Dave Rubin hosts The Rubin Report, launching an AI-powered Spanish version before analyzing President Trump's pause on Ukraine aid following a clash with Volodymyr Zelensky. Rubio defends the administration against Democrats like Eric Swalwell and Mark Kelly, while Keir Starmer insists on continued military support despite Zelensky's push for a minerals deal. The episode also covers $100B TSMC investment in Arizona, new tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and an FBI document controversy involving Pam Bondi and Kash Patel that led to a field office head's resignation. Ultimately, Rubin argues that abandoning conventional wisdom is essential when new facts emerge. [Automatically generated summary]
And you'll get the full show, all of our interviews.
We're going to start putting some archives there and a bunch more.
However, we will do today's show in England.
Why not?
Mostly it's about this Ukraine craziness and the media response.
Oh, also Donald Trump is giving a big State of the Union speech tonight.
There are rumors that the Democrats are going to walk out, that they have banners they're bringing.
Some people are saying they're literally bringing eggs.
We shall see.
So let's just dive right in because there's just a lot of craziness right now.
Let's start from the AP getting the latest on what's going on.
In Ukraine, a deal to end the war between Ukraine and Russia is still very, very far away, Ukrainian President Zelensky said, adding that he believed Ukraine's long-term partnership with the U.S. was strong enough that American support would continue despite recent fraught relations with U.S. President Donald Trump.
So, of course...
That goes to what happened on Friday, which we covered extensively yesterday.
And I did see a bunch of comments, by the way, that a lot of you guys, you appreciated the way that we covered that and that I repeatedly said to you, hey, don't trust me on this.
Look at the 40-minute video yourself because there was just so many ways to clip this thing.
And if you watched the entirety of the press conference, you really see...
That Trump was giving Zelensky every opportunity to be gracious and thankful, and he just couldn't take it.
And there's been a lot of fallout over the next couple days, so check this out.
According to BRICS News, just in, U.S. President Trump officially halts all weapons sales to Ukraine.
Now, that happened yesterday.
We have a bit more from CBS News.
The Trump administration has paused U.S. military aid to Ukraine, the White House confirmed Monday.
It's the latest fallout days after a contentious...
This meeting between President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Ukrainian President Zelensky at the White House after the White House.
At the White House, sorry, erupted into an open dispute in front of TV cameras.
The president has been clear that he is focused on peace, a White House official told CBS News.
We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well.
We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution.
Okay, so this really should surprise nobody, right?
They had a meeting at the White House.
On the agenda was, we're going to do this minerals deal so that the U.S. will...
Have some vested financial interest in Ukraine rather than just endlessly supporting a war that the country likely cannot win, at least within the way that Zelensky may want a victory here.
That would probably give some military assurances as well, because we basically be in business in this rare earth mineral business with Ukraine.
And all Zelensky had to do is sit there and, as I said, be gracious and kind about it.
He could not do that.
The meeting absolutely blew up.
The lunch was canceled.
Zelensky left the White House.
Suddenly now has been bouncing around Europe, which we'll get to that in a moment, and trying to figure out where else he can make up some of the money he's not getting.
But it's not just the money now.
Now he is also not getting the weapons.
So...
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, as I say, I'm very proud to say he was our senator here in Florida, who clearly is just, he was just rip ready for this job as Secretary of State.
He went on CNN, talked to Caitlin Collins about how Trump is the one trying to bring peace here.
The old man with dementia before and the DEI hire they tried to usher in, they were endlessly funding this war.
Was it getting us anywhere closer to peace?
I think objectively you can say, no, Trump is trying to do some different things and that has everybody apoplectic.
Well, number one, you know who else said that Ukraine is very brave and very valiant?
President Trump.
He said it today.
He said it repeatedly.
Your soldiers have been very brave.
Your fighters have been very brave.
Your people have been very brave.
He said that repeatedly.
And everyone recognizes that.
But we're three years into a war that has no end in sight and no exit strategy.
The EU doesn't have an exit strategy.
I saw the comments tonight from the leader of the EU saying there needs a new leader of the free world.
