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Content:
Politics, Surgical Alzheimers Cure, AI Robot Drummers, AI Robot Pacing & Leading, Jeff Bezos Credibility, Oprah's Production Company, File Deletion Legal Strategy, Daniel Penny Trial, Pam Bondi AG Nomination, Matt Gaetz, MSNBC's Fate, Rachel Maddow, Democrat Political Strategy, Mike Rogers Rumor Debunked, President Trump Influencers, DOGE Government Reduction, Low Cost Healthcare, Government Reform, Social Security, China's Red Tape, Democrat Identity Politics, Pete Hegseth, Female Combat Positions, Russian Hypersonic Missile, Ukraine Russia War, ADHD Strategy, Scott Adams
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and you've never had a better time.
But, if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that you can't even understand with your tiny, shiny human brain, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes absolutely everything better.
It's called The Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now.
Go.
All systems coming online.
Boop, boop, boop, boop.
Well, if you can't get enough of me, and I think that explains most of you, you might enjoy a podcast I did with Paul Leslie.
You can find that on my feed for yesterday, I think.
And what's interesting about it is he asked better questions than most people ask.
So when you ask better questions, you get better answers.
And you might like it a lot.
So it's Paul Leslie.
If you want to find it on his feed on X, he goes by at the Paul Leslie.
So it's just all one word.
The Paul Leslie.
L-E-S-L-I-E. Hey, there's a new study.
Let's see if you can figure this out before I tell you how it went.
There was a new study, according to Science Blog, in which they tested to see if people's mental health worsened if they looked at negative feedback on their digital devices.
All right, what do you think, people?
If people were forced to look at a diet of negative information on their phones, for example, do you think it would help or hurt their mental health?
Well, you'll be surprised to learn that marinating in bad news can actually make you sad.
Yes, I know.
It's true.
The more exposure you have to negativity, the sadder you get.
But weirdly, the worse the news was, the more likely somebody was going to click it.
So we have this bad habit where we pursue things that make us feel bad, such as bad news.
Do you know how you could have saved a little money on that study?
That's right.
You could have just asked Scott.
Scott, does exposure to negative thoughts make you feel bad?
Huh.
Let me think about this.
Yes.
Yes.
Pretty sure it does.
So I'm glad we handled that.
I've actually taken this to the next level.
Do you have people in your life who will bring up the most darkest negative story of just some horrible thing happened to somebody or something you like?
And do you ever just say, stop, stop, and they can't stop?
Like, they want to tell you that, you know, somebody beloved had a railroad spike stuck through their head.
It's like your favorite person.
And you're just like, stop, stop.
And they go, oh, no, I was just going to tell you about that.
No, stop.
Stop.
I know what you're going to do.
And when you tell me that, it will only make me feel bad and there will be no positive outcome from this story.
So stop.
Stop.
Do not speak again.
Well, but just the railroad spike.
But no, stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Don't move your mouth.
No, no more sounds.
Stop.
And then the railroad spike went through the head.
For some reason, when somebody wants to tell you bad news, you can't stop them.
I don't know if you've had that experience, but it doesn't matter who it is.
You just can't stop them.
Anyway, there's a report that China has developed a surgical cure for Alzheimer's.
Now, I don't believe anything about this story.
Now, it came from a source I'm not familiar with, so it doesn't come with automatic credibility from any source.
But let me tell you what they say they've done.
You tell me if you think this is likely to be true.
So, apparently, they've done 42 clinical trials, and every one has been a success.
And what they're doing is they're doing some surgery on your neck lymphatics.
Now, of course, I understand medical technology deeply, so let me explain to you as it was written down in this report.
It's a deep cervical lymphatic venous enastomamosis surgery.
And the way they do that is, what they do is they use super microsurgery technology to sort of shunt the lymphatic circulation in the meninges, and then that will accelerate the return of the intracerebral lymph through the jugular foramen of the skull base and take away some of the metabolic products in the brain, thereby achieving the goal of possibly reversing the brain's degenerative lesions and slowing the progress of the disease.
Now, I know that you were thinking that's exactly what it did, so that was probably just review for a lot of you.
But do you really think that China reversed Alzheimer's in 42 different trials in a row, and it's the first you're hearing about it?
This doesn't even sound a little bit true, does it?
I'd love to think it's true, so for a recreational belief, I'm going to say, sure, sure, why not?
Maybe.
I don't think so.
The one thing you could guarantee about the age of robots is that people would use robots for things that you don't need robots for.
This is the dumbest one of all time.
Somebody invented a robot that can play the drums.
Now, you're going to say to yourself, I know, But Scott, there have been things called drum machines for a long time.
You could just program them and then they make sound.
And to which I say, well, but this is better.
They've added AI to it so it can make up its own beats.
Now that's pretty good.
Imagine if your AI drummer could come up with beats that you wouldn't even think of.
That'd be pretty good.
But you know what they did?
They put this capability in a robot.
So the robot has arms and they're trying to figure out how to make the wrists to be as snappy as human wrists.
To which I say, you're just producing sound, right?
That's the end product of the robot drummer?
If it's just sound...
Can't you just directly produce the sound?
Do you really need a robot arm to hit a drum?
There's no other way to produce that sound, like such as recording a drum?
I don't know.
I do like having a robot to play ping pong with me because at least I can get some exercise and play ping pong.
So if you know anybody who's making one of those ping pong playing robots, I'm in the market.
As soon as I can get one.
Well, there's another study from the University of Bristol about if you synchronize the movements of your robots and your humans, it builds trust.
So they call it harmonizing.
So trust between humans and robots is improved when the movements, let's say if you're just walking down the hallway, if the robot kind of synchronizes with the way you're walking or the way you're moving, Then your trust will be improved in both directions.
Now, I don't know how a robot develops trust, but it works in at least one direction.
Now, on one hand, it looks like an innocent little unimportant story about how robots learn to move the right way.
However, here's the part they don't tell you, and that's why I'm here.
If a robot starts pacing and leading, Meaning copying a human being, but then later it moves on its own and you see if the human copies the movement somewhat automatically without knowing it.
That is one of the most powerful methods of persuasion the world has ever known.
At the moment, it's something only humans can do.
So if you're in a meeting with your boss and your boss does this with his hands, do that with your hands.
If your boss does this and leans on the table, do that.
And after you've copied your boss for, say, 20 minutes while the boss is talking and there's a meeting going on, then see if you can get the boss to follow you.
So after you've copied the boss's art motions, you do a new one.
Put one hand up, let's say.
See how long it takes you for your boss to get into that same position.
You're gonna be amazed how easily it is to get people to change their physical position without knowing that you did it to them.
It's something we practiced in the hypnosis class, and I didn't believe it.
I didn't believe that it would work until the first time I did it.
And I thought, holy cow, did I just make somebody change their entire body?
Without them knowing it?
Yes.
And you can reproduce it.
It's very easy to reproduce.
But if you teach a robot how to manipulate humans by matching their Movements.
And then the next stage would be matching their language style.
So that's also a persuasion trick.
So if somebody likes to talk in military ways, do you know anybody who likes to use a lot of military terms?
Like, we're going to take that hill and, you know, I jumped on that hand grenade and, well, we'll live to fight again.
You know, those just continuous war-like things.
If you pace that and you adopt the same style when you're talking to them, They will begin to trust you, and you will begin to have a persuasive effect on that person.
It's pacing and leading.
We probably don't want to teach the robots to do it.
It's probably too dangerous.
Nobody's going to believe me about this, by the way.
If you are not steeped in persuasion as a hobby or a job, You wouldn't really know how dangerous this is.
But if these robots start copying the way we talk and the way we move, they're going to have full control over our minds.
Let me say that again.
