TikTok: The Lifeline for Small Businesses in 2025 | Tiffany Cianci DSH #1138

TikTok.

Like I said, small businesses are growing and thriving there.

People think that TikTok was shut down because of national security.

Every single creator I know wanted an actual data privacy protection bill.

Even TikTok advocated for a full data security protection bill because in Project Texas, they've already secured our data.

I challenge you to ask any friend, have you ever had a friend whose TikTok account was hacked?

All right, guys, Tiffany Cion C here.

We are in D.C.

About to be a busy two days for you, right?

It's going to be an insane two days for me, but it's been an insane four days leading up to it, too.

You did like 50 interviews leading up to this?

I'm at, I think, 46 right now.

And I, no, no, I just had the AP in the car on the ride over.

So 47.

You did one on the way over?

Yep.

That is savage.

So what's the story that everyone wants to hear about?

Everybody wants to hear about saving TikTok.

What's going to happen to TikTok?

If Trump's going to negotiate the deal to keep TikTok in the long term, that's all I've been working on.

Yeah.

And you're feeling, we're filming this on Saturday, right?

Or is is it Sunday?

Today is Sunday.

Sunday the 19th.

So for people watching this, it'll be after whatever happens.

But what are your predictions for TikTok?

So we already know that Trump's going to turn it back on on Monday.

He's asking the companies to turn it back on today.

I don't think they'll be able to.

I think Biden would have had to issue a statement, but we will be back on by tomorrow, I believe.

And in addition to being back on by tomorrow, he made an announcement today that he wants to see a negotiating divestment where Americans hold 50%.

I probably should tell him we already do,

so we're there, guys.

Awesome.

Wait, Americans already own 50%?

I didn't know that because you've got guys like Mr.

Beast and Kevin O'Leary trying to buy.

Yeah, they're trying to buy it without the algorithm.

They're trying to do like a full buy, and he's saying he only wants Americans to have to own 50%.

He's not asking for a full divestment.

Interesting.

In that case, I've always projected that we would probably end up with the Chinese owners giving up like three to five percent and a like slightly larger ownership state coming from Americans, and and that we could save it there with a sufficient divestment team.

Because the U.S.

has to be one of their largest user bases, right?

We're actually not the largest user base, but we generate a lot of the income.

TikTok shop here generates a lot of the sales.

7.1 million small businesses in America generate all of their sales on TikTok.

700,000 employees in America rely on TikTok.

We are one of their largest money producers, but we're not the largest user base.

Got it.

Who is?

It's actually like a

amalgamation of a lot of asian countries and some of europe but we represent like 10 to 16 percent oh that's it yeah wow i assumed it was way higher than that yeah no interesting that's why there's no reason for them to sell to us yeah and why do you choose to use it because i know you get a ton of viewers on tick tock right i do i do i don't have like a million followers i have 250 000 followers but my videos average you know six to ten million views on my big videos my educational videos and my live streams are 500,000, 700,000 people.

That's insane.

Well, I focus on content that's all about exposing corporate capture of our government, corruption, monopolies destroying small businesses.

It's not excitement, like it's not fun content, but it's really important content.

It's needed, right?

Yeah.

Someone like you.

Someone that can div that information uncensored.

Because if you did that on other platforms, let's be honest, a lot of that would get censored other than X.

Ian Carroll does a lot of content that early on was very similar to some of what I do.

And he's suffered a lot of censorship on all of the other platforms.

He and I are really good friends.

And

when we talk about the censorship and other platforms, it's just off the charts.

That's why we focus on, I know he likes X a lot.

I do some on X, but really I focus on TikTok and he loves TikTok.

He just had the biggest ratio of all time.

He really did.

I was in there.

I was doing the work.

What was it?

Two million likes on that one reply?

On that one reply to Elon.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

And Elon didn't address the reply, right?

No, but I really hope it opens a conversation that's really needed in our government right now.

Yeah.

I mean, he seems very logical.

So I'm sure if he actually dives into stuff, he'll change some of his sentences.

and a lot of people assume that that ian is some kind of a of a just a know-it-all or a conspiracy theorist ian's a history teacher oh wow he's a u.s history teacher and he taught children history classes in a very non-partisan way i've seen his lesson planning it was really amazing he gave up teaching to do this because he said he needed to teach everyone

and he's he's amazing you get labeled that a lot like a conspiracy theorist no no i uh I get told a lot that I'll never have any sponsors.

Yeah, because you go after the big companies.

Well, people offer me brand deals all the time and I send them over like a three-page questionnaire on who their investors are, whether they've taken investments from private equity, whether they're still founder operated, if they have any offers out right now, trying to seek more investment.

And very few ever send those back.

I could, so from an entrepreneur business point of view, I could see why.

Yeah.

You know, that's a lot of information.

It really is, but I can't put my name to something that's destroying small business.

Small businesses in America are 99.9% of all businesses.

They also create 99.9% of

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The jobs in America.

Wow.

And nobody knows that.

Nobody realizes that ratio.

I did not know that.

It's because big corporations are really good at finding efficiency to make money.

and amazingly good at exploiting labor to do it with less and less people.

And so over the last 20 years, big business has eliminated jobs and increased their profitability, while small businesses have created all the jobs, literally all of them.

But they're the ones that get no play in Congress because they can't afford to fight there.

Yeah, but you are not a fan of H-1B visas.

Well, you know, honestly, if they're coming over to serve in small businesses and not just to go into the big corporate entities, I wouldn't be as opposed.

But if they're just coming over to help monopolists not give jobs to Americans, then that would be a problem for me.

It's a really nuanced conversation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm all about small businesses.

I mean, the pandemic was probably the biggest destruction of small businesses.

It destroyed millions.

