Modern WisdomUncovering The Biggest Fraud Scheme In America - Nick Shirley
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
95 min read · 18,842 words- 0:00 – 4:10
How Did Nick End Tim Walz?
- CWChris Williamson
Who were you on the phone to this morning?
- NSNick Shirley
A lot of people have been calling me. I actually can't even keep track of all the numbers, and so today, I just got asked to go talk in front of Congress just a moment ago. So people are just calling me saying, "Hey, we want some information. Can you tell us about this? We're just trying to gather information." And for instance, today, someone just called me and said, "Hey, we have a, a meeting. We'd like you to testify in fr- front of Congress on January 21st." So I'll see if I'll do that.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. So it's starting to hit the bigger levels of sort of real law, real government now?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, I mean, within just one day of me posting my video, well, it got over 100 million views in 72 hours. But within the first day alone, you had Elon Musk retweet it, you had JD Vance retweet it. You had quite literally every major politician retweet it. The next morning, Kash Patel puts out a post on X about it, and then that same day, Attorney General Pam Bondi also pos- puts out a post, uh, mentioning my name in that video, and same day, Mike Johnson as well. So it spread across the entire internet, and it's the most viral video, the exposé on fraud in Minnesota. It's the most viral video by anybody not named MrBeast in an exposé format. Over 100 million views in 72 hours.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you end Tim Walz?
- NSNick Shirley
I did end Tim Walz. [chuckles] He is no longer running for re-election of governor.
- CWChris Williamson
Tell me the story, then.
- NSNick Shirley
So Tim Walz, everyone knows him. He, he was almost the Vice President of the United States, and he has a record going on in Minnesota talking about fraud. Ever since 2019, he's known about fraud. He's been talking about how they've been fighting fraud, and he's been enabling this fraud to happen, and so I go and make this video, and what ha- I showed the fraud happening, and you would think people would be like: "Oh, amazing! This kid just showed that fraud's happening." Instead, Tim Walz goes on TV, he calls me a white supremacist, calls me far right, and he also calls me a delusional conspiracy theorist.
- CWChris Williamson
Are you any of those things?
- NSNick Shirley
No. And so then Tim Walz, after calling me all of that, he drops out of running for re-election of governor. So I was right. I show people the truth, and Tim Walz, he couldn't handle it, so therefore, he went to deflecting mechanisms of calling me far right, delusional conspiracist, del- delusional conspiracist, and, um, a white supremacist, when I was just talking about fraud.
- CWChris Williamson
You think that the reason that he's not running for re-election is exclusively because of this story?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, 100%. He knows the baggage is so much that he cannot-- he can't run from it, and he's hoping probably people would think less of it, and so he's gonna step sid- step aside and not run for re-election.
- CWChris Williamson
How much is he culpable? 'Cause Minnesota's a big state. There's lots of stuff going on. He had an election campaign to look after not long ago. Is it his job to be paying attention directly to this sort of stuff?
- NSNick Shirley
He's obviously part of it. There's obviously larger communities like the DHS inside of Minnesota.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the DHS, sorry?
- NSNick Shirley
The Department of, uh, you know, the Department of Homeland Security, but then you also have DHS that receives the money, and they kind of give the money t- money to the welfare, Medicaid programs, everything like that.
- CWChris Williamson
So not entirely unculpable then?
- NSNick Shirley
No. I mean, his office kind of... He's, uh, he's said it himself, the buck stops with him. He said that multiple times, and he's known about the fraud forever.
- CWChris Williamson
It is an interesting challenge, right? Because you have some people... Y- y- anybody that is running for office wants to show, "I've got agency, and I make things happen inside of my state," and it kind of sounds powerful, ubermensch-y to say, "The buck stops with me," but when it turns out that the buck is kind of messy and on fire and deserves investigation, you become culpable for the promises that you've made in the past.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, and at the end of the day, he knows about- he knew about it. He knows that there's daycares all around Minnesota. He actually bragged about that in a debate with Tim Walz. He said, "You can go visit them." I visited them. There was no kids.
- 4:10 – 15:31
How Nick Uncovered $10B of Fraud
- CWChris Williamson
Give me the story from the start of how this came about.
- NSNick Shirley
So last June, every week for the past one hundred weeks, I've been y- doing, making YouTube videos about something happening in the US or other countries. And so back last June, I went to Minnesota to make a video about the rise of Islam, 'cause I've heard how mosques were replacing Christian churches and how the Somali population was growing, and so I wanted to go do a video on the rise of Islam, and while I'm there, I'm talking with locals, and they're like, "Nick, you have to do a video on the fraud. There's these daycares, these, there's these adult daycares, there's assisted living homes popping up right next door to us, and they're all ran by Somalians. You need to do a video on the fraud." And I said, "Well, I can't just come and just paint fraud to be happening and bring no evidence." So I made my video about the rise of Islam, and I saw it firsthand. I saw communities that had been overtaken by Somalians. Um, actually, me and my mom, my mom was my camera woman for that video.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughing]
- NSNick Shirley
She comes onto me-- she comes with me on a lot of trips. We got jumped in Cedar-Riverside. They snatched the camera, and they threatened me and my mom, and so I, after that-
- CWChris Williamson
Who's "they"?
- NSNick Shirley
Somalians inside of Cedar-Riverside, 'cause inside there, they also have rivalry gangs, and there's a kind of a whole gang thing going on-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NSNick Shirley
... inside of these Somalian communities. And so I knew there was a, something there, and I went back home, and I kept trying to do my invest- own investigation to get the, get down to the fraud, and I couldn't really get the numbers specifically, and then a man by the name of David, who's in the video, he reaches out to me, and he says, "Nick, I have all the information. I've been researching this for years."
- CWChris Williamson
Why did he reach out to you?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so he's been trying to get the story out for years.
- CWChris Williamson
But did he reach out to you before you did your documentary?
- NSNick Shirley
... Well, he had seen some of my other videos on YouTube-
- CWChris Williamson
Right
- NSNick Shirley
-as well, so he kind of just knew maybe this kid would be interested, 'cause he's been trying to get it from local people, and local news has been reporting on the fraud for years. And a lot- so they've been reporting on it for years, but it's never blown up on a national level. And this man, David, had all the numbers. Somebody from inside the Capitol had given him the information on the CCAP funding, which is, uh, federal and state money that goes to these programs. It's called the, I believe, the Childcare Assistance Program. So he had all the information, and he said, "Nick, I have been looking into this for years, and I have never seen a single child at one of these daycares." And so we went and made this video about the fraud that was taking place. And I-
- CWChris Williamson
When did you make it?
