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Content:
Politics, Jake Tapper Defamation Lawsuit, Zachary Young, LA Times Harry Litman, Daniel Penny Gold Medal, Democrat Identity Politics, Naval Academy Racism, Fortune 500 DEI, Anti-DEI Executive Order, Jay-Z, WaPo Jeff Bezos, Good Neighbor Foreign Policy, Pete Hegseth, Biden Admin Misinformation Research, Disinformation, J6 Gaslight Cone, Laurene Powell, Syria's Future, Guatemala Election Investigation, Antony Blinken, Deportation Cost, Byron Donalds, Martha Raddatz, Annual Time Change, Trump Fragrance Ad, BlueSky, Darcie Bell, President Trump, Fair Elections Danger, OC CA Election Questions, Birthright Citizenship, Marc Andreessen, FU Money, Scott Adams
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Well, I don't know if you can hear or see me, but it's not working on my end.
I'm going to have to get out and get back in.
Oh, there I am.
Looks like we're here.
Let me know if you see any major technical problems this morning.
Well, stocks are mixed.
Mine are up.
But I hope yours are too.
Alright, we've got a show today.
It's going to be the show of shows.
Possibly one of the best things you've ever seen.
Just got to make sure I can see all my comments.
Everything's looking a little slow today.
Do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
Do-do-do-do-do-do.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and I'm pretty sure you've never had a better time.
But if you'd like to take this up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank of chalice stein, a canteen jug or glass, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure that dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens.
Now, darn it, go.
Ah.
So good.
Alright.
Ladies and gentlemen, would you like to find out what's in the news today?
We'll start with some scientific golden age stuff.
Did you know that higher caffeine consumption is associated with improved social cognition and executive function according to the Journal of Psychopharmacology?
Well, I wonder if there was a faster way to find that out.
Yes, you could have asked me.
Coffee makes you better in every way.
Would you be surprised to know that there's a battery breakthrough?
Yet another one.
This one sounds pretty good.
So according to Brighter Side News, there's a breakthrough that should extend electric vehicle range to over 3,000 miles on a single charge.
So that would be 10 times what it is now.
So they're looking at a 10 times improvement in technology.
And all they did was they engineered a special binding material that prevents a high-capacity silicon anode from expanding, which is exactly what I've been telling them to do.
I mean, how long have I been saying?
You're going to get a lot more energy out of these things if only you would engineer a special binding material that prevents a high-capacity silicon anode from expanding.
Kind of obvious, if you think about it.
But the result is a lithium battery with 10 times the capacity of those with ordinary, old-fashioned graphite anodes.
Ugh!
Ugh!
Graphite anode.
Who wants that when you can have 10 times better?
Well here's another scientific study that they could have maybe ignored.
Gilmore Health News reports that people are more likely to become friends with people who smell like them.
So people are more likely to become friends with people who smell like them.
Do you think that that science is reliable?
Here's my first question.
Don't you think you could reliably figure out who smells like you by looking at a picture of them?
If I showed you a picture, let's say if you were 25, and I showed you a picture of another 25-year-old person with the same cultural background, And then I showed you a picture of a 90 year old person from a different cultural background.
Which one would you think you would smell more like?
You probably smell like people who look like you and act like you and have your same background and culture, eat the same foods, the same part of life, so you sort of smell different when you're young.
Maybe you have the same kind of bath products because young people would use a different set of colognes and things than old people would.
Do young people use cologne?
I don't even know if that's the thing anymore.
But I'm going to say I don't believe the study because there would be too many things that would infect that study.
By the time you smelled somebody, you've already seen them and probably made your decisions.
So, yeah, there's something, there's a correlation, but I don't think it's a, I don't think you can make friends by changing your smell unless you smell bad.
Maybe that would work.
Well, China has a spherical patrol robot, so it's about the size of a big tire on a car, and it's got rubber tread on it, except it's more circular.
It's like an orb, and it rolls around, and it can help patrols, and it can go into water, because it works on water or streets, and it can detect and stop crime by itself.
Now, I saw one of these that might have been a Japanese one that would shoot a net and capture you.
That seems pretty dangerous.
But yeah, pretty soon you'll have robots doing all the news or doing all the work of the police.
And then you can defund the police because the robots can work 24 hours a day.
Police are good for eight plus overtime.
Alright, here's a story that bothers me.
So Jake Tapper and CNN are in this defamation lawsuit brought by this Navy veteran, Zachary Young.
And I guess when Jake was doing the news one day, he mentioned some things.
The details don't matter, but Jake mentioned some kind of black market, and then he mentioned this guy.
And it made it seem like this guy was part of the black market, which would have made him part of the problem.
I think in Afghanistan, whereas he might have been more like part of the solution.
So because of the maybe lack of clarity with the CNN reporting, it ended up being defamatory, and apparently the Navy veterans doing well in court so far, because there's definitely, it looks like there's definitely grounds for this.
And even though CNN tried to protect itself by issuing a clarification or correction, the court ruled that they did a poor job on it, and so it might not count.
Meaning that if the story got a certain amount of attention, the correction has to get something like at least a good faith effort to get a similar attention for the correction.
And the thinking is that CNN ran its main story in a high visibility time, but kind of gave a short shrift.
Is that what it's called?
It kind of went light on the correction.
But I don't know how you could not go light on the correction, because the correction is a much smaller story than whatever the big story was that you made a mistake on.
But here's my problem on this.
I totally get how the Navy veteran could feel that this affected his life in a way that a monetary settlement makes sense.
I kind of get that.
But here's what really bothers me about it.
As much as you might not like Jake Tepper's political views or his coverage, which would be my case, he has been really solid on helping veterans.
He's like so pro-military, especially injured veterans, etc.
And I worked with Jake on some veteran projects when we were doing some cartooning things.
Long story.
But he's got a long history of being right with the military and being respectful and making sure they get lots of attention, working personally on his own time to make sure that they help raise funds.
So I hate to see a situation where this Navy veteran, who does seem to have a case, he seems to have a real case, and the courts are agreeing so far, but I hate that he's taking down somebody who would be so much on his side.
There's got to be some way to make that better.
Without taking down somebody who's your ally, right?
So if you can separate for a moment that you don't like maybe Jake Tapper's framing of news, which would be my case, I don't think you can take away from him that he's got, I don't know, decades or so of being really, really positive for the military.
I don't know.
Do you want to lose that?
It's a tough one.
There's a lawyer slash writer who wrote for the LA Times who's quitting.
His name is Harry Pittman.
And he said he'd rather work somewhere where they didn't have fair and balanced reporting about Trump.
So his problem is that the newish owner of the LA Times has said and made a big deal about the fact that That they're not going to be just in the tank for Democrats, but rather they're going to try to be real news where they show something fair and balanced.