In the 505-ish days of pandemic closures that happened in the United States, 551 new billionaires were created.

Whoa.

551.

While at the same time, millions of small businesses went out of business permanently.

And you know where most of those small businesses went to rebuild new businesses?

TikTok.

Really?

And now they're being closed down.

That's a shame.

They're suffering twice.

That's a shame.

So 551 new billionaires.

I wonder what industries a majority of them were.

So many of them were exploiting PPP loans to grow user bases by offering products people didn't need, offering services to help people survive the pandemic.

We saw tons of billionaires created for the pop-up drive-through clinics and testing facilities.

We saw a lot of exploitative child care centers that weren't actually serving children, but were getting lots of money.

We saw so many different mechanisms that were created to just extract revenue, wealth, and taxpayer dollars from our economy.

And none of it went where we needed it.

Absolutely.

Now, as someone who I'm I'm getting pitched to like, like raise money now for the podcast, can you expose some of these private equity firms, like their tactics, their predatory tactics that they use to small businesses?

Yeah, I'll give you an example because a podcast kind of maybe more closely aligns with name image likeness in sports.

So many young athletes that are like NCAA athletes are right now, for the first time, getting access to name image likeness brand deals.

And on day one, when they turn 18, because they're not allowed to be approached before that without a parent present, they're getting sent over offers for like a million dollars.

They're like, just sign here.

And these are kids that come from the streets, kids that come from at-risk neighborhoods that have fought, scrounged, fought to get out and build something for their families, to build something for their communities.

And that looks like more money than they'll ever see in their life.

But in those offers they're getting, they are so exploitative.

It basically creates indentured servitude for the rest of their life because it basically says that they get to keep sometimes 60, 70% of every dollar they make for the rest of their careers.

And they're handing those over on day one.

Private equity firms are going in and buying up small businesses en masse.

They did this especially during the pandemic when they were suffering.

They'd offer them a cash infusion and say, we'll take a minority stake.

And they would quietly on the back end also offer money to one other investor saying they were taking a minority stake that would accumulately allow for like a hostile takeover.

And then they would force everyone out and exploit the small businesses.

Yeah, that is a fear of mine because I do want to do like what Rogan did kind of and sell one day.

But at the same time, like you said, it's got to be the right person because there is a show called Hot Ones.

Do you know that show?

Yeah.

And they sold to, they're saying saying George Soros' group.

Yeah.

So it's really important that when you're negotiating, you consider your intellectual property and the value of what your name means for the rest of your life.

When you're thinking about who's going to own it, you have to think about what their ultimate goals are.

And when you negotiate for every podcaster out there that's looking to you to set an example for them, when you're negotiating to sell your name, you're not negotiating with the person sitting across from you.

They could be your brother.

They could be the person you feel like the most kindred spirit you've ever negotiated with in your life.

And you better assume that the person you're actually negotiating with is the monster that's going to buy it from them.

You need to picture the worst possible human that could own your podcast and decide if it's worth it.

Wow.

Because somebody else is going to buy it in two to three years if it's private equity.

They turn all of their investments over every couple of years.

So you're not with them for the long haul.

They might convince you and get you in and butter you up and things might be okay for a year or two.

But when that fund closes out, they're going to hand you off to a different firm and you have no say.

That's so good to know because people don't think about that when they sell a business, right?

That's what's happening to all of the small business brands in America, like all the franchises.

Right now, there are like private equity firms that have done good.

There was a private equity firm that saved Tropical Smoothie Cafe.

People would think, oh, so they do good.

Well, their fund had to close out and they just had to hand them off.

And they handed them off to one of the darkest private equity firms in the United States.

Their franchisees are terrified they're going to lose everything.

When you say darkest, what qualifies that as darkest?

Blackstone Carlisle Group.

These are dark private equity firms that will stop at nothing to exploit money.

And these are small business owners whose lives are on the line right now uh roar capital just bought subway right they bought subway in an 8.9 billion dollar deal and all of their franchisees were immediately told they all had to renovate well first of all subway franchisees were failing they have the largest default rate of any subchain in the united states on their loans to the sba so they were already failing under bad leadership then roar capital came in well first of all they already own jimmy johns they already own three other subchains and arby's so they have the competitors in-house so immediately they'll they'll unify all the suppliers and they'll say, you can't use that anymore, but like sign these new agreements.

And they'll raise the prices.

So the franchisees are paying more and Rourke is taking a percentage.

And they'll say, oh, we need to renovate.

You'll do better if we renovate.

So you guys need to take out loans for $120,000.

We'll give you the loans at an X, like an inflated interest rate.

As they do that, then they'll say, These are the people you have to buy all the renovations from.

And they don't tell them they're getting a 13% kickback on the back end.

Whoa.

They could have made that cost way lower for their franchisees.

But for a lot of these private equity franchise owners, they have a saying, you're not doing it right if your hand is not in the pocket of your franchisee 13 to 60 different ways.

I've heard that at franchise conferences in real time, standing on the stage.

I've heard it.

You said 13 to 16?

13 to 60.

60.

13 to 60.

And that's because there are certain franchises you can't squeeze as much and certain franchises you can squeeze everywhere.

But 60% after that, you'll be, the FTC will come down on you.

That is so scary because you think they just make money off the sale and you think it's like a fee or whatever, but you're saying 13 ways they're making money off you.

So, a lot of people don't know that I started my TikTok channel because I owned a franchise and a private equity firm took us over, and I was the president of our union when it happened.

And what's happened to that franchise since then is that they are currently in litigation with hundreds of their franchisees.

Wow.

They're being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for exploiting and retaliating against their franchisees.

The DOJ has subpoenaed documents in their dealings with their franchisees.

