Tristan Tate Opens Up About Faith, Prison, and Andrew’s Salvation
113m 20s
The speaker reflects on his journey from atheism to Orthodox Christianity, emphasizing that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is the foundational truth of faith. Despite being a brother to a Muslim, he maintains a respectful, non-confrontational relationship, choosing to avoid public debates to preserve family unity and focus on shared goals. He believes true faith is rooted in personal conviction and disciplined living, not in ritual or social performance. He criticizes modern Christianity for being passive in the face of cultural threats like secularism and LGBTQ+ ideologies, while praising traditions in Europe that uphold strong Christian identity. The speaker expresses deep concern about the future of education and the rise of AI, warning that automation will disrupt job markets and critical thinking, increasing inequality. He views cultural and spiritual resistance as vital, citing historical examples like Romania’s defense against Ottoman invasions to illustrate Christian resilience. He also stresses the importance of personal integrity, self-awareness, and leading by example, especially in influencing young people. Ultimately, he sees unity across religious lines as essential in a time of spiritual and cultural uncertainty, advocating for strong, grounded faith that stands against both external threats and internal complacency.
- What if tomorrow's not promised? Because according to the Christian faith, Andrew would not be entering the kingdom of heaven. - Yeah, it is a weight that weighs on my shoulders. I think it boils down to one factor, one factor only. - Do you believe that he is actually dead for two days? And do you believe he actually goes together from the grave? - I don't think you can consider yourself a Christian and just you believe that to be factual each week. - I struggle with women more so than anything else. I don't think you can ever feel more lonely than when you're in bed with a woman who you just don't care about at all. You can't lie to God, but anyone's not the God not, you know? As though he doesn't know what I do in my private time. - I would like to think that he know that I didn't waste the opportunity he gave me and the platform he gave me to tell young men to be better, better people, stronger people, more disciplined people. - I don't believe that God's gonna throw anything at me that I can't personally handle. Going to jail and having everything taken away from me was like a hard reset in my mind. My mother suffered a heart attack. Had a tripled heart bypass surgery. She had, I think, a 10 or 15% chance of survival. And I requested to the remaining authorities the permission to go to his England and I was denied. My grandmother was sick in Alabama. She did die, so I never saw her again. So the things that were stolen from me by this process, I will never get back. - Hey, before we get into today's episode, I want to share two quick things with you. First, if these videos have meant anything to you, if they've encouraged your faith or helped you see the gospel a little bit more clearly, I just want to ask you to subscribe. A lot of people tune in every single week and haven't hit the button yet. It only takes two seconds and it helps us keep putting these conversations in front of people who need them. And the second thing, this one I've honestly been really excited to say, I'm officially announcing our ministry's biggest live event to date, Open Heaven live podcast tour. It's happening November 8th this year at the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving, Texas. This is gonna be a night centered around worship, faith, real conversations and genuine community. I believe God is going to move it a powerful way and I would love for you to be in the room. Tickets are on sale right now. You can head to briskroffer.org/tour or just click the link in the description below. And please, only get your tickets through my official site or that link below. I recommend not buying from random resellers online. I believe this is going to be a really special night and I hope to see you there. All right, let's get into that episode. So Tristan, you were an atheist for a lot of your life. - Yes, I was. - And then you became a Christian. - Indeed, I did. - So what changed? - Well, I've always been a bit of a nerd. You just gifted me this Bible from the 1800s and you didn't know that I collect vintage and antique books before you gifted me this. So I always been an avid reader and avid bookworm, let's say. And it was my love of European history. I think that reawoken my interest in Christianity. I think it was through no fault of my own that I was forced to leave Indiana, which is a very Christian part of the world. Very Christian part of the United States, certainly. And I moved to a town called Luton in England as a young kid. Now, Luton England is famous for many things. It's famous for terrorist attacks. It's famous for being a hotbed of extremism, Islamic extremism. The July 7th bombings of the London Underground, you're probably too young to remember. But it's an event I remember very well. And those people came from Luton. They were trained in Luton. And going to school there, I think there was just absolutely no culture of Christianity. So when it became obvious to me that all these different people had all these various, various different beliefs, I remember speaking to a Sikh who I went to school with. And I thought, what do you mean you don't believe in Jesus? What do you mean you're not a Christian? What do you mean you don't believe in God? Like as I thought of God. And on the young mind, I think that can be quite a damaging environment, especially because I had no Christian role models in my life to really look up to. So atheism, I slipped into it more from a lack of interest in religion than a rejection of what I've been taught as a child. But yeah, it was my love of European history, the study of European history that made me reanalyze my position and look into, I guess, what I was missing out on. And I was baptized into the Orthodox Christian church twice, in fact, once about eight years ago, maybe nine years ago. And once last year, again, but there's a reason I was re-baptized and we can visit that later. Yeah, so you're an Orthodox Christian. That's my next question. I am Orthodox Christian, yes. I'm Orthodox Christian mainly because of the culture of the environment I live in. Yep. I'm Orthodox Christian because that's where I fell back in love with the church and fell back in love with the message of Jesus Christ. But I have absolutely no hatred in my heart for other Christian denominations. I feel like the days when we used to stab and kill and murder each other are over. And if somebody says to me, there are any vangelical or non-denominational Christian or Catholic, I'm very happy to consider them my brother because we will believe in the same message. Same here, you know, and I think it's so fascinating 'cause right now, particularly like Catholicism and Orthodoxy right now in America, it's on a rise. Like atheism is dying. Yes. Agnosticism is becoming popular, which I like, because at least you're a little open-minded indeed. But Orthodoxy and Catholicism is rising. What do you think is that? Well, I think, and we can get into the great schism and exactly why these two faiths separated and might take on it. But I think that they are certainly beyond doubt the original church of Jesus Christ. Everybody, you know, some people consider the Catholic church, the original church. I consider the Orthodox church, the original church, and I'm not sure how much history you know behind that. I'm happy to go into why. But they are widely considered by every single Christian in the world as the spawning point. These are the people who kept the lights on, so to speak. I know non-denominational Christians. It was actually a non-denominational Christian who introduced me to your work and your podcast for the first time. He's my cameraman. Oh, wow. He's from Texas. He says, you got to see this guy. And that's the first time I ever saw your face. But I feel like we all understand that there was a time in the world where everything was very dark. People couldn't read. People couldn't write, you know, people, you know, only went to the church for knowledge. And, you know, in these monasteries that I visit in, whether it be a Catholic monastery in Italy or an Orthodox monastery in Romania or Greece, these are the exact same places that kept the lights on and kept the message alive, you know, for the torch to eventually, you know, arrive in the United States and give rise to everybody else. So I think it's just a, I guess, a Genesis thing where people really believe that this is the original church and they're looking into these denominations. I encourage anybody to look into it if you have time. However, I think being Christian today is enough in 2026. Yeah, you know, I value a lot of them. I value a lot of things about Orthodox and Catholicism in the sense of like you have this deep respect for tradition. Where some of that like Americans lost, I believe heavily as we thought that, oh, in order to get people to start following Jesus or coming to church, we got to make church cool, right? So we got to get the light package and the smoke machine. And I'm like, look, like, okay, sure, like I'm not just going to like completely dog on it. But, you know, something that I love is, I have a Coptic Orthodox friend, his name's Father Lazarus. So when I go to his church, there's some smoke machine, there's no lights. But there's a deep fear of the Lord in there. And I respect that aspect of tradition. And that structure that it brings in here is like, wow, you see this different beauty aspect of God and it just makes you at all, you know? Well, yeah, and it's the feeling I get certainly 'cause I've been to churches here in California, actually. What's the name of it? I was in a place called Shingle Springs up near San Francisco and it was called the Green Valley Church, run by a guy ironically named Mike Sinner. Okay. And I went to one service there. I mean, that's just his name, I mean, but it was, it was a very cool experience. It was, you know, there was guitars on stage and drums and everyone was up clapping their hands and stuff. I went with two friends of mine who I'd met on the airplane over here, actually. And it was very interesting seeing this, like, newvo American style church service. But when you go to an Orthodox service every Sunday, I go to, I don't actually go to a church. I go to a monastery every Sunday where they hold a service there. And you look around and if you take, you know, the cell phone's away and maybe the modern clothing, you're looking at a Christian service that's, you know, been conducted the same way since way before the United States was even a country. So it's kind of like a time machine, you know? And you have all the paintings of the various saints on the wall and, you know, it's something that you don't get in America. I think with this newvo form of Christianity, but, you know, I'm glad it's thriving here, nonetheless. But there is this deep feeling of history when you go into these buildings that are one and a half thousand, two thousand years old. And you see people conducting services in the exact same way that the first Christians did. It's, yeah, it touches your heart. - It is very powerful. You know, it's something that I'm thinking about right now. You're obviously Christian. Your brother Andrew is a Muslim. - Indeed. - Tell me about that. Like, is there like a lot of conflict with that? How does that make you feel? - Well, I try to save it as a conversation that hopefully we can have when we're older. I feel like, as a, he's my older brother. By the way, so he's a year and a half older and he's approaching 40 years old. I don't feel it's my place to police him and his children and his family about what he personally believes. I'd like to, but at the same time, I understand that he has people in his ear, telling him to preach to me, to bring me over to the Muslim side. Let's say, and there's no way at this point in my life when Andrew and I have so much to do that I'm going to create conflict in mind and his working relationship and our brotherhood and everything we're trying to achieve in this world. I feel like these are conversations that when we're 45, 46 plus, we're gonna sit down and really hash out in detail. Once I'm off the internet, I at this time in our lives, we certainly have to stand as a united front against everything we're up against And we try not to create.