But here's a lawyer and an opinion guy who literally couldn't handle fair and balanced and says directly that you shouldn't be fair and balanced because, quote, someone who is not telling the truth on the other side.
So here's a lawyer who Who had been writing for a major newspaper, who somehow got it into his mind that Democrats don't lie.
How could you go through the past four years and not know that the Biden administration massively lied about everything, including Biden's brain?
The biggest lie we've seen.
The fine people hoax.
Does he think that's true?
How in the world, it's just so puzzling, how in the world could you work in the domain, the very domain of news, and not be aware that one side lies pretty much all the time?
Now, do the Republicans lie a lot?
Does Trump say things that Democrats think are not true?
Yes.
But to imagine it's only happening on one side...
And also to imagine that the nature of the disinformation is similar.
Trump makes claims that are observable, and he might be exaggerating, but they're sort of observable.
Yes, there's crime coming in from open borders.
Maybe he says there's more than there is.
Maybe.
We all understand there's more crime.
It's observable.
But then you take the Russia collusion hoax or the fine people hoax, the drinking bleach hoax.
These are really well-established, complete hoaxes.
This is completely different from somebody who has a little hyperbole.
All right.
Edmund, we're going to be deleting you after this, so have fun on today's program in the comments.
I've got some drunk control on my subscription platform that I'll be deleting as soon as we're done.
So, anyway, it just amazes me that anybody can say in public they think one side's lying and the other is not.
That feels like the lowest level of understanding your reality.
Could you be more lost than thinking only one side is telling the truth?
That's as lost as you could be.
It's kind of amazing.
Well, anyway, there's a, according to PJ Media, there's a House Republican who's trying to get an award for Daniel Penny, the highest civilian award, which would be the Congressional Gold Medal.
So it would be giving him that because he's a U.S. Marine veteran and Who defended himself and fellow passengers against a threatening homeless person before being unjustly prosecuted by DA Alvin Bragg.
That's PJ Media's take.
Well, here's my question.
So first of all, let me enthusiastically endorse that.
Yes.
Even if he is unfairly convicted, he should get the...
Uh-oh.
Did I just...
went quiet, didn't I?
Looks like we're done.
Well...
Let's see what happened there.
So I just got a blank screen on my end.
I think you can see me now, but I think we're back.
All right.
Yes, we're back, say the comments.
All right.
So I was saying that Daniel Penny should definitely get the Congressional Gold Medal, even if he is unfairly prosecuted.
I think we'll find out maybe tomorrow what the jury is doing in that case.
But I would like to ask you the following question.
Would Daniel Penny be in jail except for identity politics?
If we were not a country obsessed with race, would Daniel Penny even be prosecuted?
If you simply reverse the races and you said that the hero Marine was a black American and there was a crazy white guy that looked just like Daniel Penny and he was threatening people on a bus and the Marine Marine Black man took him down and saved all the people in the car.
Do you think he'd be arrested?
I don't think there's any chance of that.
Now, it seems to me that the justice system is broken by identity politics.
Would you agree?
Now, it was also bad in the, you know, any time that if you were, let's say, especially bad, you know, 50 years ago, if you were a black person who got picked up, you're not going to be treated as well.
I think we all agree that that was the case.
So it's not good in either direction, but we can't say it's good now, that's for sure.
So here's my take on that.
So I think that identity politics is destroying the justice system, but how in the world does identity politics not destroy everything it touches?
So if you were to say to me, Scott, we're going to take you back in time.
There's been no DEI or CRT or any identity politics, but we're thinking about implementing it.
And we want to see what you think of this plan.
So we're going to change the focus from merit, and everybody's an American, to we really need to help some groups more than others in special ways, and identity is a good way to really focus on who needs the extra help and making things fairer and better.
I would have said, huh, if you want your country to be successful, you need something like unity and brainwashing basically that makes everybody think they're on the same team.
You know, America.
If you do the opposite and you remind people that they're all special and different and they need to be treated uniquely and that maybe you owe them something, on paper, that should destroy the entire country.
Right?
If I simply described it to you in objective language before any of it had ever been implemented, you would have said, oh, that's the opposite of unity.
A country needs unity.
Like, more than anything, it needs unity.
Otherwise, you're just bickering with each other, and you'd be susceptible to external risks.
But if you're unified, you build up this strong economy, and everybody's doing well, and then you've got a strong military, you're safe.
So the most dangerous thing you can do is change from America as an identity to identity is the main thing you're looking at, which is the opposite of unity.
So you should have destroyed it, but it goes further.
Remember I've taught you that we're not good at knowing what's real?
That includes me, right?
We have these impressions of what's real, and we probably live in a subjective reality anyway, and we're all filtering things through our biases, etc.
So one of the things I teach you is that the closest you can get to reality, Is whether it predicts.
So do you have a worldview that can, more accurately than chance, tell you what's going to happen next?
Right?
So, for example, in 2015, when I said, whoa, this Trump fellow has a full toolbox of persuasion, I predicted that he would win against all odds.
So probably that was an example of something like reality, because it predicted.
A further prediction of identity politics would look like this.
Since identity politics should destroy everything it touches, then you should see the things it touches first and hardest get destroyed first and hardest.
Would you agree so far?
That if you're going to make a prediction and you said, okay, I predict that identity politics will destroy everything it touches— Further to that prediction, whatever it touches first should be the first thing to achieve total destruction, right?
That would be an obvious prediction.
So, where did the identity stuff start?
Not in America as a whole, because it didn't really catch on with the right side of the country and a lot of independents, but it started really hard with Democrats, right?
So the Democrats fully embraced identity politics before the country fully embraced it.
So the country is sort of half on board, half off board.
So you should predict from that that the entity that fully embraced it would be the one to be fully destroyed by it before the other entity that's only half accepted it gets fully destroyed.
And that's what happens.
The Democrat Party is fully destroyed.
They picked the DEI hire for vice president, which locked them in, reduced their options.
Now, remember what I tell you.
When I complain about DEI, and this is the most important thing that can be said, it's not about anybody's genes.
It's not about your culture.
It's only about limiting the number of people you consider for a position.
And anytime you limit your options, you should end up with worse results.
It wouldn't matter if you're a plumber.
Let's say you're a plumber and you only have one tool.
Are you going to do as well as a plumber who's got a bunch of tools?
No, obviously not.
So the Democrats, they pick their DEI hire because they had to, becomes vice president.
Then when you have to make that difficult decision, the one where picking the right vice president really matters for capability, As long as the Vice President is not doing much, the DEI selection is fine.
It's just a symbolic thing that sits over there in the corner.
But as soon as the country needed a Vice President, we realized that the DEI had limited their options.
So even the Democrats revealed or understood that they painted themselves in a corner, but understanding that they had painted themselves in a corner wasn't enough to escape because they're painted in a corner.