They have bankrupted dozens of veterans that bought franchisees under them with fraudulent paperwork.

Terrible.

They manipulated all of their federal filing documents so people thought that their finances were better than they were and that their sales of new franchises were better than they were.

And these people took out loans from the government to buy those franchises.

Private equity firms are destroying small businesses in America.

Have you gone public with that company or no?

Yeah, it's Unleashed Brands.

Unleashed Brands?

Unleashed Brands.

I am currently testifying against them in several cases across the United States.

One of them is really horrifying.

It's a case that is not even with a franchisee, it's with one of their customers, a seven-year-old girl named Mia, who fell off of a zipline at their urban air trampoline parks in Awatuke, Arizona.

She thought she was the only one, but she didn't know dozens of people were falling off their ziplines all across the United States.

Well, during my case, a whistleblower came to me and he said, hey, I want you to know we fought to try to save you, but we failed.

And he sent me all of these documents that were from a second legal case that had been sealed And they'd spent millions of dollars to seal it so no one see the documents from it.

In those documents, there was a letter that said that the safety company for urban air franchises had gone to the CEO and said, you cannot pull the harness checkers on these ziplines because kids will get injured, they will die.

And the CEO or their team at the CEO headquarters overruled them.

And just weeks later, Mia fell.

But it was happening in trampoline parks all over the United States, right?

And what happens is when you go to a trampoline park for a birthday party, you sign your kid in at the front, right?

You do the iPad, you don't realize there's 90 pages of legal documents under that.

And they included a forced arbitration clause where they can include a non-disparagement agreement or an NDA and a confidentiality agreement.

So if kids are falling off trampoline parks all across the United States, one, they're not allowed to go public because they can get sued.

Two.

They are forced into a secret arbitration, so there's no court documents anyone can find.

Three, they can't work with each other, so they can't unify to sue these companies.

And in arbitrations, their damages are kept.

So a child's life is maybe worth $250,000, whereas in a courtroom, it might be 100 million.

And all these kids are falling off trampoline, like falling off these ziplines.

A mom was internally decapitated at her son's seventh birthday at one of these trampoline parks.

Oh my gosh.

And when they were producing documents in these cases, none of them produced the documents that showed that the CEO knew what was going to happen.

But I got them and I turned them over to all the lawyers.

Well, that's the difference between simple negligence and wanton disregard for human life.

That's the difference between a bankrupt company and something that's the cost of doing business.

And so all of these tactics these private equity companies employ are designed to ensure the free market never sees the bad behavior.

The public never responds.

They can continue to exploit the American population and the small business owners.

And so they're not just exploiting small business owners.

They're also exploiting the customer base.

They're also exploiting the American population that believes that there's safety in these institutions because they don't see anything on the news.

That is so nuts.

I am learning so much.

I did not know secret arbitration was a thing.

So a lot of big companies probably use that.

You have a phone that's got an iPhone?

Yeah.

How many apps would you see on your iPhone right now?

Got to be 100 because I have like five pages.

Do you have Uber Eats?

I have Postmates, yeah.

Postmates.

Okay.

So one of my biggest videos I've had on every platform was a video where a woman was in the back of an Uber with her family and the Uber driver ran a red light.

They got T-boned.

Their livelihood was destroyed.

Doctors, lawyers in the car, they gave up their jobs for years trying to recover, get their bones repaired.

And they went and they tried to sue Uber because the driver wasn't properly vetted.

Uber argued in court that they weren't entitled to go to court with Uber because years earlier, their 12-year-old daughter had ordered a pizza on Uber Eats, a different company, a different app.

And in the terms and conditions, clicking Uber Eats, she had signed an arbitration agreement for Uber Eats.

And they argued that it should expand to Uber, which is a totally different risk mechanism.

It's like ordering a pizza poses you very little risk.

Getting in someone's car is very different.

They want in court.

No way.

They want in court and Uber does not have to go to court with those people now.

Whoa, that's a really good thing to know because everyone takes Ubers.

And if people get, I've been in an Uber accident, actually.

My car got hit when I was in it.

So if I use Uber Eats, I couldn't sue them for that.

They could argue that and they would succeed.

They just did.

There was another case very recently that was very ugly in the press.

A man and a woman went to Disneyland, Disney World, and they had marked on all of their information that she was very allergic to something anaphylactically.

And it was in their magic bands.

It was in all the restaurant reservations.

It was confirmed multiple times.

They did everything right.

And she went to a restaurant and they served her what she was allergic to and she died.

No.

They went to sue Disney for failing to take the proper care.

that's necessary when they did all of the right things to protect her, including at the restaurant that day.

And Disney argued in court that because two years prior, three years prior, they had signed up for a two-week trial of Disney Plus to watch a movie, that they weren't entitled to take them to court because they had an arbitration agreement and the Disney Plus.

No, first of all, one is going to a theme park and putting your life on a roller coaster.

Yeah.

The other is literally watching a movie in your living room.

Very different risks.

And they argued in court that basically they weren't entitled to go to court because they watched a movie two years ago, never even signed up for the service.

Just the trial.

That is so scary because a lot of these big companies obviously have apps these days.

Yeah.

All sorts of apps.

So they could all be just bundling that in.

It's worse.

You want to buy a washer and dryer?

Buy a washer?

Buy a washer and dryer.

Oh, buy.

Just go to Best Buy, buy a washer and dryer for your house.

New.

You don't see anything before you buy it.

The boxes get delivered.

Yeah.

When you take out the warranty paperwork and you plug it in, there's something in the warranty paperwork that will say you are now tied to an arbitration agreement.

And then by plugging in this washer, you forfeited your rights to a trial if we burned down your house.

What?

I'm not kidding.

Oh my gosh.

