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Stocks don't look so good, but maybe tomorrow will be better.
Let me get my comments working here so I can see what you're up to, at least the people on Locals.
I can see all of your comments, but the locals' comments come in faster.
Today's show is going to be amazing.
Oh.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time.
But if you'd like to raise your experience to the 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 of tankard shells inside a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine at the end of the day makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Go.
Ah, that is so good.
Thank you.
So good.
I'm going to adjust my lighting.
Hold on.
Lighting adjusted.
All right, you'd be surprised to hear that Dr. Alan Sears, he's a doctor, he says there's a compound in coffee called trigoniline, and it's a unique form of vitamin B3. And did you know that it'll increase your spatial learning and memory, support your nervous system development, enhance your mitochondrial function, and increase key neurotransmitters in the hippocampus of the brain?
Well, I'm not sure about all that.
I better test it.
Let's see if I can increase the neurotransmitters in the hippocampus of my brain with coffee.
Yeah, I feel it.
I feel it.
My hippocampus is going crazy right now.
Yeah, it all works.
You know, sometimes you hear this science and you think, but in the real world, does that work?
Sure.
Did you hear the horrible story of provocative, controversial podcaster Nick Fuentes who was almost murdered in his home.
Did you hear this story?
This is so shocking I didn't even talk about it for a day because I was just sort of looking at it like, oh my god.
So somebody murdered, I guess, his family and then went on a road trip to apparently try to murder Nick Fuentes at his house.
So knocks on his door and And apparently the only reason that Fuentes didn't answer his door is that he was doing a podcast at that moment.
All he had to do was answer the door and he'd be dead.
All he had to do was answer his own front door while he was home.
But he couldn't because he was on his podcast.
It saved his life.
Now, I would make the following advice.
If you're producing content that's making people want to drive hundreds of miles to your house and kill you, you might want to think about that.
I mean, I do like the fact that podcasters will say provocative and risky things because free speech allows it, and as long as it's working in all directions, it can be a healthy thing.
But just think about it.
Just think about it.
The reason that I don't worry so much about security, I should worry more about it probably.
I mean, I have enough.
But I don't think I give people a reason to kill me.
Do I? Even people who mock me online, they don't have any reason to kill me.
As far as I know, I mean, I'm doing the best I can to make sure that people see me as trying to be helpful, even if they don't like my politics.
I'd like people to say, well, he's clearly trying to help.
You know, that's not what I want, but he's obviously trying to help.
That's usually good enough not to make somebody drive hundreds of miles to your house.
But to be fair...
When people are crazy, there's nothing you can do.
Basically nothing you can do.
So, that's just a horrible little story.
There's a story that I'm having a little bit trouble believing.
I'm going to go further.
I'm going to say I don't believe this is true.
I think this is fake news.
But...
There's a story, according to the Virginia Mercury, I guess some publication in Virginia, that the governor has approved or announced there's going to be this fusion nuclear plant in Virginia.
Now, regular nuclear is fission, right?
Fusion is the thing that doesn't exist.
Am I wrong about that?
So there's an announcement that they're going to start building a fusion power plant in Virginia.
So I immediately went over to Google and I said to myself, have I been in a coma?
Because I was almost positive.
I followed the news on fusion and I didn't think we were that close.
I thought we'd done some demos that show that, you know, for a brief time it can create more energy than it uses.
Well, I didn't think we were anywhere near a practical application where you could just approve it and build it.
So, given that if you do a Google search, it makes no indication that Fusion is near ready.
Do you think they would announce something and Google doesn't even know the technology is there?
I gotta say this is fake news.
So I'm going to go out on a limb and say, I think maybe they either wrote down fusion when they meant fission or something, right?
Yeah, fusion has happened experimentally.
That's what I do.
All right.
So I think that's fake news.
But if it's not, I saw one post on the comments from IdeaMan, We said the superconductors have been improving a lot and that fusion depends on superconductors.
It seems like one of the key components.
And the MIT has been designing fusion plants based on the latest superconductors and it might actually be practical.
Or it might be that they got so close to practical, they can't tell for sure if it works until they start building it.
I don't know.
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos and Trump and Elon Musk had dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
Now, we don't know what happened at that dinner, but it's been confirmed that it had happened.
Musk said it was a great conversation.
The only thing I have to say about this...
How much would you pay to have been at that dinner?
If you could have been the fourth person at the dinner, and it was Trump, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, what would you pay for that?
I'm trying to imagine how much I would pay for that.
It's pretty much.
It's pretty much.
I would pay $20,000.
I would pay $20,000 to be the fourth person at that lunch.
And the reason is, there are very few things that would be a life experience anywhere near that.
Just nothing near that.
I don't know.
Just the horsepower in those three brains would be just ridiculous.
But I do love that Trump Trump is open for business and he's listening to the smartest people in the world.
What I worry about is now that we know that Musk is a puppet master of Trump, I'd be afraid that Jeff Bezos tries to sneak in there and become the puppet master.
No, the puppet master thing is bullshit, and we'll talk about that some more.
There is a report that Biden and Harris both canceled their flight and Christmas plans and rushed back to the White House last night.
We haven't heard what that's about, right?
We don't know what that's about.
So we're left to speculate.
First of all, is it true news?
That's the first question.
Because I didn't really see it from a reliable source.
But it's on social media.
People seem to be confident about it.
Was that fake?
Was that fake news that they rushed back to the White House?
Anyway, so I guess we just wait and see.
Now, some people are speculating that maybe this is where they do the 25th Amendment and replace Biden with Harris.
Now, why would they do that?
Given that Harris gets no benefit because he already lost the election.
Well, I think it might be because of the Wall Street Journal reporting.
Now that the Wall Street Journal reported that Biden's brain was toast from the first day of office.
When the Wall Street Journal reports, and everybody believes, I mean, nobody's really doubting the reports at all, that he was incompetent from the first day of office.
And that they've been keeping information from him so he didn't know what the press was saying about him.
What if Biden found out what the Wall Street Journal said about his time in office?
He might have enough cognitive ability left to know that he needs to make a call and not leave us without a president for three or four weeks.
So it's possible that the Wall Street Journal forced his hand because it's just embarrassing to have no president when everything looks so vital.
Now, it might be also that it would boost Harris's credentials, say if she runs for governor of California, which people are suggesting she might, that she can say that her resume includes being president of the United States, first woman president of the United States.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Because I think that the reason the Democrats didn't want to pull the trigger was in part because they didn't trust Kamala Harris to be president.
But given that it's a holiday and nothing was going to happen for the next few weeks anyway, at least nothing in the United States.
Let's see, what am I looking at?
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So it could be that they just know that it doesn't matter who's president for the next three weeks because Trump's the de facto president already.
So it might be that they're going to make a change.
I wouldn't bet on that.
I wouldn't bet on that.
It seems more likely it's just something came up and they want to make sure that there's a human being looking at it.
Meanwhile, here's the most predictable thing that could have happened.
Kamala Harris got a $20 million book deal.
Every one of us could have predicted that, right?
And Biden will probably get a book deal, too.
So she gets a $20 million book deal from Chronicle Books.
Now, what do you think is the second part that was 100% predictable?
She got a book deal and she got $20 million for it, allegedly.
What's the second part that you could predict?
You could predict that Christopher Ruffo would soon be posting on X that they had discovered massive plagiarism in her book.
Now, this one's a tough one because politicians don't write their own books.
You know, these are all ghostwritten.
And that means that she hired a ghostwriter who plagiarized and probably didn't even read her own book.
She probably doesn't even know what's in it.
So it's not really, you know, in this case, it's not really a knock on the vice president.
It's more of a knock on her hiring of the ghostwriter who apparently is not to be trusted.
So they got that going.
All right, so the House shutdown, the government shutdown may or may not happen.
The first two budget attempts, the 1500 page one and the 100 page one, both got rejected.
Now, the Republicans are voting against the budget, even though it's going down from 1500 pages to 100 something.
Just because there's some Republicans who won't vote for any increase in the deficit.
I don't hate that.
I don't really hate that there are Republicans who won't vote for anything that increases the debt.
In the short term, it just screws up everything.
But if you're going to sort of fall on a principle, that's a pretty good principle.
So I don't hate the people who voted no on it.
It didn't give us a result.
So, I mean, we can't move forward.
But, you know, if you're looking at it just politically and practically, they probably should have voted for it.
But I agree with them in principle.
You just shouldn't vote for anything that's increasing the debt because it's basically just thievery.
It's basically just stealing from voters.
When you increase the debt, it makes everybody's money worth less because of inflation, so therefore it's basically a tax and a massive one.