- NSNick Shirley
Uh, December 16th is when we filmed it.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, wow, so you really turned it around quickly.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- NSNick Shirley
Within just a few weeks.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- NSNick Shirley
And so I had no idea. I thought we were just gonna go to these daycares, and I thought you'd be able to open up the door and go to the reception, receive a brochure for your child, and that the first daycare we go to, it's, uh, one building that has two of the same daycares inside of it. Had... It was named Mako, and there was another one that's also inside of that daycare. They had both been receiving money from the government, upwards of $5 million. And it was strange 'cause all the windows were blacked out. The sign above it said, "Open 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m." You open the door, nobody would answer. You ring the doorbell, nobody answers. And then a Somalian woman comes up, and we're asking her: "Where's the kids at?" She says, "I don't know." I was like, "What the heck? Like, what's wrong with these daycares?"
- CWChris Williamson
She came out of the-
- NSNick Shirley
She drove into the parking lot-
- CWChris Williamson
Right
- NSNick Shirley
... and she went into a store next door. And I was like: What the heck is going on with these daycares? That was weird. Okay, let's go to the next one. Let's see what happens. We go to the next one. They also received a million dollars. They're licensed for 40 children. All the windows were completely blacked out. I knock on the door, and I hear a lady talk, and I said, "Well, hey, I'm trying to enroll my son, little Joey, into daycare." And she's like, "No," and she wouldn't give me any more information. And so you would think that even if they didn't want to talk with me, that they would maybe give you a brochure, right? Just to kind of show that they're actually a legit daycare. And they're licensed for 40 children. It's funny 'cause then after that, I post my video, uh, local news, CBS, then tells that daycare they're gonna go, and they film a video, and there's 12 kids inside the daycare. Well, either way-
- CWChris Williamson
It's still not 40.
- NSNick Shirley
What?
- CWChris Williamson
It's still not 40.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, it's still not 40, so what's the point of giving them a million dollars?
- 15:31 – 23:09
The Business Model Behind Fraud Daycares
- CWChris Williamson
Fuck. Okay, can you explain to me the exact journey of a dollar, uh, where it comes from, where it goes to, and what you think is going on? I'm... I imagine that there's a variety of different paths that it can take, but money has to come from somewhere, go to somewhere, get fed back to some- what, w- what's the, what's the, the story there?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so for instance, the when... So for instance, with childcare, there's this thing called the HHS, and that's a federal, it's, uh, I believe it's Health and Human Services. So they allocate a certain amount of funds to stuff like, uh, childcare. For instance, they allocated, uh, a hundred and eighty-five million dollars to childcare. And then that money, you then go submit, you go get licensed for your daycare, and then you say, "We want this many children," and then you're able to receive this money for these daycares 'cause it's part of their... Like Tim Walz openly bragged, even on X and in the debate with, with, uh, JD Vance, like, "We're gonna give childcare and daycare a raise."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
Like, why would you do that?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
There's a lot of hard-work, hardworking parents that are paying to put their kid in childcare.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And so that's kind of how they go about making their money, and then they've realized, "Well, daycare is great. Let's do adult daycare. Let's do assisted living."
- CWChris Williamson
Hang on, hang on. So you've got this fund that can help to, uh, uh, pay for daycare, but somebody needs to create a business and file a business, and w- what's the structure of what's going on on the ground there? Who's working there? Are they being paid in cash? Are they being paid-
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so that's kind of the problem right now. That's why the federal government has surged Minnesota with investiga- with investigators to figure out what's actually happening. 'Cause it's been, like, this kind of weird liquid thing where no one really knows.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And so that's kind of the problem. That's why you're seeing it's kind of hard to track down what's actually happening.
- CWChris Williamson
You know that there's money going in, but you're unsure where it's coming from or how it's being distributed?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so I went to a fraud committee meeting, and this one lady, she's a Republican representative for the state, she laid out one of these frauds that was happening. You had one man, he also, he also ran a daycare, assist- assisted living, and he had multiple violations, but the government kept giving him money. And so somebody from inside the state DHS was cutting the checks, and they continued to, uh, give these people money even though they're violating and having violations.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And so that's why they had been enabling this fraud to happen for so long. That's why Tim Walz, he needs to be held accountable for it-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NSNick Shirley
... 'cause like you said, the buck stops with him. [chuckles] And so if someone's stealing a hundred thousand dollars, a, a million dollars from your bank account, how fast are you gonna find out? Pretty quick. And Tim Walz has been saying they've been fighting fraud since 2019.... and so six years later, he's been enabling fraud.
- CWChris Williamson
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- NSNick Shirley
Now, it would probably be a lot harder-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- NSNick Shirley
... 'cause of everything, but, I mean, people were starting up, starting them up everywhere. I mean, if you just drive around Minneapolis, and you pay attention to all the daycare centers, or whether it be daycares, or adult daycares, or assisted livings, or home health services, you'll be shocked. Like, literally, almost every block, there's some sort of welfare program, whether it be autism daycare. You're like: "What is going on?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And they're not, like, nice buildings. They're like these almost like warehouse-style buildings, and they just slap a daycare on top of it, and there's no children to be seen anywhere.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you looked at the landlords of these buildings? Who owns them?
- NSNick Shirley
I haven't looked into whose landlords are.
- CWChris Williamson
That'd be interesting to work out w- how culpable it sort of goes back. Okay, so that's, I suppose, the business side, and it's kind of obvious. You find a loophole inside of the government and some of the subsidy money which can be paid to these kinds of facilities. You start one, you gain all of the money to pay your costs, but because you're not operating it fully, you don't have to pay the costs, and you're able to arbitrate. You just scrape off the top of-
- NSNick Shirley
Yes
- CWChris Williamson
... whatever's left.
- NSNick Shirley
It's tax-exempt.
- 23:09 – 29:43
Where is the Funding Actually Going?
- NSNick Shirley
still?
- CWChris Williamson
Is this money being sent back to Somalia at all? Have you got any idea?