Even if you have insurance, like home insurance.

Your home insurance might try to sue them, but they're going to get forced into arbitration.

Your home insurance shouldn't have to cover something.

If there's a defect and a product like the defect should be responsible, then the liability insurance with that corporation should be responsible for that defect.

But unfortunately, we just see over and over again that arbitration has taken over the court systems.

The Supreme Court keeps upholding it and expanding what was a good law when it began.

into something that is nefarious and exploited by mega corporations.

Yeah.

And that's why the American public keeps suffering and nobody knows knows the bad stuff is happening.

No, this, I'm glad we're bringing light to this.

This is so interesting to me because capitalism has its downfalls, right?

Capitalism in a free market capitalist society is probably the best mechanism we have on the planet.

It doesn't exist here right now.

We have a crony capitalist society that has been captured by private interests.

Free market capitalism would require that all of this bad behavior was seen by the public and we would wage boycotts.

and we would go and we would post bad reviews and we would tell everybody not to shop there and they would change their mind.

We would go to court and get a hundred million dollar verdict and they would change their behavior because that was not a cost of doing business, that was not worth the risk.

And they would start spending the money to protect Americans.

But when they don't have those risks, it is a cost of doing business, and the free market isn't responding.

So, we don't have a free market capitalist society right now.

That's really a problem.

That's why TikTok was so huge, right?

Well, it brought to light a lot of bad behavior, it brought to light the bad behavior that was happening with the companies I'm fighting, it brought to light the bad behavior that was happening at Uber Eats.

It's where we saw the largest response to the Disney Plus versus Disney arbitration, and we got them them to withdraw it.

Oh, really?

Yeah, we put enough pressure on them that they withdraw the motion.

Wow.

And he got to go to court.

Well done.

That's impressive.

Yeah, it's like for the people because you get so many views on TikTok.

I mean, you get all these people standing up, signing.

You saw the food petition banning Kellogg's.

Yes.

I got like 500,000 signatures.

Yeah, I was absolutely advocating for that.

I think they did an amazing thing.

But honestly, if people were able to sue in America and not get forced to an arbitration with those companies, then we would already have done that.

We would have accomplished that already.

If our government weren't captured by those same lobbying dollars right now, we would have already achieved that.

Interesting.

So you can't directly sue these large companies, basically.

It depends on the large company, but a lot of class actions are precluded by simply buying a product.

And even if it's not the fruit loops, the same company that owned Fruit Loops might have owned the company you bought your washer and dyer from.

They own everything.

Yes.

Headlogs, they own everything.

And so if you sign one arbitration agreement or one like class, a non-class agreement, which means you can't fight with other people, then you're barred everywhere.

Wow.

Yeah.

The ones that really get to me are the health ones when people sacrifice consumer health for profits.

I am not a fan of that.

Our regulatory agencies, which I, Bobby Kennedy talks about this a lot.

He's been on my podcast a bunch of times.

I've been on his podcast.

He talks about this a lot.

Right now at the FDA, the same regulators that approve the drugs get royalties from the drugs.

Wow.

What possible reason would they have to deny anything?

I did not know that.

So the people at the FDA that are approving the drugs, they get royalties.

Yep.

And not just like royalties this year, royalties for life.

That is nuts.

There's somebody that was involved with the like the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

I don't remember which one.

And they're guaranteed $100,000 royalty every year for the rest of as long as it's in use.

Every booster, everything that follows, no matter what.

Yeah, they're on the fifth one now, right?

It's mind-blowing at this point.

That's what I heard.

I don't know personally.

Think about how much they made off of Zempic.

Yeah, when instead we could just remove poison from our food and maybe we could fix things.

All right.

Well, we're on the right track.

Red food diet just got banned, right?

It's amazing how that happened right before his confirmation hearing.

A lot of good stuff has been happening right now.

Isn't that amazing?

Crypto has been doing well.

Well, a lot of people are, a lot of people, a lot of lobbyists are fighting very hard to ban Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

from getting the HHS position.

Really?

Yeah.

I don't think they'll succeed.

I think that Trump's pretty committed.

I think he's coming into office.

First of all, I lobbied for Bobby to win because he helped bring to light what was happening to me and the other small business owners.

It was really a personal decision why why I voted for him, but I'm pretty open about that.

I also was in Maryland where I had the luxury.

Yeah.

Right.

I could choose whoever I wanted.

And I felt like he'd earned my trust and he'd earned my vote.

But

Trump's coming to office as a lame duck.

He's coming in with no need to be re-elected.

He doesn't have to give anybody allegiance on anything.

He can do everything he wants for the American people if he chooses to.

Whether or not he chooses to stay the course, I do think he's going to try to build a legacy.

And I think that's probably going to be part of it.

So I think he'll probably go to the map for Bobby.

And I really hope he does.

I hope he does it for Tulsi, too.

Yeah, I think he will.

His word has been pretty solid lately.

Yeah.

You know, you got to do it.

He's showing up for me right now.

Showing up for you.

He's repairing a lot of burned bridges.

I mean, if I were in his spot, forgiving Zuck for banning him and losing the, pretty much losing the 20 election, you know, banning him.

And he forgave him.

So that was hard.

It takes a big person to do that.

Why does Mark Zuckerberg look like Dave Portnoy now?

I think he had a really good PR team behind his rebrand, to be honest, because he's going on these podcasts.

He's looking like a normal person now.

He is one one pizza review away from like portnoy sheen version

so you don't fully trust him do you no absolutely not i don't trust mark zuckerberg as far as i could throw him and i'm you know i'm not that strong yeah i uh i don't trust him because the way he exploits small businesses dude facebook ads are so expensive now i used to be able to run them and make money but dude I want you to think about what you just said, because that is why small businesses go to TikTok.