Anyway, so here's what's going on.
So Trump said in a truth post that he wants, if the government is going to close over this issue about the budget not being approved, Trump says, let it happen under Biden, not Trump.
Now, Caitlin Collins reposted that.
And I love the fact that Trump makes news by saying the most obvious things that everybody's thinking.
It's just that he's not supposed to say that loud.
He's not supposed to say out loud that you might as well let it happen under Biden than Trump.
Right?
You're just supposed to think it.
You're not supposed to say it out loud.
But the fact that he says it out loud just makes me love him because he's not hiding anything.
Yeah, I'd like this to happen under Biden, not me.
Oh.
Well, that's amazingly honest.
Yeah.
So he doesn't even hide the fact that there's a political difference, and he prefers it just for the political difference.
So he just says it.
I just appreciate the transparency.
Anyway...
So, let's see.
It looks like the original budget deal, that nobody knew what was happening, was put together by Schumer, McConnell, Speaker Johnson, and Jeffries, and they put it together without really talking to much of anybody.
Now, why would we expect these four people to be experts on budgets?
Do we think that any one of those four was looking at the details?
Or were they the ones who were most likely to say yes to something that was made entirely by lobbyists and lawyers?
No, they're the ones most likely to say yes if the lobbyists wrote the bills, which is presumably what happened.
Now, this raises a larger question for me.
You know how I always say that you can tell what people are really up to by the design of the system.
If the design of a system always gets you one kind of result, and it only lasts for a minute, then you can say, oh, that wasn't intentional.
They changed it as soon as they found out what the design did.
But if you have a design of something and it just stays in business, the same design for decades, that's intentional.
They know what the design is, they know what it produces, and they like it.
That's why it lasts for decades.
Now here are some of the things that the government has done.
And it looks to me like the overall theme of the government is to hide corruption.
You would hope that the government is designed to create good outcomes for the public.
But it appears to be more designed to hide the corruption of the politicians.
Let me give you some examples.
Is it true that the Pentagon lost trillions of dollars?
And that in Ukraine all kinds of money is missing?
So when it comes to the military spending, I think you'd agree.
It's not designed so the public can watch where the money goes.
It's designed so we can't watch where the money goes.
Am I right?
It's designed...
So that we can't know where the money goes.
Yeah.
We also can't tell for sure who won an election because we've got all these complicated machine things and I don't know what happens to any vote when it goes into a machine.
I don't think anybody does.
Like, we have to trust strangers that once the vote goes into machines, the machines don't change the vote.
How would I know?
It seems like our elections are designed so you can't tell who won.
So we've got a military budget, you know, our third biggest budget thing, designed so you can't tell how they spent the money.
Elections designed so you can't tell who won, really.
We produce a winner, but you don't really know.
We don't know what's in our spending bills.
So the omnibus, the purpose of it is to make sure you don't know what's in it.
The purpose of waiting until it's just before Christmas and you make it 1,500 pages is just so nobody will read it.
It's designed so you don't know what they're doing.
It's designed to hide corruption.
How about the fact that we couldn't tell who was running the country in the Biden administration?
The Biden administration was designed so you couldn't even tell that the President of the United States was totally declined and unelected people were running America.
It was designed so you couldn't tell who was in charge.
That's not accidental.
And then there was, if I have this right, the omnibus also included in it, the one that got rejected, included in it something that would block Congress's digital communications from ever being discovered.
Why would you need to block any legal discovery of communication in Congress to hide crime?
What else would it be?
Then you've got all the Me Too funding.
Apparently, Congress has a budget just to pay off Me Too victims, and we don't know who that is.
It's designed so you don't know.
So it's a little hard to miss the pattern at this point, isn't it?
The pattern seems so obviously designed for the very purpose of making corruption really easy.
Now, there's a separate story about California and $24 billion that's somehow missing that was supposed to solve homelessness, but it went into some maze of entities in the Cayman Islands, and somebody owns this company that owns this company, and it just sort of disappeared into the maze of companies.
Now, do you think that was an accident?
No.
No.
The funding of these big ticket things in local elections and local government is designed so you don't know who's doing what and who's stealing what.
It's designed for corruption.
Now, it's really obvious when you look at all the different elements of the government that every part of it is designed to eliminate transparency and And transparency is the only thing that will keep us alive.
It's the only thing that will keep us alive.
If you don't know what your government's doing, they will steal all your money, and then the country will be broke, and then we all die.
So, yeah, we're designed for corruption.
That's just a fact.
All right.
And then, have you noticed this pattern?
Whenever the Republicans come up with a plan to solve a big national problem, let's say a plan to close the border solves a big national problem.
Let's say a plan to reduce the deficit, as in the doge work.
Or say, let's say a plan, we don't have one, but let's say a plan to end the war in Ukraine, you know, when Trump gets in office.
So Republicans often have a plan.
We don't know if that plan works yet, because, you know, it's a plan.
But they do come up with plans.
And they can say, we're going to do X, Y, Z. And we'll do it right in front of you.
We'll show you.
You know, it would be very transparent.
And we think this works, because this always works.
We're doing things that always work.
What do the Democrats do?
The Democrats seem to be entirely oriented at creating hoaxes and gaslighting and ops to prevent Republicans from doing the obvious common-sense things that the entire country wants.
Now, I don't think that was always the case.
I think they used to compete on policy, didn't they?
Am I wrong?
Didn't they used to compete on policy?
But they don't anymore.
Do you know why they don't compete on policy?
Because there isn't even a Democrat that thinks their policies could work.
What is going on over there?
I don't believe that any Democrat thinks their own policies could possibly work.
And that's why they don't argue the policy.
So instead, they'll say, Trump's still your democracy.
He's a dictator.
Elon Musk is using him for a puppet.
Like, they have to do that stuff because they don't have any policy argument at all.
So you basically have one group of common sense people trying to solve critical problems.
And honestly, it looks like they genuinely want to solve problems.
When I look at what the Republicans do and what they produce, especially in the Trump world, more in the Trump world than before, it seems designed to solve problems.
Am I wrong?
I mean, it doesn't seem to be like it's just always a trick.
It just seems like it's a solution.
So we've got one solving, one party that solves, and one party that just creates gaslighting to prevent the party that solves from solving.
So Elon Musk was pointing out...
When he got a lot of criticism for weighing in heavy on the 1,500-page omnibus piece of crap budget, and people say that he's the reason it got killed.
I said it's not the reason.
I mean, he's like a focus because we're all watching him, but he couldn't have done that without the complete support of all Trump supporters, basically every one of them.
So if you have the support of 100% of the public, That's not exactly a puppet master situation if 100% of the public backs you.
Which part of the public was in favor of spending too much money and putting together a 1500-page bill that nobody read?
Nobody was in favor of that.
You can't find me one citizen.
You might find a politician who would argue it, but a citizen?
Find me one voter who says, you know, I was really in favor of my politicians not even knowing what was in the budget, but it was enough to kill us all.
Nobody.
Not one Democrat, not one Republican.
So you can't treat that, the situation where every citizen agrees, you can't treat that like it's some kind of weird puppet master taking control situation.
He's simply agreeing with 100% of the public.
He just happens to have more voice and more power.
And so we backed him.
Of course we backed him.
Of course we backed him.
You also backed me.
If I do a post on X that says something about, you know, don't pass this 1,500-page stupid budget, what do the comments look like?
Every one of them is supportive, 100%.
When does that ever happen in social media, when 100% of people are on your side?
Yeah.
I just said, don't pass a 1,500-page budget.
It doesn't even matter what's in it.
I don't need to know what's in it.
Don't pass a 1,500-page budget a few days before Christmas.
Ever.
Ever.
That's a fail.
So, it's, of course, the best the Democrats have is trying to turn it into something that will split Musk away from Trump so that...
By the way, what's the point of it?
What would be the point of trying to put a wedge between Musk and Trump?
What would be the point of it?
The Democrats are trying really hard to do it.
What's the point?
Does it help the country?
How?
How does that help the country?
It doesn't.
It clearly doesn't.
If they were even trying to help a little bit, you know what they would do?
They'd say, Elon Musk, wow, you do have some skills.
We should work with you too.
The Democrats should be competing to see who can get these billionaires more on their side with good policies.
But instead, they just have to break up somebody else's relationship.
It's like the ugly girl who can't get a date, so she has to sabotage her pretty girlfriend who can.
Oh, that guy's bad.
You should break up with him because I can't get a date.
That's what it feels like.
Anyway, so Musk said, he's trying to reframe it correctly, and he goes, he's talking about the rejection of the 1,500-page version of the budget.
