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Is everybody having a good Friday the 13th so far?
You're lucky?
Feeling lucky?
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
Not counting those drones.
But if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that nobody can even understand, with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid, I like coffee, and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called, that's right, a simultaneous sip.
Go.
That was so good.
Thank you.
It makes me think the price of coffee should be higher.
Oh, wait.
The first story is that the price of coffee is higher than it has been in 47 years.
Well, you know, Trump calls oil liquid gold.
I think it's coffee.
Yeah, I think coffee is the liquid gold.
Let me put it this way.
If you said to me, Scott, I cannot give you any oil today.
I would say, really?
But I could have it tomorrow, right?
Yeah, you could have it tomorrow.
But today, no oil.
I'd say, alright, alright, whatever.
But if you came to me and said, Scott, you can't have any coffee today.
I'd say, I'm going to kill you.
But I'd be kidding because I'm against violence.
Well, you would not be surprised to know that there's a big advance out of Korea, South Korea, obviously, in batteries.
They found out that they can add water to a lithium metal battery and it increases the lifespan by 750% using only water.
Wow.
I love the fact that nobody thought of putting water on it.
It's like the most abundant element in the universe.
All right.
Not the universe, but recently on the planet.
So you don't need to know any details about that.
I always tell you the battery stuff in the context of if battery technology becomes, let's say, five times better, everything changes.
And then there must be like 20 or 30 things that are going on, every one of them.
Would make batteries five to ten times better.
So there is a real interesting world coming of robots and self-driving cars and everything else with batteries that last forever.
Meanwhile, according to study finds, scientists are getting close to having a pill that cures diabetes.
Mount Sinai team is working on it.
They figured out the mechanics of it, so they're pretty sure they can do it.
They just need to test it on humans, so it's going to take a while.
But I wouldn't wait for that.
Meanwhile, Tesla...
Launched what they call their Actually Smart Summon feature in China.
Now, I think what that means is you can summon your car from anywhere and it will just drive to you so that you can get in it.
Imagine never having to park your car again.
Can you even wrap your head around that?
Imagine that wherever you're going, your own car drops you off in front of the door, and then you tell it to go park itself, and it just looks for a parking place.
And then when you want it, you just summon it, and it goes from its parking place to wherever you're waiting.
Now, that's pretty amazing.
But it looks like China has the function where they can call it to you.
I don't know if a Tesla full self-driving can go find a parking spot.
I don't know that it can do that.
And also at the same time, Musk says that the Tesla full self-driving drove a car from LA to San Diego with zero interventions.
Can you imagine going from LA to San Diego without ever touching the steering wheel?
That's pretty amazing.
You know, I've told you before that my retirement assumption is that I could just go sit in the car and tell it to take me on vacation.
You know, say something like, hey car, I haven't spent much time looking around in Arizona.
Let's go to Arizona.
And then the car figures out, you know, uses its AI to figure out what hotels will stay at along the way.
And, you know, if it's time for me to have lunch, it would be amazing.
I just do my own work while I'm going somewhere.
All right.
Meanwhile, so the SpaceX headquarters...
Which had been in some other named city, is now officially named Starbase.
So it's Starbase City.
So we have a new city in America called Starbase.
All right.
Now, I would love to know how Starbase was designed.
Because didn't Elon Musk have a lot to do with designing the whole city?
Wasn't it a nothing until he decided it was a city?
So I'd love to know what technique he used to design it to make it livable, because I would imagine some of that is transferable to other places.
We'll see.
Meanwhile, the Vigilant Fox is reporting over on X that Neil deGrasse Tyson, he was on CNN, he was warning about the lack of trust in experts.
So see how out of time this sounds to you.
Imagine that this happened yesterday, I think.
So this is a yesterday opinion.
And ask me this.
Does it feel like this is a 10-year-old opinion, like it doesn't apply anymore?
But I'll read it to you, all right?
So this is Neil deGrasse Tyson.
He goes, doing your own research could have ultimately lethal consequences if you're making decisions that affect your health and well-being.
Does that sound like a 2024 or 2025 opinion?
It feels like sort of out of time, doesn't it?
But he goes on.
This is a problem going forward.
It's the loss of people's trust in experts.
I need to clarify that a little bit.
I don't believe that the problem is the public's loss of trust in experts.
It's not the trust that's the problem.
It's the experts.
That would be like saying, you know, in World War II, the real problem was people lost trust in Hitler.
No, no.
No, the problem wasn't they didn't lose trust in him.
The problem was Hitler.
He was the problem.
And the problem with me is not that I've lost trust in experts.
It's the experts.
It's the experts.
So it doesn't even sound like this came from our time.
It feels so off.
Anyway.
By the way, there's no right answer, because he's completely right that if you ignore the experts, you're probably going to die.
If you ignore all of them.
But if you follow the experts, you're probably going to die.
So if you had two ways, you're probably going to die.
Following the experts and ignoring all the experts.
Somewhere in the middle, where you call your shots and say, well, I feel like it's safe enough to follow these experts, at least until I find out I shouldn't have.
But maybe these other experts, I'll take a pass and wait this one out.
So that's probably your only way of surviving these days.
You've got to make your own call, which experts to believe, which is almost like doing your own research.
So there's basically no way to win.
Speaking of the loss of credibility, John Nolte is writing in Breitbart that Leslie, Stalin, and Van Jones were on some...
I think a lot of you saw the clip on social media.
It was some event where a number of news people were yakking about what happened in the election.
And according to Leslie and Van Jones...
That Trump's crushing re-election victory has driven much of the corporate media into despair.
No, actually, I think that's John Nolte's take on it.
