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Aug. 13, 2024 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:34:38

Episode 2565 CWSA 08/13/24

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	And I don't mean Trump's conversation with Musk, but we'll talk about that.
	However, if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that people can't even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank of shells, a sty and a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
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	Oh, so good.
	So, so good.
	Well, I know what you want to talk about.
	You want to talk about that big event on Spaces on X last night, where Elon Musk had a Two hour or more conversation with candidate Trump.
	And you're all wondering, Scott, what did you think about it?
	Well, well, I think it was sort of a mixed bag.
	So I'll tell you the good and the bad.
	I won't hold back.
	So it started a little late.
	Elon Musk came on and said there was a Massive denial-of-service attack, which means somebody just hits the site a lot of times until it's too busy, so everybody else can't get in.
	The Wall Street Journal said right before the event, Musk cited without evidence a massive DDoS attack.
	Cited without evidence.
	Is the Wall Street Journal suggesting that That Elon Musk lied about the technical problems they had at the show?
	How long do you have to watch Elon Musk in public talking about just about everything to know that he wouldn't lie about that?
	Of all things he would lie about?
	Well, I can't think of anything he's ever lied about.
	He's been wrong a few times, like everybody.
	But what has he ever known the truth about something?
	And then said in public opposite of that truth.
	Is that even a thing?
	No.
	He would certainly know if it was a denial-of-service attack.
	And he would certainly tell you.
	And if it wasn't, I'm sure he would say, this is the first time we've tried something of this size.
	System's getting crashed.
	Why would he even think that he would even be a little bit inclined to lie about that, even though it's his product?
	Yeah.
	Now, normal people would lie.
	Maybe they'd spend a little bit.
	He's not normal.
	He spent like a gazillion dollars more than anybody should spend on the website to protect free speech.
	He didn't do that so he could lie to you.
	To me, it's just weird that you'd even suspect a lie in that context from him.
	Anyway.
	So Elon explained that he was looking for something less adversarial and more conversational.
	His theory was that you'll get to know the candidate better if it's more of a casual conversation than an attack and response, attack and response, which is a normal interview.
	I thought that was a terrific sounding idea.
	There was a problem with it though.
	It's called Donald Trump.
	So it turns out that when you remove the physical cues, as in sitting in front of somebody, that person doesn't know when the conversation should move to the next topic.
	I think when you remove the physical cues, you know, where somebody indicates that they're ready for the next question, you know, if you're in a conversation with a person in person, they'll start nodding.
	You know, the nodding says, yeah, I got it.
	I got it.
	Hurry up.
	Or, yeah, we said this before.
	Or they'll look at their notes like they're ready to go to the next question or something.
	So there are a lot of physical cues that were not available for the conversation.
	And I think what that created was a, let's say, a conversation that didn't have guardrails, meaning that neither participant knew how long something should go.
	You know, when do you stop doing whatever you're doing and do something else?
	Yeah, some of the normal cues of conversation were missing.
	And Trump did what Trump does, which is if there's an empty space, he fills it completely.
	I mean, you wouldn't even like him if he didn't do that.
	Trump says, if you're going to leave free money on the table, I'll pick it up.
	If there's a silence, I'll fill it with my message so you hear my message.
	So, because the phone is a terrible way to interrupt somebody, and normal conversations have interruptions, where if somebody's going on too long, the other person will kind of cut in, and maybe the cutting in would be your signal that maybe that answer's gone on too long.
	But Elon didn't really have the option of cutting in.
	One, because it's Trump.
	But the other is that I don't know if the technology lets you interrupt.
	You know, when you're on the phone, sometimes you can't hear the interrupter and there's a little time lag and something.
	So I think he probably didn't have the option of interrupting, which allowed Trump to simply make of it what he wanted to make of it.
	And so to me, it was Trump's stump speech and the things he usually says and went on way too long.
	Because, you know, Musk, to his credit, was testing out a new way of doing something.
	So let me say something about that.
	Because nobody had ever done something quite like this, which is somebody like Elon Musk, you know, who's like him, nobody, talking to somebody like Trump with an extended conversation, I love that Musk took a chance on this.
	If this had gone terrible, or if this had gone great, I would love it.
	Because this is what we need more of.
	Somebody having an idea.
	Hey, I have an idea of how we can improve the communication, or anything.
	Let's try it out.
	If it doesn't work, it will only embarrass me.
	Now that's the attitude.
	What's more perfect than that?
	If you're going to learn anything from last night, had nothing to do with anything Trump said, If you're going to learn one thing, it's learn how to put yourself in a place where you could be embarrassed, but if it worked out, everybody would be ahead.
	That's perfect.
	You want a million of that.
	You don't want the people who are just playing it safe all the time, right?
	This wasn't the biggest risk.
	So he just puts himself out there.
	Maybe this will work.
	Maybe it won't.
	We'll see what happens.
	Now, to be honest, I think it didn't work more than it worked, and I'll give you some details on that.
	But it's still genius.
	It's still brilliant.
	It's still brave.
	It's still right in terms of a system.
	If you think of it in terms of a goal, what was the goal?
	The goal would be a nice, informative, You know, tell you something you didn't know, get more people involved.
	You know, that might have been the goal.
	But if you think of it as a system, and I think Musk probably thinks more like systems, you say to yourself, the current systems for information are incomplete.
	What would you do about that?
	Well, what you would do about that is test some new systems.
	So that's what he did.
	It's kind of perfect.
	From a system perspective.
	From a goal perspective.
	Did you nail exactly what you hoped you would nail?
	Well, somewhat.
	Partial.
	I'll say partial success.
	But some risk.
	Let's talk about that.
	First of all, I've got great questions about how many people experienced it.
	Because the numbers are all over the place.
	I think there are 1.3 million people listening live.
	Which is a lot.
	But not, you know, a world-changing number.
	But apparently 77 million had some kind of an impression, meaning they at least sampled it, I guess.
	But a lot of people had some audio problems and the denial-of-service thing probably, you know, they tried a few times and couldn't get in and probably quit.
	And I think Elon said there was something like a billion interactions.
	If you count the secondary effect, a lot of people had viewing parties and they streamed it on their stream and And all that.
	Which, by the way, I love the fact that Elon didn't seem to be wanting to hammer anybody who was rebroadcasting it.
	Now, in theory, Musk could have said, hey, this is our content.
	You know, the only people who can watch it are the people watching it natively, not somebody watching somebody else's podcast, which is also watching it.
	He could have.
	But that's not the way he rolls.
	I think he wanted maximum free speech, maximum reach.
	Again, from a systems perspective, 100% the right decision.
	Let people have fun with it.
	Just let it out there, let people do whatever they want with it, and the more people will see it.
	So that was perfect as well.
	So I thought Trump Went on too long, sort of went into his stump speech and complaining about his usual things and his usual hyperbole and his insults for the other people.
	A lot of things we'd seen before and way too much about the border, just way too much.
	And I think that was what the experiment found.
	If you don't have a little bit of structure on it, somebody as verbose and opportunistic as Trump is just going to fill all the space.
	And that's pretty much what he did for about two hours.
	All right, here's the biggest issue in my opinion.
	Some say that there was something wrong with the audio, because apparently there's a known problem with the hosts of the spaces having some compression problem and it will sometimes make them sound like they have dentures or make them sound like they're slurring.
	So I was listening to it and my first take was, this could end Trump's entire campaign.
	That's how bad I thought it was, because I didn't know what it was.
	When I heard it, I thought, why does it sound like his dentures are loose?
	Were he slurring?
	So he would be talking normally like this, and then suddenly he'd be slurring a little bit like this.
	You sound like maybe his dentures were falling out.
	And then he'd go back to normal talking.