internal conflict. That's not to say that we don't discuss these things, because we do. But I never discussed them to the world. I never discussed our talking points and how we debate with each other to the world. And we certainly would never sit on a podcast together and me argue the truth of Christianity and him argue Islam against me, because I just don't feel it's pertinent to do at this point in time. But he found, we spent a lot of time in the Middle East and he fell into the Islamic religion through some very good friends of mine. And I said the Gulf Muslims, I think, are the real Muslims in the world. And yes, there's a lot of toxic Muslims, but if we're perfectly honest, there's a lot of toxic Christians. I mean, the Rwanda genocide is the largest genocide ever to take place on the continent of Africa. And Rwanda is Africa's most Christian country. And these people were perverted by so-called pastors on various radio stations. And they rose up and chopped each other up with machetes for years and years. And millions of people died. So there's toxic people in every single religion in the world. And there's toxic people who are atheists. And there's good people all around. So yeah, he's just a full-grown man who made his own decisions about which religion he believes in. As did I. And he doesn't try to police me. So I return him the same respect for now, for now, while we're young. So you said like creating conflict in a sense. It's hard for me to imagine that even something like that could create conflict. Because, you know, grain at social media is just a view of someone's life. You know, you have 24 hours a day. You guys have your own problems. Good things, bad things, everything in between. But I feel like you can tell from an outsider perspective that you guys are so close. We are. It's hard for me to imagine something like a conversation like, Jesus is he God or is he just a prophet? Yes. You know, should you put all your poker chips in it? It's hard for me to imagine that that would create some conflict between you guys. I don't think it's conflict in the way that we'd actually physically argue. But if you take 100% of our time in the day and all the things are working on and all the things we're trying to achieve, if he was as fervent as I was and it came head to head, I think 25, 30, 40% of our working day would be, you know, spent discussing this one particular issue and it would take away from everything else we're trying to achieve. I mean, Andrew still does a lot for the Christian community, certainly in Romania. I mean, when there was a story, I'm not sure if he picked up on it a couple of months ago when a church had caught fire during a funeral. And Andrew and I funded the entire reconstruction of the church. Now, that's shared money. That's not my money and that's not his money. That's shared money. And when I said this, he said, yes, absolutely. He's a, he has massive respect for the, for the institution of Christianity in Europe. He gets in trouble with his, with some Muslim followers of his when he says that Europe is the Christian land and should remain Christian, just as I'm sure you and I would, would, would agree that Saudi Arabia is Muslim land and they could, they should remain Muslim. And I have no right to go over there and, you know, try to, try to mess with their culture and mess with their, mess with their foundation. So Andrew gets in trouble for defending Christianity and sticking up for it a lot as the foundation of what we understand to be the modern world. So yeah, eventually Andrew and I are going to sit down and really hash this out. But, you know, with everything we have going on right now, it's simply, it's simply not the time. Well, God forbid. I mean, obviously you, you, you guys have talked about it publicly. We were talking about earlier. Yes. There's a lot of people that don't like you guys. There's threats on your lives and things like that. I mean, what if tomorrow is not promised? Because according to the Christian faith, right? If we're being real, if someone does not put faith in Jesus, which we have talked about, you're damned for eternity. So right now, if we're looking at the cards plainly, according to the Christian faith, Andrew would not be entering the kingdom of heaven. So does that put a weight on your shoulders? Or it does put a weight on my shoulders. And I'm in a room now with a bunch of, I guess, Jesus believing Christians. I'd like to think so. You know, your cameraman have the crucifixes around their neck, which is all well and good. But from, as an intelligent man, I have to put myself in the shoes of other people. There is absolutely no doubt in the minds of Muslims who live in the Middle East that they are right. And we are wrong. Now, I don't believe that, but they believe that. They're wholeheartedly. So again, when you know you're correct, it's very easy to, to be righteous enough to say, I should be doing this. But of him and his team and his friends, says on a Muslim podcast, because he gets asked the same question, they all believe they're correct too. So it's one of these what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object questions. And, you know, he doesn't waste my time, certainly trying to pull me over to the side of what he believes and what his friends, you know, believe. So I know tomorrow isn't promised. I'm fully aware of that. I have many good friends who are no longer with us who died, whether they be, you know, Muslim or Buddhist or Sikh or Hindu or whatever they were. And yeah, it is a, a weight that weighs on my shoulders. And I feel I am correct. I would say, I would go as far as to say, I know I am correct. But I do understand that everybody who tries to pontificate to me also knows they are correct too. Sure. Which is why I avoid it at this point in time. And I guess I just have to stay alive for a little longer. So it's not necessarily passivity. It's just more of like a respect thing. Like, hey, you know, you've made your decision. All I can do is let my life be a testament to the goodness of God. Basically, I'm sure, I mean, I assume you mainly hang around with Christian people, but I assume you have friends who are Jews or Muslims or Sikhs or other religions. And I just feel like your time with them, if you were working with them on every single aspect of what you're doing in life, you know, them trying to convert you, you'd be like, this again, you know? And maybe it's maybe it away. I feel like I would kind of understand, especially Islam in particular because I mean, that is also, I mean, it's the fastest growing religion right now indeed in the world. So I wouldn't be surprised if my Muslim friends they were like trying to get me to convert things like that. You know, but I get what you're saying. And when I'm in the company of Andrew, Muslims do try to get me to convert. Andrew says, hey, leave him alone. He's a full grown man who can make up his own mind. That's what Andrew says. Fascinating. So if Andrew were here now, I'd say, guys, leave him alone. You know, I've been accused online by people who've heard this argument of saying that I respect the material world more than I respect the afterlife. That's not what it is at all because I make my own personal religious decisions and my children are baptized. I just said I wouldn't speak about my children, but I won't talk about who they are, etc. But my children are baptized into the church, etc. But I feel that's my prerogative as a father to lead my children into the way I want them to live. You know, my brother and I have disagreed on many things over our almost 40 years on this planet. And I don't see it as my, I don't see that I have any authority over him just as he doesn't have any authority over me. So hopefully we live a lot longer. And hopefully these conversations will be had with my brother later on. But while I've got, you know, while we need to stand as a united front against the world, I mean, one of my favorite passages from the Bible is, is, and I'm not, I'm not you. And I, I don't know the Bible as well as I should because I, I don't want a ministry. I'm just a hobbyist Christian. But it's, um, I think it's Psalms 133 verse one, which is behold how, how good and how beautiful it is when, when brothers stand in unity or something along those lines, I've probably butchered it slightly, but that's the core message of it. And now is the time that I stand in unity with my brother, no matter what he believes in, whether it be a Muslim or whether he be an atheist and these conversations will come later on. 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People that do that, they fall really hard. That is true. And I just think that's fascinating. I guess another question on that. It comes to mind. I mean, do you believe, you know, the Bible talks about being equally yoked, not just in, you know, literal romantic relationships, but whether it comes to friendships and business and stuff like that. And again, I have friends that are Muslim, atheist, agnostic, don't believe all across the board. But have you seen
seen like, um, I don't know, friction and maybe business because you guys in a spiritual sense don't fully agree? No, there's no friction between myself and my brother ever, which I guess leads to my original answer, you know, the the willingness to try to create it. He doesn't have. And he won't start that with me. So for now, I won't start that with him. I mean, I'm sure he thinks about my religious beliefs and maybe he wishes that I shared his religious beliefs, just as I wish he shared mine, but we don't go at each other. And we don't, when we're sitting down on a board meeting, for example, discussing whatever work we're discussing, we don't drain the time away trying to drag each other across this line because I don't believe now for one, it would work. I don't believe that it would be a fruitful. I don't believe that, you know, either of us would change our minds. And I do plan to retire in a few years and just hopefully we're both alive then. And then I will have all the time in the world to discuss these ideas. Yeah. So what is faith for you is faith more of a conviction or practice? What does it mean to be a Christian in your eyes? I think no matter what denomination of Christianity you are, I understand that there's, you know, differences in order of service and, you know, and how you pray and, you know, whether you recite the NIC and create or you don't. I think it boils down to one factor and one factor only, which is why I said I have no problem with non-denominational Christians, evangelicals, et cetera, et cetera, is whether you in your heart truly believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Do you believe that he was actually dead for three days? And do you believe he actually rose again from the grave? I think that is the core of Christianity. Despite all the messaging and all the, you know, sins and how people act and how people conduct their lives, I don't think you consider yourself a, you can consider yourself a Christian, unless you believe that to be factually true. And I think that's the bedrock of any Christian denomination and all Christian faith, certainly in my eyes. You said before that discipline matters more than motivation, which I agree in a lot of instances that, like, you know, motivation can be cool, right? But discipline is the consistency. Do you think that applies to faith too? And if so, like, how do you think that applies? Do I think it applies to faith? Yes, it does. I feel like your conviction in that one fact matters more than what a lot of people do when you know this, trying their best to prove the best Christian to the whole world, when maybe in their mind, what they don't do is research and tackle the actual evidence and the actual fact around Jesus' resurrection. I think a lot of people are happy to go to church and sing their songs. And how much they sin in their personal life really isn't a concern for me. I don't try to police other people's lives, but I'm not sure if you walked into a church in anywhere in the world that 100% of people could sit and argue compendiously about why they believe in the miracle of Jesus' resurrection. I don't believe they can do that. They just say it. They, they, they state it. But I don't think they could argue it. When you say, when you say, like, oh, I don't want to like police other people's lives when they sin, what do you mean by that? I feel like there are people in the world who are religious leaders and you very much are, whether you like it or not, a religious leader. This is the cornerstone of everything that you're doing. I'm not a religious leader. I'm a Christian in my own personal personal life, but I'm not, I don't think qualified, I guess, would be the correct term to run a ministry or to or to preach to other people. So I feel like the best a man like me can do, given my albeit rather colorful past and, you know, my struggles with atheism, et cetera, would be just to try to lead and live as an example. And, you know, all of my followers and all of my fans and all the young men over the world of all different religions do know what my religious beliefs are. And if they're encouraged to look into the Orthodox church because of the things that I say, then good. But I don't have a podcast where I sit and preach and tell people that they must be Christian because X, Y and Z. Yeah, I think it comes down to qualification, you know, I think it comes down to, you know, I guess knowing your place in the world and some people live to be, live as an example, whether it be a good example or a bad example. And some people live to actually actively, you know, preach the gospel and convert people to the belief in Jesus, people like you. So I don't try to police people because I don't think it's congruent to my message and my mission. When do you think it's right, though, to, I guess, I don't know, call someone out on their crap, you know, like if you see someone doing something weird or, you know, or the person, here's the prime example. Let's say you have a Christian brother that you're close with, you know, your friends with and they just, they keep willingly and knowingly falling into this one sin. And it breaks your heart because you're their brother. And you're like, oh, man, I love you. And I don't want to see you doing that. Well, on the contrary, you're like, okay, this guy has zero conviction about what he's doing. So do you have a line where you're like, okay, this is now where I decide to step in and maybe say something about it or something like that? Well, I do this all the time for everybody I care about and everybody in my life. But I don't necessarily, I try to correct bad behaviors, even from the fans of mine that, that listen to me. I have preached since the first day I was ever on the internet, probably 15, 14 years ago, a very powerful anti-drug message. I've always preached things like this. And if there's a friend of mine who's in a bad place or doing something that I don't think is beneficial for his life, I will correct them. And I do that just out of love for my friends. I don't necessarily do it from a place of this makes you a bad Christian because my group of friends is very diverse. My group of friends, I mean, I've got two or three Christians who are always with me all the time. My film crew, my camera crew. But besides that, everyone comes from a different place and everyone believes in different things. But I think it is your duty, irregardless of religion, to try to lift your brothers, I'll try to point them in the right direction when they're living in a way that's destructive to themselves. And let's be honest, most forms of sin, irregardless of just being frowned upon by God, are destructive to oneself. So you correct it anyway. So you, I like your anti-drug message, you know about the dare program. You ever seen that like with that lion that would come into school? No. When you left, you left pretty early on. We had like, we had a different one. We had the just say no campaign. Okay. And there was a bunch of celebrities on television back when we only had three channels saying just say no to drugs. And all those celebrities that turns out in hindsight were hooked on every single drug in the world. But I think the best anti-drug campaign in my personal anti-drug campaign was a bit old school. And maybe people would disagree with this. And my personal anti-drug crusade, because I've never tried a drug in my life in a legal substance. People are going to say cigarettes and alcohol or drugs. I understand. But my anti-drug campaign in my life was my dad's going to beat the fat of me if I take drugs, which I think is, but I think is the healthiest. I mean, if you come from a household where you know of your caught with drugs, the consequences are going to be dire and your father's going to kick you. So I think that's the best campaign you could possibly get. But tell me more about the dare campaign. I'm older. Well, I just, it's kind of like one of those things where they bring some people in, you know, and everyone's in the auditorium. And they would say like dare. And it was like a drug awareness, something program. But it was like the shirts were famous and they had this line on the front. You'd watch these videos and they'd bring in the mascot. But I actually did my own anti-drug awareness thing. My senior year, I volunteered to be all over the safety owl at my school. And they gave me a bag of smarties and I had to try to sell drugs to like the kindergartners, but it was really just like a bag of smarties to see if they would bite into it. So like I was, I was the guy in the mascot costume trying to try to dish it out to teach the kids a lesson, you know. Yeah. That's, uh, that uh, warms my heart to hear that. I'm glad more people are taking up the torch because I think that it used to be at least we used to live in a world because drugs are worse than ever. And they're out of control. Now everything's laced with fentanyl and everyone's dropping dead. So now is definitely not the time to take drugs. I'm not saying you should have ever taken them. But if you lived in Miami in 1975 and you're sniffing cocaine, you're sniffing cocaine. If you live in Miami in 2026 and you're sniffing cocaine, you may well get a dose of fentanyl that stops your heart. So now is certainly the time to be more anti-drug than ever before. But I feel like at least when I grew up, there was this, there was this illusion that they sold the kids. This pretend idea that cool people don't do drugs. But if you listen to modern music, if you watch modern movies, I mean, most modern music, they literally talk about taking all of the drugs you shouldn't do all the time. Yeah. And kids are listening this from age five, six, seven. So where is the anti-drug messaging? If it's not coming from people like you and people like me who've been gifted a very large platform. Yeah. I don't do it in a way that I'm going to tell of if I see a man my own age and he says, I like to take cocaine. I'm a bit cool. Good for you, but I won't hang out with him because I don't hang out with drug users. But I'm not going to try to correct his behavior. I don't necessarily care. But I understand that with the platform I have, millions of young men, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 are watching what I say. So the best I can do with my platform is say, don't, you know, stay away from this crap. Yeah. So I'm happy you're on the same page and I commend you for what you do. Thanks for saying that. Yeah. I had a co-worker years ago because when I graduated high school, I worked on boats and I mean he OD or sorry not OD, he sniffed bag cocaine and it was a lace with fentanyl and he died. Tipped over dead and it's honestly awful. You mentioned alcohol. What's your perspective on alcohol?