That both Leslie Stahl and Van Jones are having a bad time with the fact that the legacy media has been disgraced.
And part of the thinking, I think, on that clip is Was that it's the change in technology that caused it.
So in the 60s, the technology allowed you to have a television show.
In the 20s, it was easier to do a podcast.
So the thinking is that the technology made it possible for all these people to compete with the mainstream media.
And that's what happened.
All the extra competition.
Do you think that's the full story?
No.
As Nick Nolte points out, it's the hoaxes.
It's the hoaxes.
If the mainstream media had been telling us the truth, or even if they'd been trying to tell us the truth, but got something wrong, we'd still trust them.
I wouldn't need a podcast.
No one would need to check the internet for news if the mainstream media were credible.
I mean, if I watched it and said, oh, at least they're trying to get that right.
You know, they're not perfect, but they're at least trying to get this right.
When I watch the news, I don't get the impression they're trying to get it right.
I get the impression they're trying to, you know, pursue a narrative and a propaganda and brainwash you.
I don't get any sense they're trying to get it right.
But when I watch a podcast...
Depending on which podcast it is, I often think, oh, there's someone who's, you know, humble about how much they know and how much they don't know, but is trying to get it right.
We'll use Joe Rogan as the universal reference.
Everybody knows.
Joe Rogan very clearly, you know, I can't read minds, but the impression one gets, very clearly wants to get it right.
Sometimes he gets things wrong, like everybody in the world.
But at least when I watch him, I think he's trying to get it right.
I don't get that at all with the regular media.
Well, and what is the outcome of all this lack of credibility in the media, CNN? CNN? According to the Post Millennial, CNN lost in ratings to the Food Network recently.
CNN lost to the Food Network.
Now, who could have predicted that that would happen?
Now, let me see.
What do people like better?
Delicious food, even if they're just watching it, or bullshit, even if they're just watching it?
Answer, it's a tough one.
I think people like delicious food, even if they're just watching it.
So yeah, that's not a big surprise.
Food is better than shit.
Meanwhile, MSNBC had a guest on who said that Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to Trump's inaugural fund.
But it was $1 million.
Now $1 million is a lot of money.
That's a lot of money.
But $100 million is a completely different story.
And the MSNBC host just let that go.
So if you were watching MSNBC, you'd think that Facebook donated $100 million to just one ceremony for one day.
I've been watching Zuckerberg for many years.
He's not that dumb.
Turns out he's actually quite brilliant and a really good leader.
A million dollars is a smart investment in, you know, making friends.
A hundred million would be just bad shit crazy.
So I can't believe that the guest didn't catch himself on that.
So I think this was on the X account, Media Lies, they picked it up.
You should follow them.
Media Lies.
It used to be Kamala Harris Lies, but now it's more generic.
So Biden...
Did a bunch of pardons, as you already know about.
He pardoned 39 people yesterday, including, some say, Chinese spies.
Do you think it's true that Biden pardoned Chinese spies?
How many people think that's real?
It's on the internet.
It's on social media.
Do you think he really pardoned Chinese spies?
No.
It's a hard one because when you're talking about pardons, anything's possible.
But no, he did not pardon any Chinese spies.
It is true that the United States had, before yesterday, they had negotiated a prisoner swap.
So I guess we had some of their spies and they had some of our spies and So that deal was already done, but that wasn't pardoned.
It is true that the Chinese spies will get out of jail, but part of a prisoner swap, which is fine.
All right.
Let's see what else is happening.
Let's check in on identity politics.
As I've told you, DEI kills everything it touches.
So Biden does all these pardons, and the news today is talking about how black women are really mad because he didn't do enough for black women.
So Representative Presley, Democrat in Massachusetts, thinks he should have done more to reduce the racial disparities.
And he had, I guess he made a campaign promise to reduce the number of incarcerated Americans, but he didn't reduce it.
And It seems to me this is yet another example of how the Democrat Party doesn't really have a chance of recovering at the national level.
Locally, they're still fine.
But at the national level, this is going to happen every time they do anything.
Because I think every demographic group is going to say, hey, what did your recent change do to help my group?
Well, you know, we're not always about helping every single group every time.
Yes, but wasn't that money you could have spent on my group?
Well, yeah, I mean, we do spend money on your group too, but right now we're spending some money on this other group.
But that could have gone to me.
As soon as you have all this identity, there isn't any possibility of unity.
So the Democrat Party should continue to experience disunity until they can't do anything.
And I think the Kamala Harris debacle, if I can call it that, if you count Biden staying in too long, dropping out too late, not really having time for a primary election, I think every bit of that was just DEI. And if you think that was like, you know, a weird year and something happened that one time, but, you know, you're not going to see that again.
No, I think it's the opposite.
I think that the Democrat Party is completely destroyed and there is no way to bring it back at the national level.
Because if they get rid of identity politics, they're done.
And if they keep identity politics...
They can continue, but not as a competitive entity.
So if they want to be non-competitive, they can do it, or they can get rid of identity politics, and then what point do they have?
They built their whole deal based on that foundation.
So Benny Thompson, he was one of the January 6th committee people who called it an insurrection.
According to the post-millennial...
Benny said that he would accept Biden's pardon.
He was the chair of the January 6th committee, actually.
He would accept Biden's pardon for his actions there if it were offered.
Now, I don't know if I'm misinterpreting this, but I thought I saw Jonathan Turley say that there's no obvious crime with the January 6th committee.
They might have been liars.
They may have not done their due diligence.
They may have been unethical.
They might have been immoral.
They might have been bad in a whole range of ways, which is what I saw.
They seemed like very, very bad people in terms of what they were doing to the country.