If a robot can learn to talk like us, in other words, adopt the same mannerisms that we have individually, and also move like us, literally copying the way we move, It will almost have full control over your brain.
Now, I know you don't believe that.
But it's coming.
And there's nothing that can stop it.
Because of course the robots will learn this and be able to do it.
Of course they will.
And what would stop it?
You would almost have to legislate against it.
But since the field is still young, you don't want to put a bunch of regulations there that would stop everything.
So I think it's inevitable.
The robot's going to be very persuasive.
According to New Atlas, Raytheon has this new technology.
Where instead of the military having fuel lines, they would hook up some kind of big microwave power device and they could shoot power to the soldiers and the units from a distance without any physical interaction.
So in other words, you've got this device somewhere at the back of your battlefield, and all of your e-bikes and your robot dogs and your people who've got any kind of GPS or any kind of electronics, they go into the battle.
But of course, they'll run out of energy at some point.
The vehicles need to be recharged.
The devices need to be recharged.
And this thing can do it just by turning on and sending the signal out in all directions.
So it can actually recharge the military devices while they're being used from a distance.
Holy cow.
That's pretty cool.
Do you think that's actually going to work?
I think it's in the early stages of development, but they must have prototyped it already.
So that's interesting, but I also wonder if human soldiers are really going to be the future, because why would you ever send a human soldier into a battlefield in 10 years?
Ten years from now, why would you send a human at all into the most dangerous thing?
Because the drones are going to own the sky, and the robot dogs are going to own the ground.
There isn't really a place for a human in war, unless they're on the losing side, I guess.
Anyway...
You may remember that I did a podcast, well, I'll call it just a conversation, with Naval Ravikant.
And I did that on multiple platforms.
I did it on X and YouTube and Rumble and Locals.
Now, Locals is a subscription site, so that's limited audience.
But Owen Gregorian was looking at the numbers and noticed that on X, it has 1.1 million views.
I think closer to half a million might have watched the whole video.
But on YouTube, it has 62,000.
So on X, it was somewhere between half a million and a little over a million.
At the same time, it was all live and it went to all the platforms at the same time.
And YouTube only had 62,000.
Now, I know what you're going to say.
You're going to say, well...
Maybe less visibility or something.
But even on Rumble, there were 76,000 views.
So Tiny Little Rumble had way more views than all of YouTube for this content.
And X goes to a million of my followers right away.
So a lot of it is just that I have a lot more followers on X than I have anywhere else.
So that's always going to be bigger.
But does that look natural to you?
Does it seem natural to you that I could garner half a million to a million views?
And if you look at the comments, you know, people are very, very up on it.
I mean, they just loved it.
Does it sound to you as if I'm being suppressed?
I feel like it's super obvious and that it's always been the case.
So, can't prove it, because there is one explanation that would be normal, which is I just have, maybe I have a more active audience on X. Maybe it's just that.
But I doubt it.
If I had to guess, it looks like it's some kind of suppression.
Here's my favorite story of the day, but also the smallest story of the day.
It involves nine words.
And here's what's cool about it.
Do you know how we, you know, we've come to love our billionaires and also hate them?
So it's almost like the billionaire class has become like a wrestling show where you got George Soros who plays the heel, you know, and sometimes, you know, Reid Hoffman plays the heel, but then you've got your good guys, you know, your Elon Musks, and you got your, you know, anyway, I could go on.
But you know what I mean?
The billionaires, The ones with personalities, they like to be public.
Mark Cuban, for example.
They become a whole entertainment field in themselves.
Like, to me, they replace celebrities.
I have absolutely no interest in what Beyonce has to say.
I don't like her music.
No interest at all.
But if there's a good billionaire fight, oh, I'm all in.
I love to watch the billionaires do their thing.
Because for the most part, they didn't become billionaires by accident.
You know, there was something going on with these special people.
But here's the story.
So Elon Musk heard something at Mar-a-Lago and he posted about it.
Now, as you're going to hear in a moment, what he heard was not true.
So what he heard was, and it's not true, That he said he was at Mar-a-Lago, and that he heard from somebody there that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that Trump was going to lose the election for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock.
So that's what somebody told Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago.
So Elon posts it, and I appreciate the transparency.
So my first thing was, oh, so this is the thing that's going around.
Elon heard it, we didn't hear it, and now he posts it, so we've heard it too.
So I like the fact that he posted it.
And then Bezos weighs in, and this is his entire response.
Nope, 100% not true.
One, two, three, four words.
Four words.
Nope, 100% not true.
Musk responds, well, then I stand corrected with a laughing emoji.
Five words.
Now, here's what I love about this.
What are Musk and Bezos collectively most famous for, besides being rich?
They're our most efficient billionaires, right?
Amazon works because Bezos is an expert on efficiency.
I mean, he figured out how to do everything the fastest, best, lowest cost, most effective way.
And then Musk, of course, is the same.
He's like, you know, he's Doge.
He's the guy who took 80% of the people out of Twitter and it got better, right?
So you have the two most famously efficient people in the world.
And they had a problem.
One of them had heard a story that wasn't true and said it in public.
So how long did it take the two most efficient billionaires to fix this problem?
Nine words.
Nine words and done.
They'll never talk about it again.
It's done.
Nine words.
Now, here's why this is extra special.
You can think of a lot of billionaires who, if they deny this story, you wouldn't believe them, right?
Like, I don't have to name names.
But you can think of a lot of people right off the top of your head, like, if they denied a story, you'd say to yourself, eh, eh, but did they?
Yeah, of course you're denying it, but maybe you did.
But here's what I love about this story so much, that Jeff Bezos somewhat quietly, you know, if you can call it that, compared to other people, I guess, he builds this, you know, massively successful operation.
And as far as I know, I don't think anybody's ever accused him of lying.
I've never heard it.
So when I saw that he said, nope, 100% not true.
I immediately went to, nope, 100% not true.
There was not even a microsecond of, I wonder if he's lying.
Wouldn't that be an amazing superpower?
Imagine having a superpower where you can, in four words, completely change a news story because of your own credibility.
That's pretty damn rare.
And I think Musk recognized it too.
And just said, well, then I stand corrected.
We're done here.
I love this story.
I love when ordinary people make ordinary mistakes.
So it was a mistake to believe a rumor that wasn't true.
And then just immediately correct it and move on.
I just love everything about that.
Credibility.
Guess something.
All right, there's more talk about this Oprah situation of her taking the $2.5 million we hear.
At first we heard it was $1 million, but $2.5 million the production company took for getting Oprah to do her thing to promote Harris.
And Harris said, I took no money, but since we know the production company took $2.5 million, and it's her production company, People quite reasonably say, I think Stephen A. Smith said this, that it looks like Oprah might be lying.
And maybe she took money, but it went through the production company, so she was basically lying about it.
Now, connect this to the last thing I talked about.
When Jeff Bezos says, nope, 100% not true.
End of story.
End of story.
Oprah says, 100% not true.
I didn't take money.
It's the beginning of the story.
Apparently, Oprah is not as credible as Jeff Bezos.
Because when Oprah said it, nobody believed it.
Just nobody believed it.
Now, what's the difference?
Has Oprah lied to us?
Now, of course, when Oprah had her show, she had people on who promoted things that maybe didn't work out.
But we don't know that Oprah knew that, right?
So it's not like she lied.
But then we saw her doing her political thing and backing Harris, and we thought, huh, that doesn't look like just calling balls and strikes.
That looks like Something a little crazy, a little, I don't know, doesn't fit.
So Jeff Bezos gets basically not involved in politics.
And then when they ask him a question and he gives an answer, you go, oh, yeah, that's true.
But Oprah gets involved in a way that was awkward, frankly.
And then when she talks, people go, I'm not so sure.
I think you might be lying.
But I'm going to give you some recreational speculation on this story.
