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Content:
Politics, Elon Musk, Sugar Reframe, Peter Diamandis, Sugar Is Poison, China Car Software Ban, TikTok Ban, Mystery Drones, LBJ Relative Tapes, President Trump, External Revenue Service, US Military Protection Payments, Anti-Trump Retired Generals, Trump Inauguration, Carrie Underwood, Michelle Obama, DEI White Male Executives, Pete Hegseth Confirmation Hearing, Scott Jennings Clown Slayer, Impeached S. Korean President Arrested, Palisades Fire Failure Allegations, Joel Pollack, Governor Newsom, Mayor Bass, Aisha Mills, Reimagining Social Security Taxes, S&P 500 Special Tax, Scott Adams
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day.
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I am now hydrated enough to get through the entire show.
So let's get going.
So I've got a friend who On almost every other contact, tries to tell me that he's figured out something that Elon Musk is doing that's dumb.
And I say, you know, he's got five of the most important businesses in the world.
He's solving problems.
He's going to Mars.
I don't know if he's really dumb.
I feel like maybe he doesn't have, you know, the mental problems you think.
Now, my friend has a net worth of zero, and I don't want to say, you know, you have a net worth of zero, and you're giving advice to the richest man in the world, and none of it looked like luck to me.
It looked like skill.
So maybe you should take that into consideration, that you might know a little bit more than you.
And then today I saw a post...
By Elon Musk.
I thought, hmm, I'm going to have to go in there and correct his thinking.
Apparently, I'm just an idiot.
So, do you know how absurd it is to say, hmm, Elon Musk has an opinion, but I'm so much smarter.
Watch me fix it for him.
But that's what I'm going to do.
But only because it's a very special case.
I wouldn't do this about engineering or business or most things.
So it's a very special case.
Here's the situation.
Dr. Peter Diamandis on X, he had a post in which he led off by saying, sugar is poison.
And then he did a thread on here's why.
Sugar is poison.
Now, he didn't make that up.
That's the title of the book.
And you're all aware that I often say alcohol is poison.
Now, Elon Musk weighed in on the statement that sugar is poison, and he said, um, no, cyanide and arsenic are poisons, whereas sugar is edible.
You don't see a pile of bodies outside a candy store, LMAO. And then Elon said, that said, sugar should only be eaten occasionally and in small quantities.
Now, he's not technically wrong, right?
Sugar is not actually a poison.
Like, literally, it's not.
And sugar is edible.
And if you were going to eat it, a small amount would be not the worst thing that ever happened to you.
But being the reframe guy, I couldn't let it stand.
So I don't know what the comments are going to be, but I weighed in and I said, Reframes need not be literal.
Most of the good ones are not literal.
And then I noted I wrote the book on that, Reframe Your Brain.
A reframe is a brain hack.
It gives you the ability to make better decisions without changing the data.
So it's just a trick.
It's not supposed to be literal.
And in fact, being literal doesn't help it a bit.
There's no advantage to being literal.
You want it to work.
You don't want it to be accurate.
So I pointed out that if the goal is to minimize but not eliminate sugar, calling it a poison is a perfect reframe.
But then I had to acknowledge, because I think I learned something in this exchange, why would Elon Musk, clearly and unambiguously one of the smartest people in all of our experiences, Not understand a simple reframe is not meant to be literal.
How is that possible?
Well, I don't know the exact answer, but I ended with this statement.
I said, I acknowledge that departing from the literal doesn't work for every brain.
Now, this should not be taken as any kind of an insult to anybody.
I've made this mistake before, which is if I mention somebody who's on the spectrum, If I say anything like that publicly, people say, whoa, whoa, whoa, who are you insulting?
If you took away the inventions and the benefit that has been brought to the world by people who are technically on the spectrum, and I think Elon includes himself.
He's self-identified as being on the spectrum.
I'm not 100% sure it's true, but when I see this kind of opinion where he's favoring the literal over the reframe that doesn't need to be literal, I think, wow.
That this might be one of the cases where drawing this distinction between a reframe would work for the regular public, but here's what I learned.
I just learned it doesn't work if you're on the spectrum, which actually makes sense, right?
So being on the spectrum would make you a little more literal, and maybe you just couldn't embrace the imaginary part of the reframe.
So I learned something.
Anyway.
Looks like there might be coming a ban on Chinese connected car software.
Ars Technica is talking about that.
I guess that's the Congress is working on that.
There might be some exemptions, but it would block Americans from having cars with Chinese software.
Now, I don't know what the real potential risk is for having a, let's call China an adversary, having them have control over some number of cars in America.
But how many cars do you think are on the road at any one time in America?
It's a big number, right?
Would it be 5 or 10 million at any moment during the day?
I don't know what the number is, but it's got to be millions.
And suppose we become a self-driving car nation.
Seems inevitable.
Might be only a few years away.
What would happen if an enemy just got a hold of a million cars and just drove them into ditches?
It is a weapon of mass destruction, potentially, to have a million cars drive off the road at the same time.
So, yeah, I'm in favor of banning the Chinese software.
Even if there's no indication there's something wrong with it, there will be.
There will be.
Meanwhile, over at Interesting Engineering, there's a pinecone-inspired building shades.
So they studied pinecones.
That apparently, I guess the little, whatever you call it, the, what would you call the little leaves or whatever on the pine cone?
There's probably a word for that.
But apparently they move based on the sun.
So they wanted to find some way that you could make your windows in your building open up and close based on sun and without using electricity.
So, are we called needles?
Hmm.
I don't know.
I'm not sure if that's right.
But they do it without electricity, so that's the important part.
The sun directly causes the pinecone-like parts to open.
Now, my take on this is, doesn't your window look like a pinecone?
Do you ever want your window to look like a pinecone?
I don't know.
I'm not sure this has potential.
Meanwhile, there's the Tic Tac...
TikTok ban, as far as I know, is going to go into effect on Sunday unless something miraculous happens between now and then.
Can you give me a fact check on that?
Is that correct, that TikTok is going to be done in the United States?
It'll still be international.
But is it going to be done in the United States?
Because I feel like there might be another thing coming.
There were some reports that Elon Musk was talking to China.
I don't think that's true.
That was never confirmed.
So I don't think that was ever true.
But do you think anybody could put together a purchase deal in a few days?