But I couldn't identify anything that was specifically illegal, and I'm no lawyer, so I'm not the source of that.
But I think Jonathan Turley said it'd be hard to find anything that was really a crime.
And so I'm in favor of...
I think I'm in favor of them getting pardoned.
The reason I'd be in favor of a pardon for the January 6th committee is only if there's definitely no crimes.
Because I don't want lawfare.
No lawfare.
But the next best thing to a criminal, some kind of criminal action against them, if there is no crime, the next best thing is to give them a pardon.
Biden giving them a pardon.
Because when somebody gives you a pardon, everybody assumes you're guilty.
Am I right?
Everybody assumes you're guilty.
So I'll take it.
Yeah, give me the pardon.
So if you're not sure you can find a crime with any of these January 6th committee people, let's give them the worst case scenario anyway, a pardon.
And then the entire world can say, well, why would you need a pardon?
And that would be a good question.
Turns out the answer is simple.
There were no identifiable crimes.
But, yeah, I'm never worried that, you know, there might be some lawfare.
So, yeah, I'm weirdly in favor of pardoning them if there's no obvious crimes.
It's a big if.
It might be somebody who knows of crime.
All right, here's a test of your fake news spotting.
Mayor Eric Adams met with Tom Homan, and I guess they were on the same page about the need to deport the dangerous illegal migrants.
And Eric Adams later talked about it.
He did a little press conference after.
He said, quote, we have 500,000 children who have sponsors in this country that we can't find.
Now, the implication is that half a million children are being trafficked, basically.
But it's not what he said.
He just said there are half a million that you can't find.
Let me put that in context.
And just for the dumb people, in case there are any NPCs here, nothing I say next is meant to condone trafficking of children.
I only need to say that for the truly dumb people who may have slipped in here.
The rest of you already know that.
But here's some context.
Citizens of the United States, who were born and raised here, there are now about 73 million minors in the United States, people under 18, 73 million of them.
At any given moment, how many of them are not being supervised?
Maybe 10 to 30 million.
So, yes, it's bad that there are half a million children that we don't know what's happening with them.
That's bad.
It could be very bad.
It's also true that we have 73 million who are not watched that much.
Do you know what your kid's doing on the phone?
Do you know who they're texting?
Do you know what they're doing after school for two hours before you see them again?
Children are largely unsupervised all the time.
And the trouble that they're getting in, even if they have a proper parent, they're still largely unsupervised.
So, yes, it's a very worrisome problem that half a million children are unaccounted for.
But if you don't know what percentage of them are absolutely fine, you don't really know how big the problem is.
Now, you can say, of course, if there's even one child who's a victim, that's too many, and you'd be right.
But if you want to understand the story in context, I would ask the following question, and I don't know the answer, so this is just the question you would ask.
Is the danger to the half million...
Comparable, better or worse, than every citizen who's under 18. Because they all have access to infinite trouble.
They all have the potential to be victims of just damn near anything.
And I don't know.
I mean, what if we found out, again, if there's even one person being a victim, it's too many and we all agree on that, But what if we looked into it and the half a million missing?
It was just bad paperwork.
And that almost nobody is being trafficked.
I don't know that that's the case, by the way.
But here's my general warning.
I always tell you that when you hear a number without a percentage, it's propaganda.
And when you hear a percentage without the raw number, it's propaganda.
And when you hear any number and the larger context to which it belongs, it's propaganda.
Now, it's good propaganda.
I think it's good propaganda.
Because...
He's trying to get the country to pay more attention to the risk to the people under 18. And we all like that.
So I'm glad he's doing it.
Eric Adams is a frustratingly interesting character because he does a lot of stuff I really like, but other stuff I may have a different opinion about.
So yes, we should find out exactly what's going on with the half a million, and yes, we should close the border so that this never happens again.
But if you automatically think that of that half a million, more of them are being trafficked than maybe are victimized or just regular citizens, I don't know.
It might be true.
But it's horrible no matter what the number is.
We can agree on that.
There's a story that I don't believe yet.
According to the Daily Wire and according to most of the news everywhere, there are reports that look credible that the Biden administration is selling off the unused border wall materials.
And they're selling it for scrap and they're doing it really quickly.
And the implication is that Biden doesn't want Trump to succeed because it would be easier to just put up the wall that you already own than it would be to procure it and then start building it.
Do you believe that?
Here's why I don't believe it.
It's too on the nose.
Too on the nose.
Really?
Do we really think that Biden would try to sell the wall That even Biden was trying to put up right before the changeover.
Now, I do believe that there will be some dirty tricks relative to the changeover, which would not be that unusual, but probably low-level dirty tricks.
There's something wrong with this story, and here's what's wrong.
I would need somebody who is involved with selling it to explain what's going on.
So I will just put out this possible explanation.
It's possible that there's a reason that some of the wall...
Some components needed to be sold.
For example, maybe they were stored in a way that deformed them, so they're too hard to put up.
Maybe they rusted.
Maybe there's something else.
Maybe they have a source that they think is just a better wall.
So it's not that they're saving money, but they think they can procure a better wall than the one that we had.
So I feel like there's something else to the story.
But do you get the same feeling when you read it that it's just too perfect?
You know, what a perfect story.
Biden hates the wall until he's president, and then he builds some.
And the moment that Trump is going to be president again, he sells off the parts.
It's a little too perfect.
I don't know.
I'm not buying it.
I'm not saying it's false.
I'm not calling it fake.
I'm saying that with the information I have, nope.
I'm not accepting that on face value.
Here's another little more fake news.
So Unusual Wales is reporting that Trump's team is looking into significantly reducing, merging, or even eliminating top bank regulators.