I mean, these people are just playing silly games and saying these things.
What is their exit strategy?
What is anybody else's exit strategy?
The only person on the planet who is actively trying to bring an end to this conflict is named Donald Trump, the president of the United States.
He's the only one that's trying to do it.
And we should be helping him to achieve it.
And so do I think it's possible?
Yeah, I hope it's possible because that's what we do try to do at the Department of State is we try to bring in the conflict, not start new ones and certainly not...
Just incredible watching the difference between the previous administration with all of the DEI-ers and the people who were punching way above their pay grade.
Because they didn't deserve the jobs in the first place, whether it was Anthony Blinken all the way down, who obviously was Rubio's predecessor, versus somebody who's qualified for the job.
And what is Rubio saying?
We've tried it one way, three years.
Again, I said this yesterday, but it's like, really think about this.
If we just kept giving billions, trillions of dollars, and everybody just kept giving more money, and everyone just kept giving more tanks, and we were like, here's as many planes as you want, and everything else, we'll give you soldiers too.
What is the ending to the war?
Does that end in a military defeat of Putin?
Does Russia collapse?
Does he not use nukes?
Like, it's not a defense of Putin in any way to say we need to think about this thing differently.
But because it obviously, so much of what has happened in Ukraine has become a money laundering operation.
The people who like the money laundering, like the USAID types.
They don't want the laundering to end.
It's a pretty cushy gig when you're just getting paid to basically do nothing, or I suppose do some pretty bad things.
So Rubio just laid it out there beautifully.
Like, there's one guy trying to do this a little bit differently, and we may have to apply different pressures rather than just keep the gravy train going.
There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic.
Look, this thing went off the rails.
You were there, I believe.
It went off the rails when he said, let me ask you a question to the vice president.
What kind of diplomacy are you talking about?
Well, this is a serious thing.
I mean, thousands of people have been killed, thousands.
And he talks about all these horrible things that have happened to prisoners of true, all bad.
This is what we're dealing with here.
It needs to come to an end.
We are trying to bring it to an end.
The way you bring it to an end is you get Russia to the table to talk.
And he understands that attacking Putin.
No matter how anyone may feel about him personally, forcing the president into a position where you're trying to goad him into attacking Putin, calling him names, maximalist demands about Russia having to pay for the reconstruction, all the sorts of things that you talk about in a negotiation.
Well, when you start talking about that aggressively, and the president's a dealmaker, he's made deals his entire life, you're not going to get people to the table.
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Okay, it sounds like there's some breaking news from Zelensky right this moment, which we'll get to in just a second.
We're just having the guys take a look.
I want to double check before we read anything out of school, obviously.
But okay, so the Friday meeting goes off the rails.
No lunch.
Zelensky leaves.
And then where does he go?
Well, he goes back to Europe.
He immediately, we showed you yesterday, he immediately then tweets all of these thank yous, like dozens of thank yous to the Europeans, which could suddenly, he was like, oh man, if the US gravy train is ending, I better get in good with these guys because we got to keep the cash going.
And by the way, when I say that, I don't even mean that to be as glib as like, oh, that it's entirely a money laundering operation, because obviously he needs the cash also for the reasons that he purports to believe in, which is defending his country and everything So, okay, fine.
Then he goes over to Europe and makes nice with people.
we have some video of him meeting with EU leaders.
unidentified
Thank you.
So that's the agenda and we need to agree what steps come out of this meeting to deliver peace through strength.
All right, so there he is with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
We'll have more on him for a minute.
And basically, he was there to say to the Europeans, hey, it looks like the Americans are out, or this is going to get a little tricky, or something like that.
We're going to need more weapons.
We are going to need more cash.
We're going to need more soldiers and everything else.
They literally want European soldiers now fighting Russia in Ukraine.
So there's just a lot going on here at once.
Let's jump over to CNN. It's a short clip because it's something sane that was said on CNN, so you know that's got to be tight and concise.
Jake Tapper, who I think is really, really awful.
I've tried with him.
I've tried.