I suppose they could if they felt the price was right, but I don't see any possibility that TikTok's going to say yes even if the price is right.
So I don't know exactly what would be purchased if somebody purchased TikTok.
But it makes me wonder, if China is willing to give up billions and billions and billions of dollars, they must be hiding something.
In other words, if somehow we got control of their software and their algorithms, would we be able to determine how much they've been putting a finger on the algorithms?
Would we be able to know that just by buying it and looking at whatever they sold us?
It could be that they're worried that they don't have a way to scrub that.
Because you know how when Musk bought Twitter, there were so many little censoring tags in it that even the owner couldn't tell what it was censoring.
Like it was just too complicated.
So what if China said, get rid of all the incriminating stuff and then maybe we can sell it.
And then TikTok would have said, We could try, but we probably wouldn't get close to knowing that we had all the incriminating stuff out of the software because it's not that easy.
And then China might say, you can't sell that thing because if they find out what we've been doing, there will be repercussions.
So this is speculation, but I suspect that TikTok would be sellable.
Unless they're hiding something and they don't know how to unhide it.
Or they don't know how to hide it completely, I guess.
Anyway, if you're saying to yourself, hey, but Trump liked TikTok, so he won't like it if it goes away, I remind you he's not going to be running again.
And I would be really surprised if the Republicans ever field another candidate who can rule TikTok.
You know that being able to control And even dominate the messaging on TikTok.
That's purely a Trump thing.
You all know that, right?
So anything you say about, well, Trump did well on TikTok, so why would you ban it?
That's just Trump.
Do you think DeSantis is going to light up TikTok?
If TikTok still existed?
No.
No, he's not.
That's purely Trump.
The Republicans aren't going to care if it goes away.
We'll see.
Some of you may remember.
How many of you remember that back in 2018, 2019, I announced to you that I was going to try to put TikTok out of business?
Do you remember that?
And you said to yourself, well, that's not a thing.
And then I kept saying it's a thing.
Do you know what the first part of persuasion is?
The first part of persuasion is you have to think it's a thing.
If you don't think it's a thing, everything else you say after that doesn't matter.
You're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But as soon as you think it's a thing, then you can start looking at the pros and the cons.
So I decided a few years ago, I'm going to make sure everyone knows it's a thing.
And I got two senators.
I got to a lot of senators, a lot of people in the house, just because they're natural viewers.
Some of them I contacted personally, ones that I could DM. And in some cases, I know for sure they heard the message, got it completely, and even responded.
So I certainly was not pushing it for the last year or so, because it looked like it was just becoming an Israel issue.
So I think Israel killed it.
Because they didn't like that it was persuading against them.
Now, I don't know if that'll ever be official, or I don't know if history will record that Israel killed TikTok in America, but I'm pretty sure that's the case.
Now, normally I would have said, hey, Israel, another country, even our ally, you can't turn off a free speech platform in our country.
Stop that.
But since I'm completely on the same page...
I just sort of stepped back.
Now, do you remember when Trump first mentioned buying Greenland?
And your first reaction was, come on.
You know why?
Because you did not believe it could be a thing.
That was step one.
Trump first told you it's a thing, and then you would argue whether it's dumb, or he's kidding, or it's a joke.
But when you were done, You would think it's a thing.
And therefore, you can talk about the pros and cons, and it turns out there were a lot of pros.
A lot of pros.
And the cons?
None.
You know, depending on the nature of the deal, maybe none.
They won't necessarily be voting.
Could be a territory.
There might be a price that makes sense.
It might work for Denmark.
It might work for Greenland.
But nothing would have happened.
Nothing.
Until Trump told us it's a thing.
So when I said banning TikTok is a thing, I got no traction on day one.
I think I had zero people agreeing with me on day one.
Eventually, I hammered it and hammered it until you might disagree, you might agree, but you definitely knew it was a thing.
And on Sunday, we might find out if it's a thing.
All right.
The SEC is suing Elon Musk because they have nothing else better to do.
But I don't know if this one is legit.
It might be.
This one might be legit, and it's just a money thing.
So, you know, if he had to pay some money, I could see that happening.
But he's being sued because when he first bought the first shares of Twitter, it was above, I guess it was above some number where you're supposed to announce your purchase.
And he was late.
I guess late in registering that he'd done it.
And there's some argument that because he didn't say it, that he said just because he didn't say it, that somehow other people lost money because they didn't know that he did it?
Maybe.
I can see that argument.
I just wonder if this would have been pressed against everybody.
Because it seems like it would be easy to demonstrate this is the day he bought the stock.
This is the rule.
This is when he admitted he bought it.
It's after the rule.
$175 million, write us a check.
It might be valid.
You might say to yourself, yeah, that would have happened to anybody.
I don't know.
I watched the segment with Michael Schellenberger on Tucker's show, Tucker Carlson, and there was a little discussion on UAPs.
I did notice that Tucker sort of took over that conversation, and I never really got to hear what Michael Schellenberger thought was happening.
So Schellenberger brought up a few of the hypotheses, but I don't think he landed on...
You know, what his opinion was.
And part of it is because when Tucker started talking about it, I think that just took the conversation in such a direction that I don't know if Michael thought that was the right time to give his own opinion on it, because I'm sure he has one.
But here's what Tucker said about the UAPs, quote, they're not from Mars, they're not from another planet, they're from here.
They've always been here.
These are spiritual entities.
It's clear that these things...
Reside deep in the earth, under the water, and in the atmosphere.
And then he pointed out that Elon Musk, and he'd had personal conversations with Musk, Tucker had, didn't think that there was anything coming from space.
Now, Tucker said, and I don't know if this is just Tucker or Elon said this as well, and I'm not sure it's true.
He said that we'd pick up on satellites anything entering the atmosphere.
Do you think that's true?
I don't.
If you look at the quality of any of the systems in the United States that you thought were good, none of them are good.
If you had asked me a month ago, Scott, what do you think is one of the best fire departments in the world?
I would have said, well, obviously L.A., because they would need it, and they would have the money.
Enough of the population to get whatever they needed.
So yeah, the best fire department in the world would probably be LA. Well, not so much.
So when I hear things like, well, our advanced satellites would pick up any UFOs coming through our completely impenetrable digital network of surveillance, I say to myself, or not.
Yeah, or not, maybe.