Says the Wall Street Journal.
So they're talking about doing things with the FDIC and the Department of Government.
Oh yeah, the FDIC. So the FDIC is what insures customers' accounts.
And most of us feel that that's a necessary, very valuable thing.
But the news is telling us that Trump's, you know, doge people might want to get rid of those departments.
Is that real news or fake news?
Let's see if you get this one right.
Real news or fake news?
Team wants to get rid of the department that does the FDIC and maybe some other stuff.
So therefore, banks will be relatively unregulated.
Do you think that's true?
No, it's not true.
It's not even a little bit true.
It's totally not true.
Here's what's true.
They're definitely looking at reducing the bureaucracy.
They're definitely looking at are there places where two or three agencies should really be one?
They're definitely looking at that.
Here's what they're not doing as far as we know.
Looking at not having FDIC insurance on accounts.
There's no reporting that says they're considering that because it would probably be dumb.
But getting rid of the many departments to administer it and simplifying it But still making it available might be exactly what you want to do.
Like, how many people do you need in that department?
Probably it's bloated.
So probably if you combined it with something else and kept one management, you'd save some money.
So no, it is not true that anybody on the Trump team is considering getting rid of federal deposit insurance.
It is true.
Because it's common sense, it's true.
I don't have to do any research to know this is true.
They're looking at all the places that they can combine departments to reduce costs.
So I think that's a real story.
So Trump rang the opening bell to New York Stock Exchange yesterday.
And people were chanting, USA, USA! And even MSNBC said they'd never seen the energy there like that.
And of course, he was ringing the bell because he's also on the cover of Time magazine.
And let me say this about Trump.
We're seeing a different Trump.
He's a different guy.
And if that surprises you, you maybe haven't been paying attention because he's quite adaptable, even at his current age.
And here's my take.
A Trump who has not yet won whatever it is he's trying to win, let's say the presidency, can be pretty contentious.
He can be pretty scrappy.
He can go too far.
He can make you cringe a little bit and go, ooh, that was a little too far, even if I like him.
Wouldn't have gone that far.
But Trump who has already won And is in his last contest because he can't be president after this.
That Trump?
He is great.
Just sort of watching him simply being in his moment, you know, ringing the bell and watching the people react to him.
He has nothing to prove.
In terms of getting the job.
So once he's out of job application mode, he is really good at just being, you know, being the thing.
So I think he will be, there's a really good chance that he will go down as our greatest president.
Now, it's going to be tough to beat the Louisiana Purchase and stuff.
But, you know, if you happen to be in the right place at the right time, you get some lucky breaks.
Although, it was pretty smart to buy the Louisiana Purchase.
So, depending on the events that are outside of, you know, Trump's control, there's a lot that could happen.
It could go well, it could go poorly.
But he has a solid chance of being the best president we've ever had, and maybe even a model for other countries.
Anyway, so how did MSNBC cover Trump being on the Time cover?
Well, you won't be surprised to know that Joy Reid compared him to Hitler.
You could give them any story, and it's a reason to compare him to Hitler.
Now, it is valid.
It is valid to point out that Time magazine has had Putin and Hitler and Stalin, Khomeini.
And the point of it is not who's awesome, but rather who was significant that year.
So it's about who's significant, not who's good or bad.
And...
You know, I get the point, right?
I think I said the same thing, which is, you know, it's not an endorsement by Time Magazine.
It definitely isn't.
But the fact that you had spent your whole show or a segment of it just making this big visual comparison to dictators, they are so worthless and broken.
It's funny.
And it was my best laugh of the day, as usual.
I'll tell you, if you haven't learned to watch MSNBC a little bit, you can't turn it on and watch it for like an hour, your brain will fry.
But when we're watching the clips, if you're just looking at them to see what would happen if you had a channel that was devoted to only hiring people with severe mental illness, who didn't know it, I guess, it would look like that.
So when I watch Joy Reid or Rachel Maddow, I just see mental health problems.
I'm not really seeing opinions, per se.
Meanwhile, James Carville...
I'll tell you, that guy's becoming really interesting, just because he's so unfiltered.
But Carville said...
He found out that there are people on his team, I guess, the Democrats.
He says there are people who don't mind losing elections if it makes them feel better and superior.
But he points out, if you aren't winning, you aren't shit.
And then he watched the Food Network.
Because people like food more than they like shit, even if they're just looking at it.
All right.
Other people being weird.
Adam Kinzinger.
Talking about Donald Trump's vow to get retribution.
So he was one of those January 6th committee people.
And Kinzinger warns that if Trump tried to get retribution, he said, quote, if there's a day that Democrats decide to do the same thing to Republicans, you won't have a right to complain about it.
To which I have to ask the following question.
Did we change the meaning of the word retribution?
Because retribution means that you're the one who did something bad, and somebody is paying you back for that bad thing you did.
It doesn't mean that he just decided to do something bad to you.
No, it's called retribution.
And retribution is even part of the question, because it is assumed that the January 6th committee did something that nobody should have done to anybody.
So now, if you start the fight, you should not expect the other person not to finish it if they can.
And if they finish the fight and that causes you to go back and get stronger and come back and fight them again, that's okay.
It's not, you know, it's not a good world.
But no, you don't get to take a free punch.
So, Adam, yes, I understand that if he gets retribution, the Democrats will find a way to do it to him.
But can you tell me what Democrats could have done to Trump that they didn't literally try?
They tried to impeach him.
They tried to put him in jail.
Somebody tried to kill him.
Twice, at least.
So are you telling me that you can make that situation go away if Trump decides not to get retribution?
Nobody's buying that.