	And I was sitting there thinking, what the hell is this?
	There's nothing we've ever heard before.
	Like, not even a little bit.
	You know, when Biden was going all dementia, You could see it for years, a little bit, so that when it got bad, anybody who'd been paying attention said, well, there's the natural progression of what we've been watching for five years, so no surprise.
	But there's no hint of this in anything Trump's ever done before.
	So it would be highly unusual That he has some kind of weird, lispy, loose dentures.
	I don't think he has dentures, by the way.
	Or that he had dental work and didn't mention it.
	If he had dental work, he certainly would have known his own voice was weird and he would have mentioned it.
	I think that's fair.
	Now, what I was worried about is not that there was something wrong with Trump, although I did worry about that.
	I guess, let me take that back.
	I did worry about it.
	Up until somebody said, oh, that's a microphone thing.
	Yeah, we're aware of that.
	That's a known effect from exactly that situation.
	A host on spaces.
	People say that's a known thing.
	I don't know.
	I can't confirm it from my own impressions, but apparently Vivek sounded like that a little bit, and we know he doesn't have that slur.
	So, I can't confirm what caused it.
	My suspicion is microphone compression, but I've never heard of that, and I've never heard other people have it, so I don't know.
	What I do know is from a political perspective, it might be one of the most damaging things I've ever seen in politics.
	Because if you look at what the Democrats are saying, their entire messaging is, he's slurring, he's got mental problems, he's old.
	It's bad.
	Now, I guess the good news is that our news is so siloed that unless you go look for it, you would never see it if you're a Republican.
	You just never even see that the Democrats universally are saying he's slurring and rambling and I think rambling and slurring were the words that they were settling on for their attacks.
	And let me tell you, if you just listen to a clip Or you listened to part of it and then you heard their interpretation, that he was slurring and rambling.
	You would hear slurring and rambling.
	And it would make you wonder what's going on.
	So, I thought it was, I mean, there was literally a point where I said to my audience, because I was watching it live as well, it might end his, actually end his campaign.
	It was actually that bad, in my opinion.
	Now, The thing working against that is that people believe what they want to believe and they've already made up their decision.
	There might be zero people who change their vote because of this.
	I don't think it would matter what he did.
	And you can say that about any other candidate at this point in the race.
	Everybody's made up their mind, right?
	So I heard him slurring, Is that going to change my vote?
	No.
	Is there anybody listening to this?
	Is there even one person who listened to that and then changed their vote?
	Is there one person?
	Even one person who said, you know, I was all in for Trump, but then I heard that microphone slurring thing and changed my mind?
	No.
	Because if he comes out and does his speech today and he talks in his normal Trump way, well, that's the end of it.
	So the sooner he says something in public, and we get it on audio, and it sounds perfect, and I think it will.
	I mean, I'm pretty sure it's a microphone problem.
	But the sooner he does that, the better.
	Because he needs to erase that memory from the public as soon as possible.
	And it would be ideal if he knew what the problem was.
	It would be ideal if he got somebody who was an engineer To create a tweet and maybe even demonstrate it.
	Say, look, here's this slurring thing.
	Here's an example of somebody who doesn't slur.
	You can hear the audio of them originally.
	Now here is them going through the compression.
	You can see that this is what happened to Trump.
	And then have Trump repost it and say, you know, look at those lying Democrats saying that there was a problem.
	But I think he needs to do it soon.
	So if there's anybody who's an engineer who's ever tested this, and by the way, I'm not 100% sure what's going on.
	So if you think I'm saying I know that it was a microphone problem, I definitely don't know that.
	That's not my area of expertise.
	I hadn't seen it before, so I have no background to have an opinion one way or the other.
	I just think it's more likely because it would be weird if this is the one time he had massive slurring.
	Now, the good news is that Trump doesn't drink.
	How good news is that?
	Talk about, you know, adding to the list of reasons not to drink.
	If Trump was known, if anybody even thought he'd ever had a drink, you would have thought he was drunk, just because of the voice compression problem.
	So I love the fact that not a single person said he sounded drunk.
	If, literally, if that had been any other human being, I would have said, hmm, I think drunk, but I love the fact that Trump is so famously a non-drinker, non-druggy, non-cigarettes that it doesn't even come up.
	I mean, if you're going to pick one positive, that's a pretty big positive, actually.
	I do love the fact that as a role model, yeah, maybe he's a little, he's got some habits that you wouldn't want to copy, but that's a good one.
	The staying off the alcohol.
	Let's see, what else we got going?
	So it was long and I thought it was extra boring.
	I think Musk had a little trouble ending it or knowing when to end.
	Some of it was not wanting to force the ending, just to let it have a natural end.
	And I think Trump ended up ending it himself.
	And some of it is, how do you stop him from talking?
	And some of it is maybe thinking you hadn't gotten some good stuff yet.
	So the longer you talk, the more good stuff you'd get.
	But here's some takeaways.
	Both Musk and Trump mispronounced Kamala Harris's name.
	They both called her Kamala.
	And, you know, I just don't know what to do about that.
	Because I spent a lot of time mispronouncing her name.
	And I'm pretty sure it wasn't out of racism.
	Because I really like to say people's names correctly.
	You know, whether I like them or not, I think.
	Saying somebody's name correctly is like way up there in importance, if I can do it.
	You know, there's some I can't pronounce, like Chamath, whose last name will always get away from me.
	But I like to say them right when I can.
	But it's just weird that it's almost impossible for people to remember from one time to the other how to say her name.
	Anyway, both Trump and Musk were very pro-nuclear power as an energy need of the future.
	They had an interesting back and forth about climate change.
	I would say that Musk, he did a really good job of explaining his view on climate change.
	And I heard something I've never heard before.
	So generally speaking, Musk thinks that, you know, we don't want to be radically getting rid of our Fossil fuels, because first of all we have enough time, probably, to transition and survive any climate changes if there are.
	But he also thinks that, you know, we should be leaning hard in the direction of alternate sources.
	He thinks solar will be the dominant source of energy at some point in the future.
	I think that depends entirely upon how quickly you build nuclear power plants, but he has a Yeah, he has an interest in solar because it's part of his business.
	So I wouldn't take it too seriously when somebody who sells solar says solar might be the primary source of energy in the future.
	I'm not quite sold on that, but you understand the context.
	He's a person in that industry.
	And he might be right, by the way.
	I'm not saying he's wrong.
	But one of the things that Musk added that I never heard is that if your CO2 reaches a certain level, It becomes hard to breathe.
	Have you ever heard that?
	Why is that the first time I've ever heard that?
	And he doesn't think we're especially close to that level, but you know, maybe in the 50, 100 year range, we might have some noticeable difference in our breathing.
	That would be pretty scary.
	So I never heard that before.
	Um, what I did think is that, uh, I heard people say that it's amazing how Trump can speak on every topic.
	And what I thought is that he can bullshit on every topic.
	One of the things that Trump does well is something that I always recommend to other people if they want to learn how to bullshit better.
	If there's any complicated topic, let's say AI, and you want to, you know you're going to be in conversations about it.
	In the case of Trump, he knows he's going to be interviewed.
	You only need to learn a couple things, and then you make sure that you put those things into your limited conversation time, and it will sound like you know more than you know.
	So Trump does this with AI.
	He says, you know, AI could double the amount of power we need.
	Now, I don't know.
	Will it?
	I mean, I think he's directionally correct about that, but that doesn't take really an expert.
	That's just a headline you read once?
	Oh, AI will double our energy need.
	But it's so smart when Trump lays down a little fact like that, because first of all, it's probably the most important fact, you know, other than the AI existential threat itself that we all know.
	But not everybody knows that the power draw will be not just a lot, but like, oh my God, a lot.