Like, there's no escape.
You created a situation which you can't escape.
Now, will the rest of the country escape?
It might, because it's only half infected.
The other half has absolutely rejected it from the start.
And maybe a Trump administration can move against that.
The other thing that you should predict is, since we know from the mental health professionals, that the more you think about external things, such as, how can I help somebody at work?
How can I help my family?
You know, what can I do for my friends?
Just external things.
That makes sure you have better mental health than somebody who walks into every situation and says, how is this affecting me?
But, like, how do I uniquely have a problem in this situation?
What about me?
Now, identity politics is the ultimate, what about me?
Because you walk into every situation and say, all right, I'm the only black lesbian here, so I need to get into that identity and really defend it, make sure that the black lesbians are represented and not discriminated against.
What should that do to your mental health?
Now it has nothing to do with being black or lesbian, but rather it has everything to do with focusing on your specific internal situation as opposed to the world.
It should give you mental health problems.
And indeed, predictably, Democrats have massive mental health problems that are not shared by Republicans.
So Republicans have an America frame, which is external, even though we're in it, it's an external focus.
And sure enough, their mental health is good, exactly like you would predict.
If you'd never seen this and you just went back in time and said, all right, here's the deal.
Half the country is going to focus on their own problems.
The other half is going to feel like they're part of a larger thing, and they're going to focus on making the larger thing better, which also requires them to fix their own problems, but their focus is on America.
Which one has better mental health 10 years from now?
It's obvious.
Yeah.
Like, I believe 100% of mental health people would agree with me at this point.
Maybe they wouldn't have 10 years ago, but given our current perspective, I think they would.
All right.
Speaking of which, according to the National Pulse, a judge has upheld an anti-white race-based admission policy for Naval Academy.
So the idea was, you know, if colleges can't use race for admissions, what about the Naval Academy?
Well, according to the judge, they can use race as an admission criteria because the judge said that the Academy has tied its use of race to the realization of an officer corps that represents the country it protects and the people it leads.
This one's a little more complicated than Than others.
Because remember, the military is the one place where all that matters is you get the right result.
So even if you don't like it, for example, if you're 400 pounds and you want to join the military, they're going to say no.
They get to do that.
If you're blind and you want to be a pilot, the military is going to say, you know, nothing against you, but you can't be a pilot.
So, the military does very specifically have the right to discriminate by anything it wants.
It just has to discriminate in a way that makes sense.
So, it comes down to this question.
Would our military be more capable if we had better diversity in the officer corps?
Now, here we can assume...
Well, let's just take the assumption that everybody's capable.
So they didn't force it with DEI, just everybody's capable.
If everybody were capable, I would agree that a diverse officer corps might make you a little better off.
It might make people more likely to join.
They might accept the decisions a little bit more.
However, we don't really live in that world, do we?
We don't live in a world where everything stays the same except the one variable you're changing.
If we lived in that world, I think I'd be in favor of this.
Because having a diverse officer corps, if it made you a more effective military force, the military does get to discriminate.
And if they're discriminating against white men, but it makes the military stronger...
I don't know.
I don't have a huge problem with it.
But the question is, do they have their assumption right?
Is this form of discrimination, which is blatant discrimination, they're not trying to hide the fact that it's discriminatory, which I like.
I like they're not trying to hide that.
Yes, it's definitely discriminatory against white men, but we're going to make an argument that it makes the military stronger.
Well, In the real world, what that's going to cause is a DEI bubble of less competent people in management roles.
Because it's the same everywhere.
If there were exactly as many capable people who were vying for the positions, then I would say, you know, under that situation, because you're going to have good officers no matter what, because you have so many.
Under that situation, you know, maybe diversity...
It does make sense as a goal.
If it makes the military stronger, it makes me safer.
But that's not the case.
The case is you would almost certainly end up with a less capable military because your officers would be sort of forced through the funnel of, you know, I'm going to get fired.
I'll get demoted if I don't promote a diverse set of subordinate officers.
So it should, on paper, lead to a complete destruction of the military.
Right?
Right.
On paper, it should.
And what do we see?
We see that enrollment of white men has dropped through the floor.
There is a slight increase in non-white men joining the military, but not enough to keep it functional.
So at the moment, our military is on a death spiral, meaning that they can't get enough people to join.
And the specific place is exactly where you'd expect it to be.
Because if I told you, hey, we're going to discriminate against, I don't know, some specific religion, and there's a reason.
Don't worry about it.
There's a good reason it makes the military stronger if we keep your religion out of it.
So your religion, you can't join the military.
Would you expect those people to join the military if the military said, you can join, but we're not going to make you an officer?
Of course not.
Of course not.
You wouldn't join.
So we're seeing DEI destroy the military because if it doesn't have enough capable humans in the officer positions, it's going to be destroyed like anything else.
So, in theory, we should see the entire military become almost dysfunctional if it stays with the DEI thing.
Now, Trump could change that, so we'll see.
According to Fox News, they did a take and they looked at Fortune 500 companies and they said...
That almost all of them still have a DEI. So we hear a lot of prominent stories about DEI being reversed in Walmart and John Deere and anywhere that Robbie Starbucks focuses on, basically.
But you shouldn't feel that that means that's the beginning of the end of DEI. But I ask the following question.
Corporations are risk-averse.
So they just want to do whatever keeps them out of trouble.
So to me, it makes perfect sense, and it's also perfectly predictable, that most of them would still have their DEI departments.
Because so far, the push against it is not nearly as big as the proponents of it.
So they're just playing it safe.
And I don't disagree with that because the corporation is working on behalf of the stakeholders, the shareholders, and the shareholders just want money.
So if I invest in a company, I don't want it to destroy itself by acting opposite of what the public wants it to do, and then it gets boycotted and all that.
So I understand why big companies are risk-averse.
So the only way that's going to change...
Is if the government says, you have to stop this DEI stuff, it's illegal.
And I ask the following question.
Can Trump make it illegal?
And I know I'm using the word wrong, but I'll clarify in a moment.
Can Trump make it illegal for corporations to have DEI programs?
Now, when I say make it illegal, my non-lawyer understanding of an executive order...
Is that the executive order simply teaches you how to interpret current law.
Do I have that right?
Is there some lawyers on here who can fact check me on that?
An executive order, he only has the authority to sort of interpret how the current laws were meant to work, right?
But that's a lot of power.
Because our laws are written with enough ambiguity that you can say, yes, we're going to open the border.
No, the law says close the border.
So you can interpret it any way you want.
So it seems to me that Trump could simply say the Constitution says it's illegal to discriminate against race.
So that's the current law.
And all these companies are discriminating on race.
That's what DEI does.