The Democrats pushed every illegitimate button that they could touch to try to get rid of Trump.
If he does a non-legitimate thing, which is find something they did illegally and prosecute, That's perfectly acceptable.
In fact, he should give it back as hard as he got, minus the assassination part, of course.
But I'm not in favor of lawfare or violence, of course.
But yeah, he should use every tool he has that's ethical and makes sense and not as going too far.
Don't want him to go too far.
But my sense is that Trump will probably just not have the enthusiasm for retribution.
I think it would just be too much work for what you would get.
You wouldn't really get anything from it.
So I would be in favor of pardoning Kinzinger, too, to make him look guilty.
So apparently, according to CNN, Biden isn't inclined to issue any pardons to people who used firearms or drugs or had drug charges. Biden isn't inclined to issue any pardons to people who Thank you.
Jake Tapper points out that that's after Hunter Biden was pardoned for firearms and drug charges.
Now, is that a good gotcha?
That Biden allegedly doesn't want to give pardons to people with firearms and drug charges, but he just gave a pardon to his own son for firearms and drug charges.
So did CNN get a good gotcha there?
Gotcha.
No.
No.
This is, again, thinking by analogy.
This is not an analogy.
Every single person watching this story knows that the only thing that mattered was that Hunter Biden was his son.
And we all get it.
We all get it.
You could hate it.
You could not like it.
But we get it.
Father pardoning the son.
We get it.
CNN, this isn't a gotcha.
But what's interesting is that Jake Tapper on CNN, he played it as a gotcha.
Like he played it as, you know, a clear, let's say, inconsistency with Biden that maybe should be noted.
No, that shouldn't be noted.
There's no story here whatsoever.
Man helps his son.
You don't need to ask any extra questions, do you?
Do you need to look for any inconsistencies if somebody helps a family member?
No!
That's sort of what the whole family member thing is about.
Of course he did.
Let's talk about the drones.
Mayorkas and the FBI put out a document saying they had no evidence about the reported drone sightings posing a national security or public safety threat or having any foreign nexus.
He said that none of the sightings so far have been corroborated by electronic detection, which they're making available to the locals.
So, how do you interpret that?
So, Homeland Security and the FBI, they have no evidence that the sightings are national security or public safety risk or have a foreign nexus.
What's missing?
There's a lot missing, isn't there?
How about we checked with the military, and it's definitely not one of ours, and it's definitely not one of the vendors who is trying to make a deal to the military.
Don't you feel like that's sort of obviously missing?
Wouldn't that be the most obvious thing you want to say?
It's one thing to say it's not Homeland Security, and it's not the FBI, and that they don't know anything about it.
It's another thing to say we asked all of the departments in our government and they all said it's not us.
That's what I want to hear.
I want to hear we checked with everybody who could even remotely possibly be involved with the drone and they all assured us It's not them.
Now, even that could be a lie.
But it's so obviously omitting the most likely people who would be involved in it, which is the military.
I didn't think it was the FBI. I didn't think it was Homeland Security.
I thought it was the military.
They're vendors.
Maybe not the military, per se.
What do you make of the fact that none of the sightings have been corroborated by electronic detection?
What I make of that is nothing because the drones, many of them were flying under radar, so that wouldn't catch them.
And by the time the person with the fancy machines shows up, the sightings are probably over and some of them are just airplanes and some of them are private drones and stuff.
So it does bring up the question if this drone stuff is nothing but mass delusion.
And yesterday I would have said it's not mass delusion.
But there's mass delusion on top of it.
Meaning that at a minimum, 95% of the videos and the photos you see online are fake.
A minimum 95%.
Is the other 5% real?
I don't know.
But I know there's no detection of it.
I know I haven't seen a picture that looked real yet.
So I have personally spent a lot of time looking at videos and photos that are allegedly in New Jersey and other places.
I haven't personally Seen anything that looked real.
And what I mean by that is I look at the video and I go, okay, an orb?
How hard would it be to make a video with a fake orb?
It'd be real easy.
So, I just, I don't know.
I would say that I'm going to move the possibility of it being literally nothing, like there's no drones.
The possibility of that went from yesterday I would have said 10%, But I'm going to raise that to 30%.
I think there's a good 30% chance that there's not been a single drone.
That there's not been a single unexplained car-sized drone.
There's a good 30% that's never happened.
But people are wildly reporting that it did.
That would be a mass hysteria.
And mass hysterias are so common...
So common that just because it sounds unlikely, don't rule the down for that.
It sounds unlikely, but it's the most common thing that happens in society, mass hysteria.
We do it all the time.
This could be one, but I still think there are...
Enough of the in-person sightings and stories that make me think there's something up there, even if 95% of them are just aircraft and private drones and nothing to worry about.
There seems like there's something up there.
The fact that the government is so sure that they're not dangerous, pretty much I take as a confirmation that the government is involved and they know what they are.
Anyway, the news on it is ridiculous and social media reports all look absurd to me.
So, I'll say it again.
I haven't personally, and I've looked at a lot of the videos, I haven't personally seen anything that looks to me like, oh, that's a real unexplained phenomenon.
Not yet.
It's just blurry pictures.
The NASDAQ, where stocks go to get listed for trading, one of the places, They got slapped down by a court because they were trying to require the companies that were listed on their exchange to have DEI in their corporate boards.
So NASDAQ was trying to regulate the companies that sign up to be on their listing by saying you've got to have at least a woman on the board and either somebody who is a different race and or LGBTQ. So I wonder how many boards were tempted to just say, all right, guys, we got a woman.
That was easy.
But as far as I know, none of you are LGBTQ. Is that correct?
And everybody's like, no, we're not.