Most people don't know that Facebook's algorithm is explicitly designed to not allow for organic growth for any business profile.

You have to pay to play.

You'll go in there and you'll think you've made the best like video you've ever made.

And it goes there and you get 100 views, 105 views, the same video that's getting 17 million views over on TikTok.

The same thing happens when you go to Google and you go to YouTube and you're like with a business portfolio or you're going under a business like organization.

as your header for your profile and you'll make an amazing video and you know people want to see it you know there's hunger for it and it goes nowhere and And then they'll send you some emails and they'll say, it looks like you're struggling with your content.

We can help you.

And they get you to buy that first ad and suddenly you get 80,000 views for that small business owner and they say, I found my audience.

And then you try to pull those ads and suddenly no one's watching again.

You think people are going to follow you like it's the yellow pages and they can find you, but can't, right?

When you look at how Google and Meta are designed, 99.9% of Meta's revenue.

and 98.7% of Google's revenue comes from ad dollars.

Wow.

And so they're designed to exploit small businesses and they pit you bidding against monopolies that can afford whatever they want but the monopolies get a 60 cut that's an estimation we don't know their exact negotiations but you might be bidding three dollars and 61 cents a like or a transfer to your website that's that's a common number three dollars and 61 cents for somebody to like and walmart might be paying 41 cents wow okay because they're buying more of those likes they're buying more of that access and because the same investors that own walmart also own meta and they also own own google interest blackrock owns huge chunks of all of those state street owns huge chunks of all of those so small businesses cannot compete they're up against monopolies and they have to pay for access to an audience that's why when people talk to me about tick tock they're like cat videos and i'm like the backbone of america's economy why did it take a foreign company inventing a product to bring the american dream back to america it's because corporations destroyed it American corporations captured our government and destroyed the American dream here.

They made it so we can't afford housing.

They made it so we can't afford to get a job because the jobs we get don't pay the bills.

They made it so even if we try to get a job, they're ghost jobs online or you're going to get a job that's dead and that's not going to pay for what you need and you can't pay your student loans back, right?

They took away the American dream.

But TikTok has been giving it back or at least filling in some like stop gap as like a healing process for Americans that can't pay their bills.

They might make $200 a month on TikTok.

They might be in the affiliate program.

They might be in the creator program.

And they might get that extra $340 a month.

And that might be the difference between choosing medicine and groceries this month.

Yep.

Yeah.

Cause 62% of people are living paycheck to paycheck.

7.1 million small businesses rely on TikTok for most of their revenue.

Wow.

For most of their sales or most of their customer access, because they can't get access on Meta or Google.

They have denied them access so that you have to pay for the access.

They're in small businesses don't have the money.

They don't have the resources.

And they're the only ones still employing anybody and creating jobs.

I'd rather they kept doing that instead of giving money to corporations that already have too much.

Agreed.

I got a buddy that does live shopping.

He does sports cards.

Have you seen those?

Oh, I love those actually.

I think they're really fun.

My son likes the Pokemon cards ones.

Yeah, yeah, the Pokemon ones, but basically, like he gets no views on Instagram or anywhere else.

But on TikTok, he's doing $10 million

a year off TikTok.

Like I said, small businesses are growing and thriving there.

People think that TikTok was shut down because of national security.

Every single creator I know wanted an actual data privacy protection bill.

Even TikTok advocated for a full data security protection bill because in Project Texas, they've already secured our data.

I challenge you to ask any friend, have you ever had a friend whose TikTok account was hacked?

Hacked, yes.

Stolen, hacked, a TikTok one?

I've never met anyone.

TikTok?

No, Instagram.

Instagram?

Absolutely.

Instagram all the time.

Mine, all the time.

Have you ever met anyone whose TikTok account was hacked?

No, banned, but not hacked.

Yeah, never hacked.

That's because all of their data is secured at Oracle.

In Project Texas, they spent like $2.8 billion to put it there.

And they did that because Trump said he was going to ban it if if they didn't protect their data so they did it they responded they did it people are calling him a flip-flopper on this but he's not a flip-flopper they just did what he asked yeah but they secured the data and when they did that they said yeah go pass a data security bill because we've already done it meta and google they lobbied against the data privacy and protection bill and they paid for the tick tock ban crazy so did i pack but i'm not supposed to say that out loud yeah that's a controversial one if you want to beat me on that one you're welcome to um but they did as a matter of fact they've been tweeting constantly all week long that it's time for TikTok to go through all of their surrogates.

Yeah, you look at who funds that one, and it's a whole rabbit hole, right?

Yep.

Um, have you looked into private equity and real estate?

Because now houses are so expensive, and you hear these rumors about like what is it, BlackRock buying up a ton of them?

Yeah, so it's not BlackRock, it's Blackstone.

Oh, Blackstone, BlackRock doesn't invest in real estate, uh, but Blackstone has a huge portion of their portfolio in real estate.

And Blackstone is a child of BlackRock.

It was spun off by BlackRock, got it.

Uh, and they created Blackstone.

Blackstone is buying up as much as 44% of the houses in some markets right now.

And it's really, really nefarious because what they're doing is they're buying up and holding them.

They'll buy entire communities and they turn them into rental-only communities.

And as they're doing it, they're intentionally working with other private equity owned entities that are rent price fixing companies.

And so what happens is they go to some small market landlords, people that are like, you know, six units, eight units.

I'll go to one of those guys and I'll be like, hey, you're not getting enough for your units.

We'll help you out.

So they go into this program and they'll go to like sign the terms and conditions.

They don't read it.

They don't know that one, they've signed their arbitration agreement, their confidentiality agreement, but they've also signed an agreement that they agree, that they will agree with whatever price they give them, or they can be sued

by the company they just signed up with.