So therefore, all these companies are in violation of the Constitution, and I can send the FBI after them, or Department of Justice, whoever it is.
Right?
Am I wrong that he can simply say, the existing law says DEI is racism, so therefore, my executive order says that the Department of Justice should target Anybody who's involved in racism.
Would that work?
I know there's like several levels of, you know, I'm sure there's levels of lawyerly details that I'm not understanding, but just in general, could the government force the individual companies to back off on DEI? I think they could, but I'll look for a fact check on that.
Meanwhile, Jay-Z has been accused of raping a 13-year-old 20 years ago, I guess.
And he denies it.
And I have to say, you know, because of Diddy and Jay-Z being a buddy of Diddy and, you know, regular attendees of the parties, we do all just assume that Jay-Z is guilty, right?
Right.
But should we?
Should we?
Yeah, I'm going to take the more difficult stance and say that he's innocent until proven guilty, and this particular charge I don't find especially credible.
So there's two issues that could be separated.
One, did Jay-Z do anything sketchy or illegal at any of these ditty parties or anywhere else?
And the answer is, I don't know.
How would I know?
But the second question is, is the specific, specific charge, which basically is money motivated.
Remember, it's not a criminal charge.
Well, don't remember.
I didn't tell you.
It's not a criminal charge.
It's an individual who got a lawyer to sue him for...
I think they're not asking for money.
They were suing for some kind of acknowledgement or something.
I think they said it was like an acknowledgement.
But Jay-Z, I think, is treating it like it's a shakedown.
Because there might be a money element that is the only way to solve it.
So he might not be wrong about the money shakedown, which is independent from the question of whether he did anything wrong.
Because you could have a money shakedown whether he did something wrong or not.
Somebody could make the claim.
So I'm going to say this one's a coin flip.
It's a coin flip.
And again, I'm not judging if Jay-Z ever did anything bad in his life.
I don't know.
I mean, I have my assumptions, but I don't know.
So as an American citizen, innocent until proven guilty.
But do I think that this one fairly stale accusation, do I think this specific one is true?
I don't find it credible.
Now, that doesn't mean I'm saying it's not true.
Remember, when I use the word credible, it's not about whether it's true or false.
That part I don't know.
It's just whether it comes across as true or false.
It's just how I receive it.
And how I receive this is, this looks exactly like what every celebrity gets blamed.
It just looks like they found a way to get some money out of him.
It doesn't mean that he's innocent.
Definitely not saying that, but it also definitely doesn't mean he's guilty.
So keep an eye on this one.
My only concern is that in our zeal to make sure that all the truly criminal people get treated like criminals, we may reach a little too deep.
So let's just be careful about that.
The Washington Post, as Molly Hemingway pointed out, the Washington Post has a headline, Once Spurned Trump is Fetid in Paris.
So the Washington Post is basically doing a big headline that says that Trump, who was their number one enemy the first time he was president, that he's being treated like a celebrity in Europe, which is a very positive thing to say about Trump.
And it's especially surprising when it comes from the Washington Post, which you would expect to be more propaganda against Republicans than any kind of legitimate news.
But remember I always tell you that if you know what happened, you don't know anything.
But if you know who was involved, well, then you might know something.
So if I told you that the only thing that happened was the Washington Post changed how they talked about Trump, you might say to yourself, oh, looks like they're softening up and they're deciding to be middle of the road.
Maybe.
But Jeff Bezos recently said, and I think Trump confirmed, that Bezos and Trump are going to have dinner.
And Bezos, I think, was actually somewhat positive about Doge and bringing down the debt and some other things that Trump likes.
So Bezos is very clearly and pointedly saying, there are some things I like about this Trump administration, and I'm going to see if I can embrace the parts I like, which a lot of people are doing.
So it does seem to me that the boss, Bezos...
Having a planned dinner with Trump probably did change the headline.
Now, that doesn't mean that Bezos called somebody and said, hey, change that deadline or give me a positive headline or something like that.
It could just be that the people who work for Bezos are reading the same news I am, and when they find out their boss is going to be meeting with Trump, they realize that that would be a much better meeting If the headline said Trump did great in Europe, right?
Would you send your boss into a meeting with Trump like a day after saying, the Europeans all laugh at Trump because he's such a big bully, right?
And then your owner is going to go have dinner with the guy that you just maligned?
Right.
I feel like this might be a temporary truce where the Washington Post is going to be nice to Trump as long as Bezos is talking to him productively.
So is that news?
Is that fair and balanced?
Or was it just another distorting effect causing them to distort in the other direction?
The distortion being that the owner is going to have a meeting with Trump.
I don't know.
But the only thing I know for sure is if you know the Bezos-Trump, you know, the personalities involved, it seems to make more sense.
Because I can't see them just independently deciding to be fairer to Trump.
That doesn't make sense.
Anyway, as Matt Gaetz points out on X, Trump went to Europe to make peace and Biden was bombing Syria.
And then I saw a claim today that our various military operations around the world, which seem to be permanent and ongoing, are how the deep state funds itself.
And that Trump is a threat to the business model of the deep state.
So the deep state, under this telling, would be Partly about power, but also more about money, because power and money are pretty related.
And that there is this ability to funnel off a lot of money from anywhere there's a gigantic, expensive military operation.
So that the real play is not so much that we care about these other countries, but rather they're all scams to feed the deep state.
Does that sound real to you?
I feel like it's a little bit real, meaning that I'm sure there are entities and individuals who benefit from every time we make a war.
So that part sounds true.
But I don't know that it follows that, therefore, the only reason we get into these wars is for the benefit of these deep state people who have figured out how to make a profit out of any larger flows of money.
It's probably part of it.
But I think you have to get to the larger question that we all like to ignore.
And maybe this is the neocon versus the non-interventionist argument.
So I've long been on the side that says we should not start wars with other countries.
We should not try to conquer them just because we can.
And maybe we should just stick to doing a good job as America and And let other people alone, and if they have good or bad governments, it doesn't matter.
We'll find somebody to trade with.
So I've always been in that, you know, let's not be the ones who start wars.
You know, sometimes you have to defend yourself, but not a starting one.
However, I'm also aware that the counter-argument is super strong.
The argument for starting lots of wars.
There's really a strong argument for it, which I hate, because I don't want that to be true.
It's not something I can fully embrace, but I can't ignore the logic of it.
Here's the logic of it.
Whoever is the strongest in this world, if they use their power, and they use it ruthlessly, they might be able to stay in power.
Those who have power and don't use it, or don't use it ruthlessly, are probably going to be overtaken by somebody who gains enough power and uses it ruthlessly.
So the argument for us being basically bastards everywhere in the world is that that's how we stay safe.
So in any five-year period, being a bastard is a terrible idea because we're killing people and it's expensive, etc.