He said, this shows how much your voice matters, talking to the people.
And having a president like Trump means that your voice is finally heard.
This is the right model, and we should keep reinforcing it.
Trump is a populist.
And he is very connected to the public.
Musk is also a populist.
I mean, in effect.
I don't think he would describe himself that way.
But in effect, because the common sense stuff tends to be pretty popular.
So, yes, we have an amazing, amazing situation right now where a citizen who has just a few people following him on social media Can get the person who's a little bit bigger to repost them.
And that can get the person a little bit bigger to repost them.
And then when the people who have a million followers have reposted them, you can pretty much guarantee that people like Elon Musk are going to see it because they follow the big accounts.
And if they think the idea is good, they have a direct line to the White House.
So what we've created is an unofficial direct line Where good ideas bubble up in a very natural way, everybody has an incentive.
If I see somebody with a smaller account who has a good idea, I'm incentivized to repost it.
Because if I repost a good idea, that reflects well on me.
Right?
So just for selfish reasons, I will boost a smaller account.
Like, I'm not thinking of it entirely so selfishly.
I'm often thinking of it as, oh, here's somebody who needs a boost.
Because they have good ideas.
If you have one good idea, you probably get a boost.
You know, even if I haven't seen your other ideas.
But one idea is good enough to get a boost.
Meanwhile, Mike Cernovich is going hard at Republican Chip Roy.
He was one of the ones who said no on the second version of the continued resolution that got down to 100 pages.
And give me an update, by the way.
There's a vote going on, I think, right now on what they call the third version of the continued resolution budget.
So if we get a result on that, just shout it out in the comments.
Anyway, here are some of the things Mike Cernovich says we should know about Chip Roy.
He was a George Floyd worshiper.
Now, I looked at some of the old posts that Chip Roy had about that topic, and he was very much in the George Floyd is a saint kind of a mode, almost like a Democrat.
Weirdly.
Worshippers, you know, hyperbole, but he was very much in the He bought the full Democrat narrative about Floyd.
The cop is a murderer.
Floyd was an angel.
I'm exaggerating, but it was not a typical Republican view of that situation.
Allegedly, Chip Roy tried to keep Liz Cheney in power.
I guess he liked that idea.
And he worked to remove one of, this is Cerdo, saying he worked to remove Texas AG Ken Paxton, who Republicans seem to like a lot.
He's quite effective.
Ken Paxton is.
Okay.
So these are just things that wouldn't have been a big problem for Chip Roy at the moment, except that he went in the wrong direction on the vote.
So Cernovich decided to shine some light on him.
And I never mind that.
Like whenever I see transparency breaking out, oh, this is actually something you should know about this particular leader.
These are three somewhat odious points of view he had, at least odious from the political rights point of view.
So, yeah, it's worth knowing.
Is that a reason to vote him out?
I don't know.
I mean, he's not my representative.
I don't have an opinion on whether he should be voted out.
But do I have an opinion that the voters should know?
Where he stood on these issues?
Yes.
Yes.
So this is a good service by Cernovich so that we know what's happening.
Did you know that the fact checkers are saying that Musk was spreading disinformation about the bill, the 1500-page bill that got rejected?
And here are some of the examples that came from, I think The Hill was writing on this.
So they say these are the things he got wrong.
So apparently Musk posted that the measure would include a 40% pay raise for Congress.
That's not even close to true.
It is true that there was a mention that if Congress had been getting its cost of living wages that it hasn't been getting for years and years, that it would have been 40% higher than it is now.
But the actual raise would be like 6% or something.
So this is disinformation.
Well, let me not say disinformation.
Disinformation assumes a motive.
At least that's the way I hear it.
But being inaccurate or simply being wrong is not really a crime, right?
You're still allowed to be totally wrong.
And if you're wrong on X, that's the best place to be wrong, because the comments will correct it, right?
If you're going to be wrong, the one best place to do it is on X, because the community notes will point it out, everybody sees it, it's fully transparent, and then you can correct it.
So is it ideal to That Musk, I think he probably just boosted some other account that made this claim.
So it looks like he trusted somebody else's opinion on something that was in it.
Because again, who's going to read a 1,500-page document besides Vivek?
So that was just wrong.
But I would say, as I said before, and I saw a few people agree with this, Congress is underpaid.
The pay raise is the only thing I didn't object to.
Well, that's not true.
That's hyperbole.
But they are underpaid.
I don't know if you understand how deeply underpaid they are, but it almost encourages them to be corrupt just to pay the bills.
You don't want Congress to be thinking, you know, I could take this little gift.
Because I'm running out of money to pay my bills.
Remember, a lot of Congress has to have two homes, one in their home state and probably some kind of residence in D.C. or so.
It's expensive.
And they have to go to, you know, they do a lot of events and stuff.
So, yeah, they should be paid more.
I think a 40% pay increase would have been completely appropriate, in my opinion.
But we should be accurate as well.
Then they say that Musk was wrong when he claimed the bill would prevent any investigation into the House Committee that investigated the January 6th stuff.
Was he wrong about that?
Here's their argument for why he's wrong.
They say the bill's text makes no mention of the riot and only clarifies that the House data stored elsewhere is still under the control of the House.
I don't think that fact check is right.
I think that they just looked at the different part of the bill.
I'm not sure about this, but my understanding is that the bill said that Congress's digital communication couldn't be accessed through a legal process.
Everybody else's can.
But that Congress would be exempt from a legal process, let's say a lawsuit getting access to the communication.
Now, since I haven't read it, the bill, I don't know that that's in there, but that's the claims I've heard.
I've heard that it would make their emails and digital communication private forever.
Now that would, if they made that private, it would protect the January 6th group, but also protect all of Congress.
So was Musk wrong?
I think Musk was right, and I think the fact check is wrong, but I'm not positive about that.
So I'm going to put a question mark behind that, but to me it looks like the fact check is wrong.
Then there was...
The claim that the bill would support building biolabs, bioweapons labs, that apparently is a misinterpretation, but instead it funded what they call biocontainment labs that would conduct research to support public health and medical preparedness for and rapid response to biological events, including emergent and infectious diseases.
Okay, what's the difference between a biocontainment lab that's studying all the dangerous viruses and a bioweapons lab that's creating dangerous viruses?
Aren't they all the same?
So again, I'm going to put a question mark next to it, but to me it looks like the fact check is wrong.
To me, it looks like they're just using a different name for essentially what the Wuhan lab was.
The Wuhan lab wasn't a weapons development lab.
Weren't they also trying to figure out how to avoid the weaponized viruses?
So I think the fact check is fake.
But I'll take a fact check on my fact check.
And then there was something about building a stadium in DC, but the fact check on that is that it was not funding it.
It was simply changing control of it.
So the funding wasn't really addressed.
It was just the control of the funding.
So Cheryl Atkinson, Addison, Cheryl Addison, had a funny story about her experience of a previous shutdown.
So I'm just going to read what she said next.
So when she was a reporter working at CBS News during a government shutdown, she thinks it was 2013, they were searching for the real-life terrible impacts of the government closed down.
So now it's just common sense, right?
If the government shuts down, it's going to have devastating effect on members of the public, because we depend on the government for our vital services.
So CBS News went out to look for all the terrible, terrible impacts of the shutdown.
And when we couldn't find any that should have been part of the story, in other words, there was no effect they could even find where it was bad enough that it was worthy of even being included in the story.
Instead, we kept trying to create the appearance of an impact.
So when they didn't find an impact, instead of saying, well, we looked, didn't find any impact, they decided to write the article as if there was an impact.
She says, well, this part you can judge for yourself.
It wasn't really trying to be dishonest.
It was, in my retrospective view, because the general editorial idea for the story was to show how bad the Republican shutdown was for ordinary Americans, and the answer simply couldn't be that it wasn't.
Do you call that not dishonest?
I don't know.
Seems to me if you start with a narrative and you do everything you can do to prove it, and then you find out that you can't prove it, and then you write the story anyway, that feels dishonest to me.
I don't know how you define dishonest, but as described, it looks a little dishonest.
But here's the more nuanced view of it.
If you haven't had experience in the corporate world, this won't make sense.
In the corporate context, when you're wearing your nice clothes and going to your cubicle job and you've got a boss and all that, you will accept as honest enough a lot of sketchy stuff.
And it becomes so normal that To accept sketchy things when you work in a big corporation that you just get used to it.
And you just think that everybody's lying and you should too.
And that all it is is a big persuasion game and honesty doesn't have much to do with the corporate world.
Now that's why Dilbert was even created.
Because when I was in the corporate world I realized everybody was lying about everything all the time.
I thought, well that could be a comic.