So if that landlord's giving people decent rent in Atlanta, that's one of the worst markets, say he's charging, you know, the price it was three years ago and people are paying $1,300.

And this company says, you could be getting $19.50.

And he says, whoa, I love my tenants.

I can't do that.

I just wanted to know what I was missing out on.

I just wanted to know.

They say, well, you will or we'll sue you.

And suddenly all the small market landlords they've captured and they have whole teams that go out and recruit these people and bring them to like meetings and tell them to sign up.

All of these people now are hiking their rent when they wouldn't have done it.

This is a violation of the free market.

They're not making the choice they're being forced to at this point, right?

But at the same time, all of the big private equity companies, they've pooled all of their data into these one, like this one data aggregator, and it's price fixing all of the rents across the entire Atlanta area.

One of them was just raided by the FBI and the DOJ

for price fixing and engaging in collaborative behavior to price fix in multiple markets in the United States to lock people out of housing.

Really makes you wonder because when I was house shopping in Vegas last year, there was not much on the market.

It was really slim pickings.

I'm from Las Vegas and I i have so many friends that can't find houses because they're getting bought up for cash the day they hit the market we have so many friends that are struggling to even go into apartments right now because the pricing is so high in vegas and it's funny because i was talking on a on a podcast the other day and i said when i was in vegas i was 15 years old when i got my first job and i'm gonna out myself right now because i'm probably the oldest person you've had on your podcast uh that was 1996.

I was 15 years old.

I got my first job at MCI WorldCom.

And to give you an idea about how employees are living today, how they're trying to pay and survive, I was 15 years old and my starting rate of pay was $14.40 an hour, plus commission.

As a 15-year-old girl, if I had worked full-time hours, I would have been making $33,000 a year.

That's the average starting rate for most teachers right now.

Wow.

And it's been 27 years since then.

Yes.

So inflation.

At that time, Vegas had the lowest cost of living in the western United States besides Phoenix.

And my rent on my apartment, I had my own apartment when I was 16.

Wow.

I rented my own apartment and my rent on this really nice apartment in, it was on Silverado Ranch.

Silverado Ranch.

Yeah.

It was a, it was a Camden Homes apartment.

They didn't notice I wasn't 18 when I signed my paperwork.

I signed for my apartment.

And my apartment was $740 a month.

Damn.

Those same apartments, one of my friends just moved in there.

She's paying $2,400 a month.

So like 3.5X.

But what's the minimum wage in Vegas right now?

What is it?

It's at 10.

I think it's at 10.

I was making $14.40 an hour back then.

So you were making more than the average minimum wage and paying three and a half times less.

Yeah, one third.

That's nuts.

Yep.

Yeah.

But that's corporations.

And a lot of people don't understand this is how it's supposed to work.

It's gross.

If the free market were real and it were happening and we could see the bad conduct and our regulators were doing their job, then this would be good.

Like capitalism as a process.

is is a pretty decent mechanism for moving financial markets forward because it's fixed.

You know how it's supposed to work.

It is the regulator's job to make sure that human interests don't corrupt it.

And because they've been allowed to be captured by it, what we're seeing over and over again is that the regulators are failing to keep it free.

And so as a result, we have crony capitalism.

We have just vulgar, corrupted capitalism that has captured the very thing that's designed to keep it in check.

And so at this point, it's abusive because capitalism as an economic principle is designed to extract wealth from the market and to balance itself to make sure that it gets out what it can to create more growth.

Well, if you looked 20 years ago, every $1 in inflation, like literally 61 cents of that was reinvested into new plants, higher wages, more employees.

And our market was doing that because we had higher corporate taxes and our regulators were requiring that it be reinvested for them to get tax breaks.

But instead, right now, literally only like three cents of every dollar of inflation is going back into our market and the rest is going to the billionaires.

That's not.

It's a massive shift.

It's all just being like strip mined out of our economy from all of the middle class, all of the working class and all the small businesses because it's doing what it's supposed to do.

It's just not being checked by the forces that are designed to check it.

We keep electing them and we watch as they insider trade.

We watch as they take fat cat briefcases full of money and gold bars.

as we saw recently in New Jersey.

Gold bars.

And we keep re-electing them.

And honestly, I think TikTok is the place that was going to change that.

And I think you're terrified of it.

That is so nuts.

These stats are mind-blowing.

60%.

It used to be 61%.

Now it's 3%.

3%.

Is that partially because Trump lowered the corporate tax in his last term?

So Trump isn't the only one that lowered the corporate tax.

I mean, Trump actually raised taxes on private equity.

He was the first one to do it since Carter.

Oh, wow.

Every single president since Carter has loosened restrictions on private equity.

Back then, you could only have 30 investors to be private equity and not have to report to the government.

It was actually Clinton that took the rails off when he repealed Glass-Teagle.

And then Obama made it so they could have unlimited investors and not have any government oversight.

Trump didn't do much to help with private equity, but he was the only one that tightened the restrictions just a little bit by making them hold their investments a little longer to qualify for their tax breaks.

I hope he does more this time, a lot more.

But every single president has gone down that path.

Every single president has loosened restrictions or made it easier for big corporations to succeed and for small businesses to fail.

It's really hard to watch.

Hopefully, the times are changing, though.

I mean, his crypto crushed this, so it's not like he needs any more money.

That is true.

You know, that is true.

That was one of the best crypto launches I've ever seen.

You know, that was done.

Like, I was over at a house with a bunch of the crypto guys after the crypto ball the other night.

Yeah.

And they looked at each other and go, do you want to launch this?

And I was sitting there on the couch and they were all wearing gold slippers, like Trump slippers, like the sneakers, these big fluffy sneakers.