I said, Jake, you were the one sane one.
You were the chosen one.
You were the Anakin Skywalker of that place, but you've chosen the dark side.
He's literally, as you know, he has a book coming out in two months about the Biden mental health cover-up, even though he was one of the people, I would say one of the prime people on a major news channel that was covering it himself.
Anyway, he did say something kind of sane on CNN, and you know we like to give the devil his due.
We're kind of admitting in the mainstream that everyone's been playing it both ways, right?
So there's this money laundering component to it.
It's not just that all of these countries just care about Ukraine so much.
Now, yes, I accept they don't love Putin and there could be this ever encroaching conflict between NATO and Putin, so that's bad.
But if you really hate Putin and you really hate Russia...
Would you be buying all your gas from Russia?
There's other ways you could get gas.
Or you could, I don't know, there was some orange man who said, drill, baby, drill.
You could start drilling more, get gas in other ways.
There's other pipelines maybe that haven't blown up that you could look at, things of that nature.
But this is what Europe's done.
They've played both sides of this thing.
So you could actually argue...
That while they have been, you know, putting whatever dollars and military equipment into the fight against Ukraine from the European side, that they're also funding the Russian side by buying gas from them, right?
Russia then takes that money and does whatever the hell they want to do with it.
There's a similar version of this when you talk about Iran.
Anyway, interestingly, because it does turn out when you look at the old videos that Donald Trump has been largely right about everything pretty much forever.
You may remember this video.
It's a spliced video.
This is Trump 2018 at the UN warning Germany that being dependent on Russian energy, probably not a great idea.
And then the second half is him continuing that with some Germans at a dinner.
Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.
Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence.
From the encroachment of expansionist foreign powers.
Well, I have to say, I think it's very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia, where you're supposed to be guarding against Russia and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.
So we're protecting Germany, we're protecting France, we're protecting all of these countries.
And then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia, where they're paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia.
So we're supposed to protect you against Russia, but they're paying billions of dollars to Russia, and I think that's very inappropriate.
And the former chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that's supplying the gas.
Ultimately, Germany will have almost 70 percent of their country controlled by And that's why I love showing you guys old video clips.
So that's Donald Trump seven years ago when he was president talking.
This is before the Russian invasion, the newest Russian invasion.
Obviously, they had invaded under Obama, but the newest this last three-year invasion.
Warning you guys, warning the Germans, if you guys are sucking on the teat of Russian energy, it might come back to bite you.
And the best part of that video is that the Russian, they then flash to the Russian, sorry, to the German diplomats there, and they're laughing in Trump's face, like, oh, you don't worry about that.
And of course he turned out to be right.
And then, of course, in the dinner...
The second half of the video we just showed you, he's illustrating, guys, we're defending you from evil Russia while you're paying Russia and you're becoming so dependent on their energy that if that pipeline blew up or if they shut it off, you would be in a lot of trouble.
It gets cold in Europe in the winter.
Now let's jump back to Keir Starmer, who is the really, I would say, very, very poor...
Prime Minister of the UK. He really is not good.
When you think of just sort of like...
The puppet types that are up there that don't do anything good for their country.
He sort of seems like the poster boy right now.
Trudeau kind of seems like he's on his way out a little bit, something like that.
Here is Keir Starmer saying that, well, the UK, as if they don't have enough of their own problems, like, I don't know, ever encroaching jihad on their streets, they're going to fund Ukraine's military.
Even if there is a peace deal, they'll just keep doing it.
Those Brits crazy with their tea and their crumpets.
unidentified
First, we will keep the military aid flowing.
And keep increasing the economic pressure on Russia to strengthen Ukraine now.
Second, we agreed that any lasting peace must ensure Ukraine's sovereignty and security.
And Ukraine must be at the table.
Third, in the event of a peace deal, we will keep boosting Ukraine's own defensive capabilities to deter any future invasion.
You know, I just realized I don't know what a crumpet is.
Can we get a picture of a crumpet?
I assume it's a small cookie or a type of cracker or something that they're drinking with the tea.