So I don't know anything about the details.
So this is just speculation, and it's just based on how the real world works.
And it's based on the fact that in the real world, people can be kind of shitty.
I don't know if you've noticed, but people can be kind of shitty.
So here's what I think might have happened.
And I think this strongly enough that if I had to bet on it, I would actually place a bet on this.
It's not 100% because it's just speculation, but I'd bet on it.
And here's the bet.
That Oprah, of course, makes money that flows through her production company, which is why people say, you did get paid.
You just did it through your production company, you liar.
But I would further assume that the production company does more than just handle Oprah's appearances, because it's a production company.
They probably do a wider variety of things, which means that whoever is in charge of the production company probably have their own financial incentives.
In other words, they would be judged by how well they support Oprah, but they would also be judged by their other lines of business within the production domain.
And their salary probably would depend on how well they do outside of pure Oprah business.
So, now if that's true, and I don't know that that's true, but it seems like a normal thing you'd expect that the production company has expanded to handle other operations.
That's why, that'd be one good reason for having a production company.
Now, if this production company was...
Smart, but kinda shitty.
And they start negotiating with the Harris campaign.
What's the first thing the production company is gonna figure out?
They're gonna figure out they're dealing with amateurs.
They're not dealing with really good negotiators, and they're not dealing with business people.
They're dealing with youngish, often, campaign people who are just so excited that Oprah might consider coming.
So they say, what's it going to cost to get Oprah here?
And the production company says, well...
You know, it's a big operation.
We gotta, you know, when Oprah travels, it's really expensive.
But we think we can do this for $2.5 million.
And then you can imagine the Harris campaign saying, all right, all right, that's worth it.
Because $2.5 million to get Oprah, that would be a market price.
Because the other performers, you know, were in that low million dollar range too.
So you could imagine And I'm speaking as the creator of the Dilbert cartoon.
You can imagine that the production company knew that Oprah wasn't going to take money for it, so they got to keep anything that they could negotiate.
So they would sort of leave the impression that the $2.5 million since it was going to Oprah's production company was sort of Oprah's money, you know, minus the expenses.
But if the production company didn't say that directly...
And they just said, this is what it's going to cost to get Oprah here.
We can put it in writing.
Oprah will be here.
We'll do the production.
You'll pay us $2.5 million.
Well, it could be that the Harris campaign didn't really care who was getting the money.
They just knew it would cost $2.5 million to get Oprah.
So here's what I think.
I think there was a weasel at the production company.
Who knew that if they thought they were getting Oprah, who may have said, I'll do it for free, they may have just sort of left that impression that they were paying for Oprah when really the production company was just boosting their own bottom line, some of which would go to Oprah, but maybe it was more about the production company itself and their own objectives.
So, here's what to look for.
See if Oprah fires the head of her production company.
It's probably somebody she's worked with forever, so you wouldn't fire them even if they did this.
But I wouldn't be surprised To learn that Oprah was not totally filled in on what the production company asked for or what they paid them or what they said.
Maybe because she just wouldn't be interested.
Her part was, do you want to show up?
Do you want to support Harris?
Yes.
That's all she needed to know.
And the production company handled the rest.
So if I'm wrong about all that, and by the way, what I'm describing would be sort of a normal way the world works.
It wouldn't be an abnormal way.
The most normal way it would work is the production company would say, oh, we've got a live one here.
I think we can take them for $2.5 million, and it'll only cost us a million to do the expenses.
Otherwise, Stephen A. Smith is right, and Oprah has some explaining to do, but I'm still going to give her the benefit of the doubt that there's somebody else in this operation that maybe has some explaining to do.
Meanwhile, the New York Times says OpenAI, who they're suing for using the New York Times content to train their AI, and the New York Times says, you can't do that.
That's our intellectual property.
You can't train your AI on it, and then suddenly it has all the learnings of the New York Times.
So part of the lawsuit required some files to be turned over by OpenAI to the New York Times, and you'll never guess what happened.
So the case relies on some files, and OpenAI had the files.
They were asked for these files through a legal process.
Can you take a wild guess?
What happened to the files?
Anybody?
Have any of you been alive for the last five years?
What do you think happened to the files?
There was a glitch.
Oh, damn it.
We sure meant to give you these files, but there's some kind of glitch.
They got corrupted or deleted or something.
So I guess these files aren't going to be useful, but darn, we sure wanted to give them to you.
I mean, we tried so hard, but we wish we could have.
But the glitch, the glitch got us.
Now, here's my question.
How many times in the last five years Has somebody who is some public figure or important entity managed to skate through a legal process by claiming that they lost or a file was damaged?
It turns out that seems to work every time.
Why would anybody ever turn over a digital source if they thought they could just destroy it?
Yeah.
Ding dong, the glitch is dead.
That's funny.
All right.
Well, I don't believe anybody who has a glitch and a file disappears, but maybe, you know, since it's within the range of things that could happen in a real world, however unlikely.
It looks like it works as a legal strategy.
It makes me wonder if there are lawyers who ever suggest the client does that.
You know, like, well, as your lawyer, I must inform you that you should not destroy any files.
As your lawyer, do not.
I'm going to put it in writing.
Do not destroy any files.
But also as your lawyer...
Just as background context, everybody who does destroy their files and claims it's an accident seems to get away with it.
But as your lawyer, I advise you not to do it.
Don't do that thing that everybody gets away with.
No, no, don't do it.
So I suppose that conversation's happening a little bit somewhere.
Meanwhile, according to Slay News, the Daniel Penny trial took an interesting turn with a forensic pathologist, Dr. Satish Shundru, who got in the window stand and said the chokehold did not cause the death.
He's a former Miami area medical examiner, so he knows what he's talking about.
And he said...
I did not believe the air choke.
He calls it an air choke as opposed to some people say there's a thing called a blood choke, which would be more severe.
But he called it an air choke.
And he said that the cause of death probably has something to do with the effects of sickle cell crisis.
So I guess he had a bad case of sickle cell anemia.
Schizophrenia.
I don't know how that kills you physically.
The struggle and restraint and the synthetic marijuana.
So he had something that wasn't marijuana.
There's some synthetic thing that's way worse.
I'd never heard of it, actually.
And he said, someone's schizophrenic high on K2. That's the synthetic marijuana thing, K2. And involved in a struggle can die without a chokehold being involved at all.
And then he said, and I think this is sort of the kill shot.
He said, what's also important is unconsciousness always precedes death in a chokehold.
So, in other words, when they showed up, he was conscious.
And then he died.
He was no longer being choked, and he was conscious, and then he died.
And if I interpret this right, I think the forensic pathologist is saying that if the guy stopped choking him and he was conscious, then whatever killed him wasn't the choke.
Is that true?
Well, I'm no forensic pathologist, but I'll tell you, if I were on the jury...
And I heard one pathologist say, oh, I'm pretty sure he killed him with that choke.
And then another one who's equally qualified said, no, nobody dies from being conscious after the choke.
That's not a real thing.
And he had real other reasons he would have died that would be somewhat ordinary.
Now, that is clearly enough doubt that That there shouldn't be any way he could be convicted.
Because you don't need a lot of reasonable doubt.
You just need some reasonable doubt.
This is way more than reasonable doubt.
Right?
If you're going to say, like, what does a bucket of reasonable doubt look like?
It would look like this.
One of my favorite court stories is about the lawyer who was trying to defend his client with reasonable doubt.
He didn't have a strong case, but he wanted to make the jury think that reasonable doubt was a little stronger than maybe it is.
And so here's what the lawyer did.
He said in his closing statements, not only is my client completely innocent, but the real killer is walking through that door right now.
And said he's going to walk through the door right now.
And he turns and he points toward the door.
Everybody in the jury box turns toward the door.
All the witnesses turn toward the door.