	Like, I don't know if we can do it a lot.
	Like, crazy a lot.
	And the fact that Trump knows that and puts it out there first, first of all, chews up the time that you might have talked about AI.
	And when you're done, you think, well, that Trump, he's pretty plugged in.
	He knew that important fact about AI.
	It might be the only fact he knows.
	No, I'm exaggerating.
	I mean, I'm sure he knows NVIDIA is making the chips and he knows that it's the most important thing for the future.
	And he knows China is trying to catch up, you know, basic stuff.
	But when he throws in that little thing about energy, it just makes him look like he's a little bit more plugged in than he probably is, which is good technique.
	So yes, Trump can bullshit on basically every topic because he does this trick.
	He finds that one little nugget of knowledge that makes him look like he's dug in and then he gives it to you and he fills up all the time and then like, wow, he could talk about anything.
	So, It's a good communication and political technique.
	We don't know how deep he can go.
	Then Musk pitched an idea, which in some ways makes me think that was his primary purpose for doing this.
	But Musk said, I think it would be great to have a government efficiency commission that ensures that the taxpayer money, that the taxpayer's hard-earned money is spent in a good way.
	And then Musk said, I'd be happy to help out on such a commission.
	Now, he pitched it two or three times.
	And I think the first one or two times, Trump just sort of ignored it and said what he wanted to say.
	And so Elon circled back to it and made sure that he got a response on it.
	And Trump's response was, I love it.
	Well, you're the greatest cutter.
	And he's talked about how Elon Musk has cut expenses in his own companies.
	I did not get the sense that Trump loved the idea and thought it had potential.
	I got the sense that he was politely talking to somebody who was offering a service, and you never want to say no to that, especially your host who has invited you onto his platform.
	So to me, it looked like a polite answer.
	But did not indicate any real interest in pursuing it.
	So I think it sort of died from neglect that day.
	And the other possibility is that Trump is in political mode, where he should be, and he knows that if he starts talking about cuts, or even starts talking about having a commission with Musk on it to talk about cuts, That the Democrats would say?
	What will the Democrats say?
	The Democrats would immediately turn that into, Elon Musk is helping Trump cut vital social services, which nobody said, but they could easily spin it into that.
	So I think Trump was politically astute enough to know That agreeing unambiguously, yes, we'll form this commission, you can be on it.
	That would sound like you're all losing your jobs in the government and your social security will get cut.
	Doesn't mean any of that would be true, but that's how it would get spun.
	So I think maybe Trump's instinct to hit a light touch on that, the question about that commission, Should only be discussed after he's elected and he doesn't have to get elected again.
	Then you've got something.
	You know, give me a lame duck Trump with an efficiency commission where he'll never have to run for office again.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	I want that.
	I want a lot of that.
	But before the election, maybe Maybe just a light touch on that, just to sort of suggest that you might be somewhat interested a little bit.
	It's about the right touch.
	Anyway, the propaganda networks like MSNBC, they just want to talk about all the times that
	Musk has posted untrue things, and on the list of untrue things, where these are unambiguously untrue things that Musk has in the past said on the X platform, which proves that the X platform cannot be trusted with anything honest, says the MSNBC person, he actually says that the immigration, current immigration, is to replace voters.
	The voter replacement theory.
	So that was an example of something that Musk has said that is unambiguously not true.
	I think it's observably true.
	I think it's the most obviously observably true thing you've ever seen in America.
	How in the world is this not true?
	I believe we have people on the record Saying that it benefits the census.
	You might get more representation in blue areas if there's just more population there.
	Clearly, they're being registered to vote.
	Clearly, the Democrats have rejected any legislation that would deny them the right to vote, meaning the people are non-citizens.
	I would say it's the most objectively obviously true thing in American history.
	Now, there might be other reasons that people are in favor of unrestricted or relatively unrestricted immigration, but clearly the voting part is part of it.
	I mean, I can't think of anything that's more obviously true.
	And what would be the argument that it's not true?
	I mean, the numbers are the numbers, and they do get mailing They get mail-in ballots.
	So some would say it's so they can vote.
	Others would say it's so they can harvest the ballots that the non-citizens were never planning to use.
	But now that they have them, somebody else can fill them out, mail them in.
	Who knows?
	But of course, the EU
	One of their officials, this Thierry Breeden guy, or Thierry Breeden, or Tyree Breeden, or Tyrant Breeden, I don't know how to say his name, but he sent this big official-looking letter to Elon Musk before the conversation with Trump, and it was a big bureaucratic letter I could barely get through, but the idea was that the European Union is watching the X platform,
	Because they think it's a disinformation spreader, and maybe, you know, dangerous disinformation that could make things violent.
	And they warned that a conversation with Trump might be more of that, and could certainly work against X's interests of staying in business.
	Now, imagine that.
	Now, what was Musk's response to that?
	Something like, shove it up your ass.
	But there was certainly nothing on the conversation with Trump that is even slightly dangerous.
	I didn't hear anything dangerous.
	But misinformation is what every conversation with every politician is.
	Do they imagine that if Harris had been the person, who by the way is invited, so Musk made sure that Kamala Harris has the same opportunity, But every politician lies pretty much every time they go on television, in ways that everybody can tell.
	So what is the European Union going to do about the fact that every politician lies every time they're on television, or any time they're recorded?
	It's not like Trump is the one guy doing it.
	So this seems to be the way that the American spooks are controlling European entities to control American politics.
	So, Musk is the only one holding out against incredible pressure.
	I imagine this is going to get really expensive for him.
	He might even lose the European market entirely.
	So, the European Union, I don't know, I think the United States should threaten them.
	But of course our government is on their side.
	If I were President Trump, let's say he gets elected, if that happened, I think we would have to tell the European Union that if they censor us, if they try to censor American free speech, that will remove all funding from NATO.
	Too strong?
	I don't see any scenario in which I would protect Europe while they're removing our free speech.
	Let me say that directly.
	There's no scenario in which I would be willing to protect Europe from anything if they're actively trying to suppress free speech in my country.
	No, if you're attacking my country, I'm going to side with Russia.
	Sorry, Russia is not attacking my country, but Europe is.
	This is an attack on my basic freedoms.
	So if Europe is attacking me, And Russia is not, even though Russia has a pretty good reason to attack, and they're not.
	Is it wrong that I would side with Russia?
	Now, I'm being a little hyperbolic, of course.
	When you take this out of context, somebody will take it out of context.
	This is hyperbole, right?
	But, you need to take it seriously.
	I'm not so sure that wasting money on NATO makes sense when Europe is attacking the United States.
	Period.
	That's how seriously I take it.
	I would, I would say we're just going to cut all your funding and we'll just make sure that the United States can close its borders and, you know, good luck, you're lost.
	Anyway, again, that's hyperbole.
	Obviously, we would prefer a strong relationship with Europe.
	The Washington Post, they've got a, so that the White House presser, The Washington Post's Cleve Woodson.
	He's a reporter, I guess.
	And he said this.
	He said, Elon Musk is slated to interview Donald Trump tomorrow night.
	So this is ahead of the event.
	And he said, I don't know if the president is going to feel free to say if he is or not, but I think that's misinformation on Twitter.
	It's not just a campaign issue.
	It's a, you know, it's an America issue.
	What role does the White House or the President have?
	Any sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that sort of intervening in that?
	Some of what was about campaign and misinformation, but you know, it's a wider thing, right?
	Now I'm not going to say he's a DEI hire, but you're terrible people, so you're going to say it.
	This is massively incompetent in public.
	Massively incompetent.
	How in the world did this guy get a job?
	Anything!
	Anything!
	Now, would I be mocking him if he were a white man?