alcohol. So I actually used to drink a lot more when I was younger. I think the problem with alcohol is to have a one person to have a universal policy on it is very difficult because it affects people in very different ways. I had a guy used to work for me. I'm not gonna embarrass him and say his name, but after three or four drinks, he'd start acting like a jackass falling over, throwing chairs around. I told him, I said, "Brother, you should stop drinking. It's bad for you." He said, "But you drink." I said, "No, no, no. It's bad for you. You shouldn't drink." I think it has such different effects on everybody else. It destroys some people's lives. To be honest, a lot of adults drink in a very healthy way and it doesn't have any negative effect on their lives besides they're a bit tired the next morning. Any substance abuse is bad. Prescription, pain medications, alcohol. Some people smoke too much. Maybe even I smoke too much, to be honest. I would advise checking your own behavior and looking yourself in the mirror. If you partake in any activity that makes your friends warn you about it. Because I think people can be very polite nowadays and people can be like, "Hey, bro, you got a bit drunk last night and kind of laugh it off." I think you should have friends around you that if you are showing the signs of destructive habits they should step in, I think community is a massive part of this. I think alcohol is very dangerous when you're isolated. I think if you're a streamer or a professional video game player and you stay at home all the time and you're like drinking alcohol by yourself, I think that's a big red flag. So I don't really have an official policy on alcohol but I live in Eastern Europe, I live in Romania which is the most Christian country in the world but they love to drink in Romania. The priests drink, the monks drink, the government drinks but everybody in Romania drinks and it's a part of the culture. So I don't try to tell anybody what to do in terms of alcohol besides to make sure that you are not yourself in a destructive place or you're not causing any harm on others. That's the time to stop. That's such an interesting, because I think in America if we went to church on Sunday and then after church we saw the pastor out at lunch having a beer, it would be weird here. Really? I feel like it would be weird here. But then if you go to Europe, it's like, "Oh, let's go to the pub and get a pint." Afterwards and then you're like, "Whoa, well, the culture is different." So I'm glad that you brought it up. I think that's interesting. I've personally never had a sip of alcohol before. I don't say that like prideful. I accidentally had a taste. Christmas Eve by accident. My cousin lives in London now but she came back and brought me and my now wife a pre-wedding gift and it was like a box of chocolates and I ate one and it tasted-- It was a rum or whiskey, right? It was champagne. I had no idea. I would cough and it would burn my throat and I was like, "Dang, the thing's got a kick to it." Then I gave you another one and then I looked at her and it's like, "Why does it taste like this?" She's like, "It's got champagne." And then I was like, "Oh my gosh." But I always thought that was funny. I think there's a big disconnect in culture. America's experimented with-- I mean, the founders of America, a lot of them were Puritans. And if you're familiar with the Puritan movement, that was like absolutely nothing that can lead you to sin should be permitted, including alcohol. I think the Amish still lived that way today. But America has experimented with prohibitions. They have one of the highest ages of consent for alcohol in the world. I think it's 21 years of age before you can legally drink here. If you actually just look at the statistics, because I am an American, but I'm also a European, a lot of countries have a lot less of a problem with alcohol than the United States. And I think it's one of these things where it's like, "You can't do this. You shouldn't do this. You can't do it." And then when they turn 21 and they're off at college, they're binge drinking and go into these keg parties or I don't know if those are still around. And people develop problems with alcohol. Whereas if you live in France, France for all of its problems, don't even get me started on the politics of France. It's finished as a country. But the actual French culture, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds will have half a glass of wine with dinner everyone. And it's so normalized that people don't suddenly turn 18, which is the drinking age in France and think, "Finally, I can do this. Let's go nuts." So I think to be honest, speaking as a European, the healthy introduction of alcohol into people's lives is better than not drinking at all is the best for anybody, of course. But the healthy introduction of alcohol into people's lives as they grow up is a lot less congruent to having these chronic problems than, "No, you cannot touch this stuff until you're 21 no matter what." I think that's the mistake America makes, because America has more alcoholics and more, I mean, I just passed a gas station here. There's four people sitting around drinking out of brown paper bottles and their lives aren't really going too well. I can assume. But you don't get that in Europe. Yeah. Yeah. There's a passage of scripture. I believe it's in one of Paul's epistles in the New Testament, but he says, "Do you not be drunk on wine but be filled with the spirit?" And then the language is interesting. And one of the translations, I believe it's in L.T. it says, "For it is a waste." Isn't it funny how we call it being wasted when you get it? That's a very fascinating to me. But I love, I love, in Proverbs 31, "King Lemuel," he's like, you know, he's like, "Look, it's probably wise if you're like a very important leader or someone like that to maybe not drink." He's like very like open-handed. He's like, "I'm not trying to beat y'all down, but it's probably wise if you're a leader or not drink because you'll probably be swayed in your decision making and you want to be sharp and aware and understanding conscious of your decisions that you make." And I really admired that because I was like, "Man, you know, so you're right. There's so many people that they just are like a loose cannon when they get a hold of alcohol, particularly in America." Yeah. And I'm thinking of like maybe 10 people right now in my brain, you know? But, you know, at the same time, it's like, wow, what can we, you know, alcohol is such an interesting thing because you can't just label it and say, "All of it's bad." Like, my tolerance for alcohol, like if I've never had a subalcohol, so if I had like half of a beer, I wouldn't be so reminded. Where's like, I have like friends that they can have like two beers and then they're still so reminded, they're perfectly fine. But I think the best way of policing this, to be honest, is to police yourself and to lead by example. So for example, if you want some of my content from eight, nine years ago, for example, I'm drinking. I'm having fun. I'm at parties. I'm at night clubs. This was a very different life I lived back then. But I have rules for myself when it comes to drinking today. I do not, I do not, I never get drunk in public. I never get drunk around people. I don't know very well. I never get drunk around women. I never get drunk around my kids. I never get like, if I am sitting in my house and we're playing a poker game and it's me and all my friends, I will drink as much as I like and I'll stumble over to my bed and pass out. But certainly when you know you are in a position where people watch your behavior and you're trying to set an example to the world, nobody is ever going to see me stumbling, stumbling out of a nightclub in this day and age. I'm never going to see me falling over or throwing up or being drunk in public. You have to be, I think, very careful when you are in a position of authority to, to dissuade that behavior from the younger generation. Well, it just sucks that that's what's described as like success now. Or maybe you know, I use success as like a loose term. But if you go to university here in America, everybody's doing exactly that. And if you're not doing that, you're like the odd guy out in a sense. Well, universities in America have become the breeding ground for a lot of toxic behavior. I agree. People will go to university in the United States, particularly. And they may be, you know, good Christian kids like like, like not quite like you because you're at different level. But they could think of me for all-intensive purposes, good Christian kids. And they can come out believing in, you know, radical ideas. Well, I refer to as like radical, dangerous ideas, ideas of transgenderism, etc. I mean, this is the, this is where these ideas are implanted onto the minds of the young and American universities are terrifying places. I'd rather my children remain uneducated than go to an American university. I mean, there are specific ones, of course, MIT to study, I don't know, advanced mathematics is probably a little bit different than, you know, studying gender studies or business at the University of Arizona. But it's, it's, yeah, those places have been, I believe, purposefully infiltrated. By Marxists, communists, you know, the crazies because they know if you get hold of the youth and you can change our mind to believe in the absurd, then you can control the future. Which is, well, one of the reasons myself and my brother started our counter to that university.com, our own online school, which I'm not actually a teacher in, but we have professors just literally teaching people, entrepreneurial ship and wealth creation methods because modern day university is a, is not just a toxic environment, but it's also becoming increasingly useless. As more and more people leave the university with these degrees and, you know, Microsoft themselves in Amazon in the last few weeks have just fired 30,000 people and everyone's being replaced with AI. I don't think these pieces of paper are worth, you know, four years of binge drinking and cocaine taking to get hold of. I mean, you could, you could say wherever someone goes to college, those four years are going to develop that person for the next 60. Yes. And yeah, that's why I think it's so important. There, there are a handful of phenomenal universities out there and, and they're, they're great. And, and, and obviously you can get your degree in many different things. I'm graduating from Liberty University. I'm getting my biblical studies degree and things like that. But in the fall, we're going to start doing some campus dialogues and debates with students, particularly on the topic of faith. Because I, I think we need that at the core of it, right? And, and, and, you know, I have a lot of respect for a lot of people that, and, and this may be bold, but I have a lot of respect for people that live that life. And they go, yeah, I'm not a Christian. I have a lot of respect for that versus the person that lives that life. And they go, well, I'm a Christian and And you can't judge me because I'm like, yeah, and then I'm like, well, hold on a second. What do we do?