We were just there.
I don't think I saw any crumpets.
But the point of that clip was that what he's basically saying is we're just going to keep doing the same old thing.
Yes, at some point this war will end.
At some point Russia will still be Russia and Ukraine will still be Ukraine.
Will the borders look a little bit different?
Probably.
Already, to be like, before any of that has come to pass, to be like, and once there's a peace deal, we'll keep funding the military over there.
It's like, why does nobody...
Except for basically Donald Trump, and then I would say a couple other leaders.
Javier Malay is obviously doing it.
What's his name down in El Salvador?
Bukele, sorry.
Bukele is doing it.
Netanyahu is doing it.
There are a few leaders that are like, I will care about my country, and I will make a case for my country.
And when I talk to the United States, I can ask them for things.
It doesn't mean I'm going to get everything I want, but I'm going to fight.
For my country.
Like, that's what we are seeing right now.
Oh, I would add Viktor Orban in that there are people who are like, we have a country.
There's a reason we have a country.
We have a culture and a history and we have land and we're going to defend it.
And then there's these other types, the Keir Starmer types.
And it's like, why are you so focused on Ukraine?
Do we have a picture of a crumpet?
We have a picture of a crumpet.
Look at that.
So it's like a small griddle bread.
Interesting.
Largely off the carbs.
I don't really care for the crumpet.
You know, to each his own, as they say.
Okay, so there's a lot happening at once here.
So then, so we just showed you Zelensky jumping over the pond and talking to the Europeans and trying to get some money and weapons out of them and stuff.
Keir Starmer came this way across the pond, met Trump at the White House.
This is after the Zelensky disastrous meeting.
And watch Trump getting a little poking Keir Starmer just a teeny tiny bit.
Think that to some extent, that Russia is the bad guy here, that they invaded a sovereign nation and you can't do that and whatever.
But that doesn't mean you endlessly fund this guy.
That doesn't mean you endlessly give them cash and everything else.
That's the problem.
Now, here's the breaking news because this is just perfect.
I mean, it's perfect that this is happening while we're live on air.
This is from Chief Nerd over on the Twitter.
Now, Zelensky says, my team and I stand ready to work under President Trump.
President Trump's strong leadership to get a peace deal that lasts.
Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it anytime and in any convenient format.
So do you get it?
So Trump, by going in there, arguing with Zelensky, having Zelensky go back across to Europe and beg for more money and everything else, maybe Zelensky realized, boy, this isn't going that well.
This is, you know, like, we do need the U.S. And I don't know if I can really trust these Europeans.
I don't even know that the U.K., it sounds like they have 25 tanks that work.
They may not want to give them all over to fight Putin on the Russian-Ukraine border, right?
So suddenly, oh yeah, we'll sign the deal anytime, anyhow.
So all, everything that just happened here is completely Zelensky's fault because that's exactly, the whole meeting on Friday was to sign the freaking thing.
Here's a tweet from Zelensky, which I guess happened just moments ago at 1037 a.m.
Eastern.
I would like to reiterate Ukraine's commitment to peace.
None of us want to end.
None of us want an endless war.
Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.
Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians.
My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump's strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.
We are ready to work fast to end the war and the first stages could be the release of prisoners and truce in the sky, ban on missiles, long-range drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure and truce in the sea immediately if Russia will do the same.
Then we want to move very fast through all next stages and work with the U.S. to agree to a strong final deal.
We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence.
And we remember the moment when things changed when President Trump provided Ukraine with javelins.
We are grateful for this.
Our meeting in Washington at the White House on Friday did not go the way it was supposed to be.
It is regrettable that it happened this way.
It is time to make things right.
We would like to do future cooperation.
and communication to be constructive.
Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format.
We see this agreement as a step towards greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope this will work effectively.
This is a beautiful thing doing a live show, guys, because we're telling you a story over the last couple of days, right?
We've been going through what happened, when it happened, watching Zelensky's plane go back and forth to all of these countries, asking for more, and what's the resolution that we just got in the last few minutes?
I'll sign the freaking thing.