	Yes!
	Yes!
	He appears to be incompetent at his basic job, and he's suggesting that the White House should end free speech if they don't like it.
	Because Trump might say something that's misinformation, as if Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have never said anything that's misinformation.
	How in the world did this guy get a job?
	Are you freaking kidding me?
	Now, remember my prediction, that if you've got a woke company, and they have to do the DEI thing, and there's just not enough people in the pool of people that they have to pick, They don't stop picking.
	They just lower their standards until they can be diverse, because that's their highest priority.
	Washington Post would be right at the top of the DEI totem pole.
	So, of course, they've got to try extra hard.
	And the predictable outcome is wildly incompetent staff.
	Now, to me, this looked like an example of a wildly incompetent staff.
	It might not be a DEI problem.
	Is there any proof that he was hired because of a DEI issue?
	No.
	None at all.
	But it's your first question, because they have a system which guarantees incompetence eventually.
	And then when you see the incompetence, and it's so glaringly obvious, are you going to not say, well, there was a thing that predicted that?
	And it had nothing to do with race.
	It has nothing to do with gender.
	Has nothing to do with your genes, your culture, has only to do with supply and demand.
	If there's not enough supply in the short term, they're still going to hire.
	Even if the supply is lacking, they'll just lower their standards until they meet their diversity.
	So that's what it looks like.
	But do we know that's what happened?
	No, no, we don't.
	All right.
	Uh, Kamala Harris is on the cover of a Time Magazine.
	But when Time Magazine asked her for an interview, she said, no.
	Do you know why Time Magazine put somebody on the cover?
	Well, partly it's, you know, to get eyeballs and the usual reason that a publication does anything.
	But here's the other reason.
	So that they'll do an interview.
	If Time Magazine says, we're going to make you the cover, you're supposed to say yes to the interview.
	That's how that works.
	It was like when my little college invited me back after Dilbert became kind of a big thing in the 90s.
	The college I graduated from, Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, before I went to Berkeley, they decided I would be named the Outstanding Young Alumnus.
	So I was like, wow, that's quite an honor.
	And of all the people who graduated, they think I'm the outstanding one for young, young people.
	So they invited me to come give a speech.
	I thought, wow.
	Wow.
	What an honor.
	I got invited to give a speech at my college and I'm going to be like a returning hero.
	And, uh, are you going to tell me what went wrong before I tell you?
	Cause you all know, right?
	Cause I was very young.
	I was not wise with the ways of the world.
	The reason that they name you the Outstanding Young Alumnus is they think that they can get more money out of you if they name you the Outstanding Young Alumnus.
	It's just a fundraising thing.
	It has nothing to do with any respect they had for you as a graduate.
	So I was so fucking dumb, I flew all the way to New York to give this little speech that nobody listened to.
	And it was all just to basically, you know, rope me in and turn me into a massive donor.
	And the whole thing was just ridiculous.
	So I never fell for that again.
	Were there other organizations that said, hey, we'd like to give you an award?
	Yes, there were.
	Do you know how I handled those?
	No, thanks.
	Oh, but, um, maybe you don't understand.
	We, we have this prestigious award and we just voted to give it to you.
	So that's why we're inviting you to come speak because it's a big honor for you.
	And I would say, that's great.
	No, thanks.
	So that's why I handed it in the future.
	Anyway, so Kamala was on the cover of Time Magazine and she still said no, which tells you that there, Strategy of keeping you from hearing anything that she says spontaneously that she's not reading is still in play.
	And I'm going to say again, it's brilliant.
	The longer they go without you hearing her make a mistake, the longer you'll think that any mistake she makes is just some kind of weird oddity and nothing you need to take too seriously.
	It's like, oh, maybe she just had a bad day.
	So, but if she came out of the gate, you know, blathering and cackling and acting like her usual self, you would say, well, why did we pick her?
	They just have to keep you quiet for a month without hearing, well, keep her quiet for a month in terms of spontaneous, challenging interviews.
	And you will form strong opinions, her supporters will, that will not be changed if she says something in public that doesn't sound too good.
	I hate that this is such a good strategy.
	It shouldn't work.
	You know, in the world that you want to live in, having your candidate not talk in any challenging situation should be the last thing that you would look to as something you would support.
	You think even Democrats would say, all right, all right, look, you know, you had Biden who couldn't talk to anybody.
	You replace, you replace him with Harris who can't have a conversation and you want me to vote for that.
	You're asking me to vote for the second candidate in a row who can't talk in public.
	The most basic thing a president needs to do.
	You'd think that all common sense says that they'd be out.
	Like, I'm out!
	But if they're out, Trump wins.
	And they can't abide that.
	So they're gonna twist their brains into whatever pretzels they need them to be so they can say she's great and not hearing from her in a spontaneous way for a month Is really good strategy for that.
	They might also be coaching her to see if they can get her to be more coherent in public.
	Meanwhile, the Kamala HQ account, which I think is an official account of the Harris campaign, they posted this.
	Seven years ago today, white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched on Charlottesville, chanting racist and anti-Semitic bile and killing an innocent woman.
	This is who Donald Trump calls, quote, very fine people.
	Now, I would like to suggest that Republicans use the following standard.
	Now, the Snopes has debunked it, and by the way, the Trump War Room, that's also an official account, said of it, it's a lie that has been so thoroughly and exhaustively debunked that repeating it insults the intelligence of the American people.
	Every time anyone gets fact, well, this was me, sorry.
	Here's my opinion.
	Anytime a Republican gets fact checked, They should ask the entity that did the fact-checking to fact-check the fine people hoax.
	And I would use that as the key to help Democrats understand which fake news is fake.
	So if I were interviewed and somebody says, you know, President Trump said 15 things that are not true.
	What do you say about that?
	I would say, did your network debunk the fine people hoax or did it report it like it was true?
	Well, we're not talking about me.
	We're talking about President Trump.
	I know.
	But you're the one who's judging whether he told the truth.
	We'd like to see if you're good at judging who tells the truth.
	Do you believe that he once said that neo-Nazis are fine people?
	Well, it's not about me.
	No, it is about you.
	You're the one who's judging who's telling the truth.
	Can you judge the simplest, most debunked hoax The most important and dangerous one in ever American history.
	Did you tell your audience that, that none of that was true?
	Cause Biden ran an entire campaign on it.
	Did you ever mention that it wasn't true?
	Well, keep, stop trying to change the subject to me.
	It's not about, it's not.
	No, it is about you.
	It's very much about you.
	That's what I would do if I were Republican.
	I wouldn't let anybody do any fact-checking if they're not willing to fact-check that.
	All right.
	Axios, which we, I would say, I wouldn't consider that an objective source of news.
	Let's put it that way.
	But they're reporting that crime was lower under Biden than under Trump.
	But one of the Trump communication guys on the campaign, Dylan Johnson, tries to clear that up on X with the post.
	So he says, so it may be true that in some cities, Some categories of violent crime are lower for the first six months of 2024 compared to 2023.
	But, violent crime is still way up compared to 2019 under Trump.
	Now, let me tell you how people report fake statistics.
	First of all, all data is wrong.
	You know, I'll tell you that a million more times because you don't believe it yet.
	You still think I don't mean that.
	You still think that's hyperbole, don't you?
	When I say all data is wrong?
	All data is wrong.
	Because there's always somebody who has a financial interest in presenting it, otherwise you would never hear it.
	The only data you ever hear is data that someone who's collecting the data, the same person who's in charge of collecting it and presenting it, has a financial interest.
	Or it could be a political interest, but that, you know, translates into financial as well.
	So there's no such thing as just data.
	And there never will be.
	There can't be.
	Because it's all collected by liars with financial or political interests, and those people have no incentive whatsoever to tell you the truth.