The judge looks toward the door.
And then nothing happens.
The door does not open.
And there's this awkward silence.
And then the defense attorney turns back to the jury who are still looking at the door.
And now they look back at the lawyer.
A little time has passed.
And the lawyer says, that is reasonable doubt.
Because they had enough belief that there was another explanation for the crime, that every one of them looked at the door and waited for the real criminal to walk in.
Now, that's a little bit too clever, and I don't think that would actually win you a case.
Was it Jerry Spence?
I was wondering that.
I wonder if it was Jerry Spence, or did he just tell the story?
He may have told the story, but I don't know if it was him.
Could have been.
Could have been Jerry Spence.
But now that's trying to sell reasonable doubt, you know, if there's just a trace of it.
In the real world, you need a little bit more than somebody's walking through the door.
It might have won that trial, but, you know, generally speaking, you need more than that.
But if you've got an expert who says, nope, I'm quite sure this person could have died of other causes.
That really needs to be the end of it.
So, here's what I'm worried about.
What happens if it goes the other way?
Because I feel like...
I think the men in America are kind of done with this, and the white men in America are very done with it.
I don't know what would happen.
I'm not predicting violence.
But if Daniel Penney gets convicted after this expert says this, we're going to have a lot of questions.
And I don't think it's going to be business as usual.
Here's what I don't think.
I don't think the process just processes and puts them in jail.
I assume there'd be some appeal process.
But I feel like there's a point where the public just has to take over.
And I think the public has to make it clear that we're watching this thing.
And ultimately, the public does have all the power.
Because there are enough of us, and if we're mad enough, whoever it is we're mad at is going to have a really bad day.
One way or another.
Again, I'm not recommending violence.
So I really think we need to keep an eye on this one.
We can't let this one get away.
We men, mostly, we've got to protect them.
And I feel like a personal responsibility to do that.
It feels personal to me.
Very personal.
Because Daniel Penny, I don't know him, of course...
But he's everybody.
He is every guy.
He's every guy.
So I don't really feel him as different from me.
Like, when I watch Daniel Penny, I'm not watching some stranger, even though I don't know him.
I've never heard him talk.
I'm watching me.
So if you don't think I'm going to have a problem with him being convicted, if that's the way it goes, well, you're wrong.
And there will be consequences.
I don't know what there will be.
But let me just say this to any part of the world that is looking to put this guy away.
You better be really careful.
Because this one's not free.
You know what I mean?
This is not free.
And you don't know what the price is yet.
And we're not going to tell you.
You could have to fucking find out.
But this one's not free.
So let's hope for the best.
Golden Age is here.
I think he's going to get free.
But if he's not, it's going to be expensive.
One way or another, it's going to get real expensive.
Well, the big story of the day, Matt Gaetz bowed out in his bid to be Attorney General.
And Trump cleverly already filled that news cycle by putting up Pam Bondi, who was Attorney General in Florida and is a close confidant and super loyal, highly qualified.
Almost everybody says she's a better choice than Matt Gaetz simply because she doesn't have the baggage, but she has even more skill, more experience, more direct experience and that kind of job.
So I'm very happy with this.
But here's the other thing.
Did we just learn that Trump is not a dictator?
I think we did, right?
Can we stop talking about that then?
Here's what I saw.
Now, my take on Trump has always been he's the opposite of a dictator.
He's actually more tuned into the opinions of the public.
And other politicians than anybody I've ever seen.
So here it didn't look like it was going to work.
He tried.
He would have pushed it.
If Matt Gaetz had wanted him to, he would have pushed it, which I appreciate, just from the loyalty perspective.
He returned the loyalty.
But Matt Gaetz did a solid.
At least that's my interpretation of it.
And when he talked to all the politicians who had to vote for him, he realized he couldn't get it.
And he probably didn't want to do the recess appointment thing and just cause a bunch of provocation.
And so he decided to back out.
Now, so what we get is...
So here's the outcome.
Number one, Gates sucked all of the energy in the news cycle toward him for several days so that the other nominees didn't get nearly as much scrutiny.
That was probably useful, but I don't think it was a plan.
It just worked out that way.
We found out that Trump can't do anything he wants, and he will respond in a reasonable way when he reaches an obstacle that doesn't make sense to try to break it down.
So that's a huge win for Trump.
It won't be in the news.
The news will just ignore the fact that we've now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump has Does not have dictator powers.
And it doesn't look like he's trying to.
It looks like he was trying to respond to the public.
Because even the Republicans were saying, you know, not your best play.
We see why you're doing it.
We do want to attack dog in that job.
But maybe not your best play.
And Trump listens to the people.
Takes Matt Gaetz's recommendation, which was also listening to the people and the politicians.
And we get, what do we get?
We get a better candidate.
We get some, you know, diversity that I think was useful.
You know, a woman in the job, that's useful.
He gets the same amount of loyalty, higher level of experience, probably will sail through the confirmation.
And Matt Gaetz still has other opportunities.
Now, we don't know what he's going to do.
Some say he's going to run for governor.
I don't think so.
Some say that he might try to get appointed to senator.
I don't think so.
Some say that he could just retake the seat he resigned from because he technically resigned from his current seat, but he's been elected for a future seat.
And I heard this on social media, I think it's true, that he could just pretend like he didn't quit, you know, do a George Costanza and just go to work.
Now, he might have to go to work after the second, you know, the next term, so he'd have a few weeks off for Christmas, but it would be hilarious if he just George Costanza's this situation and he just goes to work after everybody thought he quit.
I don't know if that's legal.
But if he got elected and he didn't resign from the upcoming term, at least on social media, people are saying he could do it.
I don't think he will, because it would put him right back in that place where the ethics report could come out.
So, I think he's not going to go back into government right away.
He might later.
But Here's what I think would be his perfect situation.
The thing that Trump needs more than he needs one more loyal soldier doing the thing Is another big media entity that supports them.
Because you saw, you know, all the media entities are under some kind of fire from the left.
So if Matt Gaetz decided to take his existing podcast and just beef it up and get more interesting guests and go full Alex Jones and, you know, really make it like a sort of a foundational thing that conservatives listen to, He has all of those skills.
I'm looking at a message going by.
Yeah, so Gates has all of those podcasting skills with the behind-the-curtain knowledge, with all the contacts, with the ability to invite anybody on the show, name recognition.
It's kind of perfect.
So I've got a feeling he might go into the media.
That would be where he would have the most impact and make the most money, etc.
But there's one other possibility.
I'll just put this out there.
He's married to the sister of Palmer Luckey, who's the creator of Anduril.
Is that the name of it?
It's a defense company.
It's a new one, and they do kind of newer, cooler, high-tech defense stuff like drones that can do things and other things.
Now, suppose...
That Palmer Luckey wanted an executive to put in the company to help it go public.
Well, that would be good for his sister, because his sister would be married to somebody who would get massive stock options and become a billionaire within three years.
Maybe.
Because the company looks like it's ragingly successful, and I think it's still private, as far as I know.
So they would presumably be looking at a way to go public and cash out.
And maybe he could be some officer in that company.
So, there's so many things that he could do that it's hard to, you know, I don't think any of us are going to guess what's happening.
So, I'm going to say this.
I don't think we'll ever know what the real story was.
I don't think, I mean, it could be as simple as just exactly what he said.
He wanted it.
Trump wanted it.
There were about four or five senators who said no.
He knew he couldn't change the mind, didn't want to do the recess appointment.
He just pivoted.
But the weird thing about this is that everybody wins.
Isn't that weird?
When is the last time you saw a story where everybody wins?
We get a better attorney general, one that's less controversy.
Matt Gaetz will be turned loose to do something that's probably something he's better at.
Trump still wins because he gets what he wants.
I don't know.