But if you were to look at 100 years, it could be that all that being a bastard and conquering countries and overthrowing people that we want to use as our markets and our sources of raw materials and bottling up Russia so it doesn't become a major military threat to us and all that.
It could be that's how you last 100 years.
And that my plan was more of a, hey, let's not start any wars.
That's a good five-year plan.
But maybe the hundred-year plan requires you to be a bastard all the time.
And if you can show me a counter-argument where there was a major dynasty or superpower who thrived for hundreds of years without being a bastard, I would love to hear about it.
Because I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist.
And if it doesn't exist, it means it's never worked anywhere to be nice to your neighbors.
Now, if you can find an exception like Switzerland, then I'm just going to say, that's obviously an exception.
You know, if you say, oh, this island country, okay, obviously an exception, an island country.
But generally speaking, Countries need to dominate.
I see somebody saying China doesn't do this.
Yes, they do.
China is using their economic muscle to tie everybody up into a situation where they couldn't possibly cross China because their economics would depend on being good with them.
Likewise, China is building out their naval situation so they can have a military control of the entire ocean area on their side of the world.
It's exactly what we would do.
Russia is trying to keep their warm water poured so maybe they can project more naval strength into other parts of the world.
Because if they could take over some countries in South America and make them more pro-Russian, they would certainly do it.
There's no doubt about it.
So if we out-bastard them by saying, all right, you bastards, you're going to try to take over some countries in our hemisphere and So we're going to take away all your toys if you do it again.
So I feel like I don't want to embrace the neocons and say starting wars is a good idea because a lot of it is for profit.
I think that's true.
But I don't know that America survives by being the good neighbor.
And I think everybody's afraid to discuss that because the government can't say it out loud, right?
There's nobody in the government who can say, look, if I'm being honest with you, if we're not total pricks to the rest of the world, we're not going to survive.
Your grandkids won't survive.
That's the argument we need to have.
The one where somebody can say, yeah, I mean, I hate to say it, but in the real world where people are terrible bastards and the evil and Hitler can rise at any minute, if you're not the biggest, baddest bully, you're in trouble.
It's one of the reasons I like Trump as a leader because he's perceived as the strongest one and it will keep other people from getting too adventurous in theory.
So, That said, we'll talk a little more about Russia in a minute.
So also, Molly Hemingway had a funny observation about Pia Hegseth.
She said, sadly, no one in D.C. cares about adultery and drinking.
And I thought, okay, that should really be the end of the conversation.
Because if we don't hold anybody in Congress to this standard, that if they're cheating on their spouse or they're having too much to drink, we don't really get rid of Congress people for that reason.
So why would Pete be the only person who's held to this standard, which is closer to a standard of personal behavior than it says anything about what he would do in the job?
So, I don't know.
I think it's a good point, that it's total hypocrisy.
Did you know, according to Fox News, Justin Haskins, that...
Biden spent millions on misinformation research.
Now, that's scary.
So, in the Trump administration, it was like a few million dollars got spent on trying to look for misinformation.
But since 2021, Biden-Harris at White House spent at least $267 million on research and grants related to misinformation and disinformation.
$267 million On a project to decrease disinformation.
Now, if you've watched Mike Benn's content, etc., you know that anybody who gets into the misinformation-disinformation business is probably the one who wants to spread the misinformation and disinformation.
And to do that effectively, they have to tell you that the counter-arguments are not real.
So, Wherever you hear that anybody wants to spend massive amounts to counter misinformation, they are the ones with the misinformation.
Now, the other ones might be too.
But the ones who are looking to counter it are not looking to counter it with the truth.
They're looking just to win, basically.
They want their team to win.
So, how could the Biden-Harris White House have saved $260 million if they had wanted to actually reduce misinformation and disinformation?
Do you know what they could have done for free?
They could just follow me on X. That's not even a joke.
Because what I do on X, and not alone, all right, you can think of a dozen other people in the same category, but I'm one of a dozen people on X who I spend all day long telling people what is fake news.
Do you think that I do it worse than whatever government entity is built to find misinformation?
No, I'm not worse at it.
I'm better at it.
If you did a one-to-one competition of what I call down as bullshit versus what the misinformation people call down as bullshit, I think you'd find that the misinformation people found all the obvious stuff that you would know as bullshit as soon as you saw it.
But they wouldn't have anything that I have.
My list of 20 hoaxes that the Democrats have played, where's that?
Where's that?
It basically comes from my ex-feed and then people duplicating it and sending it around.
So I'm not the only one.
There are a dozen or so people you can mention who also are the ones who can tell you what's true and what isn't.
But you don't need to spend money on that.
You literally just have to expose people to the counterarguments.
That's all you need for the misinformation, disinformation, and that's what X does.
So even when I guess I'm wrong, believe it or not, it's happened.
Then there's a community note or somebody cracks it and we move on.
But no, you should spend zero on this because it's literally free on X. So...
Here's something you need to be reminded of.
You know that half of the country is still completely trapped in the gaslight cone that says that January 6th was an insurrection.
That's about half the country.
They're still trapped in that hoax.
Now, the other half of the country, let's say the Republicans, are fully aware that the real situation that the news is trying to hide from you is that a whole bunch of people saw what they thought was obviously a rigged election.
Now, I don't know if it was, But I can tell you that the people who attacked the Capitol were quite sure that they could see it with their own eyes, and it was obvious that it was rigged.
So don't forget that half of the country is still completely gaslighted on the most important question, and they don't know it.
Now, what would help them?
Well, being on X and following me, because I could help them get out of that gaslight.
It's 100% gaslighting.
But what else is happening in that domain?
Well, Steve Jobs' widow, Lorraine Powell, she says she's shifting the focus of her pro-immigration advocacy group to combat the far-right disinformation campaigns.
Do you believe that Lorraine Powell...
Jobs is trying to improve the quality of information that people get with her so-called disinformation campaign.
No.
She is creating disinformation about the right because she's on the team of the left.
And imagine if you didn't know that and you thought that there were some people, wow, I'm sure glad Steve Jobs' widow wants just the truth to get out.
No, I don't think anything like that's happening.
Nope.
She's just on a team.
That was according to Breitbart, that story about Lorraine Powell Jobs.
Well, meanwhile, let's talk about those Syria rebels.
So there's a report that Assad, the leader of Syria until recently, escaped to Moscow.
So, that's got to be a pretty unhappy guy.
Because I can't believe that the Russians are going to let him, you know, have free reign.
He's basically, wouldn't he basically be like a prisoner?
Because they need to control him completely.
I suppose the Russians might want to keep him around just in case they have some play to get control of Syria back.
They'd have a puppet to put back in.
So, I guess they'll keep him alive, unlike Prigozhin.
But as Mike Benz points out, there's a picture of the Syrian rebels behind a tent that has USAID written all over it.