what do we mean by following Jesus, you know, but yeah, it's very fascinating. Where do you see the world going in the next five, ten years with the way you view the education system? I think that, you know, for the first time last year, it was reported in the United Kingdom that people who are non-university educated slightly overtook in terms of income, people who are university educated. So certainly when my parents were young and probably when I was very, very young, the university degree was very well respected because people went to college and university with a purpose. I think people now do it without a purpose. They just, this is what I'm going to do next. I myself have no higher education. I finished school when I was 16 and I haven't spent a single day in any educational classroom since then. So I think it's more about a willingness to be educated than an obligation to go to college. And I think that a lot of people in the world are adapting to the modern world a lot faster than people who go to university are reading from textbooks that are 10, 20, 30 years old. I think agency is going to be what divides the haves from the have-nots in the future, more so than any type of qualification. Because, as I said earlier, like mass layoffs are incoming, AIs are placing almost every single job you can think of to some degree. I mean, I've watched studies AIs going to replace surgeons very soon. It's terrifying to think that, you know, I mean, it's not terrifying to think a machine is going to do an operation on you. Machines do lots of things for us, but it's terrifying to think that all these people who spent all this money and all this time being qualified in this very specific skill are going to become obsolete. So I don't know what the world's going to look like, but I feel like the wealth divide is going to grow bigger. I feel like the middle class is going to evaporation. What's left of it anyway, and you're going to have the haves and the have-nots and what's going to separate them is the agency to take action more so than what they know. Yeah. Have you ever seen a Star Wars before? No, I've never seen Star Wars. In episode three, sorry to spoil it, but no, I'm not going to watch it anymore. I don't watch movies. Okay. Well, Padme is giving birth that she dies, but basically all the people in there are just like robots and machines that are giving that are like helping deliver the babies. And I'm like, that's what I imagine the future being unfortunate. There's like aspects of, which I'd love to know your thoughts on AI and the advancement of technology and things like that, but there's some aspects of AI that I love. I think the hard thing that I'm not really enjoying about AI is so many people are replacing critical thinking skills while leaning on the robot. And I'm like, God has given us a unique, beautiful mind. We should learn to think and we should value truth. And that just goes to show you that. I mean, just because you go to university for four years, that doesn't mean that you know truth. That doesn't mean that you know that you have wisdom and that you have knowledge, letting a robot think for you. But what are your thoughts on AI and stuff like that? Well, you see it every day on Twitter. It's the only social media platform I'm not banned from. And I will post something which is which is conjecture. It's subjective. It's my opinion. Or it's my take on something. And at least 20 or 30 people underneath it. It's like, @Grock is this true? @Grock, how correct is Tristan? @Grock, if you had to disagree, what would you say? And I'm like, the hell's wrong with you people? Like I don't do that. It's ridiculous. And yeah, I feel like, well, the thing that's about AI is this. People get it all wrong. They think AI is going to take your job. So let's say you're an accountant. People like AI is going to take my job. No. One guy who understands AI is going to take 50 of your jobs. So there's always going to be someone behind the machines. We talk about AI as though it's an independent entity. But we can list the four or five companies in the world that own all the AI technology, not the Chinese ones because they keep it all secret. They may well be more advanced in the models that we look at here. But we can see which companies and which people are in control of this technology. And I feel like throughout human history, there's been different periods where people who held the strings to power had a different skill set. And this includes having the strings to faith, for example, that the Pope has always been one of the most influential and powerful men in world history for many of the centuries I can name. As well as the the the sultans of the of the Ottoman Empire. So faith has been one, armies, weapons, the printing press. You know, these people are now setting themselves up to be the next generation of the world's most powerful people because they control the technology that everybody's about to rely on. And what's about to run the modern economy? So I pray that these people, you know, use that power responsibly. And I certainly trust people like Elon slightly more than I trust some of the others. I'm not trying to have any of them, you know, attack me online. So, you know, let's not name names. But yeah, I just I just pray that the people in charge of this technology truly have the the a good for humanity. I hope for humanity in their hearts as they going up after going about this. And not just a relentless pursuit in the technological advancement, which could end I think very badly for everybody. Yeah, I want to ask you something real quick. If you're already paying a phone bill every single month, wouldn't you rather that money go towards something you actually believe in? Because most people just pay the phone bill, stay with the same major carrier and never really ask what their dollars are supporting. That's why I want to talk to you about Patriot mobile. Patriot mobile is the only Christian conservative wireless provider in America. They take a portion of your monthly phone bill and use it to support causes centered around faith, family, freedom, and spreading the gospel. Every year, they contribute millions of dollars to organizations that are actually standing for those values. And this isn't just some new company. Patriot mobile has been doing this for over 12 years. They've consistently backed with they believe in and helped fund organizations making a real impact. And you're not sacrificing coverage. Patriot mobile gives you premium coverage across all three major US networks, which means you can get the same or better service than what you're probably already have right now. They have unlimited plans, mobile hotspots, international roaming, and you can even run multiple numbers on different networks from one phone. And switching is simple. You can keep your number, keep your phone, upgrade if you want, and make the switch from home in just a few minutes. Plus, their customer support is 100% US based. So if you're already paying for wireless every month, make that money count. Go to patreon mobile dot com slash price or call 972 patriot use code price and you'll get your first month free plus 15% off for life. Well, we talked about AI and the advancement of truth and what truth is. I mean, you obviously value truth a lot. Yes. Do you think that modern day Christianity today is weak? Or do you think that it is strong? What's your perspective? Hmm. Modern day Christianity can mean a lot of things. But I do feel like a lot of the strength in the Christianity of the past came from unity and came from I think what's what I can describe as a healthy perception of outside threats. You know, Romania is a very interesting country. I'm not sure how well you know Romanian history. Not really, but I know a little bit. Romania is the country in which every single Ottoman invasion into Europe besides the the more attacking Spain ran through. So all of Romania's heroes and all of Romania's greatest leaders and all the people who you see statues of in Romania who are people who fought against the Ottoman Empire to try to keep the Islamic invasion out of Europe. And these people are labeled and painted in the media today by I mean people you might know Dracula as a character who was it was a real person. His name was Vlad Sepesh. And yes, he was violent. And yes, he was, you know, you could describe him today as a bit of a psychopath. And yes, he did things that people in the 14th century did. But at the core of who he actually was was he was a defender of the Christian faith. And he cared about Europe being a Christian, a Christian continent. And that's what he gave his life for ultimately. And I think that Christianity in modern times, although you don't have to impale people and do the insane he did, I think they should wake up a little bit and have a a healthy attitude and a healthy, a healthy understanding of the threats that are attacking Christian nations, whether it be whether it be the LGBTQ plus agenda or the or the transgender movement or outside religions. But they don't. I feel like they've leaned too much on the turn the other cheek. They've leaned too much on the we can all get along. Atheism again, I think is a massive threat. And yeah, I think modern day Christians can be weak and they do need to wake up a little bit. So what does it look like to be a strong Christian in your perspective? I feel like we could take examples from other religions and other countries. We can say that if you go to Saudi Arabia and you insult their prophet and their religion, they'll lock you up in jail. Five. Now, America has freedom of speech. So that's a different example. So I'm speaking purely as a European now. But let's take countries that do make speech laws, a country that I have absolutely no love for anymore, the United Kingdom that arrest 12,000 people every year for speech violations. It's okay, you can get arrested in England for going outside an abortion clinic and praying quietly in your head. You know, if they think you're praying, you can get arrested. If you insult unvetted third world migrants coming on boat.
you can get arrested, but you're perfectly fine to insult Jesus Christ and you're perfectly fine to insult Christianity. And I'm like, well, how dare a country that is not just a Christian country, not just foundationally Christian, but also England is largely responsible for the spread of Christianity throughout the modern world, including right here in the United States. How dare you, if you're going to make speech laws, make them apply to absolutely everybody else in your country besides the Christians, you know? So I feel like they could be a bit stronger in that regard, or certainly not please speech at all, which as an American is the best way. But I feel like you know, a natural hostility to outsiders is, I mean, some very good and very strong countries to this day still have this. And the British will call it racism, but a country like Poland, for example, I think Poland just officially named Jesus Christ as the King of Poland a year and a half ago. So the official King of Poland is Jesus Christ, by the way, and you're not allowed to insult Christianity there. And even if the law is on your side and you have freedom of speech, if you walk around the streets of Bucharest and you start screaming insults to the church or screaming insults to Jesus, people, Christian or, I mean, whether or not this is the most Christian action or not, will probably come and punch you in the face because they love what they love their culture and their religion so much that they're naturally offended. Whereas you know, what I see in France when the Olympic ceremony took place and they were mocking the last supper, I'm not sure if you saw this. And with transgenders and fat, grotesque women taking the place of Jesus and the disciples, etc. Which absolutely was a mockery of the last supper. By the way, now they tried to deny it. I feel like everyone in France was like, oh, cool, that was our Olympic opening ceremony. In fact, the next day, my brother and myself went down to the French embassy in Bucharest and started a protest. This is all documented. And at the time, we were under some form of arrest, I'm not anymore, but we were under some form of judicial control. And if you commit any crime while on judicial control, you immediately get sent back to prison, organizing a protest with eight or more people is technically an infraction of the law. So I knew when I went there, I was going to be thrown in prison for doing this protest, but I almost was playing chicken with the Romanian authorities because I thought, we are in the most Christian country in the world. I know every Romania, every Romanian respects Jesus Christ. I'm going to go and start a protest and I dare them to throw me in jail for it. So I started a protest outside the embassy of France. And although I understand people were barking down telephones, wondering what they could do about me and my actions, no action was taken. I started the protest. Anyway, alongside my Muslim brother, who was absolutely appalled at what the French did. So yeah, I think we need to have some more backbone, some more balls, take some action, you know, and not stand for the open degradation of our faith wherever it comes from. Yeah, yeah, we need more more men standing up and being firm and being bold for their faith. Okay, so you have Luke 2334 in your ex-Bio. Father, forgive them. What's the purpose of that being in there? You know, I was, I was, I wrote that on a whim. I think I put the in about a year and a half, two years ago, when I decided to, at the time, there was this legal case against me that went nowhere, by the way, the legal case got thrown out. So I was in jail in prison, house arrest for no reason. And I feel like I understood that the people doing this to me were not necessarily my persecutors. I've likened them recently in some proceedings I have going on as dogs that have been let off the leash to attack me, you know? And I don't know. One day, I just, I was sitting there, opposite my prosecutor who was telling me I'm a criminal and telling me he's going to put me in jail and he failed to do so. And I just thought, you know, this guy is just a morally poor person for sure, but I didn't feel like he had any malice towards me. So I wasn't going to preoccupy, preoccupy myself with having any, any malice towards him. So it was aimed specifically at the people who were persecuting me at the time, just as a message of, you know, I don't hate you. And I'm not going to spend my time hating you and planning revenge on you and, you know, dreaming up scenarios where, you know, I can get one up on you. I'm like, okay, you, you were doing what you were doing. I couldn't put innocent people in jail that I knew were innocent. I couldn't take them away from their families. I couldn't do it. But these people are, like I said, morally poor, whether they identify themselves as Christians or not. And I put that in my bio, just, you know, to let the people who persecute me know that I have no malice against them. So, so when you were in jail, tell me about that experience, were you from what I understand and correct, correct everything that I get wrong right here? Are you all including the house arrest in that jail time? Is that where you're, you're, you're saying jail was separate from the house arrest? Well, it counts as jail time legally, but to clarify, I was in a physical prison for almost four months of a physical actual prison for four months. And the total time I spent confined to my house was encroaching on two years. It was like a time I was free. And all the rest of the time before I was free, I was confined within the borders of Romania. And when did you, when, when were you allowed to leave? February 26th last year. So just over a year ago. February 