You know, darn it.
All right.
We're either going to have to replace one of you with an LGBTQ so I can be listed on the NASDAQ, or one of you is going to have to change your lifestyle.
Can I get a volunteer to be LGBTQ just while we do the paperwork?
And then one will be like, yeah, I'll do that.
Sure.
What do I have to do?
Do I have to have sex with somebody who's my same sex?
No, you just have to say you are.
Because it's really not about what you've done physically.
It's about how you identify.
So we've got to fill out this paperwork.
So I need you to identify as gay for...
Could you do that for 10 minutes?
10 minutes?
Yeah, I can give you a game for 10 minutes.
Yeah, all right.
Paperwork, fill down.
All right, obviously the DEI stuff and the identity stuff is ridiculous bullshit.
Obviously DEI destroys everything it touches.
This would have destroyed the NASDAQ because companies would have said, I'll just list somewhere else.
Or it would have created a competitor.
Imagine if the NASDAQ just put itself out of business by becoming so hard to work with that everybody said, well, I think I'll go to the New York Exchange, or somebody else says, I think I'll do a startup of a new exchange, if that's even possible.
But the court slapped him down and said that they're not the entity that can tell companies what to do in that specific way.
So they don't have that power, so they lost that.
Did you see that the Inspector General report came out on the FBI's involvement in January 6th?
And, of course, the news, predictably, split into two movies on one screen.
On one screen, the fact that there were 26, what do they call them, confidential human sources, so people who were not on the payroll of the FBI... But had already, you know, before January 6th, had been sources.
So they're basically spies within right-wing groups.
So 26 of those confidential human sources, but not FBI agents, this is important, not FBI agents, but confidential human sources were in fact in the crowd.
And so how was that reported by the political left?
The political left said, see, there's another conspiracy theory by the right that's been debunked.
There were no FBI agents in the group.
So I guess we can put that to rest, can't we?
So that's one movie.
The other movie looked at exactly the same news and said, well, there it is.
There's proof that the FBI was behind the trouble that happened on January 6th.
Which one of them is right?
Which movie do you like?
Do you like the movie where it was proven that the FBI had nothing to do with it, or the same information proving that they were totally culpable?
It's the same information.
The story is the same.
How can we be reporting it as opposites?
It's just what we do.
It's crazy.
So let me tell you my take on this.
My take is this.
Why would you believe in the IG report?
They're making you think past the sale.
Think past the sale.
So if you're thinking, did those 26 confidential human sources, did they have anything to do with the bad behavior?
Or if you're thinking, well, maybe the FBI lied and some agents were involved, how would we know?
Then you're thinking past the decision.
Here's the thing you shouldn't think past.
Why would you trust an IG report?
If you don't trust the FBI, Why would you trust the people who gave the information to the FBI, giving the information to somebody else to talk for them?
Here's me as an FBI agent.
I've got a bunch of things here that I claim are true.
Good try, FBI agent.
Just because you say it's true, that doesn't mean I think it's true.
Right?
That's just you, who I don't believe, saying that this stuff is true.
Sorry.
Sorry.
I'm going to have to independently find out if that's true.
So I'm going to hire an inspector general.
The inspector general goes and talks to that agent and says, I'm trying to find out what's true.
And the FBI says, this is true.
The same stuff I was trying to show everybody else.
And the IG says, let me look at that.
All right.
I'll put that in the report.
Where do you think the IG gets their information?
By asking the FBI. So there shouldn't be that much difference.
Between the FBI telling you themselves and the FBI telling the Inspector General who tells you what the FBI told them.
Do you think the inspector general had their own confidential sources inside the FBI and they're working their moles to find out what was real?
And do you think that the FBI, if they had been involved in something terribly illegal or unethical on January 6th, do you think they would have written it down in their documents so that when they did an email search, they're like, oh, there it is.
It's right in this email.
You just said you have 100 agents there and you told them to cause trouble.
No.
If they were involved in something that bad, overthrowing the United States government, they're not going to write that in an email.
It's not going to be in a text.
So how in the world would the IG know anything?
The IG would know exactly what the FBI told them, And if they were involved in any bad behavior, I'm pretty sure the smart play would be don't tell the inspector general.
Now, here are the things that are not ruled out.
Number one, that the FBI told the confidential human sources, you better cause some trouble there or else you won't be our source anymore and you'll go to jail.
I don't remember that part.
And if they did tell the confidential human sources that, would the confidential human sources sell out their protector?
Probably not.
So no, I have no credibility in the IG report, no credibility in the FBI. And we wouldn't know if there was any freelancers.
So let's say you really nailed them down.
You say, all right, FBI, you've admitted to the confidential human sources.
But how many agents did you have?
Zero.
There were no agents.
All right.
Here's my next question.
Did you work with any external people who used to be in this line of work but now are freelancers so that it didn't look like the FBI was behind it?
Well, I can't speak for everybody in the FBI, but I didn't.
Like, how would you even know?
If somebody associated with the FBI or the CIA or some intelligence group did some freelancing for the benefit of some Democrats, how would you know?
There's no way to know.
And the Inspector General report is just worthless, I think.
However, here's my larger point.
I don't think it's important.
Because everything that we know about January 6th, Just depends on whether the security was there.
So if it's true that there were some people associated with the FBI in one way or another who were trying to make things worse, I don't think it matters.
It doesn't make much difference to the larger narrative.
The larger narrative is that it was allowed to happen, meaning that Trump asked for more security.
They were fully aware that there was a problem coming, and they chose...
You know, various people, Democrat-leading, chose not to respond in a way that you and I think would be sufficient.
Now, that's the whole story.