- NSNick Shirley
Yes. So some of that money has been traced back to go back to, to Al-Shabaab. A reporter found that out, and I actually talked to a man who worked at TSA. This is coming out in my part 2. So, and there's a video from 2017 from, uh, Fox Local News there, where they had reports of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash going through TSA. Literally in cash, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So they then take this money, they get it through TSA, they then take them to the back of a room, they then claim the money, whatnot, 'cause you can't, you can't... Me and you, we can't go through without saying we-- if we have more than ten thousand dollars, you have to let people know. And so then they let them go through, and all they have to do is get to a country like Dubai, where they can then send that money and wire it over to a place like Somalia-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NSNick Shirley
... and it can go through.
- CWChris Williamson
I was gonna say, 'cause it's all cash.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
This is cash, cash, cash, which is a kind of a bit of a nightmare. It's good that it's untraceable, but when you start shifting big volumes of it around, up to nine hundred and, uh, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars, uh, yeah, you're gonna have to have a pretty sophisticated operation to distribute it.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, and so that's why-... Like, for instance, that's why I think a lot of the women there aren't actually getting paid money or aren't getting paid legally, 'cause they just give them cash.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- NSNick Shirley
Um, 'cause it's a way you don't have to report, and if you, if you work in cash, everyone knows that you don't- you can kind of move around taxes if you're working around a cash primarily business.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you got any evidence that it's coming back into the government at all?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so it is interesting, for instance, that Ilhan Omar, she's outside of the daycare with the lady who operates another daycare, who then is also giving the mayor a tour of her daycare. And there has been funneling to some of these campaigns, allegedly. For instance, Tim Walz. It was very weird when Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz to become the vice president to run with her. Nobody really knew who he was.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- NSNick Shirley
And, uh, I wanted to make sure I had the right stat for when I came to talk to you about this. So Tim Walz, the day he's chosen to become vice president, he raises a record high, thirty-six million dollars in one day for his campaign with Kamala Harris.
- CWChris Williamson
Record high...
- NSNick Shirley
In one day.
- CWChris Williamson
Of all vice presidents or all-
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, like the first day-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- NSNick Shirley
... that's like the most mon- amount of money a vice president has brought into a campaign.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow!
- NSNick Shirley
Thirty-six million dollars. Tim Walz, he's a football coach. He's from Nebraska, and how does he raise thirty-six million dollars in one day?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
They're anti-billionaires. They're anti-Elon Musk.
- CWChris Williamson
I suppose the argument might be, uh, maybe some rich donors on the left are able to, or they're, they're concerned about the, uh, potential of a second Trump term, so people are gonna dump- Do you need to register where that money comes from? Do people need to register donations in that sort of way? Is it trackable?
- NSNick Shirley
I think so.
- CWChris Williamson
That should be pretty easy to work out where that's come from then.
- NSNick Shirley
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And if there's a ton coming from Cedar River, the Quality Learning Center, um, you'd think, okay, well, we could trace that back. Or-
- 29:43 – 34:52
Are Holes in the System Inevitable?
- CWChris Williamson
Tell you what's interesting, I did the first long-form podcast episode with anybody from DOGE ever, and it's a guy called Sam Korkos, who is currently the CIO of the Treasury Department. So we did the episode on the same set as the McConaughey one, but instead, we had the US debt calculator on the big video wall [chuckles] behind us. And, um, I was asking him just how sort of inefficient... And he's, he's very much on the technical side of this. What are the algorithms that we're using? How are we tracking these things? Um, you know, he's very much sort of in the matrix of this, trying to reprogram it to make it more efficient from a technical standpoint. He's got a big technical background. Uh, but if you just think, okay, that's the system-... which is designed and relatively easy to be able to investigate, relatively easy to, to, to investigate. We've got all of these different systems, how-- let's put them all out on a whiteboard, and we can work it out. If you're, okay, you need to fly to Minnesota, go to this place, investigate this. Is there a person there? When do the kids arrive? When do they leave? Has this guy got four wives? What's going on? Is the money being paid in cash? That's so much more arduous. It's like that's Whac-A-Mole, as opposed to what Sam's doing, which is much more like an atomic bomb of trying to improve efficiency. And he was having challenges. He was hitting limits. So I guess, the first thing it makes me think about is, when you have a country of this size, the diseconomies of scale of three hundred and thirty million people, there's gonna be so much slippage in the system and so many holes and little exploits and speed runs that you can go through. This is kind of inevitable. This isn't me, uh, excusing the fact that it happens, but just how could it not? How would it not? But the point is now, okay, we have found this, so we play Whac-A-Mole, and this is not a small mole, right? What's the total amount of fraud?
- NSNick Shirley
It's estimated above nine billion, with a B, nine billion.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Yeah, that's a significant amount of money.
- NSNick Shirley
It's a lot of money.
- CWChris Williamson
Just in, just in Minnesota?
- NSNick Shirley
Just in Minnesota.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow!
- NSNick Shirley
And so it makes you think, like... One thing I'm super proud about my video, is it's the first video you've ever seen where r- journalism really created instantaneously change.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
You had feds go and launch multiple investigations. They decided to freeze all childcare funding for the state of Minnesota-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NSNick Shirley
- outright.
- CWChris Williamson
They've frozen all-
- NSNick Shirley
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... childcare funding for the state of Minnesota?
- NSNick Shirley
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, well, that sounds good.
- NSNick Shirley
Hundred and eighty-five million.
- CWChris Williamson
That sounds good, but that, that has got to impact people who are legitimately trying to get their children looked after.
- NSNick Shirley
My next point is they said, "We'll give you back the funding once you prove you're a legitimate business."
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- NSNick Shirley
To this day, time of this recording, no businesses have submitted to prove legitimacy.
- CWChris Williamson
None?
- NSNick Shirley
None.
- CWChris Williamson
How are you tracking that?
- NSNick Shirley
The department of-- the HHS made a video about it just the other day.
- CWChris Williamson
The HHS made a video. Have they got a YouTube channel?
- NSNick Shirley
Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
They should probably.
- NSNick Shirley
Probably. They, they've been, they've been tagging me in their post on X.
- 34:52 – 50:50
Is Nick’s Video Encouraging Xenophobia?
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, so what's been the rest of the fallout, sort of structurally, of what's gone on in Minnesota?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Childcare stuff's been halted until you prove, and then you can get it back.
- NSNick Shirley
Yes. That's been a fallout. Just the other day, there were protesters stormed ICE, and ICE a- actually killed a protester.
- CWChris Williamson
I saw, was that the lady in the car?