26th, 2025. I was arrested on December 29th, 2022. So on, I, I, I was listening to your interview, Patrick, that David. Yes. And you were talking about how you were actually grateful for jail on the episode. Yeah. What did you mean by that? I, I don't believe that, that God's going to throw anything at me that I can't personally handle. And I feel it was a bit of a, a hard reset in my mind. And I will state without apology here that I was, I'd slowly become accustomed to things that I should have been grateful for. So if we take September 2022, I'm on a private jet every week going to somewhere new in the world. Money's flowing in. I literally don't have to worry about money at all. Everything in my life is going so well that it had become normalized to me to the point where before I went to jail, the famous example of St. Andrew, what should we do for New Year's? He's like, I should go to the Caribbean. I should we go to, to, to, to Korscheval and Switzerland or should we go to the South of France? What should we do for New Year's? I'm sitting down like, ah, that's boring. That's boring. That's boring. I found that exact New Year's Eve. I found myself locked in a prison. And I thought, you know, none of these things would have been boring and I shouldn't have been so ungrateful for the life that I was living. But it crept up on me slowly because I'm not like, ah, I didn't catch a crypto pump. I didn't win the lottery. My, my wealth and success slowly crept up as the years, you know, went along. And maybe, you know, you're very young. So, you know, never find yourself in this situation where you have absolutely everything you ever wished, you know, for having, but you didn't appreciate having it. Going to jail and having everything taken away from me was like a hard reset in my mind, where even now it's been years since I was inside of a prison cell. I appreciate everything so much more. So, I think it was, it was good for me. Yeah. You also said on that episode that you felt like I was giving you an opportunity to prove that you were who you said you were. Yes. Andrew and I are not religious teachers like you, but we are teachers in one way or another. We, we do try to teach, you know, mental fortitude, discipline, self accountability, strength, you know, not caving into the pressures of society. Not, you know, we're very anti, you know, we're very anti people feeling sorry for themselves. I'm super, I'm really not a big fan of anyone who commits suicide. I feel like there's always a better way to get out and do that. And I hadn't really been through any hardship, through my rise to internet fame besides the loss of my father, which was a difficult time. But for years and years, my life was so comfortable. And there I am in a, you know, in my million dollar house, with my million dollar cars and my, my $20,000 suit sitting there behind a camera saying, oh, our guys be strong and be mentally disciplined. And it's like, well, it wasn't until I was thrown in prison. And I came out, not broken, not upset, not, um, not downtrodden, that the world saw that maybe I was, in fact, the character that I was portraying. So yeah, it gave me an opportunity to show my fans that I am who I said I am. And, you know, tests come in all various shapes and forms. I would say the two years of being locked in my house was harder than the four months in prison. But again, I have no mental damage for that. And I practice what I preach of, you know, you can't change the rules of chess, but you can always look at the board and understand what the next best move is. And, you know, that's all behind me now. At least for now, who knows of the, you know, the trustworthy remaining authorities will take another swing at me. But I'm ready for it now, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was a good opportunity to prove that I was why I said I was. Did you see something absolutely crazy in jail? Like, did you see something like just wild? Remain in jail isn't exciting like American jail. I think I'd rather go to American jail any day of the week, because Romanian jail is very boring. It's very much the people you're in the room with affect your jail experience, because you get put in a room. And that is it. I know people who've been in those rooms for 18, 19 months, two, three, four years. There's no yard. There's no law library. There's no chow time where you go to a hall and interact with other people. You literally get put in a room and you're stuck there. So I didn't see so many crazy things because at first I was with, I think I heroin smuggler, a burglarer and a murderer in my cell. And then I was put with Andrew and
to a separate cell. So besides hearing all their sub stories, etc. in my first few weeks in jail, you'd hear more crazy things than you would see crazy things. So you'd hear people smashing their heads against the wall at night trying to kill themselves, you know, just uncontrollable screaming, but you never really know what's going on because you're locked in your own personal room and you have a window about the size of maybe this small light over here. I had a view of a church funnily enough. So yeah, that gave me a lot of strength. You probably had like the only good view. Well, I mean, it was mostly a wall and then like the top spire of a church in the top right hand corner and some very ugly apartment buildings. I wouldn't say it was a good view. I've seen nicer views, you know, the Ritz culture hotel as a Dubai is a better view than that. However, it was, it was what it was. And, you know, that was a long time ago. Now that was the first three months of 2023 was April 2023 when I got out. So they might put me back. Who knows what the remaining will try? They're trying to save their reputation and they're going to try and tell the world I'm a criminal again, but hopefully by this point, having their first cases dismissed, everyone's going to understand that it's a set up. And if they don't, that's fine. I'll come bail you out. Oh, thank you. Well, there's no bail on that. If I'm in Romania, I don't fly in as my known associate. They'll put you in there with me. But I'll have some interesting talks, I'm sure. I'll bring a chess board in there if they take me in there and we can play some chess. I may not be as good as you, but we could play. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I never, I never proclaim to be good at chess. I claim that I like chess and I like playing chess. See, I'm the same way. Yeah. I'm the same way. I'm not good, but I like to play. Yeah. I'm a hobbyist player. Yeah. I never use my last name when I play online because I don't want to bring shame on my father because he was, he was unreal. He was a wild chess player. Yeah, he was. He was. Look, most guys don't even think twice about what they're putting on their body every single day. You'll think about what you eat, you'll think about how you train, but then you go in the shower and you use whatever random shampoo or body watch that's been sitting there for years and you don't even question it. I was the same exact way. I ended up switching over to base body works and honestly, it's been one of the simplest upgrades I've ever made. I've been using their shampoo and conditioner. It's called the shower duo and the difference is immediate. The peppermint hits your scalp. It actually feels clean, like genuinely clean, not stripped and your hair just feels healthier, thicker, not dried out like most of this stuff out there. And once I started seeing the difference, it made me think a little bit more about the products I'd been using before. A lot of the stuff guys use daily have ingredients linked to hormone disruption. Things getting absorbed through your scalp every single day without you even realizing it. That doesn't sit right with me. So knowing this is a clean, no soul face, no pair of beans, none of that stuff, it just makes it an easy choice. And I like that it's simple. I'm not doing some 10 step routine. I just swapped where I was already using for something better. So if you're serious about seeing care of yourself, not just what goes in your body, but what goes on to it, this is worth looking into. Go to base bodyworks.com. Use code Bryce for 20% off. And they'll throw in a free toiletry bag when you grab a set because at the end of the day, confidence shouldn't come at the cost of your health. You said a long time ago that or a while ago that you would have hated that if Andrew went to prison without you. Yeah. How important is y'all's like loyalty and friendship to each other. I know we kind of talked a little bit about it earlier, but well, it's not just, I guess, I could say it's the most important thing in my life. But that would not be necessarily true. It's the most important ingredient to the success that we've found. I don't think and he wouldn't mind me saying that there is an Andrew Tate today, as you imagine, without a Tristan Tate. There certainly no Tristan Tate without Andrew Tate. So I feel like, you know, always having a brother you love who cares about you, who wants the best view, who tries to motivate you. I think it was the extra momentum that we needed to escape the quite frankly horrible environment I grew up in. And I'm not sure anyone would know either of our names today if we didn't have each other. So that importance can never be understated. Is there anything about following Jesus specifically that you wish Andrew would see that you don't think he has seen yet? You know, Andrew and I, in terms of morality in the way we live our lives, are very, very similar. Andrew doesn't even drink alcohol by the way. So like you could, you could argue that he's, uh, he's less of a sin of the me because I do occasionally get drunk. And alcohol isn't a sin but drunkenness is of course. There are examples that, you know, we take from each other. I don't think morally we differ on many of our opinions and behaviors in the way that we live. So it's not like I have a brother who's a drug addict and he sees me not taking drugs and me saying, well, you know, preaching the Bible to him and him coming around. I feel like we both serve as examples for each other. And there's nothing specific about me being a Christian that's made Andrew alter his behavior at all. Because, you know, regardless of what you might see in the media which lies about me endlessly, I'm not the person that you will read about in the BBC. You know, anyone who's met me face to face is always like, well, you're much nicer than I expected you to be. I said, really expect me to do attack you. Like, but certainly the characters they write about in the BBC, the tape brothers, they write about there. I wouldn't want to meet those guys, but they don't exist. They're fictional boogie men created by the media to try and take away from our message. So yeah, Andrew lives a very morally clean life. And he doesn't need me as a guidepost to steer him in that direction. You know, something that I respect about, um, like removing you and Andrew from the picture just in general, Muslims, just in general. Something I respect is they pray a lot more than Christians do. In fact, they fast a lot more than Christians do. They give a lot more than Christians do. They do a lot of things more that than Christians do according to their religion, which I greatly respect. And I admire a ton because I think that's something that we need to adopt, particularly in Westernized Christianity a little bit more. I mean, you have like liturgies and stuff like that and in Catholicism and orthodoxy and, you know, all that jazz. I mean, I just love and respect that a ton. Um, but the idea of Jesus being God, it's so fascinating that that's just the pinnacle of everything because everyone has a perspective of Jesus. Well, I think when I gave my explanation of what it meant to be a Christian earlier, I feel like that can be adopted by people who don't fast, don't pray, don't go to church, don't give money to charity, for example. But if you were to ask a Muslim, what does it mean to be a Muslim? They'll say a deurance to the five pillars of Islam and the five pillars of Islam list exactly the things you said. It's the original declaration of faith fasting during the Holy month of Ramadan, Zakat, which is giving a percentage of your money away to charity, praying five times daily and a pilgrimage to Hajj at least once in your lifetime. So three of the things that you named are literally in the description of what a Muslim will tell you. It means to be a Muslim. Whereas when you asked me, what it meant to be a Christian, I said, faith and belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I didn't list all of the Christian virtues. Which I do do. I mean, I do do charity. I do pray. I do fast. That being their cornerstone is why you see that behavior and I have a lot of respect for Islam as well. For sure. You know, I definitely, I love that you said that because if we don't have faith, like for, here's my process. I was going to, and I had depression and anxiety from like eighth grade to I was a junior in high school. And when I was 17, I was planning on taking my life because I thought it was the only way to get the pain to go away. I'm glad you didn't. And thank you. And I had an encounter with Jesus there, surrendered my life to Jesus. And you know, although I respect all those things about Islam, my thought process was if I can't even work to fix the whole of my heart, there's not enough self-help books that can help me. There's not enough feces that I can do that can fix the whole of my heart. How could I ever work to perfection? And in my mind, I'm like, it's impossible. I can't, I can't work to perfection. I'm broken. I gave it and fixed my broken heart. And that's why I love that, that pinnacle of like, if you don't have faith in Jesus Christ or if you do have faith that Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross and trust in it, it's going to produce the most genuine aspect of prayer and submission to God, because it comes from the heart. It's like, I'm listening to you because I love you. Not because I feel like you have to, you know what I mean? I believe that too. Yeah. But what do you think? And I know you're the one asking the questions here, but what do you think about the demonization of Muslims and Islam, particularly by the United States? Because when I'm in the United States, if I'm in, I don't know, if I'm all across the world, you can go to, you know, most countries in the world. And they at least understand like what Islam is and what they stand for. But I feel like you go to a lot of places in America and you say the word Muslim and they're like, ah, terrorist, like they don't really understand. I feel like the media, especially to back up these, these wars in Afghanistan, these wars in Iraq have really demonized the Muslim community. What do you think about like the coexistence between Christians and Muslims? Can it, can it happen? Should it happen? Is there any common ground? Well, I have a couple thoughts. The first thing is like, I believe I value highly freedom of speech and freedom of religion. So here in America, like, do I want everyone to be a Christian? Yes. But I'm not like, I'm not in the sense where I want to force everyone to follow Jesus if that makes sense. You know what's interesting is like right now in the Middle East, they're like rejecting the Islamic caliphate right now. And that's something that you don't really hear. Like we have contacts from like underground churches in the Middle East where we'll hear one thing in America from like American media. And then they tell us a different thing from news sources that are coming in from the underground churches. Yep. I know that. Yep. So like things like that where you're like, Oh, okay, they're rejecting the Islamic caliphate. You don't really hear that here. Right.