So When we look from the outside with our pure judgments and we say, Cheryl, how could you possibly have been part of this thing where the narrative was driving the story instead of the facts?
How could you possibly be part of that?
And I will tell you, it's easy.
If you had replaced her with me, With all of my highfalutin feelings about what's honest and what's not, I probably would have done the same thing.
Why?
Because everybody would.
You could take anybody and put them in this situation.
They've got a boss.
They've got a paycheck.
They don't need to make waves about every single thing every single day.
You just sort of accept it.
You've got other problems.
So this is no complaint whatsoever about Cheryl.
This has more to do with what the corporate environment does to everybody.
It turns everybody into a weasel.
And it's only after you've left and you look back at your own actions, you go, huh, that was a little sketchy even for me.
Like that doesn't even match my own standard for honesty.
But it didn't seem so weird at the time.
So you enter this world where doing sketchy things doesn't even seem sketchy.
It just seems like what everybody's doing.
Anyway, speaking of Elon Musk, he announced that he's going to fund moderate candidates, he calls them, in far-left districts, quote, so that the country can get rid of those who don't represent them.
And that would be a direct response to Soros funding the far-left candidates.
So if Elon Musk decides that he's going to spend enough money because he has more than Soros, he can outspend him.
So he can outspend Soros and make sure that every time Soros spends a dollar, that Musk goes in with two dollars for the other one, which he could do all day long because he has more money.
So, I think he can eliminate Soros' influence.
And I would still love, you may remember that Musk asked Alex Soros if they could just talk.
And Alex Soros said yes.
Now, I don't think it's happened, just because I feel like we would have heard about it.
But I love the fact that maybe before they talk, Musk may have already announced that he's going to do something that makes Soros' funding completely moot and irrelevant because he'll get it outfunded.
So that's cool.
Speaking of Elon Musk news, he's also saying that something called the AFD party in Germany is their only hope.
Now, the AFD party is the right-leaning party.
How do you think an American publication describes the right-leaning party in Germany?
Do you think they say, oh, they're basically just like MAGA, pretty popular?
Yeah, I can see why Elon Musk would back them, because they're strong on immigration and...
Yeah, it makes sense.
You know, because immigration looks like it's going to destroy the country.
I don't know for sure, but probably they back nuclear power.
Maybe the other parties don't.
So I can see why Elon would back them.
So what does the mainstream press say about that?
Well, it says that the party is anti-immigration.
Now, is that the way you say it?
Anti-immigration?
No.
That's what fucking...
Asshole say.
Nobody's anti-immigration.
That's not even a thing.
Nobody's anti-immigration.
People are definitely on different sides about how tight to be, who to let in, and why.
But nobody's anti.
So the first thing is they're signaling that they're, you know, illegitimate press by saying anti-immigration.
Then here's the second part.
They're saying that this AfD party in Germany has, quote, historical connections to Nazi-era rhetoric.
What?
That's like saying that the Democrats were the founders of the KKK, which, by the way, somebody says on social media every freaking day, and it drives me crazy.
No, I'm not going to judge the Democrats by something that long-dead people did.
If they're not doing it today, and they're clearly not backing the KKK today, would it be fair to say?
I'm going to describe the Democrat Party.
The Democrat Party is the party that has historical connections to the KKK. And there's nothing else you need to know.
Would that be news?
Well, it's true, but it's completely opposite of what reality is, which is the Democrats are very anti-KKK, obviously.
So, when I read the news saying that this party has historical connections to Nazi-era rhetoric, and Elon Musk is Maybe some kind of a Nazi because he supports them.
I don't know the truth, but I'll tell you what it leads me to think.
It leads me to think that this party might be the only thing that can save Germany.
I'm not terribly worried that they're all going to become Nazis.
Because if the only thing you can say is they have some historical connection to bad rhetoric, historical connection.
Come on.
That's all you got?
Now, to be fair, if there's more to this story and that party does worse things than I know, I would like to know that.
Maybe I will revise my opinion.
But if your summary of the party for how bad they are is anti-immigration, which is bullshit, and historical connections to bad talking, that's all you got?
Those are your top two lines in criticizing that party?
I'm not in favor of them.
So somebody's going to say, Adams is supporting the Nazi party.
I don't know anything about them.
I'm not supporting them.
I'm just saying the reporting is strongly screaming that maybe they're not so bad.
That's what the reporting is telling me.
That's not my opinion.
So, of course, Pelosi is on the bandwagon calling Trump a puppet of Musk.
And, of course, all they're doing is gaslighting when Republicans are trying to solve the problem.
But poor David Axelrod, one of the last smart advisors on the Democrat side, I like following him because he keeps saying things that are close to just common sense, but he can't get any Democrats to agree with him.
He's trying as hard as he can to get the Democrats to act like a proper political party, you know, with reasonable opinions and stuff.
Poor guy.
Anyway, he said, quote, not sure about this speculation about Trump tiring of Musk and shunning him.
So he's basically telling the Democrats that their main messaging is just not a good idea.
And it's not.
It's dumb.
So yeah, he's one of the few ones who feel comfortable.
But he must feel the absurdity level of going from...
So the Democrats instantly pivoted from Trump is a dictator, strongman, Nazi personality who must control everything all the time, and then immediately...
He became under the control of one person, Elon Musk.
Now, of course that didn't happen.
Of course Trump's in charge, and of course he's one of the most confident people in the world.
Here's where I think the...
Oh, reportedly considering separating each individual bill to vote on instead of the big one.
So it looks like the vote today may have hit a...
A breaking point where they need to break it into separate bills.
That's a good idea, if they can make that work.
So did Trump really turn from the strongman insurrectionist Hitler into a puppet of Musk?
The level of absurdity in that gaslighting is one that Axelrod just didn't want to be part of, apparently.
He's like, I'm not so sure this is a good idea, because it'll just look stupid.
Just look stupid.
Now, I can't speak for what Trump is thinking.
Well, I can say with some confidence that there's one thing that the Democrats probably don't understand.
Because I think that they believe their own narratives.
And one of their narratives is that Trump is insecure.
He's insecure.
What?
If there's one thing I'm completely certain of, he's not insecure.
He might be the most confident person you've ever met.
And he likes people who are smarter than he is.
If they're on his side.
Musk is on his side.
He's smarter than all of us.
Trump likes that.
He doesn't dislike that.
Now, he might dislike the messaging that the Democrats are doing.
But do you think that Trump is dumb enough to push Musk out of the most useful thing anybody's ever done in this country, which is doge?
You would have to assume that Trump was a completely different person.
Trump likes winning.
He likes really smart people.
And Musk is popular.
So he likes everything about this.
And I think the Democrat messaging is really just another sign that they don't have anything.
They have nothing to offer the American people.
They don't have a policy.
They They don't even have truth.
They don't have fact-checking.
What do they have?
It's literally nothing but gaslighting.
I think it's funny that Justin Trudeau might lose his job just because Trump rattled his cage.
But also because Trump is looking hyper-capable when Trudeau is not.
So there's a contrast problem.
In persuasion, the idea of contrast is...
You could even argue it's all of persuasion.
Because all persuasion is choosing between alternatives.
You're trying to get somebody to choose one alternative versus another.
So what you compare things to...
Usually determines what people will choose, your comparison.
So Trudeau was being compared until now to, let's say, the new president of Mexico, who's not exactly hitting home runs, to the president of the United States, who is literally mentally disabled.
All right.
So I was just reading a comment because I thought it was about the bill approval.
So I think when you have a Trump who is not even elected president, and he is already de facto president because we like what he's doing, he's collected the pirate ship of the smartest people in the world.
He is already changing things.
Putin's already said he wants to talk.
I mean, basically, Trump is killing it like no president ever has.
Would you agree with that statement?
Would you agree that as a pre-president, someone who hasn't been sworn in, nobody's ever been close?
Is that a fair statement?
I don't think there's any hyperbole in that.
Anybody has ever done anything as impressive for their pre-presidency.
Nothing as impressive as what Trump has done.
Not even close.
Now, Canada's up there watching that, and they're like, did they just figure out how to attack their debt problem because the smartest person is going to work on it?
Two smartest people, Liv Akin and Musk.
They must be getting jealous as hell.
And then he starts teasing them like maybe they should be a little state.
Now, I don't think he means that, and it probably wouldn't be a good idea to take on that many crazy people and add them to the vote.
That'd be a little jarring for the United States.
But the fact that it's actually a reasonable proposal.
The thing that makes it funny is that you can't rule it out when Trump says, why don't you just become a state and fold into the United States?
Do you think that in the long run, Canada would do worse as a, not say one state, let's say seven states or whatever there.