- NSNick Shirley
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I wanted-
- NSNick Shirley
That was very sad to see.
- CWChris Williamson
I wanted to talk about this, dude, 'cause I think one of the concerns that everybody has is we've already got some pretty sort of tight tensions around this sort of stuff at the moment, the UK maybe even more so than here. Uh, do you think-- how much do you think your video contributed to the tension of what happened in Minneapolis the other day?
- NSNick Shirley
Well, they surged the city with federal agents, and they launched these investigations, which is a good thing. Do we want crime to be happening? Do we want illegal migrants running rampant in our cities? Do we want millions of dollars being funneled across to other places? These are all good things, but now the left is saying that you're a bad person for trying to crack down and to uphold the law.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And so for that lady to be out there and impeding law enforcement, and then attempt to run him over... Like, the video is pretty evident that she was going to-- her target was to run him over.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And he shot her. Super tragic. I was super sad when I saw that video. I s- like, it, that didn't, that did not need to happen. She didn't need to put law enforcement in risk. She could have supported [chuckles] law enforcement-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NSNick Shirley
... and she could have abided by what they said. They told her to get out of her car, and then she goes and-... hits the ICE agent, and he's fearful for his life, and he shoots her. Super sad, right? No one, no one wants to see that happen. And, uh, it's just gotten to a point where people need to really come to their senses and think, "Okay, this is law enforcement. If they're gonna tell us to do something, we should probably do it."
- CWChris Williamson
Listen, yeah. But-
- NSNick Shirley
But now you're, but then you're seeing these politicians come out and say, "ICE, get the F out of our city." Little, Little Guy Frey says that, the mayor of Minneapolis.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And then Tim Walz is calling this a, a war against the federal government. Why can't they de-escalate and say, "All right, you guys, fraud's bad. Illegal migrants, if you're here, local law enforce- federal law enforcement's here. If they get you guys, you're gonna go back to where you came from"?
- CWChris Williamson
How many of the Somali people are there legally versus illegally? Is there any idea?
- NSNick Shirley
I don't know.
- CWChris Williamson
What's your estimation?
- NSNick Shirley
Well, with Biden, a lot of people came into the country, over 10 to 20 million, and so there's a lot of them. And then people, undocumented, people have been doing their asylum cases, so who knows exactly how many?
- CWChris Williamson
You had no indication of how many people were actual citizens versus illegal?
- NSNick Shirley
No. [inhales]
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- NSNick Shirley
But 'cause some... For instance, some of them came out here, like Ilhan Omar, she's a naturalized citizen of the United States. She was born in Somalia, brought over, she became a US citizen, now she's in Congress. And so there's a lot of people who are naturalized citizens, and because it, this happened a long time ago, people like Ilhan Omar then have kids, and then those kids are born citizens.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And so that's what makes it super complex, um, with the topic of illegal immigration, 'cause you have parents who are illegal, kids who are illegal, and the option is, "Well, if we find you, you have the option to go back with your children-
- 50:50 – 59:02
Why is the Press So Against Nick?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. What's been the response of the mainstream press to this?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so you think they'd be happy that somebody goes in and goes and shows what, that fraud is happening. But instead of investigating the fraudsters, they investigated me. [chuckles] They tried to come in and debunk my whole entire story. They couldn't do it 'cause it was true, and, uh, they labeled me as a MAGA YouTuber, conservative, right-wing journalist. All right.
- CWChris Williamson
Would you call yourself conservative?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, I am conservative. I think, uh, a lot of the values from conservatives are stuff I just share, uh, equally as well. I just think it makes the [chuckles] most sense.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
But, um... but I had this conversation with a left-leaning journalist. I said, "Well, are you a journalist, or are you a left-wing journalist?" He's like, "Well, I'm a journalist." I'm like: "Okay, same thing here. I'm a journalist, too." [chuckles] And I'll, I'll talk to the liberal, I'll talk to the homeless man, I'll talk to the guy running the daycare. I'll talk to the person who's been living in the neighborhood for eight years. I'll talk to everyone inside my video, and that's why my video, I think, resonated with so many people, 'cause I was showing, and I was talking to quite literally everybody-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NSNick Shirley
... from the daycare owner to the man who's been doing his own viga- investigation for years, to the guy who's been living in this, living in Minneapolis for eight years, who's never seen a kid inside a Quality Learning Center, and then [chuckles] the crazy liberal who's yelling at me, telling me I'm ICE. [chuckles] So I'll talk to everybody, and I'll go to these protests, and I'll do these live streams, and I'll talk to the protesters, and I just let people talk. And if they wanna come after me, so be it. But I'm there to give each and every single person I interview an opportunity to explain what they're doing, what they think, and why they're, ul- ultimately, why they're behind the cause that they're behind.
- CWChris Williamson
Why do you think it is that the mainstream press had such a problem with it? Is it just a good optics to seem like you're sort of fighting for the underdog brown person, or is it- is there something deeper going on?
- NSNick Shirley
I think it's 'cause they're trying to delegitimize me, 'cause I pose a threat to everything that they are. I pose a threat to their viewership, to their dollars, to their fan base, and so why would they want me to get credit for a story that they should have been reporting on? They have thousands of employees. Mmm, uh, I have me and myself-
- CWChris Williamson
And your mum.
