, is 3.8%.
From there the conversation gets uncomfortable fast — for everyone, including Trump supporters. Doug doesn’t pull punches:
“I’m really affronted and disgusted at how unseemly the things that Trump is doing now really are, and the things that he’s saying, which are batshit crazy.”
We dig into the two stories that should be much bigger news than they are:
The $1.776 billion “slush fund.” Trump’s DOJ and Trump’s personal lawyers quietly settled his $10 billion suit against the IRS two days before it was scheduled to go in front of a judge. The settlement creates a pool of money — administered by five panelists appointed by the Attorney General (and removable by Trump) — that can be used to compensate Trump-aligned victims of “lawfare.” But buried in the language is something closer to blanket immunity for Trump, his family, trusts, affiliates, and subsidiaries from any future federal action. As Doug notes, it’s the same playbook Biden ran on his way out the door: “That essentially you can do anything you want, and you can’t be — nobody can go after you for it after the fact.”
3,700 trades in a single quarter. That’s what Trump disclosed for Q1 — somewhere between $200 million and $750 million in transactions. Including buying Nvidia the week before the State Department authorized H200 chip sales to China. Sixty trades a day, often in tickers he had just posted about on Truth Social.
We also get into:
Why the stock market is at all-time highs while the average American can’t afford breakfast — and the eerie parallel Doug draws to Weimar Germany in 1923
The $139 billion monthly drop in foreign Treasury holdings (the largest since 2022) and what it means for gold
Why mining stocks are still cheap despite gold companies “literally minting money” — and Doug’s continued bet on the sector
The Massie defeat, the $32 million spent to take him out, and why Doug thinks AIPAC should be registered as a foreign lobbying group
Why Doug believes the AI buildout is a bubble that will leave behind “white elephants” — especially now that the hyperscalers are funding it with debt
The generational war brewing online between boomers who see the financial reality and Gen Z who see the economic reality
And throughout it all, Doug returns to a theme he’s been hammering for years — but with new conviction:
“I’ll stick by my prediction that the U.S. is heading towards a civil war. And it won’t be just between two parties, but between several, and it’ll wind up with the breakup of the U.S.”
It’s a sober episode. Not many laughs this week. But if you want to understand why the disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street feels different this time — and why even Trump’s most loyal supporters are starting to wonder what they signed up for — hit play below.
Go Beyond the Podcast — Join Crisis Investing
The podcast is where Doug and I lay out the themes. Crisis Investing is where Doug tells you what to actually do about them.
This week we talked about a dollar nobody can value anymore, foreign central banks dumping Treasuries at the fastest rate since 2022, gold companies minting money while their stocks lag, an AI buildout that increasingly looks like a debt-financed bubble, and an average American who can’t afford breakfast at Wendy’s. You already understand the why. Crisis Investing is the what and the when.
Which gold and silver miners Doug actually owns. The oil names he’s still long. For Founding/VIP subscribers - The private placements crossing his desk with warrants attached. The asymmetric speculations he’s been famous for over four decades — the kind where a small position can return many multiples of your money when the herd finally shows up.
If “the edge of the precipice” is where Doug thinks we are, this is how he’s positioning for it. 👉
If you’ve been nodding along to these podcasts for months, this is the next step. Don’t just understand what’s coming — be positioned for it.