So I don't know if that's a good reason, but Trump said about the UAPs, I'm going to give you a report on drones.
We don't know if the drones are really the same as the UAPs, but the drones over in New Jersey, I think he's talking about.
We'll give it in one day into the administration, he told the governors somewhere, because I think it's ridiculous that they're not telling you about what is going on with the drones.
I'm going to make a prediction.
He's not going to tell us what's going on with the drones.
And if he does, you're going to feel that it's incomplete.
Like, really?
Does that explain all the drones?
Or did that explain some of the drones?
Or maybe a lot of the drones?
So, if you think that Trump's going to get in there and then answer that question to your satisfaction, I don't think there's any chance of that.
I do think he means it.
I do think he's telling the truth, that he's going to try to do that.
I do think he'll try.
But no matter what he says, you're going to say, how do we know he wasn't told to us to leave something out?
How do we know that when he hears the real reason, he says, oh, man, I really wasn't expecting that.
So, yeah, I guess I'll just say they're hobbyists and I'll leave out the rest.
Maybe.
So I'm betting you will not be satisfied with whatever comes out of that.
There's an Army Green Beret who's now making some claims on social media, I guess, according to the Daily Mail.
He was led into this secret UFO crash storage at an underground naval base.
And he went through all the places and they showed him the advanced alien technology.
There was an orb that seemed to be operated by consciousness alone.
And there was some kind of thing you put on your arm, and it was magic.
But here's the part that completely made the whole story fall apart.
I mean, if it didn't already.
Apparently, he saw a door that was labeled, and I quote, off-world technology.
And I'm out.
And I'm out.
No.
There is no place in the world...
Where somebody has a door labeled off-world technology.
Because even if you accepted that there is such a thing as off-world technology, and even if you accepted that nobody should be in that part of the building unless they had full clearance and ability to know, even then, you're not going to put on the door off-world technology.
That's just not going to happen in any real world.
So no.
Sorry, Army Green Beret.
That doesn't pass the initial sniff test.
Speaking of sniff tests, Alex Jones had kind of an exclusive, I think, he has from a descendant, see if I get this right.
So it was maybe the grandson or so of somebody who was a confidant and a very rich guy, confidant of LBJ. So, the first part of the story is that LBJ was just a flat-out criminal, and he ran the government through blackmail, through, I guess, J. Edgar Hoover.
So, according to this telling, so Alex Jones and his guest, it's well-known, well-documented.
Apparently, there are books written in which LBJ was just flat-out criminal.
Some say he was also a murderer.
Some say he ordered the hit on JFK because he was so humiliated by the way he was being treated.
Now, there seems to be good evidence that he was humiliated.
So the part is, did he really order it?
Well...
The evidence is, according to the grandson, he found some, he'd had them for a long time.
He didn't just find them.
But for a long time, he had had the tapes left to him, you know, in the estates or the wills or something.
So he had these little tapes, and he finally had them, you know, converted so we could listen to them, whatever that took.
And then those tapes were played, and it showed...
I believe it was either, you know, his own relative talking to another close confidant, and it seemed to be a phone call in which they were talking casually, but in a worried way, just sort of matter-of-factly, that LBJ had ordered the hit on Kennedy.
And it's just like right there, plain as day.
Now, Alex Jones says that the source is impeccable, so he vouches for the human being.
Who had the tape.
He knows that that person was in fact a relative, is in fact a relative of a real person who genuinely was LBJ's confidant and apparently participated in some shady stuff.
He's checked to make sure that the audio was not AI generated.
So he feels that he has a positive source.
The recording didn't just pop up today.
It's something that the source that he trusts says he's had in his possession for a long time and that it didn't seem fake.
Fake in terms of it doesn't seem like something that was not related to those two people.
It does look like the two people made the tape.
It's a real tape.
But then I listened to it.
I would like to give you my judgment.
It might be the real people, just like as claimed.
It might be exactly those two people.
It may have been made at exactly that time.
So I think the tape is real, the people are real, and the timing is real, and they really said those things.
However, I'm going to give you a little insight as a professional writer.
The hardest thing about being a professional writer when you write dialogue...
And I remind you that I write dialogue for characters every single day for 35 years.
There is a skill involved in writing dialogue.
The main part of the skill is avoiding looking like it's scripted dialogue.
Did you all know that?
The main thing that you want to avoid to be a good writer, you know, one that people pay attention to, is your writing has to just be clearly unscripted.
You know, something that a real person would say.
If you listen to the tape, as I did, and you're a professional writer, you will see right away it's scripted.
So it doesn't mean it's not true.
That's a whole different conversation.
It could be that the principals wanted to get it on tape so that it would be believed or something in future days.
It might have been a protection thing.
Maybe they were protecting their own lives by having a tape that would be embarrassing to LBJ. So I do think everything about it was real, except that it was, in my opinion, very obviously scripted.
So as a professional writer, that was professionally scripted.
Do you want to know what the tell is?
The tell is how perfect it was and how often they put the person's name.
In the middle of a sentence, so you'd know who was talking.
That was a little over the top.
So it would go like, hello, Saul.
I hope you're having a good day.
Well, thank you for that input, Saul.
It's good that we have these.
I'm making that up, but you can see how stilted it is.
Here's where our real people talk.
Oh, man, I got this thing.
What?
Yeah.
I got a thing, and then the other one talks over him, and then he asks a question, and then you circle back, and you apologize for saying it wrong, and you correct your words.
That's what real conversation looks like.
This was not that.
It was pretty far from natural conversation.
Now, I'd like a second opinion.
And remember, I'm not doubting the veracity of the underlying claim.
I wouldn't know one way or the other.
I'm just saying it's scripted.
It might be true, but it would be scripted.
If there are other professional writers who write dialogue specifically, I'd love to get an opinion on that.
SpaceX is going to launch two unmanned lunar missions, so I guess there are two rovers, and those rovers will be going around on Mars, not Mars, on the moon.
So Elon Musk is launching two probes into my moon.
Ouch.
So that's fun.
I really like having a rover on the moon.
I'm pretty much rover fascinated.
I'll watch whatever that rover does and takes pictures of.
The December inflation was 2.9.
They expected it to be 2.9.
So the good news is it's not going up quickly.
But, of course, the baseline of our costs are all basically unaffordable.
So, yeah, unless it goes down, it's not helping at all.