- NSNick Shirley
My mom. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
[laughing]
- NSNick Shirley
And that's pretty much it. I'll have my cameraman-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- NSNick Shirley
... and that's it. And we just did over 100 million views on an exposé that they should have covered as well.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
But instead, they come after me. So I think that's kind of why, and so that's why you're see- And they know that the mainstream media, it's dying. Like, their viewership is g- getting less and less each and every single year. And so if they can come in, and they find somebody like me, who goes and does this story, gets way more views than they did, why would they want to say, "Oh, good, good job, Nick Shirley. Like, that's amazing reporting you, you just did"?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- NSNick Shirley
Let's do everything to make people know that, at least try to make them know, that whatever Nick Shirley did was not true. But it was true.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I t- there's certainly a, a rivalry between independent and legacy media in that way. I would say, at least, again, the m- the immediate benefit that these people get, in the same way as the immediate benefit that Tim Walz perhaps got, is the optics, that if you're not seen to be pushing back against this, you're seen to be implicitly agreeing with and endorsing the worst possible explanation of why you could have done it, that you don't like brown people, that you're the secret agent for Donald Trump, that you're a fed, that you're a whatever. Um, I think that, to me, makes the most sense, but I don't, I don't disagree that, um... For the first time ever, it was really funny, there was some, uh, gossip in the evidence-based fitness community a couple of months ago, and, um, it was the first time that I'd ever seen the press commenting on a really niche internet story. So typically, YouTubers, we would react to shit that happened in the real world or that's in the press. Press does an investigation, we talk about it, right? "Today in the New York Times, did you see the article about such and such?"... This was the first time where it happened the other way around. It was like some niche internet beef had gotten sufficiently big that the press had gone, "Oh, that's a story that we can have." And that was when I, I really realized that sort of the flow of traffic is moving in the other direction. It very much is that the independent media stuff- I'm s- still hesitant about, like, completely sucking off everybody who's doing independent stuff. Mainstream press still gets a ton of reach in places that we simply can't. Like, we just can't reach most of Middle America soccer mom people. There's not-- They're not gonna hit your algo, no matter how many times Elon Musk retweets it. The only way it works is if NPR pick up on Musk's tweet. But, uh, there is definitely a rivalry going on, and as with any sort of dying institution, it tends to not go down without a fight.
- NSNick Shirley
There's a rivalry going on, and it's competition at the end of the day for them. They're trying to keep up with people like me and you. I mean, we're able to run our operatives a lot smoother and smaller than they are. Just think about what they have to do to go out and get a story. They have to book a cameraman. They have to carry around this huge backpack. They have to get approval from the senior editor, and then when they want to post a video, then it goes through two different hands, and then they have to approve it, and then it goes live. Versus me, I book my flight, I get to the location, I film, I edit, and I post.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, the frictionlessness is a, is a massive advantage. It's why you were able to basically turn it around in ten days. Um, the criticism of that would be, well, because you're not going through the appropriate amount of scrutiny with having higher levels, this could ca-- There will be an error, some sort of an implication error or many in the video that you put out, and in the next one, and in every podcast that I have ever done because it's not gonna go through an entire team of fact-checkers. I think the reason that people feel particularly aggrieved when the mainstream media make errors, it's the same reason that you feel super pissed if you ever to see a cop texting while driving. You're like: Hey, you're supposed to enforce the law. Because you enforce the law, you're kind of meant to adhere to it more rigorously than we are.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but, you know, the concern that people have about citizen journalism is that it's fast and loose with the facts, and if it just gets clicks, it doesn't matter. So I think, you know, if I was to give you a piece of advice, I think certainly as you move forward, which you're probably already doing, you need to, unfortunately, become increasingly squeaky clean with your own fact-checking as you go on, because the amount of scrutiny, the amount of eyeballs now is just gonna keep getting more and more. And if you fuck up, what's gonna happen is that's gonna be used. That, uh, is gonna be, um, a microcosm to try and smear the rest of the world... Oh, see? See the error that was in there? Actually, he's not a such and such, and then, [whooshes] that's the rest of it.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah. I mean, I've made my mistakes, too, and when you're ma- going through and making a video like that, the editing process is long, and that takes a lot of time to edit, so you're also doing fact checks as well when you're editing it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
Because I edit all my videos. I'm also going through, and if something's not true, I'm not-- I'm gonna call it out for what it is. And, uh, everything in that video that I posted was true. And have I made mistakes before? Yeah, I have. I'm twenty-three years old, and I've been doing this sort of journalism for about two years now. Like, I'm not gonna say I've never made mistakes, but in this case of the Minnesota fraud video, it's been proven to be completely true, not only by me but by the government, by the locals. I mean, Quality Learning Center, it just got shut down the other day, got closed on January 6th. And also, when the same, the same day that that guy came out, and he was talking about Quality Learning Center, we're open, and, uh, that same time, the Commissioner of Children, Tiki James, was doing a live stream, and she announced that the daycare had been closed, while he's out there telling people it's open.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- 59:02 – 1:08:22
Does Nick Feel Safe Anymore?
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me about the security concerns that you've got now.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so security now, I have to have it because I exposed fraud [chuckles] and, uh, right now, I have somebody with me twenty-four/seven. I have somebody at the house as well. It's super expensive, and as a YouTuber, I don't make enough money to be able to afford it, unfortunately. So I was able to, to raise some money. Uh, I don't know if you know him. His name's Officer Tatum. He has a nonprofit side of a security company, and, uh, people can go ahead and donate to that, donate to that, where it's helped me. It's called Black Line Guardian, and they have a security side, uh, a, a go- they have, like, a nonprofit side of it where people can donate to.
- CWChris Williamson
So your big, scary dude with the beard outside is, uh, organized by him?
- NSNick Shirley
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow, cool.
- NSNick Shirley
So that helps a lot, and so that's been critical because of just, like, the threats that I've received, whether it's-
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me about those. What have you got?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so for instance, somebody sent me a photo of somebody in a ditch dead, and they said: "Well, this will be you on, uh, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
A text?
- NSNick Shirley
Y- just on a, just through private messages-
- CWChris Williamson
What?
- NSNick Shirley
... like DMs. People are posting, "You'll be Kirked." Um, people on certain platforms just went ahead and doxxed me, so that was great.
- CWChris Williamson
Which is why you now need the security at your house?
- NSNick Shirley
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- NSNick Shirley
Luckily, we got the info taken down, but it just sucks that there's people who get so mad about you doing something or the point where they want to kill you. I mean, we saw it with Charlie Kirk. Rest in peace to Charlie Kirk, and now it's very dangerous. Like, being well known in politics is different than being well known for having an amazing song, 'cause politics is now very polarizing. And so I thought on an issue of just fraud happening, I didn't think I-- To me, I was just making another YouTube video for my weekly uploads. I've uploaded a YouTube video every week for the past one hundred weeks. And so for me to post that video, then all of a sudden, kind of my life to be changed overnight, to the point where I have to have a twenty-four/seven security guy with me right now, and it's not the funnest thing to have to go through and-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NSNick Shirley
... try to navigate and plan s- stuff. It feels like you're just going from point A to point B now, and you're-- you kind of have to figure out how to live life a little bit different for at least this, these past few weeks, and-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NSNick Shirley
... going forward for the next few weeks as well.
- CWChris Williamson
What's that been like emotionally to navigate?