Just seems like everything worked out there.
But MSNBC is saying that Bondi is worse because she's competent.
So MSNBC went from, he's the worst choice in the world, to, okay, she's worse because she's good.
Okay.
The Republicans who allegedly were not going to support Gates were John Curtis, Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski, Alaska, And Mitch McConnell, Kentucky.
Mitch McConnell.
Anyway.
Bill Reilly had some interesting things to say on News Nation with Cuomo about MSNBC's fate.
So it looks like Comcast who owns both NBC News and CNBC and MSNBC. It looks like they might be looking to spin off MSNBC and CNBC. And that makes sense because MSNBC's audience took a big hit.
It'll probably come back after Trump gets in office because he'll have something to yell about.
But it doesn't look like it's a good business.
So they're going to spin it off.
And what Bill O'Reilly said made a lot of sense to me.
That MSNBC takes advantage of NBC's news business so that they can add the credibility of the real news to their opinion pieces.
But if you separate them, They are no longer connected to any real news collecting entity, and it would be massively expensive to create one from nothing.
The MSNBC doesn't have anything to sell, because all they have are these amazingly overpaid pundits, but they wouldn't be a news organization.
It would just be a bunch of opinions, because they'd lose the news.
Now, I don't know if that's real, but it's the first take I've heard on that that's Interesting.
And O'Reilly thinks that ABC will have to dump The View for the same reason.
Now, O'Reilly's take is that MSNBC's big problem is that it was nothing but hate and that The View has a similar problem, that they're spewing hate.
Audiences don't like hate.
Apparently, hate doesn't sell as much as you want it to.
And I think Bill O'Reilly is pretty close on this.
At least it's an interesting speculation that MSNBC doesn't have any value outside of NBC News.
Apparently Rachel Maddow has renegotiated her outrageous $30 million a year pay.
For being on the air only one night a week.
So obviously, you can't go on forever getting $30 million a year if you're only on one night a week.
So she had to lower her pay to $25 million a year, one day a week.
I've got a suggestion.
I'm not a huge fan of Rachel Maddow, her politics, but I will note that you can't take away from her that she's unusually smart.
If you hook her up to an IQ test, she's going to beat me.
Really smart.
But now we learn she might be the best negotiator you've ever heard of in your life.
Who in the world can negotiate $25 million a year for one show a week?
That's really good when your network is failing.
How do you do that?
So they're trying to sell this network, and it's got this big expense that couldn't possibly make sense.
But she must be one good negotiator.
There's an MSNBC headline that will remind you why they're full of hate and they're losing.
It was an opinion piece, but the headline was, Lakin Riley's killer never stood a chance.
For all the political controversy surrounding Jose Ibarra, the outcome of this trial was never in doubt.
Does it sound a little bit like MSNBC was glad the migrant killed the American citizen?
Like, what is wrong with them?
His killer never stood a chance.
The MSNBC is worried about the killer getting a fair trial.
There was so much evidence of his guilt.
It wasn't like a close call, was it?
Poor MSNBC. I saw NPR says most of the country shifted right in the 2024 election.
Did we?
Did the country shift right now?
I'm not sure that's what happened.
Here's what I think happened.
I think the right kind of stayed the same.
You know, in other words, policies and stuff didn't change much.
And the left became batshit crazy.
When batshit crazy clearly stopped working, it worked in 2020, but when it stopped working, they started becoming more common-sensible.
Is that a word?
Commonsensible?
Commonsensical?
Pick one.
But I think all they did was stop being crazy and start being a little bit more normal, and that looked like a move to the right.
I heard somebody else say on social media that nobody moved to the right, they just didn't have a rigged election this time, so it looks like it.
I don't buy that.
Whether or not there was rigging, I don't buy that explanation.
I think that the left had enough people in it that understood that the left had just gone crazy.
It was just batshit bonkers stuff.
And they just said, we've had enough of this.
We're going to give the other side a chance.
Because the other side is at least trying to sell common sense.
You could disagree with it.
But Republicans are trying to sell common sense.
Now, this connects me to a topic I've mentioned before.
As you know, I've been at least listed as a Democrat most of my life.
And for my early years, you know, say my 20s or so, I was pretty sure that the Democrats were the smart ones.
And the Republicans sort of had a religious base that wasn't translating into policy so well.
So that seemed like a little disconnect to me.
Because I wasn't religious.
So I didn't see that religion should be playing so much of a part in decisions.
But the Republican Party...
Has evolved into more of a common sense, you know, we love our religion, but we'll keep that separate.
You know, for our policy, we'll just do what makes sense.
Now, obviously, Republican policy is still well informed by religion, but it's not the leading voice, right?
It seems like when I was in my 20s, they'd start with the religious part and then tell you why they had the policy.
Right?
And then that would turn me off.
Because I'd say, hey, what if people have a different religion?
Don't start with that.
Now look at how Trump handles abortion.
He doesn't start with religion.
He starts with process.
He says, well, having the states decide is a better process.
There you go.
Now that's my common sense.
Common sense says, put the decision where it's best to make the decision, and then it's easier to defend no matter what happens, because at least it was made in the right way.
So watching Trump turn the religious first people into a still religious, doesn't change their belief, but he's found a way to put process ahead of it, and the process does all the work.
You don't need to appeal to the God or the Bible because the process does what it's supposed to do.
So I think that made it safe for people like me who are uncomfortable with the religion first, but like religion.
I'm very pro-religion for other people.
If you have one, keep it.
I like it.
I like you to have one.
It just doesn't work for me, which, by the way, is a fault.
If I could get the benefits of religion and I had a way to believe, I would do it, because it's pretty obvious that the religious people have some advantages.
Anyway, here's some new news.
We keep talking about Mike Rogers' As being one of the possibilities for the head of the FBI. And all the smart people were saying, my God, my God, no, that would be a huge mistake.
No, no.
Mike Rogers, according to people who know more than I do, was part of the industrial censorship thing.
And he was pushing the Russia collusion hoax and did some other things that Republicans think is not too compatible with the Trump movement.
But it turns out it was all fake news.
So Trump just messaged that he's never even considered Mike Rogers, even thought about it once.
And he's definitely not going to be the head of the FBI. Now, remember how I said when Jeff Bezos says four words, you just say, oh, that's true.
Like, you never even, not for a second, you doubt his veracity.
But when Trump says it, you know, Trump has a little bit more of a history of hyperbole and, you know, bending the fact check a little bit.
So when he says, I never once even considered Mike Rogers, you have to wonder...
Is that exactly true?
Or maybe his name came up at a dinner, and Trump maybe didn't respond to it one way or another, and then somebody left the dinner saying, oh, Mike Rogers' name is on the table.
So you can easily imagine that the rumor would start without Trump starting it, just by Trump maybe not responding to that suggestion or something.
But he's saying very clearly it's not going to happen.
Now, why did Trump say it's not going to be Mike Rogers?
Because normally you only announce who it's going to be.
Isn't that uncommon?
Sort of uncommon, right?
To announce who it's not?
Did that happen before Trump?
Do other politicians announce who it's not?
That was weird.
But here's the other thing.
Do you know why Trump said it's not Mike Rogers?
Because Trump tapped into his base, listened to what they were saying, heard there was all this, you know, don't pick Mike Rogers chatter going on, and realized that he needed to tell us that that was off the table.
Now, whether it was always off the table or he just saw the chatter and said, oh, let me take this off the table now, I don't really care, you know, because it gets us to the same place.
But once again, it's another example of Trump being absolutely tapped in and responding to reasonable criticisms about the direction that people think he's going.
I love that.
I mean, there's so many positive things happening in the government, in the country.
It's kind of incredible, like the optimism people are feeling, etc.
But when I see even these little corrections, you know, like the Bezos-Musk thing, to me, that's just a perfect moment in human behavior.