Now, here's the, here's the issues and you know, some of you that I've done a hard time with is like, I've used some strong rhetoric in the past about, particularly about Islam. 'Cause there's just things that blow my mind. You're telling me, Muhammad's gonna marry a six-year-old and like we're gonna be okay with it, like, you know, like I'm just like, okay, I'm caught off guard with that. I don't like that, it rubs me the wrong way. I don't think that his encounter in the cave is reliable on how Islam was created. Well, no, no, no, Christian does. Right, right. No, again, as me as a Christian, I do not believe. Right, right, for case. And I'll say that even though I live in a Muslim country. Right, rightfully so. You know, I guess when it comes to coexisting, yes, I think we can coexist. I just believe, and you kind of hit it at it earlier, and the politics of France. I mean, you wanna talk about the politics of France. Yes. Islam has a lot of influence on that. And I think, yeah, I don't know, I don't know how to, what do you think? Well, as a European, I could deep dive that a little bit more for you. What you have to understand about Islam is where it comes from. So I think before this conversation, I said, I live in the Gulf Arab states, and you said, oh, that's where the moderate Islam is from. And I said, no, that's where the actual Islam is from. And all of these cities, Mecca's and Saudi Arabia, Medina, all the cities around the genesis and the origin of the Islamic faith are the Gulf Arab states. So Islam belongs to them. Islam does not belong to the Pakistanis. Islam does not belong to the Nigerians. Islam belongs to the Gulf Arabs. As far as I'm concerned, if you take third world nations, and you import the people into the first world, you get violence, and you get people who do not know how to coexist with modern-day Europeans in any feasible way. So yes, I understand that a lot of the terrorist attacks, for example, they say, oh, this guy's a Muslim, and he did a terrorist attack. No Gulf Arab that I know adeers to any of these dangerous ideas. And if you were to give, in fact, I'll give you the choice. We're in America, right? You're next door neighbors. They're moving in, right? They are a family of six Rwandan Christians taken straight from Rwanda right now, the same people who I said committed that mass genocide, very poorly educated people. That's no offense to the good Rwandans out there, but that is the status quo. Or five, six Emirati Muslim Arabs, who would you rather have as a neighbor? Well, see, that's the thing where I would probably agree with you in a sense. We're like, I don't think all Muslims are terrorists. Like, that's like a very big stereotype. Like, I had Muslim terrorists, I said Muslim terrorists. I had Muslim neighbors, not that long ago. I declared by that I had Muslim neighbors, not that long ago. And they were very nice people. And I, you know, so I see the problems with the politics in France, not so much about religion, but as a attempt to integrate the third world into the first world, and you can't do that. You can't do that no matter what religion these people are from. So, you know, there was a time when I lived in London a long time ago, and people from a certain country in the world used to fly their supercars into London. London was the place to hang out before they flooded it with third world migrants. And you'd see Ferraris and Lamborghinis and everything on the street, and all of them had Arabic license plates. And these people would stay at their hotel with their wives, go to shop in Harrods, drive their cars around, and basically just enjoy London. Nobody ever thought those people were a problem because those are people from a first world nation, or I mean, technically not, but an extremely well-developed nation. And I live in an extremely well-developed nation. And guess what I do every Sunday in the heart of the Middle East in Dubai, I drive 33 minutes from my house to an Orthodox church, which the Muslim state built for people like me who live there to go and worship in. And when we talk about coexistence, you can rank the various religions. And I do have prejudices against some religions more so than others. And although I believe the Muslims are wrong about Jesus Christ, of course I do because I'm not a Muslim. I would say that if our foundation for our faith is a belief in Jesus Christ, then I should at least rank the other faiths who believe different things from me from a perspective of love and respect for Jesus Christ in one way or another. And I think by that metric, you would have to argue that Muslims come in second place. I think if we're talking about it in the sense, we as people, can just people in general coexist. No, the religions can't coexist in the way that we all believe everyone's going to heaven. That's not what I meant. Gotcha. I live in a Muslim country and I go to a church that the Muslims built for me to go and worship in. And they're perfectly happy for me to go there and worship Christ. Yeah, Francis politics, I'm telling you, it's more about third world and first world integration. If you flooded Paris with Emirati Arabs, Paris would be perfectly fine today. So then that's the question I want to ask you is what kind of Muslims do you think are involved in UK politics right now? Do you think that would you consider them extremists or would you consider them normal Muslims? Many of them, many of them are extremists and I think it was the former minister of culture to the United Arab Emirates who was a Muslim man gave a speech that's still on YouTube to the stage and watch it is about 11 years ago. And he said, you are soon going to find that England and the other European nations are a hotbed of Islamic extremism because these people think they understand Islam more than we do. And this is a warning to the West. I mean, the Muslim Brotherhood, all of these violent terrorist organizations that come out of countries like Pakistan, these are all outlawed in the Middle East. You will go to jail if you're a member of these organizations in the UAE, for example. And London, it's perfectly fine because the British, they think they understand Islam more than the people who spawned Islam, the Gulf Arabs, which is a foolish, foolish mistake. And because they're there in such high numbers and let's say in the way that I would argue the people who committed to a wend in genocide are probably the worst Christians of the modern day. The people who adhere to these terrorist ideologies out of countries like Pakistan are certainly the worst Muslims around today because they are in England in such high numbers, they have absolutely no problem voting in, first of all, local counselors, you know, who adhere to those dangerous ideas in England's politics. I wouldn't say I've been corrupted by Islam, no, but they've been corrupted by these dangerous ideologies because the people they're bringing in from the third world adhere to these dangerous ideologies. Okay, so with your relationship with God, is there a temptation or a vice in your life that you feel like is one that you struggle with the most? Oh, personal questions, I like personal questions, but I would say yes. I would say that I struggle with, I struggle with women more so than anything else. And that's something that I've never been asked as a Christian. I don't really go on Christian podcasts all that often despite the obvious patriotic bad day, patriotic bad David's, et cetera. But yeah, I probably struggle with, you know, religion and I struggle with religion. I struggle with women more so than anything else. And I was asked this by my priest, while in Romania once. And I said something to him that didn't change his mind. You can't change these big. I don't know if you've ever met Orthodox monks before, but their minds don't change. But I essentially said like, look, whatever my relationship with women has been in the past because I have children with more than one woman. I'll say that without going into too many details. And I said to my priest, I said, you know, I know the abortion numbers in Romania and in the United States they're terrifying as well. I think it's 21 million abortions since the year 2000. Entire generation of people, our age, your age, should be in existence and they're not. And I said to my priest, I said, look, yes, I may have kids with more than one woman. This may not be the, you know, biblical view of how male and female relationships should work. But I'm not a hypocrite. And I don't lie to him, certainly. And I don't lie to God. And there's not a single abortion attributed to me or my life of the way I live. And there never will be if I can help it because, you know, people go to church all the time. And they have their wife and their three kids. And they'll look at people like me, for example, I'll say it and say, oh, look, he is, you know, kids with more than one woman, a horrible person. Okay, fine, but when that guy was sleeping with his secretary, she was having abortions, you know, there was literal, well, I consider murder taking place. And there's none of that on my record, which I find to be a lot cleaner than the guy with the picturesque life, but in his heart of hearts, he's been telling women to kill babies, you know what I mean. And that doesn't make what I do okay or what I did okay. And I don't say it does, but, you know, I don't make any apologies for having the kids that I have. And I never will because they're amazing. And I'm glad they're here. Yeah, well, thanks for sharing that. That was really cool when I respect that a lot. I respect your vulnerability. Like what, you know, it's interesting because sexual sin out of all the sin in the Bible says it's different than any other sin because it's a sin against your own body, which children are a beautiful gift. I love that you said that.
Like how cool is it that God works all things together for the good that you get to see children and you're raising them and that beautiful gift? When you think of that, when you think of that one vice that you struggle with, is that like something that you feel like when confronted with it, right? Or Satan brings it to your face, you just can't say no to it. - No, I can absolutely say no. And when I was young, I chose not to. I was not religious for a long period in my life. And I feel like when you're disconnected from God and you're disconnected from spirituality, you don't have a radar to detect things that you should be able to otherwise detect. I'm not sure if you've ever struggled with atheism or anyone in this room has ever had no I had religious convictions, but let me tell you that's a fact. It takes away certain senses that you should have. You have more than just the five. And when I was young, certainly 22, 23, 24, your age. You know, you give me a beautiful woman who wants to go to bed with me. Hands down, she looks good, she's beautiful. I'm going to bed with this woman. That is absolutely not the case anymore. Absolutely not the case because as I slowly, 'cause it wasn't an overnight epiphany, as I slowly fell back into faith and fell back into Christianity, I feel like my radar for spiritually toxic things was slowly turned up over time. And I found myself next to these women who are undoubtedly beautiful, unable to sleep. You know, while they're sleeping next to me, I found myself uncomfortable with the situation I was in. And I don't think you can ever feel more lonely than when you're in bed with a woman who you just don't care about at all and no, she doesn't care about you too. I don't think there's an emptier experience. I'd rather be by myself quite literally. So I think my radar is much more dialed in than it used to be. So no, it's not a situation where I can't say no. In fact, in my position, I can't fly to any city in the world. And I'm not, this isn't a boast, but without women basically soliciting me to meet them. And I say no to almost everybody all the time. So yeah, no, it's not something that I can't resist. It's something that I do resist day to day. But as a younger man, I certainly struggled with it because I didn't think there were any negative consequences to it. 'Cause I didn't have my radar dialed in enough to detect how spiritually bad it was for me. But certainly I live much cleaner today than I did in my past. Do you want to get married? Well, I was hoping the topic of marriage would come up because I think I'm going to share a perspective that you've never heard before, okay? And that is that I believe. I mean, we hear of all these instances throughout history of governments hijacking religion to make people behave in a certain way. And America is the hotbed of this debate. And by all means, most of them are hypocrites. You see these people pontificating online about you have to have your good Christian marriage and in two years later the divorce store. There was that famous scandal recently. I can't remember her name, that blonde woman. Big, tread Christian influencer who worked for some other big tread Christian influencer. Turns out she was like banging her boss on the side. And this happens all the time. So these people pontificate, but they're not honest about their sin like I am. I like to be a very honest person because you can't lie to gods. What's the point in lying to your podcast and pretending I'm something I'm not, you know? Has though he doesn't know what I do in my private time. I feel like the institution of marriage and feel free to push back on this has been hijacked by the political class. Interesting to make people do certain things and behave in certain ways. And here's the way I describe it. People say to me, well, Tristan, you're not married. And I'm like, yes, you're correct. I'm not married. And they say, well, you know, the Bible says, because I'm an American and I'm married to my wife and the Bible says this and the Bible says this and asks me one man, one woman, and you have to get married. Like, okay, well, that's very interesting, but I'll tell you what the Bible does not say. The Bible, nor any religious book in the world, the Bible, the Quran, no book you will read. Describes a marriage, as what Americans describe a marriage as. A marriage today, if you get married in the United States, is a covenant between you and your wife and the government. The Bible does not say that's what marriage is. But the government has convinced people, okay, yet you get married. Now I have a gun to the guy's head, divorce court, divorce law. I know how much tax is you're paying together. I can survey you. I know everything about you guys because you're now married and filing joint tax returns. I know who's in a sexual relationship with who. Nowhere in the Bible does it describe a marriage to be between a government and a man and a woman. And that's exactly what is sold to you by the Christians in the United States, all the young men listening. And I'm not saying don't get married, by the way, I wouldn't use your podcast to preach something that you yourself would disagree with. What I'm saying is when all of these people are saying, you need to get married to your wife and have kids within that marriage, there is no passage in the Bible. You could read to me right now and you know the Bible better than me. That says it's a covenant between your government and the man and the wife. So I'm a big fan of marriages that take place only in church that are contracts between you and your wife and God, that you're priest overseas and the witnesses that you're wedding know you were married because they are there. I am absolutely not a fan of any marriage where you have to sign papers with the government because the government isn't listed as a party and marriage in the Bible or any other holy book. And they've hijacked the institution of marriage and they push it down young men's throat as a contract between a man and a woman and a government. And that's not biblical. - So I agree there's nothing in the Bible that says it's a contract between man and woman and the government. - Thank you. - Question, let's talk about, let's talk about, I got so many thoughts, okay? Okay, let's talk about, 'cause I like to call this exact word falsie. Okay, we don't see that exact word. Okay, let's use another example that has nothing to do in marriage. Jesus doesn't say Grand Theft Auto is a sin. - True, does that mean people shouldn't be punished when they steal someone else's car and take it for a joy ride? - Of course they, but well, I mean stealing is, you're not supposed to steal on the Bible. And I understand exactly what you're saying. And on this particular example, I don't think it's me finding a loophole. And I don't think it's me finding a loophole because up until 130, 140 years ago, marriage contracts between governments did not exist. Every single great Christian leader in European history that we've read about and that we know about, of which I know most of them on the history buff. None of them got married and involved a contract between their government and them and their wife. Nor so did all the common Christian people when Europe was 99% Christian, just throughout its entire history, every single peasant, every night, every Lord, every king, they would get married and it was a covenant between them and the witnesses which had to be at the wedding and their church. There was absolutely no government contracts for marriage up until 140 years ago. So how can the Bible and the Christian faith, which began, I mean, it didn't begin with Jesus, but the modern, the Christian faith as I understand it, began with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. How could it have been wrong about marriage for 1,850 years before suddenly people realized, ah, needs government contracts in this? That's what we're missing. That's definitely what, you know, the Bible teaches. And I simply do not believe that to be the case and no one will convince me otherwise. - So yeah, I think that's the ultimate question is like, what is marriage? That's something that actually me and Chris and our friends have been talking about is like, what does it mean to be married? If I take this ring off and throw it over you, you put it on, does that mean we're married? No, do I want to get married? Do you know? Do I want to be friends with you? Yes. - Oh, thanks, bro. - But just because, you know, you put on my ring, that doesn't mean that we're married. It's like, well, what does it mean to be married and things like that? So let's exclude your perspective of, or like, you know, you can consider it, but let's side question on to, okay, marriage isn't, man, woman in a government contract. And do you still want to get married? - I would. I would get married, yes. 'Cause I love, I just got married in January. So I've been married for like three months. - Government contract? - And, uh, government contract sealed the deal. (laughs) We got married in January 10th. And, you know-- - Congratulations. - Thank you so much. - No, I really do mean that. - No, thank you for saying that. And we, uh, and you know, it's so interesting because marriage, marriage between a man and a woman, coming under a covenant with God, saying it, and whatever it may be, in sickness and health and riches and poverty, like I'm gonna be there for you. I'm gonna commit myself to you. It is a newfound glimpse and perspective of Jesus that I don't think I would be able to have if I wasn't married. And I'm not talking to government contract here. I'm just talking about marriage a covenant with my wife. - So you would be able to have this without signing those government papers. The uncle Sam makes you sign. - You know, I'm still trying to figure it out because I believe that a marriage, 'cause, and this is actually something I've been thinking about literally within the past week. Let's say that a marriage is a covenant with God and a witness. God is omnipresent. He's always present. So we need a witness. Okay, does that mean you can get married right now because I have a few buddies in the room? - Well, I'm against same-sex marriage personally and I hope you are too, but. - Okay, so then what is marriage? Is marriage, is there an original design for marriage? I would say that God designed man and female to come together, indeed. - Right, and physically, and physically we could say that yes, we would be able to tell physically as well in that way. So honestly, we've been trying to figure out it's like what does it mean to be married? 'Cause then it's, oh, well then does sex seal the deal as marriage because in covenants, bloodshed was a sign of a covenant and, you know, if you have two virgins that get married, a woman bleeds is that a sign, but then it's like, well, what about two quadriplegic's that get married? - Yes. - That is, so going down the rabbit hole. So it's honestly something that I've been wrestling with within the past week.