- NSNick Shirley
... weird. I'm not a very emotional person. I think what was harder was going through, like, constantly defending yourself and, like, fighting back against all this fake news that was coming out, or people trying to debunk me. It just felt like you're kind of, like, fighting a war online, and that- it's just- it, it was weird 'cause you feel like- 'cause I actually never really gave my opinions on the internet before this. I was just interviewing people and talking to people, and then when everyone comes after you, you, you feel like you have to stand on business.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And so I had to do that, and, um, I gained millions and millions of supporters, literally, who support me, and it's been amazing, and it's also been pretty exhausting. Uh, like, I think the three days after I posted that video, I maybe slept for ten hours for the three days combined, and so I just ba- have barely been catching up on sleep. And, uh, yeah, it does take a bit of a toll on you emotionally, but it's just a battle you have to fight.
- CWChris Williamson
Does it make you hesitant about doing more if it means that your life's gonna be in jeopardy?
- NSNick Shirley
Yes, and now you're trying to think of different ways to do it, or if you're gonna go film this video, what security measures do you have in place beforehand? It's just stuff you didn't have to think about before. Before, it was just, I'd run around, I'd grab my GoPro and my camera, and I would go.
- CWChris Williamson
No one knows who you are. No one cares.
- NSNick Shirley
No one cares, and it increasingly started to get, like, a little bit more dangerous. For instance, the riots here in LA, people were singling me out, trying to kick me out of the, of interviewing people, and then I go to a-
- CWChris Williamson
Because they know who you are, they've got an idea about the sort of perspective you're coming into this with?
- NSNick Shirley
Yes. Protest in New York City, I'm live streaming it. I'm live streaming a protest that's happening in New York City, just asking people questions, not even giving my opinion. NYPD has to pull me out 'cause a bunch of protesters surround me. They start throwing stuff on me. NYPD pulls me out.
- 1:08:22 – 1:16:48
What Can We Expect in Part 2?
- CWChris Williamson
Tell me about part 2.
- NSNick Shirley
Part 2, [chuckles] yeah, so the daycare fraud's only one part of the fraud.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- NSNick Shirley
And what really holds the fraud together is these transportation companies. And so-
- CWChris Williamson
Like shipping?
- NSNick Shirley
No, they're called non-emergency transportation.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- NSNick Shirley
And so, for instance, these daycares and these home healthcare companies, adult daycares, they need to be able to prove that they're doing stuff. So they have created these, um, transportation companies. You'll see them all across Minnesota, all across Minneapolis. You'll drive, you'll see a van, and there's never anybody in these vans. It's just always a driver. So in order to make it look like they're doing stuff, they get these drivers. They'll send-- they'll say, "All right, here's our client." So imagine, you have an adult daycare center-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay
- NSNick Shirley
... and then you have a healthcare clinic. In order to kind of prove that you're doing legit business, okay, well, we're gonna take this adult, "adult," to healthcare clinic, and we're actually not really providing a service, and there's no person to actually take, so we'll have the transportation company. We'll f- we'll write it up that they took that person there, they got that service, and then they brought her back. And nothing actually ever happened. It's just the transportation moving from one place to the next-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- NSNick Shirley
... to be able to continue this fraud. So it's like the-- it's like what keeps the hamster wheel going.
- CWChris Williamson
Why is the transportation so important? Is that an... Is that a crucial part of logging the activities?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so it's basically so they can log the activities, and then the transportation company also makes money, and it's logging what's happening.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- NSNick Shirley
So it makes it a lot harder to kind of prove that something fishy is going on because, "No, we, we, we, we had the transportation company take the client. This is the proof."
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. I suppose the problem is because, uh, every business doesn't talk to every other business, what you would pretty easily be able to do is say, "Well, go to the healthcare," and say, "Did this person come in at this time?" W- that's not... It's not the job of the healthcare company to work with the benefit company to see that the daycare company dropped the person off with the transport company and, you know-
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, but they're all in on it.
- CWChris Williamson
I- including the healthcare?
- NSNick Shirley
In one building, in my video, twenty-two healthcare companies inside of one building.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Okay. [chuckles] Okay, so, so i- is it right to say that the transport thing is part of the crux of this because it is one of the areas that's scrutinized by the, the, the government? Is that what's going on? I just don't understand why the vans and the minibuses are so important.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, so, well, like you said, it helps log.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- NSNick Shirley
And so that way they can then... If someone was like, "Well, show us the proof-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NSNick Shirley
-Oh, well, look, um, Safari Transportation took Mohammed to the doctor." I guess it makes it harder, but-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NSNick Shirley
... in my part 2, we go to these transportation companies, to their addresses, where they're listed on the State of Minnesota website, and there's no company. There's no vans-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- NSNick Shirley
... yet they are then- we did the math. It's about fifty dollars per travel, one way to the next, and an average NEMT, uh, transportation company, has about twenty vehicles. So on average, every day in Minnesota, about two million dollars is being sucked out from these companies.
- 1:16:48 – 1:23:21
What It’s Actually Like in CECOT
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, I heard that you'd also been to CECOT as well.
- NSNick Shirley
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
What was that like?
- NSNick Shirley
Craziest experience of my life, probably.
- CWChris Williamson
Tell, tell, tell people the, the story behind that.
- NSNick Shirley
So CECOT's this maximum security prison. It's actually, like, the centr- central of terrorism in El Salvador. El Salvador used to be run by gangs completely. Grandmas couldn't go from one street to the next to go visit their nieces and nephews 'cause gangs controlled the areas. So Nayib Bukele, he actually created his own political party inside of El Salvador called New Ideas, and part of this was that we are gonna go down, and he doesn't... He's, he's rich, so he actually doesn't need funding. So he-- that's, like, how you can tell a political person isn't, can't be really corrupted, because they don't need the money. So Nayib Bukele, he, he goes in and he says, "We're gonna fight the gangs, and we're gonna lock all the prisoners up. All the gangsters, we're putting inside of CECOT, and they are never leaving."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
So they go through, and they lock up all the prisoners. They turn El Salvador from the most dangerous country in the world to the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, and they put all these prisoners inside of CECOT. And this prison, it's like a bunch of massive Costcos [chuckles] for prisoners, and they're never leaving. And no, uh, American YouTuber had ever gone in, and I saw that Luisito Comunica, the-- he's the most popular La- Latino YouTuber, he went in. So I was like, "Oh, there has to be a possibility to go." And so I went to El Salvador. I made a separate video, and I had in the back of my mind, like, "I need to find a contact, so I can figure this out." And I ended up meeting with one of the mayors in my video. He said, "No, but maybe here's this phone number. Text this person." That person says, "No." I'm like: "Well, where do I go?" They're like, "I don't know," kinda just gave up on me. And so I started following people on X, and I started sending messages like, "Hey, I wanna come into this prison." And finally, just a random person was like: "Okay, I'll put you in the- I'll put you in contact with the secretary of press." And I was able to go in, and in that video, you'll see me walk in, and right as you, right as you walk into CECOT, anything that you were feeling good about before just leaves your body.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow!