	They tell you some shaded version of the truth.
	Here's how you do it.
	If there happened to be a pandemic that happened during Trump's administration, and you know the pandemic itself was the reason that crime went through the roof, what you do is you pick the highest point of the pandemic, which had not a lot to do with Trump's administration in terms of the crime, and then you say, well, after the pandemic, when it was totally over, crime's lower under Biden.
	So, therefore, logically, Biden's better on crime, because at the height of the pandemic, There was more crime.
	But as Dylan Johnson points out, a more reasonable comparison would be the last normal year of Trump, 2019, compared to the most recent normal year of Biden.
	If you compare their normal year to normal year, Uh, things are worse, not better.
	Now, I, this is the same trick that, um, stock funds use.
	Uh, if somebody has a managed stock fund and they say, give me your money and I'll take some of your money, but I'll invest the rest and you'll make lots of money because I'm so good at investing.
	And you as a consumer say, how do I know you're good at investing?
	And they say, well, look at my statistics.
	If you look at the, if you look at from this quarter to this quarter, We were in the top 10% of all investing companies.
	And then if you were to check their numbers, they would be right.
	And you'd say to yourself, wow, they did really kill the average during that little period.
	But guess what?
	If you're guessing about stocks and which ones are going to go up, you should have periods where you're way up and you beat the average, periods where you're way down and you're lower than the average.
	And if you do a great job, Your average, if you're up and down, beats the average.
	Almost no stock funds do that.
	But they all say they do, because they can all pick a recent time when things went well for them.
	So they say, look at this period.
	Now, let's say they go five years where they didn't once beat the average.
	What do they advertise then?
	Nothing.
	They just don't advertise.
	They don't tell you what their record is when it's bad.
	They just wait for a little period when, just by luck, they had one stock that did well, and they go, look at how we beat everybody for this little period.
	So that's what the Biden administration is doing with the crime data.
	Here's a story I didn't even know was percolating, but apparently there was some kind of court case in New York where the judge issued an opinion that RFK Jr.' 's physical presence at his supposed New York place of residence was virtually non-existent.
	And she ruled that that misrepresentation disqualifies RFK Jr.
	from appearing on New York's general election ballot.
	So if that doesn't get reversed, RFK Jr.
	will not appear on the New York ballot because somebody in New York said he misrepresented his place of residence.
	Now keep in mind that His place of residence shouldn't have made any difference to the state of New York.
	How would it make a difference?
	I can't think of how it makes a difference.
	If you're running for president, can't you live in Florida?
	I'm pretty sure we have somebody running for president who lives in Florida, so what the hell difference does it make if he misrepresented the amount of time he spends in his New York home?
	So they're just going to use the misrepresentation, alleged, as a reason he can't be on the ballot at all?
	I mean, that doesn't even sound slightly like the justice system working the way anybody would want it to.
	Is there even one voter in New York who thinks it makes sense not to have an option to vote for RFK Jr.
	because he said something about his place of residence in New York?
	How does anybody care about that?
	Absurd.
	Well, here's some good news.
	According to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, they've got 157,000 volunteers for their program to be poll watchers.
	So that would be, he's worked with RNC co-chairwoman, Lara Trump.
	Now they had promised they were going to try to find 100,000 recruits.
	To volunteer for what they call their protect the vote program, basically observers.
	So they tried to get a hundred thousand people.
	They already have 157,000.
	Now I am prepared to be very proud of Republicans.
	It's too soon to say, too soon to say.
	But one of the things I've always liked about Republicans is that they quietly do the important things instead of yelling about unimportant things.
	I mean, everybody does that too.
	But Republicans are kind of, it's almost built into their character.
	How about I just quietly do this thing?
	Do you remember when the shy, the so-called shy Trump supporters were apparently lying to pollsters?
	And I kept telling you, I feel like that's a Republican thing.
	I think they just all quietly know what they need to do to, you know, make this a surprise, and then they just do it because it's important, and they can.
	So they do.
	And it looks like maybe that's what happened.
	But here's a case where I think Republicans really, really understand that you're going to need a lot of observers.
	That's not going to stop every form of potential fraud, but it's really, really, really important.
	So what happens when Republicans know something's really important, like not a joke, like not hyperbole, not politics, just really basic and important?
	They show up.
	Here it is.
	Tried to get 100,000, got 157,000.
	So far.
	Like, where's it gonna end?
	Do they have an upper limit?
	I don't even know.
	Maybe there's too many.
	But no, Republicans are saying very clearly, we don't trust this election.
	Tell me what to do.
	And then Laura Trump and Michael Watley tell them what to do.
	And then they do it.
	Good job.
	So if this turns out to be the key, and if it makes a difference in the election in a positive way, or even if they find some, you know, big discrepancy that wouldn't have been found before, I'm just going to be really impressed.
	Because, you know, we live in a country where you don't expect things to work.
	You know, we've just stopped expecting basic competence.
	But this is starting to shape up.
	Like a pocket of high competence in a world where that's rare.
	Now I told you that Lara Trump in particular is a wild card in the election.
	I think she's just so capable and you're working with Watley and of course he gets credit as well.
	This might make a big difference.
	Now, I'll re-up my idea that there should be a bounty or a payment for whistleblowers, so that anybody who sees something wrong with the election can come forward and get a big payment.
	But importantly, that should be introduced before the election.
	You don't want to introduce that idea after the election.
	You want to do it before, and here's why.
	Almost every form of cheating has at least one accomplice.
	You want everybody to look at their accomplice and say, okay, we're getting paid a thousand dollars to do this, whatever it is, hypothetically.
	Uh, but you'll make a million dollars if you turn me in.
	So if you turn me in, you'll probably get some amnesty and a million dollars.
	I will just go to jail.
	So it's going to be kind of hard to find an accomplice that you trust.
	Because if you're doing this at all, you're both criminals.
	Do you trust criminals?
	A criminal who could make a million dollars, and they're already violating a major law for a thousand dollars?
	Of course they'd take the million to turn you in and put you in jail.
	Of course they would.
	So you could completely disrupt their operation by making sure that the whistleblowers know that they can get paid after the election.
	That's how I'd play it.
	Here's some important news about Russia.
	According to the Financial Times, Russia has trained its Navy to target sites deep within Europe with nuclear-capable missiles in a potential conflict with NATO.
	Wait, are you telling me that Russia had never thought of training their Navy how to target their potential enemy?
	I feel like that's basic.
	I feel like this is a story that's a non-story.
	Is this just to make us feel bad about Russia?
	I mean, this is the kind of story where I say to myself, didn't a hundred percent of you know that everybody with nuclear weapons is training their side to target their potential enemies?
	There's literally no news here.
	It just makes you feel a certain way, which makes me think it's just propaganda.
	Here's something fun.
	The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one of Atlanta's papers, maybe the only one, they had this headline with a subtitle not too long ago.
	And the headline was this, Reinvestigation of Fulton's 2020 Election Ordered by Georgia Election Board.
	And then the subheading was, Fraud hasn't been found, but Republican majority demands the answer.
	Oh man, those damn Republicans.
	Am I right?
	There's no fraud found and they're still demanding some kind of action because you know, they just can't let it go.
	They just love those Republicans.
	So, so doubtful, so distrustful.
	There's no fraud bit.
	Oh wait, it turns out they had to update their subtitle because, uh, The fraud had been found.
	So here's the revised, they revised their subtitle on the headline to Republican Majority on State Election Board Seeks Further Inquiry of Double-Counted Votes.
	Because it's a fact that there were double counted votes.
	Now, if you're a Democrat, And you see the first headline, fraud hasn't been found, but those damn Republicans keep asking for investigations.