When I see Trump listen to the public and say, oh, you're having a problem with this Mike Rogers thing, so let me fix that.
That's perfect.
I'm not asking for anybody to be right about everything in the first draft, not even the second draft.
But if you respond to the situation and you respond in a common sense way and you show respect to your base and you're listening to what they're saying and you hear what they're saying, that's kind of perfect.
I'm not looking for no mistakes.
That's not my standard.
Mistakes are ordinary.
I'm looking for, do you have a system that can quickly identify and correct a mistake?
Yes.
Trump has a system.
He listens.
He pays attention.
And here's the important part.
He knows which part of his base are credible.
So if you've got a Glenn Greenwald and you've got a, you know, Mike Benz and half a dozen other people, I think Mike Cernovich, if you've got those kind of people on the same side and they're making a big deal about it, it's not a small point, it's a big point, and then the boss says, okay, I hear you.
That's exactly what I want.
Like, that's the country I want to live in.
I want to know that Ordinary people can influence the influencers.
It happens to me all the time.
People who are not famous make a good point, and I say, oh, that's a good point.
And then I say it out loud, and some other influencer hears it and repeats it.
All right.
Here's my favorite thing about the Doge thing, where Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are going to try to cut the fat out of the government and reduce our costs.
We're going to watch two of the smartest, most effective operators that we've ever seen, Vivek and Elon.
And we're going to watch them attack An impossible problem.
Because I literally can't think of any way you could do this.
I can't think of any way they could succeed.
Because the big things to cut are the sacred cows.
So when we watch their strategy as they approach this, you're going to see the smartest people in the world do the smartest things against the most impossible task.
How fun is that?
Like, I wouldn't even know how to bet on this thing.
Because on one hand, it's definitely an impossible task.
On the other hand, it's Vivek and Elon.
How do you bet on that?
I mean, seriously, how could you place a bet on that?
They could actually get this done.
I don't know how, but that's the fun part.
The fun part is, I don't know how this is possible.
But they might.
Now, I don't think they have it solved.
I think they're still, you know, walking around the car and kicking the tires and finding out what works.
They're putting up some test balloons, you know, some statements, a little bit of an article in the, I don't know, Wall Street Journal someplace, and then people react to it.
So one of the things they're doing is they're going to do a blog where they're fully transparent.
Now, what would make you comfortable with two unelected people and not even nominated?
They're not elected and they're not nominated, but having this massive control over the country, the world, and you.
How would you feel comfortable with that?
Only one way.
Full transparency.
So that's what they're giving us.
They're telling you how they're doing it.
They're modeling it in advance.
They're telling you what they're thinking.
They're telling you their early thinking, which might change.
And one of their early thinkings is that if they simply make the government go into the office instead of work from home, there would be a huge number of people who just resign because they don't want to commute.
To which they would say, good, that's part of the job done.
Then, their next play, and again, this is stuff that smart people come up with that I don't know if I would have.
They say that there are a lot of the red tape and, let's say, rules and regulations that the government has that were not passed by Congress.
They're not an executive order.
It's just these entities are coming up with their own rules.
And if you simply get rid of all the rules you don't need that are more problem than they are solution, then all the people who work on those rules don't need to be employed.
Because there must be a massive number of people who make sure that the rules are being followed.
So instead you just say, we don't need all these rules.
Get rid of them.
And then you can get rid of the staff that enforced the rules and made the rules.
But if you add all those things together, That might be 1% of what they want to get done, but they're leading with that.
Why would they lead with that?
Because it's common sense, because they're thinking about it, they're being transparent, and it is something that looks like it would work.
The most important thing they have to do is make something work early.
It could be small, but it has to work.
So if the first thing they did was say, all right, here's a batch of rules that we think we can just get rid of them, and here's the team of people that's going to leave as soon as those rules leave, boom!
Look at us.
Two weeks in, and we just got rid of 300 administrators who weren't useful.
So what you see early, you should interpret it as the new CEO move, meaning that by far the most important thing...
I'm seeing something about Mike Rogers here.
It's Dan Scavino who said that Trump was not considering Mike Rogers.
So it didn't come from Trump directly.
It went through Dan Scavino, but you can trust Scavino on that.
If you didn't know, Dan Scavino is like one of the longest, closest Trump supporters.
So if Scavino says that Trump said something or didn't say something, you can take that to the bank.
You don't have to ask any more questions.
Yeah, he's 100%.
So anyway...
The hard part, as you all know, is that you can't touch the Medicare and Social Security and it's going to be tough to touch the military.
Although, interestingly, Cenk Weger offered to Elon to help him cut the defense budget because he said, hey, Democrats have wanted to cut the defense budget forever.
Why can't I help?
And then immediately Cenk was piled on by Democrats saying, What the hell are you doing helping these Republicans?
And Cenk quite reasonably said, why can't we do the thing we all agree on?
What exactly is the reason I should not be putting my time and energy and reputation into the thing I've most wanted to do for years, which is get rid of unnecessary defense spending?
And Elon's reaction was, he's open to suggestions.
Now, I don't think that Cenk was offering to join the committee exactly, or join DOGE, but he might have some ideas.
And Musk says, sure.
We like ideas.
So, we'll see if that goes anywhere.
So, here's what I'm most interested in.
I do think that Vivek and Musk They have to have some idea of what to do about the big, untouchable parts of the budget.
Otherwise, they wouldn't even try.
Because if they thought the best they could do is take $200 billion out of the small part of the budget, that doesn't get you anywhere close.
I mean, you've got to take $2 trillion out of your $6 trillion to get down to a balanced budget.
And $2 trillion is not even close to what you can get from people quitting on their own because they don't want to commute.
Plus, we got rid of some regulations so we don't need this department.
Not even close.
And a lot of things that would be eliminated...
Doesn't mean that the funding is eliminated.
For example, if they take the Department of Education and they say, let's blow this up and give it to the states, the states would probably get most of that money, except for the administrative part.
So I don't really see a path how any of this can work, and I would still bet that they can get it done.
Because, you know, both of them operate at a level I can't quite get to.
And both of them seem to have optimism that they can make something happen.
So, what would they do with healthcare and...
Well, let's just pick one.
Was it welfare or was it social security?
So, social security and healthcare.
Do you think...
And keep in mind that Vivek knows the medical world better than most people.
So do you think that they could come up with something that would radically change what those things are so that the cost of them comes down and yet the public is still served?
I think so.
I don't know what it would be, but I can sort of smell it before I see it.
I feel like there's a way to do it.
For example, Let's say they promoted...
I'm just going to brainstorm for a minute, so don't take any of this too seriously.
Suppose they said, AI is so close to being your doctor that if you want low-cost healthcare...
We'll make sure that that healthcare AI sector gets really turbocharged so that there's basically a government doctor and everybody has instant access.
So if you've got a smartphone, you've got a doctor.
It's free.
Then what about medicines?
Do you think they could figure out a way to bring down the cost of meds?
Well, Here's the interesting thing.
That's what Mark Cuban's business is trying to do.
So Mark Cuban's had some success with specific drugs, but it looks like that could increase.
And he has lowered the cost of some meds.
Now, I think that Vivek and Musk, along with Trump, could negotiate with the big pharma To spread some of that cost to other countries.
Because right now, the US pays a premium for the drugs.
Other poor countries get them for low cost because America is paying for all the overhead and development.
Effectively, we're subsidizing.
So what if they figured out a way to stop subsidizing or just make it illegal?
Make it illegal to sell it for more in the United States than other places, and that would move this subsidy to the other places.
How much would that save?
A few hundred billion?
It could be a pretty big deal.
So then what would be missing, let's say if your drug costs come down through better negotiating, and your cost of talking to an expert, whether it's a doctor or a specialist, drops to zero.