- NSNick Shirley
Like, complete, completely emp- complete emptiness fills, fills your body, and then you look these prisoners in the eyes, sh- emptiness.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- NSNick Shirley
Pure emptiness. I think, uh, any goodness of them had been taken away from what they committed.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- NSNick Shirley
And so, like, whether it be, like, the light of Christ or just any good vibes they had, gone.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it designed in a way that's meant to make it more soulless than a, a normal place?
- NSNick Shirley
100%.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- NSNick Shirley
The lights never turn off. You're given a sheet. You eat the same meals every day. You get no protein.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- NSNick Shirley
Like, you get rice and beans and tortillas, I think-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- NSNick Shirley
... and milk.... and you have no form of entertainment. You don't have books, and the only time you actually get to leave your cell is to touch your toes and do some push-ups and work out a little bit, or to listen to somebody preach the gospel. And if you wanna go pee or poop, you have to do it in front of everybody inside your cell. And these gangs, rival gangs, MS-13, Barrio Dieciocho, they're all in the same room. You're locked up with your enemies.
- CWChris Williamson
How many people are on site, do you know?
- NSNick Shirley
I think upwards of a thousand probably inside. I think there's around seven-- I can't exactly remember the number, I don't wanna say.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- NSNick Shirley
But I think there's more than 10,000 of them.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow!
- NSNick Shirley
And they used to literally control that country.
- CWChris Williamson
I remember when it first happened, uh, I watched some videos about it, and it, it basically looks like football stadiums, right? These huge, like, m- monstrous constructions. And then this morning-
- NSNick Shirley
Mm-hmm
- 1:23:21 – 1:29:21
What’s Next for Nick?
- CWChris Williamson
What's next? You've got part 2.
- NSNick Shirley
Got part 2.
- CWChris Williamson
Any idea of a publish date?
- NSNick Shirley
Hoping for this coming week.
- CWChris Williamson
Cool.
- NSNick Shirley
It's been super hard to even edit with all everything I've been going on. I've went from Nashville to Florida, back home, to here. Tomorrow, I'm going back to Florida, and it's just been... Someone just called me right before this podcast to have me go testify in front of Congress, so it, it's just a lot, and I need to maybe up my team a little bit. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. So part 2 at some point in the next week, hopefully, and then what?
- NSNick Shirley
I would love to go to Venezuela.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm, mm.
- NSNick Shirley
But we'll see what happens there. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, that's-- I think that's El Salvador on steroids at the moment.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah. I do have a lot of other videos planned, but now a lot of things have changed as far as how I go about filming. Um, lots of fraud to expose here in California, lots of fraud to expose across the world. Has-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, yeah, I was gonna say, do you wanna rinse and r- do you wanna become known as kind of the fraud investigator guy for a little while, to keep on rinsing and repeating that before you move on to something else?
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, I'll do another fraud video. Those just take a lot of time, because you don't... Like I said, with my video, I did my, I did the due diligence. David had done his proper investigation. I had done mine.
- CWChris Williamson
You need to find a David for each city.
- NSNick Shirley
A little bit, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- NSNick Shirley
And, uh, you can just- you can also just continue to find that information. It just takes a lot longer.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, if you had a even partially competent team behind you, they would very easily be able to, nicksherleytips.com, submit your stuff here. They can go through and verify everything, and you've just got a pipeline of portfolios of, "Wow, we've got this many from this particular street and this city. It seems like this is the next place to go." But, uh, yeah, dude, the rapid ascension from being degenerate solo YouTuber with Mom as camera person to needing security around you is, uh... I think you'll look back on this period and, and kind of just look at it like a fever dream. It's gonna be, it's gonna be the wildest month, the few months of your life.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, it's been super weird. A- and, I mean, I already had a million subscribers before, and now I'm at, like, 1.5 almost. And, like, on X, I had 200,000, now I have 1.2 million followers. YouTube, uh, Instagram, I had 800, and now I have 2.3 million.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow!
- NSNick Shirley
So I was already somewhat popular on the internet before. Like, that, that's still a lot of people watching you, but now it's new level because you had-... the whole entire mainstream media come after me. Like, for that entire week, you couldn't turn on the news without hearing my name or seeing my footage. You had the leftists on X coming after me. You had people like Elon Musk sharing my videos. You had JD Vance sharing your videos. So it was almost undeniable, impossible to not see my video that week, and it turned out to be controversial. Tim Walz decided to step down from running for re-election because of that video.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, anybody that says that the internet doesn't cross over into the real world just needs to check out the last couple of weeks. Yeah, one video, and then the subsequent aftershocks of that is crazy.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, a lot of people were calling it, like, [chuckles] a modern-day David and Goliath, just from you have the Goliath, who's Tim Walz, and you have a little David just throwing some stones- [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- NSNick Shirley
... and took out-
- CWChris Williamson
That's it
- NSNick Shirley
... one of the, one of the top Democrats in the United States.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. What, uh, what do you want to achieve? Because it, it, it seems to me like there is an obvious, like, anti-woke or anti-progressive bent to some of the stuff that you're doing. Um, what is it, what is it that you want to achieve? Let's say that you look back on 2026, what would success look like to you?
- NSNick Shirley
I think helping more people come to sense on common sense matters, such as fraud, providing and creating real change within the country. I mean, no, no video has ever created so much change in such a short period of time. Literally-
- 1:29:21 – 1:33:59
Breaking News
- CWChris Williamson
I-
- NSNick Shirley
We got breaking news.
- CWChris Williamson
We have got breaking news. Holy shit! JD Vance announces the Trump administration will create a new assistant attorney general position, who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud, focusing first, primarily in Minnesota, and then expanding nationwide.