We can conversation occasionally that we've been having, but there's a rabbit hole here, and I remember very much when I was falling back into Christianity. Some people will read Bible verses to you, and they'll say how un-Christian these Bible verses are. I'm sure you've dealt with this because you've spoken to atheists all the time. And there is a passage in the Bible, and I'm going to misquote it for sure, that hints that if a man rapes a woman and she falls pregnant, that he has a duty to marry her. Now I've had this thrown at me by atheists all the time. Keep in mind that the world is a very different place today than it was when the Bible was first written and when these old laws were certainly put into place because this is Old Testament. And I meditate on that for a while. And I thought why on earth would something so horrible that can happen to a woman? Why on earth would the Old Testament say that he has a duty to marry her? And meditating on this, going down the rabbit hole, and again, this is just speculation from my various readings and my various interpretations, is that in this modern world, women can live on their own, exist on their own work, on their own, provide for themselves on their own. Should they so choose? But in the ancient world, being a woman with child without a man to provide for you and care for you, meant death of you and your child at some point, it meant destitution, it meant poverty, it meant living on the streets, it meant a life of begging. And I feel like, and I feel like, although I would absolutely not advocate for this in this day and age, the people who wrote that understood marriage to be a duty of care over somebody. The love and the provision and the care over a woman where she is yours and through sickness and through health, like you said, he takes care of her, provides for her. And I, I read that passage in deep confusion and it still confuses me to this day and I don't have the answers for exactly why that's written as more of an obligation than a bonus. It's not being rewarded for doing something heinous, it's being obligated for doing something heinous and you're obligated to take care of that person. Now I would absolutely never, whether it be by accident or on purpose, father a child that I turned my back on, turned my back on that child's mother, left her to fend for herself in the world. So this is definitely not the Christian view of marriage. But certainly in my own mind, I feel like if a man is with a woman and they have children together and he provides for her, provides the house, works hard, breaks his back to give her everything her and the child needs, whether or not they have a government contract or not, I would say that that couple and that family is living within a marriage to me. And I don't think there's any necessarily 100% correct answer on this. My only hard line on marriage and I'm just brainstorming is that it's definitely not a government contract. I think that's the only view I really stand by. But the short, the short answer is I don't know. So just had a curiosity, what exactly is your pushback on the government contract? I guess like, you know, like saying, oh, we got married on this state of this occasion. Here's the minister. Like what exactly is the pushback? Oh, I'm against driving licenses. I'm against licenses to carry firearms. I'm against every government contract. Every time the government, every time the government has the power to do anything, I will say abuse it. I will say. I have rule over anything I do. I have my concealed carry license from the town I'm from. Yes. And because I'm from like a small country town, it was like the easiest thing of all time. It should be. I literally just walked in. They took my picture. And I got it. But why should they be allowed to and have to take your picture for you to own a gun? I mean, your constitution guarantees you the right to bear arms. So what's the government putting extra steps in place for? If it's not going to be a measure of control and I'm just not a fan of any government measure of control, we were speaking specifically about marriage. But yeah, I'm against the government having control over any aspect of my life. I'm really that kind of guy, you know? Yeah. So I love, man, I hope you get to, I really do hope you get to experience marriage one day because you will see. I love the, and marriage is such a beautiful picture because in the Bible, well, a typical Galilean wedding would be a betrothal, so like the father of the mother, I mean, the father of the bride and then the groom, they would come together and they'd like verbally vow like, "Hey, we're going to do this thing." And then the groom would leave and he would go build a room onto his father's house and the bride would go and put on her white dress because she didn't know the day or the hour that he would get done finish building coming. So once he got done finish building, the groom would enter into the city, blowing trumpets, being like, "I'm here for my girl." Then he'd run in whether it's 2 a.m. or 2 p.m. and scoop her up and then he'd take her back to that room and for seven days they would love each other very well in there for seven days and then they would come out and they would have this marriage supper feast of both the family celebrating. And you can see the imagery of the end times, like Jesus is like, "I'm going to go and build a room on my father's house for you." And then when he returns, we trumpets, blown in the sky and coming on a white horse and he's looking for a pure spotless bride and all these beautiful, just a beautiful imagery of marriage and that understanding your relationship with Jesus. Like, I remember standing at the altar and my bride's coming down in the white dress. And I had heard this analogy so much before, but it just hit me so much more. Like, imagine being a groom and you're at the end of the aisle and you're waiting for your bride to come in the doors open and she's got a beer in her hand and she's kissing another dude. And then the doors open and she's like, "Oh, shoot." And she shoves the guy of the frame and throws the beer away. You'd be like, "Oh, heck no, I'm not marrying you." And that's maybe not the moment that the door swings open, but that's unfortunately a lot of modern marriages anyway. But we'll get into that. Unfortunately, you know? And so then it's like, man, that's what Jesus, it costs something to follow him. It costs my preferences comfort, maybe things that I'm used to, things that feel good to my flesh. I agree. Like, man, I don't want to, and that really hit me on my wedding day. It was like, man, like, man, he is full devotion to me walking down the aisle going, like, I'm ready to commit myself to you. But I wouldn't see your marriage as any less valid if no signatures have been put to paper. I feel like if I were to get married, I would get married. I know the church. I know the priest who conduct the ceremony. I know the witnesses I'd bring. And I know I wouldn't be signing any contracts, especially with the Romanian government of all places. And I wouldn't see my marriages invalid at all. Keep in mind lots of places in the world, Christian countries, certainly second and third world Christian countries, don't have this paperwork infrastructure and they do get married in that way. My baptism, I reconducted my baptism last year. There's no government contracts to say I was baptized. And I don't think it's not valid because I didn't sign a government signature saying I'm officially a member of the Orthodox church now. I don't, I don't see the government paperwork as necessary. Yes. So I think that's just where, and I think you understand what I'm saying. Yeah, I do. But there, when I say that the institution of marriage has been hijacked by governments, a lot of Americans will absolutely disagree with me and say, nope, nope, if it's not on paper, it's not official and you're not really married. I'm like, well, I would say that you are and you would say that you're not. And that's just my opinion on it. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I'm going to look more into it. We were talking about that not that long ago, so I believe me, I've deeply meditated all of these problems, especially when I look at the way my own life is set up. And I don't do it in a way that tries to justify the way that I live, by the way. I really don't. I just search for answers and I try and search for what things actually mean. Yeah. So going full circle, we're talking about that vice of women and then marriage and all this full circle, with women being like something that you feel like is a big vice that you currently struggle with or have struggled with. What do you think it would cost to fully close that gap? Well, that depends what you mean, fully close that gap because I mean, I do not watch porn and I do not masturbate. I think it's a very bad habit for men and I tell men all the time to stay away from that kind of content and to stay away from that kind of behavior. And when I do, you know, people quite rightfully bring up things that I did in my past and they say, oh, but you said this 10 years ago. You said this 12 years ago. I understand. I'm a 37 year old man. I've lived a very complicated life. And throughout my life, I've learned all sorts of various lessons. So I can live without women. I mean, I lived without women when I was in prison, 120 something days. And no, I was absolutely not, you know, what's the word? I was not indulged in any self gratification, let's say, in prison. Absolutely not. It's a hard line that I draw on my life. So could I stay away from women entirely, sure? The question is, at this point in my life, having lived the way I've lived, what does staying away from women look like? Does that mean telling the mothers of my kids, leave me alone, I'm going to try and marry this woman and just stay pure for her, but then who provides for them and who takes care of them? It's a, I think I've created a bit of an awkward situation for myself, if that makes sense, to be perfectly frank and perfectly honest with you. So the best I can do at this point in my life is, you know, continue to work myself and, you know, I would say. Women is my only vice, not a vice I've struggled with. And it's not even a vice anymore, 'cause I could take him or leave him. But it's certainly the only vice that I even have in my life. But I wouldn't think, and this is personal, and everyone here can disagree. I wouldn't think that if I met a woman in Marrieder, and in one way or another, turn the backs, turn my back on the mothers of my children, I don't feel God would be happy with me for doing that. Because this was a very different point in my life when these children were conceived, and I have a responsibility as their father to take care of them and their mothers. So I feel like I'm a husband to multiple women, I guess, because they'll never be a point in my life when I stop working and being the best version of myself I can be to give them an easy and comfortable life. Well, not that it matters, but like I wouldn't want you to do that either. I don't think God would want you to just be like, yeah, to see you guys, like I'm going, and a wife now, and I got officially married in church, and I signed the government paperwork, so all of you just move on with your lives. And that's something that I really respect about you is you're very, so many people want a blame shift. And you don't blame shift, do you take accountability? I did all the things I was responsible for. And I think that's admirable, and God would obviously want you to take care of those children and things like that. So I think that's a beautiful thing. And yeah, I respect that a lot about you. I respect the accountability and everything that you do. Thank you. I mean, okay, you've been through and arrest accusations, ongoing trial, being a dad, being a businessman, not ongoing trial, by the way. Oh, it's done. It finished. Well, it's finished for now, because I'm dealing with the most corrupt justice system in the Western world. So yes, I have beaten the case. I actually saw, will they come back and try it again? Maybe. And will they do this for the next 20 years of my life? Maybe, but as of right now, I have absolutely no indictments in the court and no charges against me. And I'm free to do anything I like. Will the Romanians try again? Sure, but the Romanians told me you were a bad person. I wouldn't believe them. I see a lot of hate online. And I'm not going to get into the personal life of Charlie Kirk, God rest his soul, because I really liked the guy. And I admired the guy very much. But I see, I'm not sure if you're aware of this. Erica Kirk was charged or at least accused of human trafficking in Romania. Did you know this? And I have always come to her defense, irregardless of what people want to say about her. On this one particular issue, I'm like, okay, so the Romanians called her a human trafficker and seized and stole all the money of the charity she worked for at the time and said that it was proceeds of human trafficking. No, Erica Kirk was not human trafficking in Romania, absolutely not. This is the most corrupt justice system in the Western world. And when they accuse me of doing something, you have a small percentage of people who will be like, well, you could trust the Romanians, but I'm like, Erica Kirk, she was not human trafficking people in Romania. Exactly the same accusation. They tried to live against me. But yeah, don't take anything, the Romanians state says seriously ever is my advice to anybody watching at home. As of right now, I have beaten the case, but they're going to keep this open for probably 20 years and keep trying to swing at me again and again and again with this. Well, I saw a picture of Yoll's lawyer on social media. Which lawyer? I don't know, it was like on my feed the other day, it was like him and Andrew. And I don't know, it just made me crack up. 