USAID is apparently the funding operation for the State Department and the CIA. It's how we get things done.
So it goes through USAID. USAID spends money in these other countries to prop up rebels and things like that.
So, all the smart people seem to think that the sudden success of the rebels was basically just the CIA overthrowing a country like it always does.
That's what it looks like to me.
Does anybody have any alternative view?
Do you think that the rebels just suddenly and coincidentally became a super fighting power just before Trump gets in office?
That'd be a weird coincidence, wouldn't it?
So yes, I think this looks like the CIA made it happen.
And once again, here's my dilemma.
When we talk about this, we're going to think past the sale.
And we're going to talk about who got caught or what we did, etc.
But there's a bigger question, which is, was this a victory?
If the CIA was behind it, did we come out ahead?
Did they get a win?
Well...
I hate to tell you this because I'm not so much in favor of the CIA overthrowing countries.
But if we don't learn anything new so that what we think is true ends up being the actual truth, this would be one of the biggest victories that the CIA ever had.
Wouldn't it?
Because...
Apparently, this would make it nearly impossible for Russia to project their naval strength beyond their local area because they need the warm water port, and it would hurt them economically as well.
So if the CIA got away with that, they effectively kicked Russia influence out of the Middle East, at least a big part of it.
They denied their ability for their Navy to extend itself and become a threat to us at some point in the future.
And it cost a lot of money and it hurt the reputation of Russia because now you can see that Russia can't protect you.
Right.
That's important.
Because if you take sides with Putin, somebody's going to say, well, you know who else took sides with Putin?
Assad.
Where's he?
So it changes how we think about Russia's ability and power, as well as it changes their actual power and ability.
And it's happening right before Trump comes in to negotiate about Ukraine.
Now, I know what you're going to say.
You're going to say, how is it good for the United States to install a fundamental Islamic terrorist-looking kind of leadership in Syria?
To which I say, that might be way better than what we had.
Because if Syria just decides to keep to itself and just, you know, maybe even eventually have relationships with, you know, the regular countries, the other countries, Maybe we're better off.
Maybe getting rid of Russia's current and future influence, and especially turning it into maybe a bargaining chip of some sort.
It might be one of the greatest intelligence CIA victories of all time.
And I don't love it.
I don't love it because it means we do more of that.
It will just be conquering countries every day because it worked out this one time.
Anyway, so does it feel to you like this was a gigantic American victory in disguise?
It looks like the rebels did their thing, but really, it was about the U.S. and Russia?
That's what it feels like to me.
And according to the Vigilant Fox, which was reporting on the reporting of Ryan Mata, Ryan Mata says that the Guatemalan government just Ryan Mata says that the Guatemalan government just got overthrown by the United States.
and it wasn't in the news.
So I don't know if this is true.
So I'll just tell you who's reporting it.
But here's the story.
The story goes that the Guatemalan government had an election, and there was a lot of belief that the election was rigged.
In other words, rigged in favor of who America wanted to be the leader.
So when Guatemala's Attorney General decided to investigate the election to find out if it was rigged, the U.S. Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, stepped in.
He flew to Guatemala and demanded that the Attorney General be investigated for corruption.
What's that sound like?
That's Ukraine.
That's Ukraine.
Where the DA or whatever it was in Ukraine was looking into Burisma and then Biden stepped in and said, no, the real problem is the person who's looking into Burisma.
So Burisma is not the problem.
It's the person who is legally in their job whose job it is to investigate them.
It's the investigator's problem.
And sure enough, he sold that.
Got rid of the guy investigating Burisma.
Now, I don't know who was right in that situation.
Probably everybody was corrupt.
There was probably no winner.
Probably just everything was corrupt all the time.
But this looks like exactly the same situation.
And then Blinken imposed severe penalties on Guatemalan politicians and their families.
So, here's the question.
What it looks like is the United States rigged an election, the locals found out it was rigged and tried to look into it, and then the United States threatened them that if they looked into it, they're really in trouble.
Did that really happen?
Is that a real thing?
And then there's some connection with child trafficking alleged that Guatemala has some alleged large connection to child trafficking.
So maybe some of that's part of the story or not.
All right.
So anyway, that's who we are.
That's who America is.
We're a country that overthrows other countries.
And we do it routinely, apparently.
And again, I'll go back to my first comments.
Maybe that's how you stay in power for a few hundred years.
Maybe there's no other way.
Martha Raddatz was talking to Byron Donalds.
About deporting all the people that Trump says he wants to deport.
And she said this.
She said it would cost about $315 billion.
This is based on somebody did an analysis.
It would cost about $315 billion to deport everyone in the U.S. who doesn't have legal status.
And she says to Byron, you often talk about the need to cut government spending.
So how is this mass deportation going to be paid for?
So this is being reported by this week.
So let us review some of the things I have taught you about discovering fake news.
Trick number one.
If they give you the 10-year expense of something, as opposed to the one-year expense, it's probably propaganda.
Do you know why?
Because the reason that you give a 10-year number is that the one-year number doesn't sound so big.
That's the reason.
If the annual budget of any one year was completely unreasonable, you would know it by looking at the one budget for the one year.
But if I have to make my argument about the one year by adding all 10 years together just so I got a bigger number, that's propaganda.
That's not analysis.
Number two, When somebody gives you a raw number without a percentage, what's that?
It's propaganda.
If somebody does the reverse and gives you a percentage without the raw number, what's that?
Propaganda.
Every time.
The only way you'll understand any situation with numbers is if you know the raw numbers, you know it for any one year, and you know the percentage that it's related to that makes sense.
So, Byron Donalds says this, That the $315 billion is over 10 years, but we're spending $150 billion a year to keep the illegals here.
Now, I don't think the $150 billion a year is accurate.
Because one of the things that that does is imagines everything stays the same, etc.
And should be, presumably, I would think that immigrants, the typical immigrant, I'm not sure I buy a number about what it costs per year to keep them.
So, Byron had a very good response from a communication and political perspective.
He's terrific at this.
So, he basically said that we're spending more, so we'll save money.
And it was exactly the right answer.
But he should have pulled her apart the following way.
He should have said, wait, $315 billion over 10 years?
Yes, that's what I'm saying, Byron.
So you're saying like $31 billion per year.
Exactly.
So how do you explain that?
Then you say, well, let's put it into percentages.
So what would $31 billion be of the national budget?
Which is $6 trillion?
What is $31 billion as a percentage of $6 trillion?
So one way to respond to her would have been, yes, the country is being destroyed by unregulated immigration.
We want to increase the budget by 0.002% to end a problem that could destroy the country.
Pretty cheap.
So you always go for the percentages and the raw numbers.
Do them both if you want to be taken seriously.
And any of these estimates about what anything costs per year, they're all bullshit.