We want peace.
I mean, that's basically as close as you're going to get to a mea culpa with this guy.
He pretty much went, it's obvious what happened here, right?
You don't need to be, you don't need a degree in political science, not that that helps you with much, to understand what happened here.
The meeting went horribly on Friday.
He goes to Europe, realizes they can't do it without the U.S., and now he's groveling back.
And by the way, that will get us closer to peace.
Well, that's if the freaking Democrats over here actually want peace, which they don't seem to want.
We'll have more on that in just a second.
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Okay, so...
It's nice when these things are breaking and we're live on air and you start seeing the pieces of that puzzle that I'm always talking about come together.
The puzzle is peace, right?
That's what the puzzle is supposed to look like.
We don't have the cover of the box.
So we haven't been able to see exactly what it would look like.
But now it's starting to materialize.
Now, one of the problems that we're going to have on the US side of this is that we have a...
A Democrat party that has become completely beholden to the war machine that loves the money laundering, whether it's in Ukraine or USAID or elsewhere.
Eric Swalwell, who, as you know, I mean, I think this guy is one of the worst of the worst.
He's not an outright Hamas supporter like Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar AOC, but he is a compromised, slept with a Chinese spy.
Yeah, Google it.
Her name was Fang Fang.
Like, he's just absolutely awful.
Here he is, and he's very upset that Donald Trump dare spoke against Zelensky.
He beefed on MSNBC. And that was the least of the stupid things that goes on over there.
Senator Mark Kelly over in Arizona, he is a Democrat also.
And if you're a Democrat, that means you have to support Zelensky more than anything that might be construed as pro-America.
unidentified
Watching Republicans in that Oval Office, but I wanted to start by just asking you about that meeting with Zelensky you attended, attended by a bipartisan group.
What was that like, and what was the response in the private room to him?
Well, Jen, I think we all have a little bit of PTSD, even though we weren't in the Oval Office meeting, right?
I think all of us, you know, a lot of people across the country collectively.
The contrast between the...
Two meetings was quite remarkable.
With Zelensky that morning, I think there were about ten, maybe a dozen of us, Democrats and Republicans.
It was very constructive.
I would say one of the most interesting things about it was that at the beginning of the meeting, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, senator from Mississippi, asked the cameras to leave.
And then we got down to business.
Zelensky, as he always is, this guy is habituately thankful to the American people, to the United States Congress, to the president.
So it was constructive.
Not a single one of us expected what happened in the Oval Office to happen.
I've been saying how great it is that we're seeing so much of this happen in front of the cameras, and it's not behind closed doors.
And what was he excited about?
The fact that it was behind closed doors.
Of course, their meeting, where basically, you know, they just go in and say, what do you need?
We'll give it to you.
That's behind closed doors, and it's wonderful.
But when Trump does it...
On the other side of the door, and we can all see it, and it gets a little testy, which actually is reality.
That's the bad thing.
For less nuanced political hot take, let's say, let's go to Jasmine Crockett, a woman whose eyebrows weigh more than her brain.
unidentified
Unfortunately, we have someone that is occupying the White House, and as far as I'm concerned, he is an enemy to the United States.
He swore an oath just like the rest of us.
But right now, when you are literally putting us at risk all because of what?
Because you want to convince your followers that you should be a dictator too, that you should never leave the White House because you don't believe that elections should take place?
I don't really understand what is going on, and I don't know what it's going to take to get people to wake up.
Dave, why do you call it a televised mental institution?
I mean, that woman should not be on TV. She should not be in Congress.
She didn't have anything to say.
She's not saying anything, right?
Like, she doesn't, it's obvious she does not know what she's talking about.
She spends more time doing her hair and doing her eyebrows than researching the very topics that she's supposed to be, I suppose you would think that she would be an expert in.
She might also want to look into her own district, which I'm told is pretty freaking terrible.
Speaking of terrible, we've got a clip of The View!
First off, Whoopi, if you supported Ukraine, you want to do something nice for the Ukrainians, how about you clip off one of your dreadlocks, which are full of weed, and you send it over there so that the guy who's got his leg blown off might have a little pain relief.