If there were also people in the FBI trying to intentionally cause trouble, I don't know that it matters.
Because whether somebody was intentionally doing it, or it happened organically...
None of it would have happened if there had been reasonable security and or a reasonable election or an election that looked reasonable.
The only thing we know is it looked rigged.
We don't know that there was.
So, I don't know.
I wouldn't obsess about that.
I would concentrate on the security part.
And I want to ask you a question.
Have I ever gone too far in talking about the FBI involvement in the January 6th crowds?
Because my memory of it is that I've largely avoided that topic because I didn't think it was terribly important and I didn't think we'd ever know for sure.
Does anybody have any memory of me saying something that's now debunked?
Because I want to fact check myself.
If I ever went too far and said, oh, clearly that was full of FBI agents, well, then I have to debunk myself.
I don't think I did.
I think I held back.
And the reason I say this, it's important for you to check my work, because a lot of what I do is make predictions.
All right, well, Hamas is acting like they might be willing to temporarily allow Israel's military to be in Gaza in return for some of the hostages, but not all of them.
And the thinking is that Hamas might have been waiting for somebody to come to their rescue, but once Hezbollah and Syria fell and Iran was crippled, They knew nobody would come, so now they might be getting more flexible, and there's some question about whether they'd try to do it before Biden's end of office, etc.
Here is my take.
Let me teach you something about negotiation.
This is not one.
Trump is going to teach them what a negotiation is, and here's what I think he's going to do.
He's going to say, releasing the hostages is not a negotiation.
You're going to do that or we will destroy you with no mercy.
And as well as we'll kill all the hostages.
They'll all be dead.
But you'll definitely be dead and you will lose everything forever.
So the way you negotiate is you say, these things are negotiable, but there's some things that are not.
Hostages are never negotiable.
Because the minute you negotiate for hostages, you're going to get more hostages.
Negotiating for hostages increases the number of hostages.
Not right away, but once they learn the business model works, more hostages.
You absolutely have to kill the hostages if you want it to stop.
Meaning, you have to say to Hamas, here's the deal.
If you want anything...
You've got to start with giving us all the hostages.
And then we can talk.
But without the hostages, every one of you is dead.
Gaza will never be for the Palestinians.
There'll never be a Palestinian state.
It'll never be a conversation.
And you will never be free in any sense.
We'll take everything from you.
Everything.
So if you treat the...
If you treat the...
The hostages as a negotiation, you just make everything worse.
I think Trump's the only one who might even understand that.
And the way he's talking, he did exactly what I said, remember?
He said, if those hostages are still there when I get sworn in, there will be hell to pay.
He means that.
That's not a bluff.
Here's what I would not expect.
That he gets in office and just starts acting like it's a regular negotiation and the hostages are part of it.
No way!
The hostages cannot be part of a negotiation.
That's your opening bid to be allowed to negotiate.
If Hamas wants to negotiate, that's the ticket.
You pay that first.
That cannot be part of the negotiation.
Anyway, I guess Trump was asked if he trusted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he had the best Trump answer.
Quote, I don't trust anybody.
Thank you.
You know, every once in a while, you say something that's so obvious and so commonsensical, you wonder why you've never heard it before from somebody in this position.
Because typically, you wouldn't want a president to say, I don't trust anybody.
But if you live in the real world, You've watched the people that you trusted that were on your inner circle selling books?
Your inner circle?
And, you know, people that you trusted and then they go out there and they're talking crap about you on the news?
No, he shouldn't trust anybody.
He should not trust anybody.
Well, I'm going to take that back.
He should trust his family.
I think he can trust his family.
But beyond that, Trusting other people is pretty sketchy.
So, yeah, I think he means this as a little bit hyperbole, you know, not really 100%.
But I like the fact that he said it out loud.
It was a good answer.
Anyway, so there's talk about Israel and maybe the U.S. taking out Iran's nuclear program.
So I guess their nuclear program is allegedly...
Within months of being able to create a nuclear weapon, because they've refined enough materials that they could make 12 bombs or something like that.
Now, here's my question.
Do you think we'd know that if they did make a weapon?
If somebody is within months of being able to make a weapon, don't you think they already made one?
Or is building the actual weapon what Iran would know if anybody found out that it would require immediately taking out their leadership just because they made the weapon?
It could be that Iran knows that if they made one and they have to worry about spies, because Israel must have great spies in Iran by now, if anybody found out they actually made one, then I think it's just a green light for complete destruction of the regime.
Would you agree?
But they'd have to get it when that first one was just brand new before it could be operational and launched.
Because first you'd build it on the ground before you put it on a missile or something.
So if they get it before it's on a missile...
And they know for sure where it is and that it got built.
They would do a lot more than destroy the weapon.
They would have to take out the regime.
And nobody would even blink.
Because they'd say, all right, yeah, nuclear weapon, you had to do that.
You know, people would still criticize Israel, but they would completely understand.
You would completely understand.
So it could be that there's something keeping Iran from taking that last step.
But what I worry about is when the news tells you that it's only a month away, that really means they already made it.
You just don't know it yet, right?
That's what it feels like.
I worry that they already have one and they just, they're good at hiding.
Anyway, apparently Trump's team is considering helping Israel if they were to go after the nuclear program.
I guess we have better bunker buster bombs that we could make available.
And now that the Syrian airspace is cleared, Israel can fly over Syria without worrying about getting shot down.
And they can fly over Iran because they've already taken out Iran's anti-aircraft.
But somebody said, but you still have to go over part of Iraq.
Does Israel feel that Iraq has no anti-aircraft that would be a risk?
I feel like there's a lot of bad stuff in Iraq.