But at least Byron had better bullshit than the person who asked him a question.
He just had better bullshit.
But I don't think you should seriously trust either estimate.
Meanwhile, Congress is trying to decide on daylight savings time.
Man, if they can't decide on that, is there anything they can decide on?
Has daylight savings time turned into a Democrat versus Republican thing yet, like everything else does?
It seems like the one thing you wouldn't have any political element to is the time.
Daylight savings time.
So...
There was an estimate here that changing the time costs us $340 million annually.
Really?
Really, you think so?
Do you think that, would you trust the estimate that changing the time costs $340 million?
Because I guess they mean lost productivity and people who don't make it to work and have more accidents because they're sleepy, that sort of thing.
I don't think that's something you could really estimate.
Not really.
Now, I'm in favor of not changing the time.
Just because it bothers me every year.
It just bothers me every time they change the time.
So I'd rather not be bothered.
So here's the story that I love so much because it's the perfect story to explain Trump.
So Trump has introduced a fragrance that is funny in itself, that he would introduce a fragrance that people could smell like he smells or something.
But the way he's advertising it on social media, he included a photograph when he was at the Notre Dame Cathedral reopening, and he was sitting one chair away from Jill Biden.
And there's a photo where Jill Biden appears to be looking at Trump while he's looking in another direction, appears to be looking at him with almost love.
Now, I don't think it's fair to say you can take that one picture and figure out that Jill Biden was in love with Trump because the picture looked like it.
So don't believe the picture.
The picture is misleading.
It could be that she was just amused at the situation.
So what you saw was she was just enjoying the show.
Maybe just enjoyed watching the show.
Maybe that's all it was.
But the fact that it became a social media meme that Jill Biden was flirting with Trump, the fact that he would use the photo that was a meme about Jill Biden flirting with him as the way to sell his fragrance might be the funniest fucking thing he's ever done in his life.
Now, I think Trump is very funny, but this might be the funniest thing he's ever done.
And you know that he approved it, right?
Nobody would have done this without his direct approval.
So it means he directly approved it.
How much do you love that?
I mean, I just love the playfulness of that.
The sense of humor, the inappropriateness of it.
He's making inappropriateness the reason why it's funny.
Anyway, according to Zero Hedge...
They talked to a former Secret Service agent, or actually it was on a Fox News interview, but Zero Edge is talking about it.
So a Fox News interview, somebody named Staropoli, he thought that Trump has a big threat before he's even inaugurated of a larger magnitude.
In other words, an attempt to take him out.
In something that would be, quote, a larger magnitude than one crazy person with a firearm.
So he's sort of suggesting, you know, a mass casualty event during or prior to the squaring in.
And he says that the current Secret Service is basically incompetent and he doesn't trust them.
He thinks they used to be good, but now they're not.
Huh.
What would be a cause of some entity in the United States that used to be highly capable, but now they're seemingly destroyed from the inside?
What could possibly...
Ah, you are correct.
Yes, we know the Secret Service was really big on DEI. And we know that DEI destroys first and hardest wherever it is most implemented.
And so sure enough, the Secret Service made it a top priority, and they implemented it, and it destroyed the Secret Service, exactly as predicted.
Now, if you're just joining, I'll give my usual disclaimer.
When I complain about DEI, I'm not talking about anybody's genes or their culture or their religion or their gender or any of that.
It just has to do with constraining the number of people you're willing to look at in your hiring decisions.
Constraining them will always give you worse output in the long run.
Anyway, I'd worry about that.
Did you know that Blue Sky, which is the social network that's sort of a competitor to X, and of course a lot of left-leaning people I've said, we're getting away from this darn Elon Musk platform and we're going to go where everything's good and everybody will be nice over in Blue Sky.
But apparently conservatives are being routinely banned from the platform.
So I think a lot of the conservatives are going there just to get banned.
They're going over there to see what they can get away with and then when they don't get away with it, they get banned.
But apparently, blue sky will become essentially a desert for any conservative opinions, and in theory, that doesn't give it much chance of success.
The thing that made Twitter so successful, at least on the political parts, is that you could argue with people, and you would see the other side, and it was like a good fight.
It was like UFC every day.
So if you go to blue sky and everybody just agrees with you that With everything.
Is that going to be sexy?
You're going to want to go back, ooh, I can't wait for those people to agree with me on everything.
I don't know.
We'll see.
There's a story in San Francisco, New York Post is reporting, that there was an activist who wanted to defund the police, and apparently this activist was moving, and And had filled up a U-Haul truck with 100% of her possessions, and then somebody stole the truck.
A 26-foot U-Haul truck, that's a pretty serious truck, with all of her possessions.
And she lost 100% of everything she owned that wasn't on her body at the time.
And she's really mad because the police didn't come and do something.
Oh, wow.
But apparently she doubled down.
Phil Bump uses my comic as his blue sky background.
I don't know.
Thank you.
Really?
Is that true?
Oh, because it makes fun of him.
That's funny.
I forgot I did a comic that once referenced Phil Bump at the Washington Post.
He's using it as his header.
Anyway, so Trump was talking to...
Well, I can't remember.
Is it Kristen Welker?
What's her first name?
Welker?
Kristen?
Anyway, so he was being interviewed, and he was asked...
But now that you're elected, will you say that 2020 was a fair election?
And Trump looks at it and goes, no.
I love that answer.
That's the answer of somebody who won a mandate.
Will you finally now say that 2020 was a fair election?
No.
That was perfect.
I love the fact that it was the biggest charge against him, and he never let go of it.
He so easily could have said, you know, we thought it was rigged, but honestly, we don't have evidence of it.
He could have said that.
And then people would say, oh, okay, now you're being a reasonable guy.
But his real belief is that it was really rigged, it was really obvious, and he's not going to lie about it.
I love that.
I just love that.
Now, I don't know if we'll ever learn that 2020, you know, in any court-approved way, will we ever learn that there were problems, but I'm on the side that says...
I would be amazed if it wasn't rigged because I think pretty much all elections are rigged in my opinion.
Can't prove it, but it would be insane for any government to allow an election to proceed without controlling it.
My suspicion is that there really are no countries with electronic voting machines who have fair elections.
It's just an assumption.
It's not based on fact.
I don't have any data to prove that.
It's just that why do you need the machines?
Why would you have them?
So if you can't answer the question, why do you have machines, then the reason, I assume, is the obvious reason, that they use them to control elections.
I don't know it.
It's not proof.
It's just I can't think of another reason.
Speaking of which, according to the Rasmussen reports, the following things are true.
This one's fun.
You ready for this?
I'm not going to tell you I believe that this is true, and I'm not going to tell you I believe that the implications of it are true.
I'm just going to tell you it's being reported by what I consider a credible source.