	You would say, you know, my MSNBC told me this back in 2020, that everything was fine, and it's just the Republicans being jerks.
	But what if you knew that there definitely were double counted votes?
	Does that change how you think about any of this?
	Well, here's the thing, people.
	There might be some cases, I guess they'll find out, in which some votes might have been double counted.
	Maybe they ran something through the machine more than once.
	Maybe.
	But at least we can trust that once things get into the machines, whether it's the vote or the ballot, that everything's good once it gets in the machines.
	Right?
	Because we've been told that.
	We have very secure systems.
	The election machines and the ballot counting machines, all very secure.
	Very secure.
	Next story.
	Politico is writing an article about there was a hackers convention in which at least one part of it is they take a bunch of machines that are used currently in elections And then they see if the hackers who are gathered can hack them.
	But thank goodness our elections have machines that can't be hacked.
	And if in the unlikely event that somebody found a problem with one, well, they would immediately fix it.
	Right?
	I mean, even if a hacker did get in, the information would be given to the company.
	The company would say, whoa, we didn't know about that, but we'll, we'll put a update patch in there and we'll take care of that right away.
	Right?
	Wait, right?
	No, no.
	What?
	In the comments, I'm seeing you don't think that would happen?
	You don't think if, in the rarest case, a hacker found some problem, you don't think the company would just immediately plug that hole because there's an election coming?
	Well, here's what actually happened.
	Turns out that all of the machines, well I don't know if it was all of them, vulnerabilities were found, quote, particularly troubling during the election year, quote, they found vulnerabilities in everything, and everything is in all caps, they found vulnerabilities in everything from voting machines to e-poll books.
	Everything.
	Everything in all caps.
	Every single technological part of our elections was hacked.
	For practice.
	For fun.
	Just to see if they could do it.
	Every single electronic device got hacked.
	By this little room of hackers.
	But at least, as I'm saying, we have months until the election, so now that they've compiled all these hacks, they give them to the companies, the companies quickly issue a Oh, that's not happening?
	Why not?
	Why wouldn't they just patch all the machines?
	It's just software.
	Well, turns out there's not enough time.
	Turns out that any kind of a change that would plug those holes would be a fairly comprehensive change, and it's not the sort of thing you could expect any company could pull off and have everything updated by November.
	So you know what they're going to do instead?
	Just hold the election.
	They're going to hold the election after the hackers have, I assume, published where all the vulnerabilities are.
	This doesn't even sound real, does it?
	I saw on, I think it was the George account.
	George is a user on X who's got a real good account.
	You should follow George.
	Um, but he found the article in Politico and, you know, posted about it, but it wasn't a link.
	So I thought, Oh, I'll go to Politico.
	This looks like the biggest story in the country.
	So I go to the front page.
	I'm like, well, George is pretty reliable.
	And he says, Politico has this big story about the election machines not being, uh, completely secure.
	And I thought, Oh, I don't see it.
	So I actually had to do a search on Politico, you know, like with search terms, and then it came up.
	So it wasn't on the top page when I looked for it, but there it was.
	And here's one of the quotes from one of the people involved, somebody named Hersty.
	So this is somebody involved in the hacker thing.
	I don't know if he was a hacker himself, but he says, quote, if you don't think this kind of place Now, what he means is the hackers had their own room where just the hackers and the machines were.
	So they had access to all the machines because they're all in the same room.
	He says, if you don't think this kind of place is running 24-7 in China, Russia, you're kidding yourselves, Hearst, he said, gesturing around the room of voting equipment.
	We are here only... Oh my God!
	I can barely read this.
	This is so insane.
	He goes, quote, We are here only for two and a half days and we find stuff.
	It would be stupid to assume that the adversaries don't have absolute access to everything.
	So that's somebody who knows what he's talking about.
	He's in the room with the equipment, in the room with the hackers.
	He's all the way in.
	And he says, It would be stupid to assume that the adversaries don't have absolute access to everything.
	And they were testing to see if they could change the vote count without getting caught.
	Yep.
	Why are we even having an election?
	This doesn't make sense.
	Unless somebody has a counter to this, I don't know what it would be.
	I mean, they You know, sometimes the counter is the hackers used the old versions of the software.
	So, it could be that.
	It could be that they just didn't have access to the brightest, newest software, and maybe they found some things that are already fixed.
	That could be.
	So, I would wait for the other side.
	There might be another side to this story.
	Remember when, uh, was it, uh, Christopher Wray, head of the FBI?
	Uh, give me a fact check on this, but my, my memory, I believe he suggested that China at the very least was already inside all of our most secure infrastructure systems in the United States.
	And the fact that they haven't crashed them is only because they would worry about retaliation, not because they couldn't.
	Now, if Christopher Wray says he is sure, without having proof, that China is inside all of our, or most of our infrastructure systems, don't you think that means that America is inside their infrastructure systems?
	Do you think that the FBI would tell you that our adversaries can get into all of our systems, and yet it would not be true?
	That with our superior hackers, at least that's what we're told, that we wouldn't be in our adversary's systems to at least have a reply in case they try to crash something?
	Doesn't that mean that our own internal intelligence people would also have full access to our systems?
	And aren't they the very same people who Try to take over governments in other places.
	It's sort of their job, the CIA, to make sure that friendly governments get installed in other countries.
	We've done it, I don't know, 80 different coups or something like that.
	Do you think that they wouldn't try to keep this terrible populist out of office with a couple tweaks?
	How would you know?
	So let's see, they would have the ability, they would have the incentive, And they would have very low chance of getting caught and prosecuted.
	Under those conditions, how often does bad stuff happen?
	They can do it easily.
	They have a really, really high reason to do it, like that they believe in their soul, like they're saving America or saving their own jobs, like important stuff.
	You know, the anti-Trumpers, in their minds, it's the most important thing in the world.
	He's Hitler.
	He's gonna destroy everything you know and love.
	So, you have the highest level incentive, somewhat easy access to change it, and all the time in the world.
	Under what conditions does it not happen?
	I can't think of any.
	I can't think of any situation in which that would not result in a rigged election.
	Like, I can't even think of a hypothetical.
	What would the hypothetical look like?
	It would look like this.
	Bob, you know, we're going to rig this election because we've got to save the country against this existential threat called Trump.
	Then Bob says, well, I would have been on board yesterday, but I had a near-death experience and I talked to God in person and now I cannot lie.
	Well, maybe.
	But look how far you have to reach.
	To come with any scenario in which the election is not rigged that makes sense.
	Now, I suppose if you had a near-death experience and turned into a whistleblower and they didn't murder you right there because they could, I guess in some weird, you know, unlikely situation, we could have a clean election.
	But the design of the system largely guarantees it.
	Now, when I say the design of the system, I don't just mean the election system.
	I mean the design of America as a system.
	Because right now the news is telling us that Hitler might come to office and get re-elected.
	We didn't notice he was Hitler the first time.
	First four years we didn't notice.
	It's just so crazy.
	But I don't know.
	It's kind of tough to feel that the election would be true.
	So I'm going to double down on my prediction.
	I don't think that the outcome, no matter what it is, no matter which way it goes, the election, I don't think it will be trusted by the people who lose.
	So if Democrats lose, they'll think it's rigged one way or the other and vice versa.
	So I don't know how we're going to have a transfer of power of any kind.
	How could it possibly happen?
	Wow.
	According to George, the one I was talking about, he says, uh, breaking thousands of British patriots gathered in London to support Trump saying his victory is needed across the world.
	Wow.
	Huh.
	I don't know if thousands is enough.
	I mean, thousands isn't, it's not a lot, but, uh, we'll see.