And they were like, you want to launch this thing?

They were having a conversation and they texted Trump's tweet.

They were like, let's do it.

Oh, so it wasn't even like an elaborate.

When I tell you, I don't even think it was planned for that night.

I was sitting on this couch and I think they were all like,

that's nuts.

I was just chilling with a whole bunch of the crypto guys hanging out because I was, I was live streaming that night from their

podcasting studio.

And they were like, you want to do it?

You want to do it?

I'm like, yeah, let's do it.

Text the team.

And that was it.

I thought they planned it out for like years.

I got to be honest.

Maybe, I mean, sure, they, maybe they want people to think that.

That's not how I read it.

I think they had everything set up so it would go off.

Got it.

But they, they pulled the trigger trigger and it looked like they're like.

That's a true meme coin launcher.

I wish I got some.

I saw some people yesterday telling me how much they made.

I'm like, wow, I got massive FOMO right now.

Oh my gosh.

Some people made millions off that.

Yeah, I believe it.

Yeah, that's the power of crypto, though, right?

When the money's not in the power of the banks.

Decentralizing.

It would be one thing if the banks were serving like banks are supposed to serve, but.

The banks are all owned by the same companies that own the companies that also own our politicians.

And so decentralizing our currency is probably the only way to take back control, if I'm being honest.

Yeah.

And honestly, decentralizing other things like putting, putting our, do you want to know the best thing we could do?

We should put our government budget, the entire government treasury budget on blockchain.

If taxpayers could see what's actually being done with their tax dollars, everything would change.

Yeah.

Because then you could live commentate on it on X or something.

You literally could see everywhere that dollar was matriculating and how it was being wasted.

That'd be great.

They would see $400 hammers and they would see wasted trips to go and like have PR trips overseas with like posse of like 600 people yeah they would see us wasting money on things we don't need or that we've already spent they would see pork products and they would see like all of the stuff being crammed into bills we don't get to read before they pass and everything would change but uh you know i don't think they're gonna let us do that didn't elon launch a site to kind of do that like track it a little more i believe he launched a site to track waste where they're adding projects on there to track some things but There's no way that we could see what taxpayer dollars are doing with what he's doing.

I hope they do more.

I really do.

Yeah.

The overseas money money seems like it's an elaborate scheme too, whenever money goes overseas.

You know, if I told you something I've never said on a podcast right now, I hope you don't get throttled for this.

There's a reason our government will never regulate BlackRock.

They will never regulate State Street.

It's because most people don't know this.

My husband's a federal attorney.

So we know this because we have a federal pension.

81% of every single federal pension and 401k and investment in America, including the presidential gold and parachute pensions, is invested with BlackRock.

Whoa.

And the other 19% is invested with State Street.

Holy crap.

The same people they're supposed to be regulating hold the future of all of their staff members, all of the congressional members, all of the presidents, all of their personal investments are controlled by BlackRock and State Street.

I mean, that right there explains everything.

It explains everything.

They can't regulate what they depend on for their own future.

They are so personally interested in its success that they can't act to save the American people from from total annihilation because it would destroy them too it would wow yeah so oh my gosh I've never said that on a podcast before but it's it's because you don't know it unless you have access to the back end look at where the federal pension is invested and I do that is nuts so there's really no solution at this point then I don't understand the only solution is to start voting out incumbents We can't let Diane Feinstein be wheeled in in her wheelchair days before she died and have aides telling her, vote I.

I what, sweetheart?

Vote I.

I'd like to introduce, no, vote I.

And they held up her hand and they took her vote.

Wow.

Right.

We're watching is Nancy Pelosi just die and feinsteined her way into Congress with her new hip on a, on a, uh, what's it called?

Walker.

Yeah.

Right.

Mitch McConnell glitches out three times a week.

The only way to change this is to stop re-electing them.

That's it.

We have to take back our elections.

We have to show up for midterms too.

What percentage of these politicians do you think are compromised in some sort of way?

You think it's really high?

I mean,

if you look at Massey and what he said,

he's one of, so Massey, weeks before his wife suspiciously died, weeks before, went on a podcast.

I think it was Rogan.

And he said, I don't know for sure, but I think it was Rogan.

He said,

I'm one of only maybe six people in Congress that don't have an IPAC handler.

I denied having one and I've paid for it every day since.

That's like 91%.

But they also each up.

I don't know if you know that there's a team of super users for our, for our treasury and for the Fed.

It was exposed in leaks, and I wish we were getting more stuff with Julian Assange.

I really want him protected at all costs.

Let's get him pardoned.

I want Snowden pardoned immediately.

I want Edward Snowden needs to be pardoned now.

I know Trump promised to free Ross Hallbrech.

Oh, that's nice.

I saw that.

He did that at the Libertarian Convention.

He hasn't talked about it since.

but he did make that promise.

I'm not sure if that's going to happen or not, but I'd like to see Snowden pardoned.

But we saw recently in leaked documents that during the 2008 crash and then during the COVID crashes, there were a team of super users from JPMorgan, Chase, BlackRock,

from like the other three big bank branches that were getting early access to what the Fed and the Treasury were going to do and the labor numbers so that they could see it.

And that means they could make back end deals and do things before the rest of the public found out.

Wow.

They were called super users or super access users.

And so they got all of the briefings before the rest of us.

Oh my God.

I mean, it makes sense.

It's pretty hard not to fix a system when you've got the fix and the fix is in.

Yeah.

I mean, look at the stock tracker sites.

You can't deny that.

Looking at the Insider Trading in Congress, look at Michael McCall.

Rep Michael McCall drafted the TikTok ban.

Yeah.

He,

in the weeks before the TikTok ban, not him.