I don't know enough about Iraq to know if it's really dangerous or not.
Anyway, we'll keep an eye on that.
The Trump team thinks that maybe just economic pressure might be enough.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't think anybody wants Iran to become a failed state.
So as bad as their regime is, they don't know what would replace it and what kind of chaos that would cause.
So we'll see.
I think that Trump will try a grand peace deal.
Something that would bring Iran into the, let's say, the world where everybody can be happy.
It won't be something they'll love, but maybe.
I think Trump could meet with the Ayatollah.
What do you think?
Do you think that could ever happen?
Could you imagine Trump actually meeting with the Ayatollah to negotiate?
I think it's possible.
I wouldn't bet on it.
But it's possible.
He's the only person I can imagine doing it.
But who knows?
Who knows?
All right.
That's all I got for you today.
I'm not sure if there's still time to order the Dilbert calendar for your gift giving.
It's close.
I think there's a good chance if you ordered it today, you'd get it before Christmas Day.
But we're getting to those last minutes.
If it did come, it wouldn't be long after Christmas, so you'd still be good.
All right.
Did I forget any big news?
Yeah.
Yeah, as long as you get it before January 1st, you won't be too unhappy.
Current report is 25 agents.
Now, the current report is 25 informants.
We don't know if they were acting as agents or they were agents.
Oh, hello.
According to Politico, Fetterman is looking at a 2028 run.
Oh man, he'd be trouble.
Honestly, he'd be trouble.
Remember I said that the Democrats can't possibly recover unless they have an unusually charismatic candidate?
I don't think he can make it because he's white, so they'd have to be desperate to nominate a white man.
It'll be fun to watch.
Hey, Joshua, I see your post on me.
You must be watching right now.
The Duke lacrosse lady finally admitted she was lying.
That's like a really old story where there's a woman who accused Duke lacrosse players of horrible behavior.
Fetterman's a piece of trash, you say.
Too weak to be president.
He's just good at politics.
All right. - Right.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's my Friday show for today.
I think I hit all the big topics, but I'm also feeling like I missed something.
A lot of people talking about that.
Yeah.
I don't even want to talk about it.
Boy, the Grok does good pictures of me now.
Yeah, the man cave, it doesn't have a set time.
But usually, the man cave is somewhere in the 430 to 530 range to start.
Biden pardoned a pedo judge.
Well, so I decided to not talk about the people who got pardoned, the specific crimes, because the entire point of the presidential pardons Is that you and I think they should still be in jail.
Now, they have their reasons, and they don't have to give them.
What I worry about is that pardons are money laundering, bribery situations, where somebody goes to a politician and says, you know, my brother-in-law's cousin has been in jail for drugs.
I'd be making a really large contribution to your campaign.
If he got pardoned.
So I suspect that the mysterious pardons are all personal favors and or have a financial element to them.
Imagine if somebody went to Hunter and said, Hunter, I'll invest $100 million in your investment fund.
He doesn't have one, but if he did, if my cousin's brother gets pardoned, how would we ever know Why that guy got pardoned?
We'd never know.
And there wouldn't be anything written down.
There'd just be a verbal promise.
So I suspect that the pardons are a completely corrupt process.
But...
I called you anti-Semitic?
Yeah, okay, I don't care.
Anyway, you get the point.
sounds like avoiding the drama the pirates off of Africa now was a question not a guess All right.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Let's see.
Would Iran want to test their nuke before announcing they have one?
You can't really test one without people finding out.
Janet Yellen said she was sorry over the presiding over a $15 trillion debt.
Sorry.
Oops.
Oh yeah, Americans are sicker for longer.
You know, the reason I didn't do that story is I don't trust the data.
I saw in the comments somebody said, there's a story that Americans stay sicker longer than other countries.
But I feel like there's context missing.
Number one, if you're in some poor country, maybe you complain less, or maybe you die from the thing, whereas the American stays, you know, treated longer.
I just don't trust the data on that one.
Let's see.
Look for people who are not charged on January 16 and you can figure out what the assets are.
This seems like a good idea.
China banning exports of raw materials that rare earth.
Okay, we talked about that one yesterday.
Yeah, it's apples to oranges.
That's what I think.
Are the sick people in the U.S. study older?
I don't know about that, but it's a good question.
I just thought I didn't trust the data for, and I can think of half a dozen reasons why.
What's that?
This guy reflects poorly on our group.
Please cancel.
Why?
Because he's being anti-Semitic.
Was that somebody saying that we'd be better off if somebody nuked Israel?
Is that what somebody said?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's not acceptable behavior.
here.
But Mike Burt's in a special category.
So Mike Burt's the official jester.
So pretty much everything that Mike Burt does is inappropriate and would get you canceled everywhere else.
But he has special access because I like seeing the inappropriate stuff, as long as you keep it in context.
If you're laughing at it because it's inappropriate, That's fine.
As long as we keep it to its little domain.
So we've got one official jester who can get away with more than the rest of you.
So don't compare him to the other people.
He is specifically allowed to be deeply inappropriate.
Like really inappropriate.
But even he has limits.
Mike Burr has some limits too.
We don't go too far.
But he tickles the edges of what's appropriate.
Let's say that.
The Ellen podcast was pro-Trump.
at least attempt humor.
Yeah.
The stock for beyond meat.
Yeah.
I guess that didn't work so well.
All right.
What else are we complaining about?
I think we're all happy now.
All right.
uh Hit a free speech tester.
Kind of.
All right, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm going to go do some other stuff.
It's great spending time with you.
I'm going to talk to the locals people privately if my system works.
But if you're on YouTube or Rumble or X, thanks for joining.