	All right, there's some documents, according to the Daily Wire, some documents have been found that explain how the Soros network not only funds candidates to get them in office, you know, the attorney generals, etc., but after it gets them in office, apparently it stays connected to them and sort of keeps training them and influencing them.
	So it's not just that Soros gets people that think like him in office, Once in office, they have a formal way to continue influencing them, because of course they'd like to stay in office, and they'd like to get funded for their next campaign.
	So basically Soros has found a way to simply buy local officials.
	And they spent $117 million since 2016 to reshape America's justice system.
	Three in ten Americans now live under a Soros prosecutor.
	I'm one of them.
	And that these prosecutors continue to be told what to do by the people who fund them.
	Now, I learned something the other day about my local area, not my specific town, but there's a town nearby where apparently the Soros slash Act Blue money is going to put a bad character in the mayor's job.
	And here's what I just realized Soros is doing.
	Certainly he gets a fast bang for the buck by controlling the justice system, and that's a pretty big lever.
	But there's a bigger lever coming, which is if you can buy a victory in the mayor's office in every middle or large city, or most of them, Those become the people who eventually go from mayor to, let's say, a state senator to, let's say, a representative to, let's say, a senator to, let's say, a president.
	So in other words, Soros and ActBlue are creating a pool of experienced people who will be the leaders of tomorrow, but they're starting them at the lower level where it's cheap.
	So you can get ownership of them at the mayor level.
	And then you continue funding them if they go to higher office, and you make sure that the best ones do that.
	So, the level of control that Soros is putting on the country is way bigger than you imagine, and it's destroying a town local to me.
	Now, I don't want to give you details, because I'll get in trouble, but I've heard some really, really bad things about the local politics and about ActBlue and Soros' influence.
	And don't ignore that, because that might be the long-range biggest play.
	According to The Hill, there was a poll that showed that even Republicans, like the Biden-suggested Supreme Court reforms, Does that surprise you?
	That even Republicans like all three of these supported reforms.
	Now, there's a punchline to this, so wait to the end.
	But the reforms are these.
	They want a term limit, 51% of even Republicans like that.
	They want a, uh, they want a term limits, 51% of even Republicans like that.
	Now, in each case, the Democrats like it more, but even 51% of Republicans said, yeah, term limits for the Supreme court.
	I could go for that.
	The binding code of conduct on the Supreme Court members, 70% of Republicans said, yeah, code of conduct.
	Totally reasonable.
	Why not?
	And then on the, let's see, saying that nobody's above the law.
	I guess not the president and not the Supreme Court.
	54% of Republicans said, yeah, nobody's above the law.
	Makes sense.
	Now, here's what you don't know about how the poll was conducted.
	They didn't tell the people they asked whose ideas these were.
	So in other words, the Republicans were not presented with this.
	Joe Biden would like to do this.
	Do you agree?
	Instead, they said, What do you think of the idea of term limits?
	And apparently they, I don't know if they vetted them, but they may have found people who just weren't up with the news.
	If you just came up to anybody and said, what do you think about term limits on the Supreme Court?
	If they didn't know where it came from, I could see why the majority would say, yeah, you know, on paper, that sounds pretty good.
	But this is another example of the phenomenon, which has been tested many times.
	If you took Trump's policies and simply said that they were Kamala Harris's policies, and stopped a Democrat on the street and said, Kamala Harris would like to tighten the border and do this or that.
	Even the Democrat would say, Kamala Harris wants to do it?
	I'm all on board!
	And then if you go, you can basically do this over and over.
	People will agree if they think their team says it's a good idea.
	And if you don't tell them which team has the idea, then you get something a little closer to an actual opinion.
	But if they know who's for it, it means nothing.
	All right.
	So, we also know that TikTokers apparently are being reported.
	I suppose this could be fake news, but there are reports from influencers that the Kamala Harris campaign has contacted them and offered them cash to say things supportive of Kamala Harris.
	Is that legal?
	I think it is, right?
	Is it legal to just say, I'll pay you to say good things about our candidate?
	Or is it?
	I think it's legal.
	I mean, kind of sketchy, but I think it's legal.
	But the idea is that you should not trust any celebrity endorsements whatsoever.
	A TikToker said that she was contacted.
	I guess she decided not to do it, but wanted you to know that these influencers are paid.
	I saw a headline that said that there was a study That TikTok is not as negative toward China as other platforms.
	Is anybody surprised?
	That TikTok, which is owned by China, but they don't touch the algorithm.
	Trust us.
	Trust us.
	We're not going to put our finger on the algorithm.
	It's just whatever the people want.
	And then a test shows that TikTok is way friendlier to China than the other platforms.
	Just a coincidence?
	I doubt it.
	It's probably exactly what it looks like.
	There's a study in Science Psychology Post or something.
	They did a twin study to see what would cause shifts in political ideology.
	And here's what they found.
	That apparently your genetics do have an influence over your initial political beliefs.
	Now you've seen plenty of studies about this before.
	That there does seem to be an actual genetic difference between liberals and conservatives.
	That people are just genetically conservative and genetically might have discussed about some things that somebody else thinks is just a good time.
	And that those are, you're just born with it.
	Now, that feels right to me.
	I believe that there is a strong propensity To, you know, favor one side based on your genes.
	But, if you were to change your mind, apparently the changing your mind is influenced by your environment.
	So, if your friends change their mind, and you watch different news, and maybe you move to a different town, you're far more likely to change your mind than politics.
	Now, all that, to me, all that is is proof that brainwashing works.
	Right?
	If we know with twins, that you can keep one twin the same, And the other twin can be changed because you change their environment, basically.
	That shows you that brainwashing works.
	Because it's not about thinking.
	What this study did not show is that if you do a deep dive and you do your own research, you will find information that might change your mind.
	Nope!
	It just said if you take this one twin and put them in a different environment, they end up changing their politics.
	Even though their genes are the same as the one who stayed the same.
	Brainwashing works.
	There was no appeal to the one better educated, who had more facts, changed their mind.
	Nothing like that.
	They just had to be in an environment where other people had different opinions, and they changed their mind.
	It's as simple as that.
	We are not irrational people.
	All right, YouTube is testing some kind of community notes thing, similar to the way X does it.
	Now, I haven't seen it yet, but that's good news, right?
	Because on X, the community notes is a good check on somebody's lying or inaccuracy.
	Because when somebody tells a whopper, there's a pretty good chance there'll be a community note saying this is not true.
	So if YouTube were to do the same thing, that would be great, wouldn't it?
	Well, I'm on YouTube right now.
	So let me say this.
	YouTube is the most wonderful company.
	I've never known a company so wonderful as YouTube.
	They are fair and professional, and the last thing they would ever do is put their thumb on the community notes such that it simply supported the narrative.
	You could count on the fact that the community notes will be debunking every reference to the Fine People hoax.
	Right?
	Wait, no?
	Well, I would say that YouTube doing community note fact-checking is one of the most dangerous things I've ever seen in my life.
	Could it work out positively?
	Absolutely.
	It could.
	If they really did take their thumb off of the process and let it just run out.
	And if it's organized the way community notes are on X, where you have to get some kind of agreement or the note doesn't come, you might actually have something there.
	However, this depends entirely on YouTube having an interest in the information being accurate versus an interest in supporting the narrative.
	Which do you think is closer to the truth?
	That YouTube's interest is to get the most accurate information out there and get rid of the worst, or to support the narrative?
	Well, I would give you this perspective.
	If you're a big company that depends on the government's being on the good side with the government, you kind of have to do the narrative.
	I don't think it's optional for big companies.
	When was the last time a big company, especially a publicly traded company, when was the last time they told you the government's narrative was wrong and you should ignore it?
	I don't know.
	Does it ever happen?