Just staying where you expected it used to be good news.
Not anymore.
Well, Trump has announced the formation of what he calls the External Revenue Service.
So instead of collecting money from the government from internal citizens, he's going to find ways to charge other companies or countries for stuff.
So it would include any money collected from tariffs, which you might say, that comes from American companies.
That's the opposite of external.
You would be right.
But if it's part of the negotiations, we're going to use tariffs as a weapon.
Using tariffs as a weapon is going to be a whole lot more convincing if we've got an entire department who's dedicated to using that weapon and collecting the money from it.
Here's what I think is coming.
It has not been in any way explicitly announced, but let me tell you what's inevitably coming.
We're going to have such a budget problem that Trump, being Trump, is going to do the smarter thing that nobody's done before.
And it's basically a mafia play because we've got the biggest military.
And you say to the small countries that have had a free ride because your military protects them, basically...
It'd be a shame if something happened to your little country.
Nothing's going to happen to us.
We're part of NATO. Nobody would attack this hemisphere.
You don't have to worry.
Well, that's only because we're protecting you.
Right, right.
What if we stopped?
What?
What if we stopped protecting you?
Why would you do that?
It's expensive.
But you're not actually sending any military here.
You're just saying that...
If something happened, you would send military here so other countries will stay away from, let's say, South America.
And then Trump says, right, yeah, that's the way it's been.
It's not the way it's going to be because if you want a little military protection in advance before you need it, why would that be free?
When you pay for insurance, you pay for it before the disaster.
You don't pay for it after the war starts.
That's not when we're going to start billing you.
You pay now because you're buying an insurance plan.
So Trump appears to be setting the stage for the U.S. military to be everybody's insurance plan, which means that you would literally pay for it, maybe even based on your population or something, just like insurance.
Now, is that unethical?
Or is it just a smarter way to organize a military?
Well, if you're another country, let's say you're Costa Rica.
Costa Rica has no military, unless they formed one recently.
I don't think so.
No military.
How hard would it be for a foreign power to take over a country with no military?
Easy.
Why is it they don't try?
Because of the U.S. military.
Do you think Costa Rica is paying us an annual payment?
For all that protection, literally protecting the whole country.
No.
Now, I think, is that fair?
No.
Now, you could argue that we're protecting them for our own benefit, and that would be a good argument.
It's like, oh, it's bad for America if Costa Rica falls to an adversary.
But it's also true we're protecting them and they're paying nothing.
We're not enough.
I think this might have more legs than you think.
And once again, Trump is doing that thing that he did with Greenland.
Until he creates this department, the External Revenue Service, you don't really think it's a thing that he would charge other countries for protection.
But now you think it's a thing, don't you?
You might hate it.
You might love it.
But guess what?
It's a thing.
It's a thing.
Trump does this maybe better than anybody's ever done it, which is making the thing that's not a thing a thing.
And then if the cost-benefit, in a purely objective sense, makes sense, then the thing can go on on its own and become a real thing.
But first, you have to change the entire national consciousness from that's not a thing to, oh, that's a thing?
Now we can talk about it.
It's brilliant.
I hate to keep saying things like this because they sound so hyperbolic, so kissing his ass, so, you know, hero-worshipping.
I get how it sounds.
But I think history is going to back me on the following statement.
We've never seen anything like this.
This is a level of understanding, understanding of how persuasion and people think.
That is so unprecedented.
There's nobody even close.
I know you want to say, oh, Reagan was the great communicator.
Yes.
Very, very good.
Very A-plus Reagan.
This is a whole different level.
So Reagan was A-plus in junior college.
Trump's A-plus at the India Institute of Technology, which is way more than you think it is.
All right.
Special Counsel Jack Smith's report is indicating that Trump would have been convicted if not elected.
That's what everybody's saying.
Is that news?
I think everybody knew that...
Didn't everybody know that Trump would be...
Trump would go to jail if he wasn't elected?
We all knew that.
Did it help him get elected?
I hope so.
So we live in a system where if things go wrong...
They could just lawfare somebody into jail and damn near did it.
The only thing that kept Trump out of jail is an amazing campaign team, his own abilities, which are transcendent, and the fact that the public said, that's a line too far.
I think the public stopped that entirely.
I mean, by their vote, of course.
But there was also an implied threat, wasn't there?
There was an implied threat.
That if half the country watched their leader be put in jail, the entire social contract was going to be ripped up.
And I think enough people said that that was believable.
I don't know if it would be, but I think it could have been the entire social contract, if you know what I mean.
Meanwhile, James O'Keefe and his OMG undercover...
Video business.
They found an advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
So this is somebody that's a high-level advisor, a former FBI special agent, and he called himself a spy hunter.
And he went on one of these dates in which he talked too much, fake dates.
So the undercover person went on the fake date and recorded him, asked him what he thought about Trump, and he said, Trump's a sociopathic narcissist who is only interested in advancing his name, his wealth, and his fame.
He's had a lifetime of cheating.
He's habitually addicted to lying about himself.
Okay, so the first thing you know is that he's suffering from terminal TDS. These are not the words of a person whose brain is working correctly.
Is it true that Trump tries to maximize his own gain?
Like everybody.
Like everybody.
Was there some politician who didn't like to see himself succeed?
Which one was that?
Even Bernie Sanders was trying to win the damn election.
So watching them try to get what's good for them, the only thing that matters is, was it also good for the country?
And what Trump is doing is also good for the country.
So there's no real difference between doing a great job for the country.
And doing a great job for yourself.
They're exactly the same.
And the job is so transparent that you would literally have to do illegal things to get out of that model of what's good for the country ends up being good for you.
You have to be illegal for that not to be true.
And we're watching pretty closely, especially Trump.
So that's crazy.
But then it gets worse.
He apparently was involved in Back in Russiagate times, he spent his time looking for all that foreign interference to explain how Trump got elected.
Didn't find any.
So his TDS is extreme.
Couldn't even believe that Trump got elected unless there must have been some foreign interference.
Nope, there was foreign interference.
It was against Trump.
The minor little Russian memes didn't make any difference.
Everybody smart knows that.
And then the undercover reporter asked him if there's anything that he, quote, could do to protect the American people from stuff that Trump might try.
And he said, quote, I'm in conversation with a couple of retired generals to try to explore what we can do.