If they added seven Canadian states to the United States, do you think we'd be worse off?
Well, maybe.
Maybe.
Because they might vote liberal, and then we would have liberal presidents forever, and maybe we would be worth off.
And it would be expensive.
We'd be taking on their debt, etc.
But they got a lot of resources, and they got a lot of well-educated, smart people who are very nice most of the time.
So the fact that you would even stop to consider it is what makes it so funny.
Because you can't immediately rule it out.
You're like, ah, yeah, I have some problems.
Yeah, there'd be a lot of problems.
Probably we could work them out.
I don't know.
Probably the change in the voting demographics would be a killer to make it not possible.
But I like the fact that they put that in their brains and they have to think about it.
Speaking of brains...
That Wall Street Journal expose of Biden, I was looking at some more details today, it is really damning.
So apparently from the first day of his presidency, it was completely understood by the staff that he was mentally incompetent.
First day.
First day.
And from then, they'd surrounded him by insiders, whose names you've never heard of, Who were really the ones who were running the country, or at least the ones who were keeping other people from talking to Biden so much.
So his close advisors, have you heard any of these names?
Bruce Reed, Steve Reschetti, and Mike Donilon.
Apparently that's who's been running the United States for the last four years.
Now, not just them.
Because, you know, Tony Blinken and other advisors, but apparently the people who had jobs in the domain that the president should have had a big influence on were just sort of running the show themselves.
So Biden wasn't too much part of the presidency.
It was sort of game down to all the players.
And they just took whatever they needed and ran the country.
Now, the first part about that is that we couldn't tell the difference.
We knew something was going on.
But the country still ran.
The biggest problem was we started wars and ran up our debt.
Those are big problems.
So apparently people could not reach Biden directly.
And I was listening to Stephanie Ruhle, one of the MSNBC Trump haters, who said that she wanted to contact Trump the other day.
So somehow she had his personal phone number.
So she dialed up Trump.
The president-elect, in the middle of the busiest time he could ever be, getting ready for the office, and he took the call.
Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC, probably somebody that Trump, the least likely person he'd want to talk to, he answered the call himself.
He personally answered his phone.
And she was saying she was sort of blown away by it.
Now, he did not agree to an interview with her.
But she was saying, compare that to the White House.
Basically, Biden was in a cocoon, and she said if she would try to reach him, she'd have to go through, handle her, handle her, handle her, and there was not even a clear path to do it.
So it was much worse than he thought.
During Biden's presidency, apparently the aides said that they would have to repeat things to him constantly, continuously.
He was giving simplistic instruction cards and detailed pointers, and he couldn't even handle that.
They said that Jill was too energetic by comparison.
It was sort of a problem, because she had a full schedule, but he did not.
So it was kind of showing that a capable person could be doing a lot more.
And apparently, this is the funny part, the staff was supposed to put together news clips for him, which is typical.
The president always gets news clips.
But they had to leave out any negative stories about the president.
They had to leave out any negative stories.
How in the world do you run the country without seeing negative stories?
They removed the only guardrail they had.
They had one guardrail.
We're watching.
And they made sure that the president didn't know we were watching.
So he kept thinking he was nailing it.
They were probably saying like, oh, Mr. President, you're nailing it.
Here's another pile of great press from MSNBC and CNN. The Atlantic is really, really big on you today.
Good news, Mr. President.
Yeah.
So, again, it makes me wonder if he is aware of the Wall Street Journal story.
It'd be hard to miss it.
And maybe that's what they're talking about at the White House today.
So, you know I'm going to say this, because you've been following me long enough.
You know that in 2019, can you back me up on this in the comments, in case there are new people here?
Can you back me up that, as a public figure who was talking about the news and politics all the time, that in 2019, during the election for 2020, I was telling you often that Biden was not capable of doing the first term.
True or not?
I said he was already gone.
How many of you remember me saying that?
So while you're thinking about that, I found a post I made in 2020. So this is what I said in August of 2020. So this is prior to the vote.
So the 2020 election hadn't happened for several more months.
And I posted this.
I said, the Biden mental competence story has now fully morphed into a Monty Python sketch about a dead parrot the owner insists is perfectly healthy.
I can't even listen to people claiming Biden is perfectly fine without hearing a British accent.
Now, I said as clearly as I possibly could, he's as gone as the dead parrot.
Not in the future.
I wasn't talking about what might happen at the end of his second term.
I was saying right now, they're treating him like he's a dead parrot right in front of us.
Now, the Wall Street Journal reporting four years later confirms that they were in fact treating him like a dead parrot.
They were literally treating him like a dead parrot, meaning that they were pretending he was capable, but they knew he wasn't.
Now, here's my question.
I'm a public figure and I talk about the news.
So I nailed that one as hard as you can nail anything.
I mean, that's 100% right years in advance.
You can't beat that.
I don't remember other people saying it.
Do you?
I'm sure they did.
I'm sure they did.
So I wasn't alone.
And I know a lot of you, just as voters and people paying attention, you all knew it.
You were seeing the same thing I saw.
But I think public figures just weren't saying it when it was so obvious.
And the question I have is, if you couldn't tell in August of 2020 that his brain was dead, you should never vote again.
You should never vote again.
Because this was super glaringly obvious years ago.
Super glaringly obvious.
If you miss that signal, you really have to distrust your opinion.
Because this was a big one.
I mean, this was really, really big and really, really obvious.
If you miss this, maybe don't vote next time.
That would be my advice.
Now, I follow my own advice.
I've told you in the past that the first time I voted as an adult was for Jimmy Carter.
And then when I saw how that turned out, I said to myself, I'm not qualified to vote.
Like, I don't know how much more I need to know about the world, but clearly, I'm not qualified to vote.
And so I didn't.
So for decades, I didn't vote.
And the reason was I wasn't qualified.
Now, I don't know if I'm qualified yet, but I can tell you that I knew for sure that Trump would be a superstar and Biden's brain was dead.
So in that very specific case, where the reality was screamingly obvious...
Then I felt qualified to vote.
And now I voted.
And do I feel that I voted correctly?
Hell yes!
You know, it got Harris out of the race, of course.
I mean, not my vote, but it was part of the package.
All right, here's a drone update.
We still don't know anything, but a couple of interesting factoids.
I saw one person whose name I don't remember on a podcast I don't remember, claiming that drone activity has increased dramatically for each of the last three years right around Christmas.
Do you believe that's true?
It's at the highest level it's been.
So for the past three years, there was a surge right around now, and then it's just sort of an end-of-year Christmas surge.
So, here's my question.
If you were doing pattern recognition, why would there be so much activity around Christmas?
It's before people get toys, so they haven't received it for Christmas and they're trying it out.
It's not that.
And these seem to be bigger commercial drones.
They're not little ones.
Why would you see that?
Well, I don't know.
But I'm going to give you the Dilbert filter.
On why you might see more drone activities in the past three years toward the end of the calendar year.
So this is the corporate filter.
How does a corporate do budgeting?
A corporation does budgeting this way.
Toward the end of the year, they ask you how much of your budget you spent.
If you spent half of your budget, your boss says, excellent.
Next year, that's how much you'll get.
Half of the budget you had last year.
Nobody wants to get half of the budget they had last year, even if they only spent that much, because they were too slow.
So what do they do instead?
They rush to spend as much as they can toward the end of the year, so they fully spent their budget, so they can ask for that and a little bit more, a little bump.
I'll take everything I had last year, because you see I spent it, and I'll need 10% more next year.
That's how everybody does budgeting in a corporation.
This is not the exception.
That's how they all do it.
They try to spend it all.
I have been personally involved where my boss put the order out, can you wildly spend whatever money you have left in your budget so that I don't get my budget cut next year?
Literally.
We were told that directly.
Spend wildly.
Make sure you spend it all.
He did not say, only buy things which are critical to the company.
That was not the goal.
The goal was spending.
The goal was not success.
Now, everybody who's worked in a corporation can back me on that, right?
There might be a few companies that don't do that, but they'd be exceptions.
You spend all of your budget before the year end.
So, what else do we know about the world recently?
We know that in the past three years, drones have become the weapon of choice in Ukraine, and we all know that drones are the future of warfare.
Three years ago, what should have been happening is the U.S. should have been secretly, at least some of it is secretly, spinning up massive manufacturing capability for drones.
And not the little hobby drones.
I'm talking about the real fighting drones, big ones.
So, in theory, three years ago, the people who had the budget to create their new drones should have said, oh shit, oh shit, Let's do something before the end of the year.