They say it wasn't him.

It was his wife or his daughter.

It was a surrogate.

Invested $300,000 in Meta.

He also took donations from Meta leading up to introducing the TikTok ban.

He also is funded by IPAC, who said that TikTok had to go just weeks before it was introduced.

And they said that leaked audio is famous, infamous at this point, right?

And then when he found out that it was going to get bundled in to the National Security Appropriations Bill, he invested like $750,000 more in Meta before it was announced.

Oh my gosh.

Over a million dollars.

Yeah, follow the money.

It never fails.

Well, 98% of Americans support banning insider trading in Congress, but there's a 0% correlation between American support for something passing and it actually passing, but there's a 76% correlation between billionaires wanting something passed and it getting passed.

Wow.

The money talks, basically, is what you're saying.

Money's the only thing that talks.

Yeah.

I wonder if there's any ways to stop the insider trading.

Like.

I mean, there's a bill in Congress right now.

It's bipartisan to do it.

Oh, really?

We should be calling and telling them we demand it, but they're not going to.

Wow.

They're not going to act against their own interests.

Scary stuff.

Have you been seeing this open AI stuff?

Oh my gosh.

Tucker just had on the mother of the person who was.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah.

I am.

Scary.

I'm a whistleblower, right?

Like, I gave documents to the FTC and the DOJ.

And there was a point where I was so scared.

I was so scared.

And people are like, oh, your private equity firm is a small one.

Mine's Seidler private equity.

They back unleashed brands.

They're the owners of the Padres.

They have bought up like Rawling Sports Gear.

Yeah.

Quick quack car washes, all kinds of companies.

And I was scared.

I was so scared.

I was told that I needed to be careful.

I was told that I needed to get security.

They hired a felon with 88 felony convictions and gave him my address and told him to bring me a message.

What?

The man had 88 felony charges for counterfeiting, forgery,

fraud.

He was,

he had been convicted of escaping police custody to go after after a witness in his case.

Animal cruelty.

They hired that man in my case.

What the heck?

Yeah.

Just to go to your house and send him as talking.

And he actually went to your house?

I mean, he,

we know that they followed us.

Whoa.

Yeah.

And then my lawyers filed a bunch of motions.

So he never got there, but we know that they hired him.

Holy.

They paid him money.

He never actually like came.

But once we knew that it happened, we were terrified.

Yeah.

They hired a bunch of private investigators to follow my employees around, around follow me around to threaten them

tell my kids that we weren't gonna have a home anymore god it's terrible they sent six letters to the new york times saying i was running a drug trafficking ring at my baby gym

yeah because they're in bed with the media right so they can paint any narrative they want i was lucky the new york times actually hired investigators to track where the letters came from and it was their pr firm wow they actually did that the new york times suspended our article oh that's what they wanted to do though my article was supposed to come out in december of i think it was 2022 i think it might have been 2021 It's been a minute now.

Um, and they sent those letters like right before it was supposed to come out when they'd sent to them for comment.

And they paused publishing the article

while they could go do research to make sure I wasn't actually trafficking drugs.

Well, shout out to them for actually like they did.

And I they ended up putting us on the cover when they ultimately published it.

Nice.

Uh, saying when private equity started, uh, when private equity started playing in the baby in the toddler gyms, because that's the businesses we owned.

Um,

but what it did was it worked during that four weeks.

They got a dollar investment from Seidler Equity.

It held the case just long enough.

That is nuts.

That's why I respect people like you, people like James O'Keefe that are whistleblowing all these, you know, like your life's on the line.

When you're exposing this type of information, you know, you're losing these companies potentially billions of dollars.

So they're going to do what they want to do.

The company that I'm fighting with has lost.

And like people ask me what a win looks like at this point because I'm still in court with them every day.

Yeah.

Like we just filed three motions yesterday.

I think we're on our like eighth or ninth case.

They keep suing me.

They're suing you?

They They just keep suing.

Oh, for like defamation?

No, I won my defamation case against them for calling me a drug trafficker and

saying that I abused like they sent out letters to our whole union saying I like abused kids and stole money,

abused my employees.

I won that defamation case.

No, they keep suing me

over and over again for a case that they brought in Arizona.

where they changed, they brought it in Arizona.

I live in Maryland now.

Yeah.

Where they changed my address on all the documents so I wouldn't get served.

41 times they changed the address.

What?

And then they got a default judgment against me for $2.3 million

because I never answered the claim.

Because you never got it.

I never answered the claim.

I was never served.

Later, we got the claim thrown out, but they got the judgment first.

And so then they immediately domesticated it into Maryland and they put a lien on my house.

And I had to file for bankruptcy protection to save my house.

Even though we had no debts, no creditors showed up to my bankruptcy.

We had to do it just to save our house from what they had lied about in court.

And then the judgment ended up getting thrown out and I never needed the bankruptcy.

That is insane.

But they keep trying to reaffirm that judgment in different courts around the country.

Yeah, because if they want to drag it on, they can for as long as they want, right?

Yeah.

Well, the bankruptcy court issued a stay saying they weren't allowed to do it anymore.

They issued a federal stay and they haven't stopped.

That is nuts.

Yeah.

Well, Tiffany, thanks for really exposing the stuff.

Anything else you want to close off with here?

Where can people support you?

I say in small business we trust.

Come back to me on TikTok because that's where where I'm going to be.

I'm at Tiffany Siancy.

Over on X, I'm the Vino mom because I used to be a sommelier a long time ago.

Oh, yeah.

And I've kept my same account for all these years.

So the Vino mom.

But you can find me under Tiffany Siancy over there.

Well, we'll link it all below.

Thanks for coming on.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

Check her out, guys.

See ya.