So here's a spook who's actually having conversations with retired generals.
We didn't get their names.
It looks like he's planning an insurrection.
So it looks like they're not looking to respond to some specific thing Trump did, but rather just take him out of office through some kind of undercover mechanism that involves generals and somebody who's a spy hunter.
Now, I assume he lost his job immediately, but who knows?
So that's all we know about that.
So beware all of the undercover people who think that they're doing what's good for the world.
I think this guy actually believed he was doing the right thing, which is scary.
It's really scary if he thought that was the right thing.
All right, the inauguration is coming up, and it's been announced a number of entertainers, but the interesting ones that are non-obvious, I mean, Kid Rock is obvious, but the village people said yes.
Now, I love that the Village People said yes, not only because Trump, you know, Trump basically made them rich, because I'm pretty sure he popularized the song again, I don't know, 30 years or 40 years after it was an original.
And since the public in general assumes that they're all gay and that that's actually part of the fun, you know, the whole YMCA thing.
It's kind of a gay anthem, but it's weird that they say, no, we're not gay.
But to the public, it's the gayest group in the world, but not in a bad way.
So the beauty of what Trump did was he wasn't mocking them.
He was accepting them exactly as they wanted to be accepted, as really good music that we like to dance to.
And it's unusually fun because it breaks out of that hetero-only way of being.
So, even watching Trump enjoy the pleasure of breaking into that hetero-only, you know, you can't act like you're enjoying that music or something, it was wonderful.
And they're paying him back, or maybe paying themselves, either way it works for me, by taking the chance.
They're taking a chance on him.
I love that.
So, good job, village people.
Carrie Underwood is performing.
That's the one that surprised me.
Why in the world would a really well-established singing star want to associate with Trump if she hasn't already?
Because isn't that going to cut her future revenue in half forever?
It might.
So, both the village people and Carrie Underwood seem to be more of an indication that Trump has been at least...
A little bit established as okay to say you support them.
Now, if you're getting the entertainment people to say that, you've really penetrated a whole new category.
Because you already got the tech people saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
The fine people hoax wasn't real?
So the tech people have all caught on that it was just this major brainwashing operation.
So once they found out it was all brainwashing, They could see all the other brainwashing, and then their vision cleared, and then they just made the rational choice.
But to get it into the entertainment world as deeply as Carrie Underwood is impressive.
So all respect to Carrie Underwood for taking what is clearly a risk.
But if she doesn't get as much pushback as would end her career, then I would say she's part of the solution.
If you're trying to unite the country, you're going to need some people who go first and take the arrows in the back.
And this, to me, seems really brave for Carrie Underwood.
I'm very impressed.
I've seen her in concert, by the way.
I've only ever been to a few concerts in my whole life, but maybe three concerts in my life.
But she was one of them.
It was a good show.
Michelle Obama is not coming to the inauguration, but Barack is.
That would make two events in recent weeks that Barack went to and Michelle didn't, where you would expect that normally she would.
The other was the Carter funeral.
Now, unless she has a medical problem, which I wouldn't rule out, just maybe something she doesn't need to get into with the public, it would suggest there's marital problems.
Now, I've heard the rumors.
I don't think there's direct evidence to support that.
And you never know what's going on in somebody's relationship.
But it's a little hard to understand weeks apart.
You know, same thing.
It's sort of built into what you expect that they would do as a couple, Brock and Michelle.
So I would say the possibility of either a medical situation that doesn't resolve very quickly, which could be very bad, and it might be just that.
Or there's something else going on.
And so there may be an early signal that...
Meanwhile, Costco has responded to criticisms about its DEI programs by saying they're planning to keep them.
So they like their DEI. They have a DEI manager, I guess.
And they're going to keep their DEI because it's worked for them, they say, at Costco.
Robbie Starbuck, who's the activist who's had huge success getting companies to...
You eliminate their DEI. Notice that Costco is not high on his list because it would be a hard one.
And it makes sense to do the ones you know you can get because it creates momentum to get the hard ones later.
So Starbuck is telling us, yeah, that's not on the top of the list right now.
Get to that one later, maybe.
But here's what I want to point out.
Costco is 72% of top Costco managers were men.
And 81% were white.
Let me remind you that I have been grossly discriminated in my life for my gender and my race.
You all know the stories.
I worked for a bank.
They said I couldn't be promoted because I was a white male.
I left.
I went to the phone company.
Eventually they said, you can't be promoted because you're a white male.
I created a TV show that lost its slot on Monday, which ends up...
You know, being a death, it's sort of a death blow to a show to lose your time slot.
Because I was a white male and I had a comic about a white guy and they decided it was going to be an all-African-American comedy night.
And, of course, I lost my entire publishing and syndication career because I said something that you would only be punished for if you're a white man.
And people didn't even disagree with me.
It wasn't even like I said something people didn't disagree with.
Once they actually heard what it was in context.
Nobody disagreed.
I've never heard a single person disagree with it, but I was cancelled worldwide.
Now, here's what you need to know.
Every one of those motherfuckers who cancelled me was a white guy.
All of them.
They were all white guys protecting their own asses because they knew they were in that position where there should have been more diversity in their own job.
But as long as they could force people like me, We had less power than them to take the hit.
They can say, look at all these good things we're doing.
We're getting rid of all these white guys who say things you don't like.
We're making sure that they can't be promoted.
Give me an extra bonus because I've discriminated against white men.
So let me say it again.
In my life, I'm not aware of even one time any black American or any black person in any country ever discriminated against me.
Not once.
Not once.
Have I been discriminated against by white people?
Yes.
A lot.
A lot.
And I fucking hate their guts.
So, if you had a problem with me because you're black, we have a lot more in common than you think.
First of all, you and I never had any problem.
Ever.
Not in person.
Not professionally.
Not in any way.
Surprisingly, and I know this would be a surprise to you, I didn't lose any black friends.
None.
I only lost white friends.
White people discriminating against white people is an enormous fucking problem.
And if you get it wrong and you imagine that it's the DEI hires that are the problem, they don't even get those jobs.
They don't even get there until there's already been massive discrimination by the white people.
So is the...
Is the police chief in L.A., who's a lesbian, and I guess three of the top people in the fire department are lesbians, is that an indication that she's discriminating against white men?
Well, she probably is.
But you also have to open the possibility that people tend to hire people that they know.