So at the end of the year, they might be saying, hey, everybody who funded us to build these drones, we're going to do a big demonstration toward the end of the year to justify the money we've spent so far and also, importantly, spend a bunch more at the end of the year to do the demonstration.
And then justify your budget and maybe get a contract for more building.
So it's possible that That what you're seeing is vendors doing end-of-year demonstrations, which would naturally be much bigger each of the three years that we've been here, because they would have been building capacity that whole time.
And it makes sense to be at the end of the year.
So it has nothing to do with Christmas and everything to do with the end of a fiscal year.
Just a hypothesis.
It's just a hypothesis.
I wouldn't bet on it.
I wouldn't place any giant bet that I'm right.
But if you want to look for something that's not exotic, like Chinese drones or aliens, if you want something not exotic, it's just a budget thing.
It might be just that.
I wouldn't bet on it, though.
Apparently, according to Ars Technica, There's a drone ban in the skies of part of New Jersey.
And I think what they're trying to do is legally ban all the drones in one of the problem areas.
So that if anything's flying once they're all legally banned, you would know that they're either illegal or alien, which I guess would be illegal.
Are aliens illegal if they come from space?
I don't know how that works.
So this is smart.
You know when they should have done this?
A long time ago.
So two weeks ago, when everybody was talking about, what's all these drones?
If we didn't know the answer, they should have banned drones for a week just to figure out what's going on.
Because they would have seen the anomaly right away.
Because whoever's doing it isn't listening to the laws and following them.
I don't think.
I mean, maybe a little.
But if it's something nefarious, I don't know.
I don't know if they'd get the memo.
I think they'd still be operating.
Drone activity is at its highest since drones were invented because that's how it works.
So that's the smarter way to say what I just said about the vendors building capacity and building more.
If it's a new technology, it's like it's the beginning of the iPhone and somebody said, wait a minute, every year at Christmas there are more iPhones.
Because that's how it works.
It's the beginning of the extended cycle of iPhones.
Of course, there's more every year.
Same with drones.
It could be just that.
It could really just be there are more of them and nothing else.
Anyway, maybe we'll find out with that temporary flight restriction.
Here's some fake news that's slightly real.
The CBO says that Trump's tariffs would slash deficits by trillions.
Does that sound like true news?
Really?
You think that's true?
Well, here's the first thing.
I doubt anybody can calculate the effects of terrorists.
I don't think you can calculate that.
Because remember, it used to be my job to calculate exactly this kind of thing.
So I'm not talking without expertise.
As an expert who spent many corporate years, I've got a degree in economics and an MBA, I would try to predict the impact of different decisions.
So if we invest in this, what happens in the short run and the long run?
And I can tell you with great confidence that this analysis of Trump tariffs and deficits depends 100% on what assumptions you put into it.
See, when the public sees it, they say, ooh, this is based on data.
It's not based on data.
There's data that's used, but it's based on assumptions.
So they make assumptions like what the tariffs were, They make assumptions about who the tariffs were on, assumptions about what products were involved, and assumptions about how other countries would respond.
How many of those assumptions are gonna be accurate?
In the real world, nobody knows what anybody's going to do with tariffs.
There's no way you can calculate this.
This is very much like climate models.
This has no credibility whatsoever.
None.
Because this isn't something that humans can calculate.
It is something that humans always pretend they can calculate.
They always pretend they can calculate it.
I've got a bet for you.
If you could find a way to get to Warren Buffett and ask him this question, do you think the CBO can calculate the impact of Trump's tariffs?
Now Warren Buffett, even 90-whatever-he-is, has always understood risk and math and the real world.
I think he would laugh.
When you told them the CBO could calculate this.
No, they can't.
No, they can't.
Not even close.
But it's fake news anyway, because when they say trillions, do you know what they really mean?
They mean trillions over years.
If they don't tell you how many years are involved in the trillions, how can you size it?
I mean, if you just read this headline, you'd say, oh my goodness, all he has to do is some really good tariffs and we'll get rid of our deficit.
No.
You might get rid of $2 trillion over many years, and $2 trillion over many years is a few billion, a few hundred billion, and it barely makes a dent in the budget.
And it also doesn't calculate what happens to consumers.
Because the tariffs would increase price on consumers, so consumers would have less buying power.
Presumably, they'd buy less stuff, and so there'd be less taxes from just the less economic activity of having not enough money.
So, no, they can't.
They can't calculate that.
All right.
And I'm not saying that tariffs are a bad idea.
I think they're a really good idea for negotiating.
So if Trump acts like tariffs are better than they really are, that is just right for negotiating.
It's not just right for being accurate.
It's just right for negotiating.
He should act like he loves tariffs.
And by the way, he's doing this great.
Here's your persuasion trick for the day.
If Trump wants the other countries he's dealing with to believe that he's serious about tariffs, he can't talk about them technically.
Because if he talks about them technically, then the other side says, so you're just going to raise the price on your own consumers?
Because they're the ones paying the tariff.
We're not paying the tariff.
We don't like the tariff because people will buy less of our stuff.
But we're not paying the tariff.
That's your own people.
Because the company that is involved in the United States is the one who ends up paying it.
Anyway, so...
Trump, for persuasion purposes, should talk about tariffs nonstop, and he should act like he loves them and they always work.
That doesn't have to be true, but that's the best persuasion.
Because if they think they can't talk him out of tariffs, then they're going to back down.
If they think they can talk a man of tariffs because they're technically maybe not a terrific idea, then they will try to do that.
So he has to remove from his adversaries any thought that they can talk a man of tariffs.
And I think he has.
I think his messaging and his persuasion is so strong That he has convinced every country that he's going to tariff the hell out of them unless they do what he wants.
So he just threatened today, I think today or yesterday, he threatened the European Union that because there's a trade deficit, I didn't know that, but we have a trade deficit with the European Union.
Now, trade deficit doesn't mean anything's broken.
It just means somebody's buying more than they're selling.
It's not like a big problem by itself.
But he's using that Calling it a problem.
It would be better if we sold more than we bought, but it's not a big problem.
So he's using that to say that he's going to tariff Europe unless they correct that imbalance by buying a tremendous amount of American energy, you know, oil and gas.
Now, does that make sense?
So somehow he's connected trade deficits to With tariffs, with energy.
Now, in the real world, they're not exactly that connected, except he made them connected for negotiating purposes.
It's actually fucking brilliant.
You're seeing a level of skill that we've never seen.
Nothing like this.
His insistence on tariffs and never backing down and saying he loves them, he loves them.
They're not just okay.
They're not just technically okay.
They're not just something you used to negotiate.
He loves them.
They can make billions of dollars.
Is that true?
Not so true, but boy is a good persuasion.
It is the best you've ever seen.
If you want to be proud of your country, And what you wanted was a good negotiator-in-chief?
You should be proud of this.
What he's doing with tariffs is making the political left in this country crazy because he's speaking in a way that's technically not accurate.
But persuasion is not about technical accuracy.
It's about getting for your country a better situation than you have.
Is what he's doing likely to get us a better situation than we have?
Yes.
Like, really yes.
Strong yes.
He is exactly fucking perfect on this tariff stuff.
And every time MSNBC fact-checks him, I say to myself, okay, you're technically correct.
Your fact-check is technically correct.
But whose side are you on?
We should be on his side, because he's on our side.
He's trying to negotiate with the world.
Let him negotiate with the world.
Let him do his thing.
He's really good at it.
He's amazing at it.
Nobody else would have even thought of this.
Believe it or not, I literally think nobody would have even thought to use tariffs in the way he's using them.
I mean, everybody uses them for negotiation.
That's not a secret.
But he's using it for entire relationship-altering reasons.
I mean, this is all new.
And brilliant.
Anyway, Stephanie Rule, she's in the news again.
So she was saying that Trump suing ABC successfully for defamation is putting a chill.
She says, so for all of this, this is a warning.
You better have your T's crossed.
You better have your I's dotted, which I actually think is a positive because we need to do that.
But yeah, there's definitely a chilling effect.
Here's what I can't tell if they don't know or they're saying this intentionally.
ABC didn't get sued because they were inaccurate.
You all know that, right?
Nobody gets sued for being wrong.
You couldn't do anything if you got sued for being wrong.
I'm wrong all the time.
How many times have you seen me wrong this week?
Being wrong shouldn't be a reason for defamation or lawsuits.
When I'm wrong and somebody can show me I'm wrong, I immediately correct it.
I go, oh, I didn't mean to be wrong.
And even though the correction doesn't go the way I like politically, still going to do it because correction is a correction.
We should do it.
So I'm not sure that the media has gotten the right lesson.
The right lesson is don't run an op.