Doesn't mean it's true, but it's coming from a credible source.
All right, so Rasmussen reports saying on X, That Orange County, California, so Friday after the election, so this is Friday after the election, at 6.45 p.m., a bomb threat came in that cleared the election counting center.
Wait, what?
There was a bomb threat right before they were ready to finish counting.
There was a bomb threat.
And so they had to clear everybody out before they were done counting.
So they did.
And then the security livestream system was disabled during the search for the bomb.
Because that would be a good time to disable your livestream cameras because they're looking for a bomb.
Would that be exactly the time you would want your livestream cameras to be extra on?
Because there's something unusual happening in the place that you're monitoring?
And so if something unusual is happening in the place you're monitoring, to make sure that nothing unusual happened, why would it be turned off when the unusual thing happened, which is the only fucking reason for a livestream?
To catch things that looked unusual.
I don't know.
Can you think of any reason?
Then, two F-150 white vans with blacked-out windows arrive.
Now, that's with a question mark, so I assume that means somebody reported it happened.
So, we're a little less credible on this one because there's a question mark next to it.
But the allegation is that some vans with blacked-out windows arrived just then, And that there was a huge ballot discrepancy subsequently.
And if things had not gone the way they did in Orange County, it could potentially flip three seats that looked like they were going to be red, but they turned blue.
It would flip them back to red.
Three's a lot when your house is that close.
Three's a lot.
It's a major power difference.
So, let me read it to you again.
You tell me if you think this election was at least attempted to be rigged.
A bomb threat 15 minutes before they were going to be done.
Security live stream turned off, suspicious vehicles arrive, and then there's a huge balance discrepancy.
Doesn't that sound exactly like what it sounds exactly like?
Now, again, I have to remind you for the millionth time, confirmation bias can get you to the same place.
If you were sure that things were rigged, then you would see things that appear to support that point of view.
When maybe there were coincidences, and maybe there was a real bomb threat, and maybe the cameras just never worked the whole time, and somebody just said they turned them off, but maybe they never worked.
It could be a lot of things.
So I'm not saying that I can claim this is true, but it's out there and it's fun.
Trump says he wants to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. He also said that when he was being interviewed by Welker.
And he said, we're the only country that has it.
We're going to end that because it's ridiculous.
Did you know it's the, we're the only country that has birthright citizenship?
Now, according to an account I don't know anything about on X called Red Alert of Florida, it showed a photo of some ancient writing.
I don't know what the source was.
But the claim from Red Alert of Florida is that the author who came up with the citizenship clause in the Constitution explicitly told us foreigners wouldn't be citizens.
In other words, it's obvious that the intent of that was to make sure that this is...
Here I am making some assumptions.
I think the idea was to make sure that Native Americans were citizens and that maybe slaves were citizens or something like that.
So I think it was about people who were legitimately already here so that we didn't form a country and say, well, you've lived here all your life, but you're not a citizen.
Wasn't it to make sure that everybody who legitimately was already here was called a citizen?
And that it wasn't about somebody coming from another country, spending 10 minutes here to have a baby, and then the baby is American?
Now, I think at some point there might have been a court decision that widened the interpretation or changed it.
But I wasn't aware that when the Constitution was made, there was no intention...
That illegal immigrants could become citizens.
Do you know why there was no intention to have that done?
Because apparently it's really stupid.
Because you're really going to attract a lot of citizens if you have a desirable country.
Anyway, so I used to be against it, against ending it.
I used to be against ending birthright citizenship.
But when you see how it's abused and you see that no other country has it, I think I'm in favor of going back to a more original interpretation of the Constitution and say that it was about the people who were already here, not the people coming from other countries.
Mark Andreessen said something on X that I saw today that messed up my brain a little bit.
He says, you know, you've heard me use the phrase FU money, and that people who have FU money can say things, and they've got a little more free speech, and so, you know, you don't have to worry about getting fired or anything if you have so much money.
But Mark Andreessen says, the FU money is mainly a myth.
He says, first of all, if you're in business, you pick up more responsibilities along with more money.
You're responsible for more people.
Your actions have more consequences for others.
And second, political power is always greater than financial power.
Now, those are good points.
Mark Andreessen is very smart.
If you don't follow him, you should follow him on X. But I'm going to just weigh in with a little bit of a tweak.
And I would say this.
I think FU money is real.
But you have to be willing to spend it all.
You have to be willing to spend it all.
That's what I did.
So basically everything was taken from me.
So I wouldn't be able to start a business today.
It would be possible because people say, oh, it's that guy, that disgraced guy.
My social situation, you know, it was destroyed as soon as I started supporting Trump and got a little worse when I got canceled.
My entire...
My entire business model was dismantled, and everybody who benefited from that business model was injured.
So the people I worked with who were part of the economic flow, you know, the ones who had been part of the calendar or whatever, they were all injured because they had less revenue.
So...
It is true that if you have enough money, you can break the rules of what you're allowed to say, which I did.
So the place that I'll kind of agree with Marc Andreessen is, FU money doesn't protect you, but it does give you an option.
It doesn't protect you, it just gives you an option.
So I knew that I wouldn't starve.
I knew I wouldn't starve, and I haven't starved.
So I was protected to that degree.
But you could easily imagine somebody who wouldn't be able to feed themselves if they said the truth in public.
Literally never be able to get a job, don't have any savings, wouldn't even be able to eat.
So in a minor way, if you have F you money and, and it's the and that's the important part, you're willing to spend it all to say what you want to say, then you have it.
If you're not willing to spend it all, and you're not willing to take down a constellation of people who count on you, then you don't have it.
And he's right.
So you've got to be willing to take whatever the cost is if you're going to tell the truth.
That's the price.
The price is everything.
The price of honesty is everything.
Now, Elon Musk has taken that same path.
But because he's also succeeding at such a high level in ways that people think are essential, and I would agree, he's managing to avoid it.
But you see that even on Blue Sky, there's beams about assassinating him.
So Elon has FQ money, you would say.
But at the same time, by saying what he thinks is true and being true to that, he puts himself in a position to lose everything.
Because if Trump had not been elected, it's very possible the Democrats could have put him out of business just to make sure his power was decreased.
So you don't always have to pay everything when you tell the truth.
In his case, it looks like he's holding on.
But you have to put it all at risk.
So Elon put his entire social and business profile on risk, to say the truth.
So far, it's working.
And so far, I'm still standing.
So the truth is fighting.
The truth still has some fight in it, because there are some of us who are too attached to it.
So everybody says they're the ones who have the truth.
It sounds weird when I say it.
All right, that's all I got for you, ladies and gentlemen, for this Monday.
I've gone on too long.
I'm going to say hi to the Locals, people, just for a second, and then let you get on with your day.
If you're on X or Rumble or YouTube, thanks for joining.