I don't know how many each dreadlock would probably get through a good 10 soldiers.
10 soldiers, depending on how many legs have been blown off in the war that you want to keep doing, you take three of those dreadlocks, you could help a couple dozen people.
But just the idea that they're sitting in a room and demanding people to announce that they support...
Do you guys support Ukraine?
Do you guys right here?
Cheer if you support Ukraine, guys.
Can I... Anyone?
Anyone?
Is this thing on?
I'm getting nothing out of my people.
You guys are never going to The View, I'll tell you that much.
Now, as we support this man endlessly...
As we give him the money, well, now he's coming around.
He's coming around because we smacked him around a bit.
There's also a degree of all of this that has been theater the entire time, right?
Like when people had to put up the Ukrainian flag in their Instagram post and we all had to suddenly become experts in an area of the world that nobody knew anything about.
People who couldn't tie their shoe suddenly could tell you all the geopolitical realities of the Russia-Ukraine border and the history and all of the stuff, right?
And when you look back, I mean, this is the beautiful thing of the internet.
As long as it remains free, where we can look back on these things that happened over the years and realize how absolutely insane it all was.
Well, how about this 2022 Vogue shoot that Zelensky and his wife did?
because I know when I'm in the middle of a war and all of my people are being killed, I do want a nice cover spread on a fashion magazine.
Think about the amount of time they spent on makeup, doing his wife's hair, what the craft service table looked like, the amount of food that they ate during that...
David Sachs, who obviously was the co-host of the All In podcast, he has temporarily, I think, stepped away while he is now the new crypto and AI czar over at the White House.
He has been one of the people.
I mean, I had him on the show several times at the beginning of...
The Ukraine war, because he was one of the most outspoken anti-war people out there, period.
Well, and now he's part of the White House, and here he is talking about why Zelensky doesn't seem to want peace, why they want this protracted war effort, and how that's connected to the Democrats.
I think that Zelensky has powerful motivations not to make peace.
I don't think he really wants to make peace.
He says that the war needs to keep going on.
He basically says the war needs to go on forever.
And I think there's good reasons for that in his mind.
Number one, if the war is over, he loses power, right?
He canceled elections there.
He's in the sixth year of a five-year term.
And if he stands for elections, he's very unpopular there, despite what the fake polls from USAID say.
And he'll be vulnerable to political retaliation from his political opponents.
He needs this war to justify his rules.
So I think that's number one, is if he gives up power, his own safety is at risk.
Number two is the gravy train here.
I mean, we've been sending hundreds of billions of dollars over to Ukraine, and these Ukrainian elites there, these oligarchs, have been feasting on that money.
And Zelensky is at the top of that pyramid.
And that whole grift ends if the war ends.
And I just think that that gives him a powerful incentive to want to keep this whole thing going.
I mean, the Democrats have become the party of forever war.
Remember, this was Joe Biden's war.
He easily could have ended this war in the first month if he had agreed to the Istanbul Accords, which said that all Ukraine had to do was stay neutral, to basically agree not to become part of NATO. And Biden said that was unacceptable, and that's why the war continued.
And just so you understand, vast amounts of fentanyl have poured into our country from Mexico.
And as you know, also from China, where it goes to Mexico and goes to Canada.
And China also had an additional 10, so it's 10 plus 10. And it comes in from Canada, and it comes in from Mexico, and that's a very important thing to say, yep.
Okay, so you may remember about a month ago when Trump originally floated the idea of tariffs, particularly as it pertained to Canada and Mexico.
Within two or three days, both Canada and Mexico came back and said, hey, Mexico said we're going to do more on the border.
Canada said we're going to do more favorable trade situations.
Obviously, that has not all materialized, so Trump is now moving with the tariffs.
Now, we can have a...
As I've said many times, we can have that honest, open conversation about do you think tariffs work?
And at the end of the day, if we say charge 25% more on incoming goods into...
From Canada, does it mean it's going to cost more here?