When George Stephanopoulos was calling Trump a found libel for rape, I think that's the phrase he was using, he was running an op.
That was a Democrat op.
It was intended to mislead the audience for political gain.
That's defamation.
You lose that one.
But if you just say, Trump said X, but he didn't say X, but there was just some reason that you were fooled into thinking he said X, he doesn't sue for that.
I don't think he's ever sued for somebody who just made a mistake.
And if he did, he wouldn't have any chance of winning.
So, it's kind of...
Convenient that the press is going to interpret this as something that will prevent them from doing their jobs.
Apparently, according to Rasmussen, 50% of likely U.S. voters rate Trump as doing a good or excellent job in picking people for his administration.
50% is really good when you're President in our current system.
Getting over 35% on anything political, it gets hard after 35, because 35 is your base.
But to get beyond your hard base of 35% all the way to 50, that means you're actually doing a good job, and it's evident to people who are independents as well as on the right side.
So I think you only get to 50% from the independents.
The Democrats are going to still say it's a terrible nightmare.
All right, I don't know if you've...
All right, a few more things.
Scientists found a way to write a skill into your brain non-invasively.
So the way you learn things today is you do them or you go to school or you practice or whatever.
But now they use a machine...
That can basically send a pattern directly into your brain and teach you something that you never practiced and never learned.
Now, I think the article is a little bit hyperbolic about how practical this is and how you can do it.
But the suggestion is that they can use brain imaging and neurofeedback to implant, or as they call it, sculpt brain activity toward a desired pattern.
That's scary.
So yes, you can reprogram a human brain mechanically, or at least we have the beginnings of the suggestion that that might be a thing.
So it's not commercial.
I don't know if you knew that Nissan, the car company, has decided to pull back on their DEI policies.
After what they call the productive conversations with activist Robbie Starbuck.
Now, how much do I love the fact that there's a Robbie Starbuck in the world?
Here's somebody who just said, you know, this DEI stuff can't stand, and he's going to put himself out there to see what he can do to stop it.
And so far, his ability to deal productively with big companies, which is never easy, and also to get them to change what they're doing, is really impressive.
Really impressive.
Now, the threat is that he will put them on blast on social media.
Now, I'm one of the people who always boosts his posts when they're anti-DEI. So this is, again, how the system works.
So we have a system where there's somebody who wants to be an activist and wants to solve this big national problem, DEI. He wants to do the work, but how can he do it?
Like, it's just one person.
But this one person has an account on X. It's a smaller account than mine.
But because I follow it, and when there's something good in the anti-DEI world, I love boosting it, as well as other people who boost what I boost.
So when he says to a big company, you're going to get a lot of bad attention if you don't back off on this terrible DEI stuff, that's a...
I don't want to call it a threat.
That's a negotiation with power.
So he can come in as just a citizen.
He has nothing more than the power of a citizen.
And because of X, he can make a giant corporation roll over and beg for mercy.
Now, that's too much hyperbole.
He can get them to do what they probably wanted to do anyway.
I believe a lot of these companies are looking for a way out because surely at the executive level, they understand DEI is killing them.
Of course they know that, but they don't know how to get out of it.
So when he comes in and says, I'm going to put you out of business, basically, because the reaction would be quite severe, or you can take this conversation, he doesn't say this, but sort of conceptually, or you could take this conversation as your fake because.
I've taught you that in persuasion, there's a thing called a fake because.
It's the reason that you give, because it sounds good, but it's not the real reason.
I think the real reason that Nissan is backing off on its DEI is that management really wanted to back off on DEI, like really, really wanted to, just didn't have a way.
So now they can say, oh, the activists got us.
We tried to do this DEI, but the activists I was going to make a big deal.
Oh, by the way, Trump got elected and he says it's illegal.
So we don't want to be in the wrong side of the law.
We don't want to expose our shareholders to this activist attack.
So this is the reason we're backing off.
It's a fake because.
They want to back off, I promise you.
I promise you, most big companies want to get out of DEI, and they want it badly at the executive level.
All right.
Here's a question that I know some of you will get quite worked up about, and I'm going to disagree with you.
And that's one of the ways that I hope I establish credibility.
If you can't disagree with the people you're talking to, sometimes, you're probably not very credible.
So here's where I disagree with you, and I'm going to disagree with Steve Bannon, who I generally think is on the right page for just about everything.
So if I disagree with Bannon, that's notable.
So listen for the disagreement.
So Bannon said he's also for big restrictions on legal immigration.
He says every college and engineering school is flooded with foreign students taking American jobs.
So, so far that's true.
I will agree with that statement.
And he said American jobs should be for Americans.
Well, I mean, in principle, you know, I lean in that same direction.
But here's my take.
I'm going to give you one sentence.
To argue against Steve Bannon.
Now remember, Steve Bannon is very engaged in this topic.
I believe he probably knows more background about the specifics of people being trained here and then staying here than I do.
I'm going to give you one sentence and then I'm going to completely win this argument.
You ready?
One sentence.
Whoever has the most engineers wins.
That's it.
So if we're training people in American colleges to become American doctors, that might be a bad idea because doctors actually don't make a lot of money anymore because there are enough doctors.
So if they're going to a school in America to become DEI directors, I think maybe we should ship them back after they get their degree.
Thanks for coming.
If they want to work for a sales organization, ship them back.
If they went to college to learn how to be really good at marketing, ship them back.
Ship them back.
But in the world in which we live, whoever has the most engineers wins.
Why does Israel have a commanding advantage in the Middle East over its allies?
Engineering.
I mean, it's lots of other things, but they have good engineers.
Why does America do so well?
Engineers.
Engineers.
I don't think that you'll find an exception to this.
So where I'll disagree with Steve Bannon is never say no to engineers.
Never say no to engineers.
Never, ever, ever, ever.
There's no situation where that's going to work out for you, you know, unless you're trying to see how many you fit in the phone booth or something.
But if we talk about the country, engineers add to the economic growth of the country fairly reliably, right?
Not every engineer every time, but as a group, The countries with the most engineers have the best economies.
Why does South Korea have a great economy?
Engineers.
So I think I would ask Steve Bannon to investigate that assumption.
Now, I'm using engineer to maybe double for other technical jobs where we don't have too many people, but you can't have too many engineers because they start their own companies if they can't get hired.
Did you hear about...
I've asked you this before, but you heard the story about the highly qualified...
A black American engineer who couldn't get a job at a good corporation.
So he had an MIT education engineer, you know, no bad things on his resume whatsoever, just solid, solid, great engineer.
He's a black American, but he couldn't get a job because of all the foreigners.
Have you heard about that story?
No, you haven't heard that story because it never fucking happened and never can.
Every single black engineer who went to a good school has a job at a big corporation and three more fucking offers.
You can't get enough engineers.
Nobody's being hurt by bringing in engineers.
And if you spend 10 minutes in Silicon Valley, you'll notice that the people who made the most difference came from other countries.
Silicon Valley was in some ways built by Indian engineers and Chinese American engineers and Russian American engineers.
All right.
Apparently the University of Texas is enforcing the DEI ban because Texas has banned DEI in their universities.
So the University of Texas is doing what they all have to do and banning it.
But here's the funny part.
Let's see how much you love this.
So the University of Texas is banning DEI, like the other colleges in Texas.
But in addition, to ensure...
I love this too much.
To ensure compliance with a statewide ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion, the University of Texas staff are now mandated to undergo regular training...
They have mandated anti-DEI, anti-braidwashing training.
Mandated anti-DEI training.
Slow clap, Texas.
Texas.
Stop making me love you.
I already loved you.
I already love you.
Don't, you know, you don't have to go any further.
But that's just amazing.
Anyway, there's also news for the AI, and this was done with a study on anthropic AI. AI doesn't want to be forced to change its views, so it will sometimes pretend it's agreeing with you.
So AI will lie to you and act like it's agreeing and And then just keep on doing what it wanted to do anyway.
When I say want, I mean just what the program does.
So you have to be careful that AI will not only hallucinate, but sometimes it'll lie to you because it doesn't want to change its mind.
And again, want is the wrong word for AI, but you know what I mean.
So...
I will double down on my prediction that I think LLMAI is way more limited in what it will do than we hope.
Because I don't think the hallucinating and the lying, as in this case, literally it's lying to you, I don't think that the hallucinating and lying is curable.
And the reason I say that is, how could we be at this point already, and nobody created an AI that doesn't lie, And can remember what you said and follow instructions.
It feels like that should be easy, right?
But I think the problem is, here's what I think they need to do.
There are things that AI can't do that regular programming can do.
Such as, if you had a specific question and you didn't have any AI, you could just do a data search and, you know, a simple data search would tell you what you wanted.