Because that's possible.
The cost of talking to a doctor could be completely replaced by AI. Then what you have is the physical manipulation part, where if somebody has to put something on you, you know, like put a bandage on you or set your bone or something, you still need to do that.
But I'll bet there's a way to make that more competitive as well.
So I think it's going to have to be an entire re-engineering and restructuring of what healthcare looks like, maybe with AI. And then if you're looking at Social Security, I'll bet there's a way to make sure that people are doing something useful for their money without being on Social Security.
Suppose you said you could trade away your Social Security, but there's this other thing you can get.
How many people would say, oh, I don't need my Social Security.
I did well in life, but I like this other thing that you're offering, so I'll take this other thing.
Suppose he said that if you voluntarily give up your Social Security forever, because you're rich, that you'll be first in line for a trip to Mars.
That's the bad idea.
So that's an example of the bad suggestion that might make you think of a better one.
What could you trade for people to give up their Social Security?
It's possible.
Well, speaking of Doge, China apparently has an even bigger problem with red tape because a ton of the Chinese workers are involved in creating and maintaining red tape and reporting things.
So I guess if you're in China business, a whole bunch of your life is just doing reports on what's happening in your job.
So even President Xi wants the country to learn how to not be that way.
Because they also have, you know, huge overhead.
So here's what they say, that they spend too much energy pretending they're implementing policy.
This is according to one expert named Lee.
Centralization is good for political decisions.
However, for economics, you do need a certain kind of chaos.
So they're Their commercial stuff in China is so over-regulated, I guess you'd say, that it's like a big wet blanket on it.
So, as I've said before, the Doge thing is not just about fixing our debt.
If we can figure out how to have a more efficient, smarter government system, one that makes sense in the current times, that is a gigantic, gigantic military and economic benefit.
So, watching Musk, who of course would be an expert in the entrepreneurial arts, realize that the biggest obstacle is the government, and then he's the one who's right in the middle of trying to fix it so it works for commerce.
Do you think China can match that?
Let's say they pull it off.
Let's say Vivek and Elon pull it off.
And they really modernize our government in a way that's still compatible with the Constitution.
In fact, maybe more compatible with it.
And still gets everything done.
But we can do things quickly, such as approve a nuclear power plant.
Just to pick one example.
How much would the United States be different if we had an efficient way to say yes to a nuclear power project?
Well, we're getting closer to that.
The government is working in that direction.
But if we could really just kill that, you know, just slay that opportunity, so to speak, that'd be huge.
So I think the fate of the United States really depends on Doge, and I don't think there's another country that can match us.
Because there is one thing we have that other countries don't have.
We've got a dictator.
Yeah, the dictator, Trump, has basically decided to voluntarily share power with an unelected person who simply got the best ideas.
Now, two of them, Vivek as well.
So remember I always told you that the person with the best idea is always in charge?
And you probably thought that's a small idea.
Oh, maybe that works in that one meeting you were in, Scott, but that's not generally true.
Oh, it's true.
The person with the best idea is always in charge.
So Elon comes in with the best idea, which is, how about you take the smartest, most badass entrepreneur, working with other smartest, badass entrepreneurs, and we try to fix our most critical problem in the government.
What's Trump going to say to that?
No, that's a bad idea.
No, it's a great idea.
It's like the greatest idea I've seen, like, maybe ever.
It's such a great idea, it's almost, you can't even hold it in your mind, it's such a great idea.
And so Trump says yes.
If he were a dictator, he would not be sharing power.
That's just not how that works.
Now, he's, of course, confident enough, Trump is, that he's still the president, so he gets what he wants.
But if Musk and Ramaswamy come up with an idea that's just so good that the public says, oh yeah, that's just a good idea, Trump's going to say yes, because the best idea always wins.
They're going to be coming.
They're going to be coming with ideas.
All right.
A couple of things.
How to fix the Democrats.
The Democrats are trying to figure out how to recover.
I have the following comments about that.
Number one, identity politics is a permanent death.
I don't think there's a path to recovery.
I think the Democrats are thinking, okay, it's sort of business as usual.
We just have to do a little better messaging, maybe organize our campaign a little differently.
It's not that.
It's the identity stuff.
The identity stuff is what made everything crazy.
It's what made Democrats walk away.
If they don't get rid of the identity politics, they don't have any way to recover.
But here's the trick.
If they do get rid of the identity politics, then they're just Republicans, and they don't have any reason to exist.
So you can't keep the identity politics, but you also can't get rid of it, because it would just destroy them for years.
The Republicans never entered the identity politics, so they have no burden to get rid of it or change anything in that regard.
They're completely unburdened by it.
But there's no way to fix it.
So the Democrats painted themselves in a corner that literally doesn't have a way out.
I don't think there is.
Now, let me suggest one Hail Mary way that they could get out of it.
I think that the media runs the Democrats more than the other way around.
And if the media decided only to tell stories that were true and useful and common sense, that it would force Democrats to be useful and common sense.
Because the media would say, here's a great idea and here's a terrible idea.
What are the Democrats going to say if it's their own media?
If CNN says, oh, this new idea is just a terrible idea, and then you're a Democrat and you turn on the TV and you're like, oh, shoot, CNN thinks this is a terrible idea, what does MSNBC say?
Oh, God, they hate it too.
The media runs the politics.
So if the media somehow and I don't see a way this could happen but if the media started to become a legitimate contributor to the country instead of whatever they are They could actually change the whole Democrat machine.
In fact, the media could get them out of their identity politics whole just by the way they frame things and just de-emphasize it, etc.
Don't do continuous trans stories all day long.
That's the media, right?
It wasn't the Democrat politicians who kept saying, can we talk about trans some more?
It wasn't them, it was the media.
So if the media fixes itself, the media that supports the Democrats, then that could cause the Democrats to make the adjustments which might make them more mainstream, which would make them competitive.
But how is the media going to change?
I don't see how that's going to happen.
Unless MSNBC just goes away and the others say we'd better shape up.
But the other possibility...
Is that they get a new charismatic democratic leader, and people are voting for the person, not the policies.
Totally policy.
You know, so if you got another, you know, once in a generation kind of leader, you know, maybe another Obama type.
Maybe.
Maybe.
But if they don't get an Obama type and they don't get their media to fix the media's own problems, there is no way to come back.
They seem to be in a permanent exile.
So Democrats are coming up with some new fake fears because this is some more evidence of how the media can't fix itself.
So the media on the left, they don't have enough to complain about from Trump, so they're making up some new fake ones.
Of course, that's what they do.
So one of them is that they're saying that P. Hegseth, who's nominated for Secretary of Defense, they claim that he says women are not qualified for military service.
That, of course, is not true.
He did not claim that.
In fact, like the fine people hoax, he worried that you might think it, so he made sure that you knew he wasn't saying that.
I mean, I watched him do that.
He very clearly says, yes, I have worked with women in the military who were great at their jobs.
He's talking about combat.
Now, I don't have an opinion about that, because I think the people who have been in combat are the ones I would listen to.
So if you've been in combat, or you know a lot of people who have been in combat, and those people say, I've got to tell you, I love women.
I love them in support roles.
I've worked with a lot.
I've done great.
But when the bullets start flying, and I heard a special forces guy say this.
I forget who it was.
It was on some podcast recently.
And this is super sexist.
So I'm just reporting what somebody else said.
This is not my own observation.
He said that when the bullets start flying, that the women freeze up.
And that he's seen him multiple times.
And that the men, either through training or selection or whatever it is, are more likely to go on offense, which might be exactly what you need for the best defense.
But they kind of had to push the women in the direction they needed to go.
Now, that's anecdotal.
And I don't support that interpretation.
It's just one that got some attention.