'Cause he like posted a picture and he's like, he's like, beat this case onto the next one. Yeah. Dude, that's such a funny post. He just like looked really funny on there. But all I can do is laugh and lean into it now. It's just like, no matter how much I win or how much these cases keep getting beaten, people are going to still levy these accusations against me. But I understand what it really is. I understand that it's when people talk about me, that they don't talk about my ideas. They talk about the accusations levied against me by the Romanian government. I mean, Romania, by the way, has the exact same level of judicial and integrity as Zambia. It's on the exact same level. And because it's in Europe, people seem to think that they actually had evidence against me at any point. But if you were accused by the Zambians of being a money laundrer, I'd say, well, who cares what Zambia says, you know? But we're talking about the exact same level of judicial integrity. And things will come to light in the next year or so that will open everybody's eyes. Even those who dislike me, that I'm certainly not a criminal of any way shape or form. I mean, you've been through the arrest, prison, beat the trial, businessman, dad, everything in between. What does Tristan take chasing right now? That's very interesting. I think that over the next few years, you're going to see me disappear from the internet, not because I'm tired of it, and not because I'm bored of it, but because I feel like I've shot most of my ammo. I think that most of the young men who follow me understand what I expect of them, what I want them to do, what I want them to be like, the change I expect them to try to make in the world. And when I walk down the streets, I can't go anywhere without being mobbed by admirers. Not a single person has ever come up to me and said anything negative in public. No matter which event I go to, whether it be Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Bahamas, all the country, Turkey, the countries I've been to this year alone, I'm surrounded by fans, primarily young men. And I feel like they all understand my messaging at this point. So you are going to see me fade away from the internet in the years to come, because I want to concentrate on raising my children. I think there is no greater mission in a man's life than that. And that's what I want to prioritize. If this is too personal of a question, we can always bounce off and just came over. I know when you were in prison, you had a kid, was born when I was in prison, yes. Yes, that did make the newspaper. Yes, one of your children was born when you were in prison. Was that hard for you, not being there? There's lots of things that were stolen from me, more so than my freedom and more so than my finances. There are so many things that were stolen from me by this saga I went through. And all I can do, because I can't go back in time and I can't change these things. And I certainly can't reason with the animals who are attacking me. All I can do is do my best to try to, I guess, make sure that those responsible do face justice. And I can't talk more about that, but a lot of people know what I'm doing right now. Yeah. And to repair any damage done to my life, myself. I mean, these people are never gonna apologize to me. The worst, of course, was when I was in house arrest, my mother suffered a heart attack, had a triple heart bypass surgery. She had, I think, a 10 or 15% chance of survival and she was in hospital in England on what may have well been her deathbed. And I requested to the Romanian authorities, the permission to go visit England and I was denied. So, I mean, that was quite a bad one. My mother is still alive and with us. Praise God. I remember I tweeted when I first got out of jail that my grandmother was sick in Alabama and that she was dying and that I needed to go see her because she's already lost my father. She already lost her son and me and Andrew are his sons. And I was talking online about my grandmother and the haters or the people who think I'm responsible for any crime. We're saying I'm always trying to use his sick grandmother to get out of jail and to get to the United States to run away. And I was released on February 26th, 2025. On February 11th, just a few days before that, she did die. So I never saw her again. But all I can do is continue to live my life and all those who did this responsible, as best as I can. So before you were a Christian, you were atheist. And I mean, assuming that as an atheist, when you die, the perspective is like, oh, it goes all black. We go into the fertilizer pit, whatever. Yeah, that was the perspective. And now it's heaven, eternity with Jesus, all the above. On a scale of one to 10, 10 being absolutely certain, one being not certain at all. How confident are you that you'd go to heaven if you died right now? You know, I don't think it's my place to give a number, which sounds like a cup out, but I'm doing my absolute best. I'm doing my absolute best to do good in this world. I have absolute faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which I quoted earlier as the cornerstone to Christianity. I don't feel like I go to church on Sundays to try to move my point score along. I don't believe I pray to move my point score along. I'm very careful when I pray, not to ever ask for anything personally for myself, just to ask for things like strength and wisdom to help me deal with the situations that I find myself in. I don't live in a way that I'm trying to shift this needle. So I've never thought about what my position on it is going to be because I feel like God knows the truth of all of our hearts and it's his place to judge us ultimately. So I personally feel like a 10. And if I were to guess your number, I'd probably say 10, too. I'm talking about me. My life hasn't always been so perfect. Well, I said, oh me either. I've made a lot of mistakes and I'm broken. And the reason why I ask and said that is 'cause you said something, you said something that, so I like to ask that question to everyone under the sun, whether we're in the street or whatever. And the typical answer is like, oh, I'm a seven. I'm a seven. People always land at seven or six or eight. And I'm like, why is that? And they go, well, I've just made mistakes.
and you know, whatever I've done wrong. And I notice you saying, I don't go to church 'cause I'm trying to move the needle and things like that. And the reason why I say I'm a 10 is because, I neither of us can do anything to get into heaven. It's about what Jesus has done. That's why, like, so that's where I get my confidence from is Jesus. And, you know, me doing good things are a byproduct of my love for him, like we talked about earlier. There's a cool analogy where it's, I don't know if you're a big sports guy, but if we, if we'll surprise you. Well, let's use sports as an example. Sure. Let's say we had two courtside tickets to the Los Angeles Lakers basketball game. Yep. And I gave you those two courtside tickets. And you went to crypto arena and you scanned the tickets and you went up there and the security guys got stopped and he was going to like, wait a second. Like, why are you trying to get courtside? And you're going to be like, well, I got tickets. And you're going to be like, well, where'd you get those tickets? And you're going to be like, well, Bryce gave them to me. They were a gift. And that's why I get to sit courtside. And I'm like in the same way, like Christ is the ticket. Like I can't look at God at the heavenly gates and go, oh, well, I prayed a bunch and oh, look at all the podcasts I did for you and look at all this. That's Matthew chapter seven. And Jesus is the part for me I never knew you. Because people put so much faith in the things that they do rather than in the one who has done it. Well, I'm on the same pages you there. I'm on the absolute same pages you. Come on, I think we covered that earlier when I did say, like people go to church, etc. However, they cannot explain in two or three sentences why they have faith in Jesus' resurrection. I'm like, well, that's the cornerstone. So forget everything else. Yep. If you if you stood before God tonight, what do you think he'd say to you? I don't I can't possibly know, of course, is the answer. But I would like to think that he knows that I'm trying to make a positive change in this world. I'd like to think he knows that I've done my absolute best to instill at least some good qualities and good attributes in every single young man who listened to me. I'd like to think that he would tell me that I didn't waste the opportunity he gave me and the platform he gave me. I mean, for example, right now, as we see here right now, I could be in a meeting right now. That could make me a lot of money. And here I am instead, which as fun as this is isn't going to make me any money. I like to feel that he tell me I didn't waste the platform he gave me and the opportunities he gave me to tell young men to be better, better people, stronger people, more disciplined people, everything that I do preach. Or maybe he might say something completely different. I don't know. (laughing) That's what I love to know that. Yeah. Well, I'd love to pray for you before we close out. If that's okay, I'd love to, you know, I've really enjoyed our time together. Me too. I knew I'd like you, but I really do like you a lot. And I appreciate you, John. So I'd love to pray for you before we close. Jesus, we thank you for a day, God. We thank you for a Tristan. We thank you for his life. God, thank you for allowing us to get to sit down and talk together. Lord, would you just continue to bless him? Bless his family, bless his business, bless him and his brother. God, would you just continue to use him in a mighty way? Speak to him daily, convict him of things, bring more things in his life. And thank you for who you are, Lord. We just lift you up. We thank you. Thank you for the ability to have a conversation. And God, we love you. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The speaker identifies belief in the resurrection of Jesus as the core of Christianity, regardless of denomination.
He and his Muslim brother maintain a respectful, non-confrontational relationship, choosing to avoid public debates over faith to preserve their unity.
The speaker emphasizes that true faith is not about external rituals but about personal conviction in the resurrection and moral discipline.
He criticizes modern Christianity for being passive in the face of cultural and theological threats, such as LGBTQ+ ideologies and atheism.
He highlights the importance of personal responsibility, self-accountability, and leading by example in faith and lifestyle.
He expresses concern about the decline of traditional education and the rise of AI-driven automation, warning of a growing wealth divide and loss of critical thinking.
He values strong, historically grounded Christian communities and sees Eastern European cultures as preserving authentic Christian traditions.
He advocates for unity among believers, even across denominations, as a key to resisting cultural and spiritual threats.
Summary:
The speaker reflects on his journey from atheism to Orthodox Christianity, emphasizing that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is the foundational truth of faith. Despite being a brother to a Muslim, he maintains a respectful, non-confrontational relationship, choosing to avoid public debates to preserve family unity and focus on shared goals. He believes true faith is rooted in personal conviction and disciplined living, not in ritual or social performance.
He criticizes modern Christianity for being passive in the face of cultural threats like secularism and LGBTQ+ ideologies, while praising traditions in Europe that uphold strong Christian identity. The speaker expresses deep concern about the future of education and the rise of AI, warning that automation will disrupt job markets and critical thinking, increasing inequality. He views cultural and spiritual resistance as vital, citing historical examples like Romania’s defense against Ottoman invasions to illustrate Christian resilience.
He also stresses the importance of personal integrity, self-awareness, and leading by example, especially in influencing young people. Ultimately, he sees unity across religious lines as essential in a time of spiritual and cultural uncertainty, advocating for strong, grounded faith that stands against both external threats and internal complacency.
FAQs
The core belief is whether Jesus was dead for three days and rose from the grave. I believe this is the foundational truth of Christianity, regardless of denomination.
I respect his choice to believe in Islam, just as he respects my belief in Christianity. We avoid public conflict and focus on unity and mutual respect, especially given our shared goals and personal challenges.
Yes, but it doesn't have to be. I believe that strong family bonds can withstand religious differences. We don’t argue publicly or let disagreements dominate our daily lives, focusing instead on unity and shared values.
I avoid debate and focus on respect. I don’t try to convert others or push my beliefs, knowing that each person has their own journey and right to their beliefs.
Discipline is essential. For me, true faith is shown through consistent conviction, not just attendance or outward actions. It’s about daily choices and staying grounded in beliefs.
I believe these traditions are the original roots of Christianity, preserving spiritual depth and historical continuity. They offer a strong, traditional foundation compared to modern, secularized forms of faith.
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