That's a worldwide pattern.
The white CEO is far more likely to hire just somebody they knew from another job.
So that's probably pretty common.
Anyway, so I'm not in favor of it, any of the DEI, but just keep it straight.
It's white people discriminating against white people is 95% of the problem.
95%.
But I love black Americans.
I hate powerful white Americans who discriminate against me.
Pete Hegseth nomination.
I didn't watch every bit of it, but I saw a lot of clips.
And I'm going to say, my God.
I have to admit that when Pete Hegseth was nominated, I said to myself, what?
TV host?
He's not even the top-rated TV host.
What?
Why does that even make sense?
Now, didn't some of you have that same reaction when it was first announced?
But then I found out more.
I didn't know the degree of his activism on behalf of the military, the soldiers.
Very impressive.
I believe he signed up for twice, right?
He was out of the military briefly and decided to go back in.
Right?
That's impressive.
He is completely dedicated to what he calls the warrior ethos.
Instead of the DEI, you know, trying to be nice to everybody ethos.
He has got an Ivy League education, so he understands the military, the people, the people on the ground.
He's brilliant because he's got that college education that pretty much certifies.
He's smarter than the average person by a lot.
And then I heard him talk.
Wow.
When they say he's just a TV host, that's what the critics are saying.
How about he has one of the best talent stacks I've ever seen?
Because if you include his immersion in the news, as a news person, you add his talent for speaking in public, you add his Ivy League background, you add his really super relevant military experience and recently.
That's like one of the strongest talent stacks I've ever seen.
But if you haven't seen yet the meme, there's a meme, I would show it to you, but you'll see it all over the place, of Hank Seth, his head is in the middle of the meme, and he's just sort of looking around just casually.
And then there's four boxes of four of the female senators who are literally yelling at him.
And they all play at once, while Pete is just sort of in the middle.
And then you hear all four of them talking over each other.
And their faces are all like rabid dogs, except it's like your worst, you know, your worst relationship experience if you've ever been male.
Now, I know you're going to say, Scott, you're being sexist.
Because you could have put a bunch of men in that and it would look the same.
No, it wouldn't.
No, it wouldn't.
It wouldn't look the same.
If you put a bunch of men there, it would look, you know, maybe some of them are asking crazy questions.
But it wouldn't be the same.
It wouldn't be the same.
So as memes go, as soon as I saw it, I thought to myself, this might be one of the best I've ever seen.
Because you have to know also that the context was that...
Pete had, I think before he was nominated, he said things about women in combat, like him not being in favor of it.
So the women were attacking mostly about that and some accusations about his personal life that had been debunked.
But watching him answer the questions so confidently and so clearly and so perfectly state what he wanted to do, which is increase the The lethality of it and to focus on that and do the job of the military, not all the side stuff.
So well said, so well presented, so confident.
Wow.
Wow.
Now, I know that I will be blamed for being all in on Trump stuff.
And this sounds like one of those times.
I think this is just recognizing quality.
That's all it looks like to me.
So if the Democrats ran somebody who could do what he did to basically weather the situation, give me a clear statement of exactly what he wants to do that matches exactly with what I want to do, well, I would say good things about that Democrat.
I promise you I would.
I say good things about Fetterman when he's good.
I say good things about AOC when her persuasion is strong.
I don't like most of the rest.
I think I would compliment a Democrat in this situation.
I just like this game.
It was totally good.
One of my favorite parts was Senator Reid asking, what does JAG off mean?
So JAG refers to the JAG in the military, the legal group of the military.
Which branch?
Is that just the Air Force?
I forget.
But it's a legal term.
So Senator, I guess at some point, Pete must have said something that used the phrase jag off, like as an insult to the jag people or something.
And so he's asked in public, what does jag off mean?
Senator Reid asked that.
Now, think of all the ways that you could have answered that wrong.
Pete just says, Everybody here knows what that means.
Now, that was the right answer.
Everything else was the wrong answer.
That was one of those situations where he clearly had not prepared for it.
Like, who would know that's coming?
But to give that clean an answer, that was a clean answer.
When you've never heard that, that shows that he's got a quick mind and he can read the room.
So that was perfect.
The people in the room knew what it meant.
But, God, I wish I knew what it meant.
So, you know, the rest of us will never know.
Any ideas?
Maybe only the people in the room knew.
What?
You know too?
Okay, we all know.
All right.
Scott Jennings did a post.
Where he was talking about the nomination stuff for P. Hegseth and all the characters who were weighing in on it during the questioning.
And Scott Jennings said, they didn't lay a glove on Hegseth today.
Why do Dems send their dumbest members to do this to this important committee?
Now, my new nickname for Scott Jennings is Clown Slayer.
Because his specialty...
Besides just being the best voice on the Republican side who's on CNN, is that he seems to just slay clowns.
Like the Democrats who just shouldn't even be in the conversation.
And again, not because they're Democrats.
They are just legitimately stupid.
Now, are there some legitimately stupid Republicans?
I assume so.
But I don't feel like they're in front of the parade.
When you hear a Republican talking, it's like, Oh, Tom Cotton.
Even if you disagree, brilliant guy.
Oh, Rand Paul.
Oh, well, you might disagree with a few things, but brilliant guy.
Thomas Massey.
Oh, might disagree.
Brilliant guy.
And, you know, you can go down the line.
But the Democrats do seem to send their stupidest people.
According to Scott Jennings.
But now, I don't usually disagree with Scott Jennings.
So this might be the only time I ever do.
I'm not sure that's their stupidest people.
I've got bad news for you.
It might be their smartest.
It might be.
I mean, you tell me which one's the smart one.
Yeah, you tell me.
Yeah, not much difference.
And then Tim Kaine was prominent.
But Tim Kaine looked like the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert, except more gay.
So he looked like the gay pointy-haired boss.
Now, as far as I know, he identifies as hetero, but presents as a pointy-haired gay guy.
So that was fun.
I couldn't get my eyes off it.
And again.
If you know me well enough, you know that I never insult the LGBTQ community because I think they're amazing.
The success they've had in the United States, reputationally, economically, socially, is just one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.
Meanwhile, over in South Korea, I was trying to ignore this because I thought the story would go away, but the ex-president, the one who was removed by impeachment, his name is...
Yoon Suk Yeol.