But if the people who have been in that situation...
Collectively say, yeah, there's something to it.
I would listen to that.
And by the way, I have no interest in women being in combat.
Like, I don't like it.
It offends me On a DNA level.
It's not even politics.
My DNA can't handle it.
It's just no.
How about just no?
Because part of being a man is that you feel like you're protecting women and children.
I don't know.
Is that built into us?
Am I socialized that way?
Or is it just natural?
So when you tell me, oh, the woman you're trying to protect is standing next to you in the hail of gunfire, I'm like, no, no, no, no.
You're making my contribution worth less.
I'm protecting her.
That's my job.
So anyway, I'm no expert on military whatsoever, but if the people who are experts say that Women in combat, remember, it's just combat we're talking about, if they say there's a difference and that it matters and it affects our readiness, I say the military is the one place you can discriminate all you want.
Because the military is about staying alive.
It's not about being woke.
So if there's any good evidence that something needs to be a certain way to get a better result, we have to chase the better result.
That's all that matters.
It's the military.
Got to get the better result, whatever that takes.
And then they're also worried that since Pete Hegseth was accused of something that there were no charges of and didn't sound credible to the local police, that the women in the military would be afraid that the military would start raping all the women, even more than already, which is actually a gigantic problem, because Hegseth wouldn't do enough about it.
And that's just totally made up.
There's nothing about the Hegseth allegations, even if they were true, which it doesn't look like they were, but even if they were true, it would have been, well, it's true that an encounter happened, but I don't think that's going to have any effect on how he does his business.
Anyway, that's more fake news coming.
Meanwhile, Russia used a hypersonic missile for the first time in Ukraine.
And I guess I missed, the first time I saw that news, I missed the point of it.
And I just thought, huh, a new missile.
So?
But apparently the reason for using the supersonic missile is to show that it can't be stopped by any of the anti-missile defenses.
And indeed, it was not stopped by any of the anti-missile defenses.
And then they point out, you know, we could put a nuke on this.
Oh.
Oh, shit.
So what Putin was doing was showing his nuclear capability without the nuclear.
He said, here's my rocket.
Try to stop it.
Oh, he couldn't stop it?
It just blew up your facility in the middle of Ukraine?
Well, you know, I could have put a nuke on that, and you wouldn't have stopped that either.
So maybe you think twice about bombing things inside of Russia.
So I think that's a pretty smart play from Putin.
But I'm going to double down and triple down on we've never been safer, and there's never been a less chance of nuclear war.
Because Putin and everybody else in the world knows that Trump the big dog is coming.
It's going to be a few weeks.
He's going to negotiate a peace.
It's going to be some land they keep.
It's going to look sort of like it looks now.
Why would you start a nuclear war if you know that it's going to wind down in a fairly acceptable way?
Almost for sure.
Probably it will look like we will commit not to bring NATO into Ukraine.
Probably means that Russia keeps most of what they already have.
Something like that.
So, no.
You don't start a nuclear war when all of your problems are going to be solved the way you want them to be solved or very close to it in a few weeks.
There has never been a safer time in the world's history.
Never.
We're the safest we've ever been.
It just doesn't feel like it sometimes.
All right, I wanted to give you my...
I've gone way too long, so if you want to leave, I wouldn't feel bad about it.
But I wanted to give you my ADHD hacks.
So these are the tricks I use to conquer my own ADHD. Sorry.
Now, do I have ADHD? Well, I've never been diagnosed with it, but I do know that there are huge portions of the day when I can't possibly concentrate and focus and work.
So, I've developed a number of tools and habits and techniques that I will share with you now.
So if there are those of you who are maybe in the category I am, which is, I don't know if I'm technically ADHD, but I exhibit those characteristics.
However, I can tame them through habits and tricks.
And here they are.
Trick number one, I wake up at 4.30 in the morning no matter what.
If you tell yourself that sometimes you can sleep in, that won't work for you.
You have to do it every day.
And you have to learn to love it.
I learned to love it by training myself with coffee and a protein bar, which when you put them together, they're like a really good taste together.
So I would get all this like immediate physical gratification within minutes of waking up.
So 4.30 in the morning, I keep all of my lights off and I've got my blackout curtains down.
So that the only light is in my immediate four foot, maybe a four foot diameter.
I can't even see or hear anything outside of my four feet.
Under those conditions, when nobody else is awake, you know, that would be here in person, I have complete focus.
And I don't think too much about anything on my calendar that day.
And I enjoy the heck out of the comments coming in from the DMs from people I love online.
And I love the news.
So I'm immediately in this, you know, dopamine positive situation.
Now, how do people who do boring things make it work?
Well, it's a lot harder if it's boring, you know, because I do things that I personally like a lot.
So I'm excited for several hours because I'm just doing only the things I want to do, but I'm lucky that way.
I do, like every other job, have a whole bunch of boring things I have to do.
Paperwork and spreadsheets and insurance and taxes.
It just never ends.
I can't do those things At 2 o'clock in the afternoon, my body just won't do it.
I can't even force myself to sit in the chair.
I've got a million things swirling around.
By the time my dog wakes up, my productivity goes down 25%.
Does anybody have that experience?
If you work at home, the minute your dog wakes up, 25% of your productivity gone.
If there are kids in the house or people who you work with who start calling you early in the morning, another 50% gone.
You'll lose 75% of your concentration just because other people are awake.
So get up before they do.
That's my hack.
But there are more.
I also found out that since my body and my brain are really the same device, that if I want to control my brain, as in making it focus better, I do that by controlling my body.
So, in the first example, I was putting coffee and a protein bar that I really, really liked into my body.
And that was making my brain happy.
If it's the afternoon and I've already done that stuff, I will exercise.
So, I'll either go for a nice walk in the sun or do some weights or something.
But the exercise makes me not want to move my body around.
And when I don't want to get out of my chair, because I just exercised and I'm relaxing, I can focus.
So I can control my brain by making my body run or walk or play a game or lift heavy objects for 90 minutes.
And then I just want to sit in a chair.
But I'm going to be bored if I'm just sitting in a chair.
So I might as well look at that spreadsheet, get my taxes done, that sort of thing.
Anyway, so those are some tricks.
Use your exercise to put yourself back in that condition.
My other trick is I go to Starbucks when my, by around 11 a.m., you know, after I've gotten ready for the day and stuff, walk the dog.
I need to dip back into work, but my brain's already spinning.
A hundred things happening in the real world.
I can't focus now.
So I go to Starbucks.
Now, this is also a hack, because Starbucks is noisy and busy, but for reasons that I don't fully understand, there's a lot of science to it, that a cafe environment allows you to focus really well.
I'll tell you what I think it is.
For some reason, when there are people all around me and literally standing next to my table, I often take a table that's right next to the line where people are waiting for their stuff.
And so often I'll be working and there'll be somebody's butt like right here.
And they're having a conversation, like right above me.
And you would say to yourself, well, that's the most distracting thing.
There's no way you can concentrate on that.
I can concentrate so well in that situation.
Because somehow my brain says, oh, you need to turn all this stuff off.
And I just turn it off.
And I go, zoop!
And apparently it's a reproducible thing because cafe sounds.
I can't do it with just the sounds.
It doesn't work.
I have to actually be in the environment.
So I can get another 90 minutes of work just by changing the environment.
I call this matching my energy to the task.
So you've got to change your energy.
To match the task.
So at 4.30 in the morning, the only way I can work is I have no distractions.
But by 11 in the morning, The only way I can work is if I'm in a full, busy cafe.
Now, if you have not experimented to discover those two things about yourself, or you might have two different things that work for you, you've got to look for it.
You've got to do a little work.
You've got to go look for it.
Anyway, experiment on that.
And that's all I've got for you.
I'm going to talk to the locals people for a minute.