	So we do have some questions about whether this would remove bias or create bias, but I'm going to compliment YouTube for testing it.
	You won't know until they do it.
	So, very much like I have highest marks for Elon Musk, trying a new way to get information to people through the conversation with Trump, I'm going to say that whether or not this works, the community notes on YouTube, it is absolutely the right thing to test.
	We'll have a good idea if it's working after a year or so.
	So, good on you, YouTube.
	Let's see what we can do.
	Fox News has a report about a Chicago Teachers Union representative claiming that standardized tests are racist and come from junk science and white supremacy and eugenics.
	And that's why the black kids are not doing so well in school because tests are racist and made by white supremacists to keep the black people down, I guess.
	Now that didn't go well with all of the callers.
	There was a black mother who called in and said, I did well on all the standardized tests and I'm pretty sure I want to raise a child who can do well on all the standardized tests.
	Why are you telling me that black people can't do well on standardized tests?
	That sounds Super racist.
	I'm adding that last part, the super racist part.
	But I do like the fact that there was a black mom who just added some black mom common sense to the teachers union, which is the most dangerous part of America right now.
	The teachers unions have destroyed... I think they've destroyed the country, really.
	Because everything that is a problem right now is the way people think.
	And all that came from the school system.
	So 20 years of the teachers' union is destroying America, and here we are.
	Anyway, so China's Huawei technology is they have some new chip that's going to compete with NVIDIA's AI chip.
	So it's a Chinese-made chip, so they don't have to rely on American technology.
	Because America has decided that China can't have the good chips.
	So I think NVIDIA is prevented from selling their best chips to China, so China's like, hell with you, we'll make our own chips.
	I don't think China's got chips that are quite up to NVIDIA's standard, but who knows if they can catch up or how long it'll take.
	But here's the interesting part.
	So China is desperately trying to decouple from requiring any American anything.
	They don't want American chips.
	They don't want American technology.
	They want to be able to have their own control because otherwise we'd have some ability to suppress them by suppressing our goods.
	But at the same time, America is trying to divest from the Chinese economy by bringing manufacturing home or moving in somewhere that's not China.
	So we're having the weirdest war.
	We're right in the middle of like a hard war with China, but without the bullet part.
	So the war is this.
	If the United States can keep China addicted to our products, let's say technology, but we can become unaddicted to their manufacturing and other products that we need because we get them somewhere else, then we would have power over China.
	Because we would say, well, you know, if you don't do this trade agreement or you don't get your ships out of the South China Sea, we won't sell you any technology and good luck trying to keep the lights on.
	Meanwhile, China would like to do the same thing to us, to not depend on us for any technology.
	But make sure that we're very dependent on them for pharmaceuticals and basic materials that we need to build everything.
	So, it's a weird war where we're acting like friends, but we're seeing who could reduce their dependence on the other enough that you can get some kind of financial leverage on the other.
	Does it seem to you like humans just like to be in wars?
	It's like we can't help ourselves.
	This is why I think Trump has the opportunity to be to do the biggest reframe in modern American history.
	And the reframe would look like this.
	Hey, Russia.
	Hey, China.
	You know that in the long run, the big war is going to be with Islam.
	And that we need to be on the same team because Islam is going to not want to be, you know, they're not going to change to Chinese culture.
	They're going to try to change you.
	So, this would be the time to make sure that Russia, China, and the United States are doing as well as possible for as long as possible, so that they have some ability to coordinate and protect from what will be a very large challenge in the future, which is just the population growth and whatever aggressiveness that comes from the Middle East.
	So, that's the way I'd play it.
	And I think Trump is good at that.
	He's good at explaining that what team you should be on and they should be on our team.
	The smart people are saying there's going to be an interest rate cuts because I guess the inflation went down a little bit and if inflation goes down, Then the Fed can say, hey, we did our job.
	And then they can lower their interest rates.
	If interest rates go down, I would expect the stock market to go up.
	And as I've been telling people for a year, you should expect the stock market to be artificially raised right around the election.
	And, you know, maybe it's a coincidence.
	Maybe it's not.
	But the people who would prefer Biden to get re-elected seem like they might be in the mood to shade some numbers, maybe go a little early on interest rate cuts, goose that economy a little bit, make the Harris team look a little stronger.
	So, we'll see.
	Anyway, there's a new...
	There should be a category called stupid news.
	So stupid news would be news that you didn't really even need to hear to know the news.
	Like Russia teaching its Navy to target Europe.
	I was like, I didn't really need to hear that because that's just basic obvious common sense.
	Well, here's another one.
	More pressure to try to come up with a ceasefire in Gaza.
	All right, so that's the story.
	That there's new movement to make a ceasefire in Gaza.
	So you say to yourself, oh, that's new.
	Like maybe finally they'll get there.
	All right, here's something else that's in the story.
	That the head of Hamas, Sinwar is his name, he said that if Israel is serious about negotiation, Uh, that first they have to stop their military operation in Gaza.
	Well, that's not going to happen.
	So what kind of negotiation is it?
	How about you stop doing everything you're doing and, uh, that'll be just the first step.
	But what will you do?
	Oh, we won't do anything.
	Just you stop fighting us.
	Okay.
	But usually, usually there's something that you do too.
	No.
	No, you just have to stop your military operation.
	That's not going to happen.
	So obviously Hamas has no real interest in, you know, stopping things.
	And Israel would probably say, how about you return the hostages and then we'll talk about slowing down the military thing.
	How about all your leaders surrender and you give us back all the hostages and then we'll have a conversation after that.
	But it looks like both sides, Have a requirement to begin the conversation that is the hardest thing that could ever happen and really impossible.
	So neither side wants peace.
	Now the people do, just to be clear.
	The people who are suffering in Gaza very much want a ceasefire.
	But Hamas, if they wanted one, they could get one easily.
	And if Israel wanted one, they would just stop fighting.
	So if you have both sides that prefer the fighting over the peace, the leadership, not the people, the people might want peace, but the leadership, they both want the fight.
	So of course it's not going to stop.
	I think Hamas thinks that every person that Israel kills in Gaza Get some closer to their goal of, you know, disgracing Israel and having some extra power over them in the future.
	And Israel, of course, has to take out the garbage and get rid of the terrorists because you can't live next to terrorists.
	So both sides are locked into a situation where they can't do anything different.
	Because they think they're winning in their own weird ways.
	So, yeah, nothing's gonna change.
	There's a little update on that story about the The son of one cartel leader in Mexico running some kind of a trick to bring the other cartel head into American custody, and America picked him up both.
	But maybe the one guy worked a deal, so maybe he'll be let down at some point, we don't know.
	But here's what we've heard.
	Now the younger man took hostage the head cartel leader from the other cartel.
	And he didn't just, you know, trick him into flying into the wrong airport.
	They actually, uh, they tied him to his chair.
	So he was actually, you know, abducted and tied up and then flown to America.
	Uh, now America says that they had nothing to do with it.
	They didn't have the plane, you know, just wasn't any of their assets involved.
	It was just completely a Mexican thing.
	Do you believe that?
	No, I don't.
	You know, if any part of our spooks were involved in this, they're supposed to say they weren't.
	So the fact that they say they weren't doesn't really mean anything.
	But I would say that whatever is happening here, the real story is nowhere near the surface story.
	I don't know what the real story is, but everything about that story stinks.
	Everything about it.
	So I don't know if it's an American plot to get the two cartels to fight each other.
	I don't know.
	But I don't trust any part of the story.
	All right.
	Ladies and gentlemen, I've gone on too far.
	I'm going to say goodbye to YouTube and X and Rumble, and I'm going to talk to my beloved local subscribers privately in a moment.
	The rest of you I will see tomorrow.

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