Y-O-O-N, middle name S-U-K, last name Y-E-O-L. Now, you might not recognize that as a South Korean president name, but you might be confused because it's also how a southern man in the United States insults somebody.
Same thing.
What, you don't see it?
Right, so...
In Korea, he would be called Yoon Suk-yeol.
And if it were an insult from a southern gentleman, it would be Yoon Suk-yeol, Yoon Suk-yeol, as opposed to Yoon Suk-yeol.
Same thing.
Anyway, he had been impeached and they wanted to arrest him, but he used his own government security to prevent him from being arrested.
So he went into his little, very well-protected compound, and when they send authorities to arrest him, his own security, which is paid by the government, said, nope, we protect him.
Until that job changes, you're not arresting anybody, which I really respected.
Now, they came back with 1,100 people.
So then the security force was so outnumbered that, quite reasonably, They knew that the smart thing to do was to stand down, and they did.
So he's arrested.
He was a conservative.
He was arrested by something more liberal on the left.
There's some insurrection charges.
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
Impeached, insurrection, he's a conservative.
Sound familiar?
Do you think we were behind this?
Do you think the United States may have backed this?
Well, I do not know, but certainly suspect it.
All right, there's a little bit more on the Palisades fire.
I know you're all tired of it, and if you're not a Californian, this may not be too important to you, but I remind you that California's economy is bigger than 35 of the other states put together, and if California gets a cold, what is it?
If California sneezes, the whole country is going to get a cold.
So if you think this doesn't affect you, Just wait.
It will.
It's going to affect you.
I mean, it affects everybody in California, whether you're in the fire zone or not.
So we're all, you know, there's a lot you haven't heard about, but we're all struggling.
So things are not easy right now for anybody.
And that includes people who have some extra resources.
Everybody's in a position they haven't been in before.
The amount of pressure on everybody is through the roof, and I don't know if you can fully appreciate that unless you've been near one of these yourself.
But here are some of the things we're learning now that should bother you.
According to Rich McHugh from NewsNation, there is video proof that there was no response from the fire department to the Pacific Palisades fire 45 minutes after it was first reported.
Now, I think that they can tell that by some video security from one of the houses that was near the fire and may have been involved in reporting it.
So, I don't know if that's confirmed, because I've heard other stories that the fire department did as well as you'd expect, but that's out there.
So, I'm going to call that an allegation.
Because I'll bet you if you ask the fire department, they'd say something different.
So until I hear the other story, I'll just put a pin on that one.
But there is some concern that they didn't mobilize in time.
Michael Schellenberger talks about some of the failures, and he had a good list that I'll summarize for you.
First of all, here's a take from Joel Pollack and Breitbart.
And by the way, you should be following Joel Pollack if you have any interest whatsoever in the fire, because he's the only person, the only one, who is a local and a national reporter and is working full-time to make sure that people understand what's going on.
And so he's doing more than, well, I don't want to get too much into the details, but we're going to owe him a lot when he's done.
We're going to owe him a lot.
A lot of people are going to owe him a lot.
So he says that in L.A., due to budget cuts, that the fire department was not deployed.
Wait, do I have this wrong?
This may have been Sheldon Burger, too.
So there's some thought from some of the smartest people who are watching that what should happen...
As soon as there's a long-term weather forecast, and I didn't know this, by the way, that what L.A. should have done and what would have been actually normal is as soon as they had the forecast that said, wait a minute, we're going to have no rain and we're going to have these winds.
And we know there are all kinds of ignition possibilities.
So, in that condition, what you don't do is wait for a fire.
Normally, that's the fire department's job is to wait for a fire and respond.
In this case, you know there's a fire.
Multiple.
So they can know with complete certainty there will be multiple gigantic fires.
What did they do in advance?
Well, not enough.
Here's what they should have done.
They should have put a truck or two everywhere there was likely to be an ignition.
And they know from history what places are more likely.
That they could have gotten really quickly, at least with one truck, to anything that just flared up.
Now, that's a big difference from what happened.
So that didn't happen.
Now, why didn't it happen?
Well, one of the reasons is budget cuts.
One of the reasons is a bunch of people got let go at some point because they didn't get vaccinated.
A bunch of it is like 100 trucks were in for repair, probably also a budget thing.
Between the budgets and the bad management, they had completely eliminated their ability to do normal stuff.
And normal, in this case, would have been to have enough trucks and people to pre-deploy.
I think the lack of pre-deployment is the biggest.
In the end, I think that's going to be the biggest thing.
There's reporting that the fire department did not know that the reservoir had been drained.
But the reservoir had been drained for nine years.
If the fire department didn't know that their main source of water, at least for that one area, had disappeared after nine years, there wasn't anybody who mentioned that?
So I'm going to say I doubt the reporting that the fire department was not aware.
It might be true that they were not officially informed, but not aware?
The whole reservoir didn't have water, and it was one of their main water sources for a place that certainly was going to catch on fire.
It's not like it maybe will catch on fire.
It was certainly...
They didn't have anything in the air that noticed.
There was no resident who pointed it out.
I don't know.
I'm not sure I believe that they didn't know.
Let's see.
What else?
Of course, they should have water sources that were near the fires.
They should have required more clearing of bushes and debris.
I think that might have been a budget-cut issue.
But the canyons were just filled with trees and debris.
I don't know how much you can clean a canyon.
Can you really do that?
Can you remove the fire debris sufficiently from a canyon that it makes that much difference?
I'm going to say yes, because the experts are saying so, but I don't know if that's really that much of a thing.
Let's see.
The state or county could have spent $50 million and had a bunch of trucks, maybe not the best ones.
They could be used ones or lower-end ones, but they could be staged near the fire, and that would make a big difference.
The number of calls that the LA firefighters make in a year has tripled over the last 30 years, while the staffing has declined by a third.
So clearly they did not, you know, some of it is that the number of homeless has gone through the roof.
Anyway, a lot of this came, I read this in PJ Media.
Speaking of PJ Media.
They report that the beginnings of what might be a recall effort against Newsom and the Mayor Bass, so I don't know if that's going to happen, but yesterday when I checked, the Palisades fire were only 17% contained, but it seemed like the other fires were definitely getting under control, but not that one.
And there'll be new wins whipping things up.
So I don't know if anybody's going to get recalled.