Well, there's obviously a legitimate argument to that, right?
The corporation that's bringing the goods in, they're going to want to pass the cost on to somebody.
And I hate to tell you, but you're that somebody.
Now, the counterargument to that would be, oh, if you put tariffs on foreign goods, then we can build more right here.
We can be competitive right here because we can't be competitive when it comes to building things and making things.
Go to, I was going to say Toys R Us.
Does Toys R Us even exist anymore?
Go to Target and go to the children's section and see what toys that they have over there.
And they're all made elsewhere.
They're not made in the United States.
Is it because we can't make a G.I. Joe character?
Is G.I. Joe even still sold anymore?
Yeah, G.I. Joe is still sold.
Okay.
I'm really aging myself right now.
They have G.I. Joe and he swims.
He's like this.
He's got the battle grip.
But the point is, That sort of philosophical debate about whether they work or not, now we're going to see it play out in real time because we're going to put these tariffs on and some companies, it sounds like there'll be some loopholes and some companies will try to invest more here.
Some companies and some, and it sounds like Canada is going to push very hard against this and we will see what happens.
But to the backdrop of that.
There are some other good things happening in terms of investment in the United States.
Here is Trump announcing that we're getting some of those Taiwanese semiconductors to be built right here, actually in Arizona, because, I don't know, maybe having all of our semiconductors being built in Taiwan when we're going into this AI race is probably not the best idea.
There's so many good things as it relates to this.
So first off, we are in this AI race now, right?
And I can do all the dystopian versions of why AI is scary and the robots are taking over and Skynet's turning on and all that stuff.
But the race is here one way or another.
And that means you need massive computing power.
You need these chips.
Taiwan happens to be the place where most of these chips are manufactured and they're doing it cheaper and better than basically anywhere else.
It's partly why China wants Taiwan, right?
They want Taiwan because of the semiconductors.
So the fact that Taiwanese companies are going to invest $100 billion...
In America, so that they can open factories in Arizona so we can make the chips here, it also puts us in less of a position to need to fight China one day for going after Taiwan, right?
Because we won't need the semiconductors that are being built in Taiwan.
So there's, on top of just the general, oh, we're getting more money.
The products that TSMC makes are literally the most important products in the world.
We are creating the conditions for American companies to thrive, for foreign companies to come in here and invest.
And when you do that, when you start doing more in your own country, when you don't outsource everything, like that G.I. Joe toy at Target, If it's there at all, then you actually don't have to be involved in so many foreign entanglements when you need less from overseas.
So this is good on multiple fronts.
Let's move over to one other domestic thing that I want to talk about before we finish up, which is these Epstein files, which has gotten very weird over the last couple of days.
Obviously, a few days ago, Trump invited a few influencers over to the White House, and they were given what appeared to be the Epstein files.
It basically turned out to be pretty much nothing.
It looked like it was like phone logs and lists of names, largely of names of people that we knew.
And people got very upset.
And they were like, what the hell's going on here?
You know, didn't Kash Patel and Pam Bondi basically say, day one, we're releasing all this stuff.
Well, now we're getting a bit more under the hood on the story on this thing.
Check this out from the Daily Wire.
In a letter to the FBI director, Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the Bureau of lying to her about turning over its files on millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Bondi sent a letter on Thursday after she said she learned from a source Wednesday night that she hadn't received all of the Epstein.
Okay, so the first part that's weird here is she now requests the files.
The FBI, previous to being headed by Cash Patel, says, you've got all of the files.
Then Cash comes in and suddenly they find out they don't have all of the files.
Well, here is Pam Bondi saying that magically a whole bunch of new files are showing up.
And you're looking at these documents going, these aren't all the Epstein files.
You know, there were flight logs.
There were names and victims' names.
And we're going, where's the rest of the stuff?
And that's what the FBI had turned over to us.
And so a source said, whoa, all this evidence is sitting in the Southern District of New York.
So based on that, I gave them the deadline.
Friday at 8, a truckload of evidence arrived.
It's now in the possession of the FBI. Cash is going to get me and himself, really, a detailed report as to why all these documents and evidence had been withheld.