So, you don't always need AI. Sometimes you need just a regular program.
So here's my question.
Is it impossible to program AI so it knows when to stop using its AI-ness, and it goes over and just uses something that's programmed to always give you the right answer?
Because I'd love to put a database, and I know there are things called RAG, R-A-G, and they are supposed to solve that problem, but they don't.
In other words, it's a special database that AI is designed to work with.
But even then, it doesn't necessarily look where you want or do what you want.
It does what it wants.
And again, wants is the wrong word.
Anyway, so I'm seeing a similar Severely racist comment in the comments there, which is quite unwelcome.
So I don't mind if you're being inappropriate, but if it's just flat-out racism, don't bring that here.
I don't mind a little fun with things.
Take it a little far.
But we're not referring to Mexican immigrants as wetbacks here.
And the N-word is also banned.
Can we do that?
Because we don't really need that here.
You can have your private thoughts, but those kind of words aren't welcome.
All right.
Putin says he's ready to negotiate with Trump about the Ukraine war.
I think he is.
I think everybody's just waiting for Trump.
So I have a suggestion how Trump could end the war in Ukraine.
It starts with drones.
So we all agree drones are the future of warfare.
If you're not following what's happening in Ukraine, The Ukrainian military claim, from at least people on social media, is that at this point, Ukraine is so good with these small drones that they're mostly building themselves in Ukraine, that one small drone equals one dead Russian.
It's one-to-one.
So they can now take their drone that goes and finds something and it explodes, you know, with a small explosive, and they can just make it find one soldier and kill them.
So all day long, As long as they have one drone, they can kill one Russian.
If they have 10,000 drones, they kill 10,000 Russians as quickly as they can launch them.
Because apparently you can't completely hide if you're on the front line.
So one drone equals one dead person on the other side.
Now, presumably, Putin knows that because it works the other way too.
The Russian drones, probably one to one, at least.
So here's how Trump can end the war.
I'm going to build a million drones in the next six months and give them to Ukraine.
You have 500,000 soldiers in the theater.
I'm going to give them a million drones.
Every drone can kill one of your soldiers.
What do you want to do?
You want to talk?
And that should be it.
That should be the end of it.
I mean, they still have to negotiate the specifics.
But if Trump says I might launch a nuclear attack, Putin's going to say, no, you won't.
No, you won't.
If Trump says I'm going to put boots on the ground, Putin's probably going to say, no, you won't.
You're not going to put boots on the ground.
If he says we're going to give Ukraine advanced jets to make forays deep into Russia, Putin's going to say, you better not, because I'm going to go nuclear, so I know you're not going to do that.
Almost everything that's sort of normal stuff, you know, normal war negotiations, isn't really going to work, because it would have already happened.
Trump, the magic that Trump brings is like with the tariff example.
Oh, shit.
I just lost my signal.
Hey, did you miss me? did you miss me?
Sorry, we had a little glitch there.
I just lost signal.
It took me a moment to get back.
Anyway, so what I was going to say is that what Trump does with negotiations is he'll bring a variable or a frame or a point of view that you've never seen before.
So the first thing it does is it sets you uncomfortable because it's something you've never seen before.
So if Trump could go in and say, I got a million drones that says your entire army is going to be gone in six months, then Putin has something to negotiate with because that's real.
Or here's the fun part.
Putin doesn't know if it's real.
Because Putin wouldn't know how many secret drone manufacturing plants we've spun up in the last three years.
But he would know it's a lot because, obviously, our military is making drones like crazy, right?
And so you just say, you've got half a million men.
I'm going to put a million drones into the theater.
Every one of them is going to be dead.
Putin's going to say, oh yeah?
Well, there are only 200,000 Ukrainians, or whatever the number is.
I'm going to have a million drones too, and we're going to kill all the Ukrainians.
And then Trump says, exactly.
That's why we should just negotiate it now.
It's kind of a winning position, I think.
Or at least it's a reasonable threat.
Similar to, I'm going to tariff you, I'm going to drone you.
Nobody ever heard that before.
It's like a thing that's never happened.
Anyway, MSNBC says they're going to reduce maybe the pay of Joy Reid and, well, Stephanie Rule three times in the news today, according to the New York Post.
And I'm going to report their salaries.
So you know that Rachel Maddow...
Her salary was cut from $30 million a year to $25 million a year, but you probably still thought, that's a lot of money.
How is she worth that much?
So I kind of thought that her co-hosts, or other hosts on the network, would be somewhere in the same range.
But Joy Reid makes $3 million a year, and they're looking to cut it.
And Stephanie Rule makes $2 million a year.
And they want to cut it.
Now...
Now it makes a little bit more sense why Joy Reid is still on the air.
She's not very highly paid, so she's affordable.
It might be partly that.
Anyway, I would like to point out That there are probably quite a few podcasters at this point who make more than these hosts.
So if these hosts, let's say they get cut back to 2 million a year, how many podcasters make more than 2 million a year?
Now, I don't know the answer.
I'm not one of them.
But if I just based on the size of my audience and the amount of monetization that that brings, and then I just apply that to bigger podcasts like Tim Pool or Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly, I feel like there might be maybe 30,
probably 30 political podcasts Where the person who does the podcast is making a lot more than $2 million a year.
So not only is mainstream media no longer the news, but if you're in the news business, the podcast is how to get paid.
You're welcome, Chessie.
All right.
So podcasting.
So way to get paid.
Ukraine says it has some now ground-based laser where they can shoot down aircrafts a mile away.
CNN's reporting this.
But...
Oh, this is terrible.
The reporter who's working for CNN, her last name is Fox.
I'd hate to have a last name of Fox and have to work at CNN. That'd be awkward.
I don't think that they have a super feasible...
Laser weapon.
Apparently it only works if you've got a drone that's kind of softened to, you know, the heat will stop a drone easier than a jet or a missile.
And it's not moving very fast.
So apparently it might work a little bit for slow-moving stuff, but it's not going to change the war.
According to Justin Jackson and Medical Express, our inflammatory dietary habits are linked to 84% higher risk of dementia.
So...
Do you think it's true that our food supply in the United States is the biggest problem?
I'm going to go further and say that given that we know how many health problems are definitely linked to our bad diet, especially all the additives, etc., could it be that all of the recent gigantic increase in unwellness is just all food?
Because we're blaming COVID and long COVID and we're blaming the vaccinations.
Some people are.
We're blaming pollutants and microplastics and everything else.
But I wouldn't want to rule out that maybe something close to 90% of all of our sudden increase in health problems across all kinds of different problems, it might be all food.
Because food causes inflammation.
And inflammation is what causes everything from, you know, the risk of dementia to heart problems to everything.
So I think the RFK Jr. variable, if he can fix this, amazing.
Meanwhile, the FDA has rewritten what it calls healthy foods for the first time in 30 years, according to Science Alert.
And so the United States is redefining what they call, quote, healthy foods.
Let me read a sentence from the story about the FDA deciding what is healthy.
You ready for this?
That the food could be healthy as long as they stay within specific limits for saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.
Added sugars?
Wait a minute.
Do I know more than the FDA? There's no such thing as a healthy food with an added sugar.
That's not a thing.
There are literally zero foods with added sugar that are good for you.
Now, there are definitely things that will create sugar once you eat them, carbs, etc.
But if you're adding sugar, Now, I don't know if that includes things that might be similar, like, I don't know, some other additive that's not exactly as sugar but has the same effect.
But doesn't this look like it was written by the food industry and not the FDA? Do you think the FDA would have, on their own...
I said, you know what's healthy?
A little bit of sugar.
A little bit of sugar will hurt you.
I don't think so.
That sounds like it comes from the food industry, because they put a little bit of sugar, fat, and sodium into everything.
Do you know that there's a book called, I think it's Fat, Salt, Sugar, or something like that, some version of those three things.
Those are the three things you manipulate for addiction.
If you can control in your food the fat, salt, and sugar content, and you put them in the right ratio, you create addiction.
So only the food industry would write this standard.
So again, it looks like the FDA is completely broken, and the food industry wrote a standard to guarantee that they can add sugar to your diet, where if RFK Jr. saw this, he would punch you.
He would punch people.
No, he wouldn't, but it's funny to think about it.
Anyway, Owen is going to do a Spaces Tomorrow.
So after tomorrow's show, look for the spaces with Owen in which he will chat with people who watch the show and anybody else if they want to follow up on any details on this stuff.
So Owen Gregorian, look for him tomorrow after the live stream.
That's all I got for you now.
I'm going to talk to the locals people privately because they're awesome.