- SPSpeaker
If you're a young parent struggling to afford childcare in the United States of America, there are programs that we have to make it easier for your kids to get in daycare, for your kids to get in preschool. Those programs should go to American citizens, not be defrauded by Somali immigrants and others, make it hard for you to get the access to the resources you need. But number two, making it easier for people who shouldn't even be in this country to fleece the United States and our taxpayers to begin with. We've actually activated a major interagency task force to make it possible to get to the heart of this fraud. We have Department of Agriculture resources that are focused on SNAP fraud, so that people who need food benefits can get them, but illegal aliens and other fraudsters don't. We have, uh, over fifteen hundred subpoenas the Department of Justice has issued to get to the heart of the fraud ring. We've done almost a hundred indictments, mostly Somali immigrants, but also a few others, and of course, we're looking in with broad investigatory authority to a number of the r- the, the, the instances of wrongdoing that we've seen in Minneapolis. But we also want to expand this. We know that the fraud isn't just happening in Minneapolis, it's also happening in states like Ohio. It's happening in states like California. And so what we're doing in order to help coordinate this remarkable interagency effort from the Trump administration, but also to make sure that we prosecute the bad gu- bad guys and do it as swiftly and efficiently as possible, is we are creating a new assistant attorney, uh, general position, who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud. Now, of course, that person's efforts will start and focus primarily in Minnesota, but it is going to be a nationwide effort because, unfortunately, the American people have been defrauded in a very nationwide way.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think when you see that?
- NSNick Shirley
Journalism that's creating change. I mean, the f- issue of fraud has been there, [chuckles] but it's not new that we've been being... It's not new that we've been being defrauded.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- NSNick Shirley
It's a complete result of my video [chuckles] showing that fraud's taking place, to the point where the Vice President of the United States needs to create a new role for Assistant Attorney General to go after fraud.... It's crazy, actually. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Dude.
- NSNick Shirley
I think, think about that, like-
- CWChris Williamson
It's wild
- NSNick Shirley
... have you ever thought, ever seen a video? We've been-- there's been lots of reports for years. Has there ever been a point in time where they froze funding, sent in feds to launch investigations, and created a new job for the attorney?
- CWChris Williamson
No, I was thinking about, I was thinking about some stuff maybe during COVID, where pe- people that had scrutiny around mask efficacy, transmission rates, vaccine stuff, perhaps, but it was nowhere near as direct. It was much more kind of little pebbles here and there, as opposed to this massive boulder that's just created it. Yeah, dude, I mean, this, this could be the beginning of a, a really huge tsunami of, of investigations around this stuff. So, uh, Nick Shirley, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, get some sleep for me, please.
- NSNick Shirley
Do I look tired?
- CWChris Williamson
No, I just want you to sleep.
- NSNick Shirley
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
I think that you-- I think that it's important for you to sleep so that you can keep on doing... You look fantastic. Um, I, uh, I think the other, the other lesson, at least to take away, uh, that I have from this, is that you cranked out a video a week for two years, and then you had the one that hit, and that's kind of the way that it tends to. Not that you hadn't accumulated an audience before, but this is the one that really, really hit.
- NSNick Shirley
Yeah, I think it's just like, I remember listening to your podcast with Hormozi, and it's just like you need to treat yourself... I remember one thing that really struck to me is he's like: "You need to treat yourself like you're the best athlete," and whatever it may be, whether it be making YouTube videos or making sure you're the best person at your job, wh- at wherever it may be. But, uh, j- like, I've dedicated essentially all my time and the past few years of my life to making these videos and creating conversation, and it wasn't a surprise that it just happened to be the fact that I made this video. It was just inevitable that something was gonna happen.
- CWChris Williamson
Sometime it was gonna happen. Yeah, dude. Yeah, that's, that's the way it works. All right, where should people go to keep up to date with your stuff, support you, do all the rest of the things?
- NSNick Shirley
Nick Shirley on all platforms. Shirley Defense, if you want a leery hoodie to leer a little bit. But yeah, just Nick Shirley everywhere.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Nick, I appreciate you. Thank
- 1:33:59 – 1:36:31
Chris’ Advice For Nick
- CWChris Williamson
you, man.
- NSNick Shirley
Thank you. Got any advice for me?
- CWChris Williamson
Get some sleep. Um, I think that's important. Honestly, dude, g- get some sleep and go for walks. Uh, like, will just keep you fresh. What else advice would I give you?
- NSNick Shirley
You're a wise guy.
- CWChris Williamson
I think, I think you need to try and delegate as quickly as possible, uh, in order to allow you to keep doing the thing that you're the best at, because the sheer volume of inflow that you're gonna get is gonna cause you to miss the stuff that you really need. So what you, what you could do with is an assistant who is just with you at all times. And again, this is gonna be hard, 'cause you need the money, and you're gonna get it funded from something. But assuming that you had the resources to do it, and fuck me, text Elon. I'm sure he can spare a couple of mil. Um, somebody who's just always on your phone and is scrutinizing everything, sending it through a team. You probably need, I don't know, two or three people that would be really great to run in the background. Uh, and then it means that you can focus on: Where am I gonna go? What's the story? How's the edit look? Uh, so I would look to delegate. I would definitely get some rest as best I could. Uh, and I would see this period as kind of like your Super Bowl, because you're not going to be... Uh, you may be, but the likely it is that this is the most relevant that you're ever going to be. So I think continuing to put your foot on the gas, which is why getting the sleep as best you can, is good, so that you can keep on going pretty hard. Keep on publishing at a rapid clip. Be careful about what you say. You don't wanna have some horrible soundbite of you saying something horrendous that kind of smears the rest of your, uh, your image, because that's exactly what opponents are going to look for. And I would say keep on reaching out to people, because i- it's evident that people wanna support your work. So if you have the desire to try and make something happen, just keep on... You've already, you've already got, like, the shameless DM gene that I also have, which is good. So just keep on sending that out, 'cause I think people are gonna wanna keep supporting you.
- NSNick Shirley
Awesome. Thank you, I appreciate it.
- CWChris Williamson
Fuck, yeah. Appreciate you, bro.
- NSNick Shirley
Modern Wisdom, baby. [upbeat music]
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you very much for tuning in, and congratulations for not being so TikTok-brained that you actually made it to the end of a full podcast. Hooray! Uh, maybe another podcast with the one and only Naval Ravikant would also be good for you to watch. It's right here.
Episode duration: 1:36:31
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