And, you know, we're going to go through it, go through it as fast as we can, but go through it very cautiously to protect all the victims of Epstein, because there are a lot of victims.
Alright, so look, there's something rotten in the state of Denmark as it pertains to all of this.
Like, the files apparently were being hidden in the Southern District of New York office, FBI field office.
We'll get to more on that in just a second, because there is some confirmation on that.
The question at this point is, what else is left?
We seem to have a list of names of people that went there.
Is it possible that people that went there didn't do anything illegal?
I suppose it's possible.
Do they have to make sure that they redact the names of the victims?
It seems like you'd have to.
What are the other files?
You know, we're just seeing files like pieces of paper, like this person was on a plane or this person took a phone call or something.
Are there videos?
I would imagine that there are videos.
Like, if this thing was some giant honeypot operation, are there videos of weird shit?
Like, Stephen Hawking doing some unimaginable stuff?
Like, nobody wants to think about that!
Anyway, Paul Sispola, a political commentator, he tweeted this out.
This is super interesting.
It gets to what Pam Bondi was just talking about.
Head of FBI field office in New York has forcibly resigned after the DOJ accused his office of hiding thousands of Epstein documents.
James Dennehy was reportedly instructed...
On Friday to put his papers in today, this may be a promising indicator of things to come from Attorney General Boddy.
So we will find out more about this guy and what was going on at that Southern District of New York field office, et cetera, et cetera.
But something weird is going on.
Why is the FBI office hiding documents from the head of the FBI and CIA? Anyway.
I don't have a bumper sticker ending to this thing because it's unfolding.
But the point is, to connect it to everything else that we did here, which was mostly about Ukraine, is that we are starting to enter an age of transparency.
Things cannot be hidden as much.
Things can't be stored away in a secret office at the FBI building at the Southern District of New York.
And the meetings can't be secretly had one way on how they're going to, I don't know, say, get rid of a sitting president.
And then spin it for us with the media.
The things are all catching up right now.
It really is a very, very promising time.
And to end the show, I would connect this to something else, which is that as we enter this new phase and this new AI phase and the shift that we're all seeing and the transparency and all of these things, we're going to have to let go of sort of the conventional wisdom that we've had because it hasn't been we're going to have to let go of sort of the conventional Oh, everyone get vaccinated.
Oh, don't go to grandma's funeral.
Oh, stand six feet away from that person while wearing a mask that doesn't really work.
Oh, just because 51 CIA intelligence officials said that Russia collusion is real, it doesn't mean it is like we can do the laundry list of things.
So Alex Karp, we ended the show yesterday with him, CEO of Palantir.
I thought he had a nice little talk on how giving up some of the conventional wisdom is probably a little bit of a way to get to something perhaps more truthful than what we have been doing.
unidentified
Look, everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works...
is intellectually incorrect.
And here is a way of seeing the world that may not be right, but it's not wrong.
And so trying to be right is very hard, but you can definitely know what's wrong.
Think Different00:01:58
unidentified
And what you've been taught in college that you basically should have no beliefs that the West is inferior, that the intellectual tradition of the West, it leads to self-flagellation and losing on the battlefield, losing intellectually.
Losing your party, losing your country, losing your border, that your institutions can't work because we're so good.
It's actually wrong.
And the West was actually never about that.
And you can be good, decent, and win, and be intellectually correct.
We're going to just have to think about things a little bit differently.
And the people who don't want to think about things differently...
Whether it's the NPCs who just repeat the talking points or it's the politicians who lie about everything or the people who do the money laundering through USAID or the people who think that endlessly funding wars that can never end is good.
All of those things.
We're going to have to let go of those things and think about the world in a new way.
And if we do that...
Then the future will be bright.
Speaking of bright futures, my interview with Bjorn Lomberg, who I would say is probably the preeminent thought leader when it comes to talking about the environment in a non-hysterical way, that there is some stuff we could do to fix the environment, but we don't have to hand over the economy to AOC. That interview from London, our conference, it's up right now?