Some smart people say Gavin Newsom will come through a fine just by blaming Karen Bass for everything.
And that might not be far off.
You know, honestly, I don't think Newsom should keep his job for a variety of reasons.
But I don't know if this specifically was his fault.
You know, the fact that he said some things that you didn't like and, you know, acted like a clown, I don't know if it made anything worse.
But Karen Bass has some explaining to do.
One of the things Gavin's done, I don't know if this is state or this is local.
This might be local.
But there are, there's a, you can't do price gouging because that's, You know, it's bad if you're price gouging.
But on the other hand, it's kind of impossible for the displaced people to find any place to live unless new places become available that weren't available before.
So in other words, nobody's going to make anything available unless they already made it available.
So if the economics and incentives were there before the fire to have a rental, well, maybe that's still there.
But if you want somebody to open up the in-law room that used to have grandma but she died, they weren't planning on renting.
So if you want them to rent, maybe they're going to charge more than the market rate because they're saying, oh, well, I can help somebody and I wouldn't want to rent it, but if somebody wants to pay a little more or even a lot more, why would I stop them?
You've got the economics of a free market and the availability that is driven by economics fighting against the we don't want to have price gouging, and those two compete.
You kind of have to pick one.
I think the smart economics in this particular case is to let the price gouging happen and let competition erase it.
So imagine, if you will, that somebody says, hey, The rent here is double because you have so few options.
What's that going to do to your neighbor?
Your neighbor is going to say, how much did you get?
They paid that much rent?
Whoa!
I'll try it too.
Now you've got competition.
Then the next person who says, well, I'll try it too.
They can't get a renter unless they lower the price.
So they're competing with the other, they're going to compete with the other rentals.
So competition.
Should make a temporary spike in rents that is completely unconscionable, like people just abusing the people who have already been abused by the fire itself.
That will definitely happen in a free market.
But it's also the only way you get real places that are available and everybody's happy with the price.
There's no other way to get there.
The government can't get you there.
So it's a tough choice, and one understands the impulse to limit gouging.
But it's worse than you think.
So if you were to look at the price of a house in LA, let's say you own a house and you wanted to say, oh, I was thinking of moving and maybe I can rent out my house and leave it behind.
If you buy a house in California, a three-bedroom house down there in LA, in that zip code, 90402, would be about $2.85 million.
Which means that if you bought it, you'd be paying $20,000 a month on your mortgage.
What do you think you could charge in rent in that three-bedroom house?
Do you think you could get enough to pay your $20,000 a month mortgage?
Nope.
You know, I think the rent will be, I'm just guessing, $6,000 a month.
So there's no economic way.
The economics just don't work.
So unless something was already rental and has been for a long time, or you've owned your house and you paid off the mortgage and you don't want to sell it, it doesn't work to rent.
I remember when people used to say, Scott, you've got a little extra money.
Why don't you buy some property and turn them into rentals?
To which I say, that's not a thing.
There's nothing I could buy that wouldn't be more expensive for me to own than compared to what I could get.
The only special cases you can do that, where there's some weird thing that got you a deal, or you've already paid it off or something.
Meanwhile, over on CNN, somebody named Aisha Mills, Democrat strategist, she's a black woman, which is important to the story, and I think she was complaining about Trump once saying that there were a lot of bad genes among the migrants.
Now, if you know how language works, And you interpret Trump correctly, a lot of bad genes means there are a lot of criminals.
And if their genes are bad, as opposed to society has given them a bad start, then there's nothing you can do about it.
And the only thing you should do to keep out people with bad genes, criminals, is to not let them in the first place.
So that's how I take it.
But apparently, Aisha and some of the Democrats have taken that as racism.
Oh, are you saying that everybody who comes across the border has bad genes?
No, he didn't say that.
Oh, you're saying that on average they have worse genes than white people?
No, he did not say that.
What he said was a lot of bad genes.
A lot is not all of them.
A lot is too many.
How many people who are just going to be...
Committing crimes.
In America, we already have people who do all the crimes, right?
Some tiny amount of people do all the crimes.
Do you think that they're genetically the same as the people who are the same demographic as them?
I don't think so.
Show me the black guy who's got like 25 convictions and then compare them to your black friend in the cubicle next to you.
Do they have the same genes?
No, they have different genes.
Whatever's causing the 25 crimes in a row situation is not what's happening to Bob in the cubicle next to you.
So to imagine that that's a statement about the demographic group, it's just weird.
Like, who would take it that way?
You'd have to aggressively want to interpret it wrong to get to all the ways you got.
But anyway, so during that conversation, there was a...
A bald white guy whose name I can't remember, but he does a pretty good job of supporting the Trump side of things.
And she said to him on the air, quote, I'm not going to be lectured by some white man who has no idea what he's talking about.
Now, suppose a white man said that about her.
Let's just reverse it.
Because both of the characters on CNN are presumably very successful professionals.
You know, they've got high-end jobs, like really high-end.
So we can treat them as, you know, not like one is the oppressor and one is the victim.
They're both in a good, good shape compared to the average person in society.
Do you think that if the man she'd been talking to, a white man, had said, I'm not going to be lectured by some black woman who has no idea what she's talking about, how long would that guy last as a guest on that show?
That would be the end of it.
They probably would just go to commercial and say, all right, well, you're not invited back.
And I think the host would say, you're never coming back.
We don't do that here.
She should have said the same thing the other way.
We don't do that here.
Yeah, don't do that.
Now, even if that's the only thing that happened, I'd be totally happy.
What was the host?
The host was Aaron.
I'm forgetting the last name.
But, man, you know, I didn't see what happened after, but if she didn't say, we have some standards, that's beyond our standard.
If you want to be invited back, that's not working.
That's all I wanted.
I just wanted a little bit of pushback.
I'm not asking for jail.
I'm not even asking that she not be invited back.
I just need that.
Just that.
Just a recognition that that's not acceptable.
Anyway, I guess Pfizer has this lawsuit coming against them for anti-white discrimination.
Greg Piper is writing about that in Just the News.
And there was some challenge to that, and that got passed, so that lawsuit will go forward.
So Pfizer is going to have a little bit more to worry about.
Over at MSNBC, the head of the network, Rashida Jones, is stepping down.
Now, that's a weird phrase, isn't it?
Stepping down.
What does that sound like?
Stepping down?
Isn't she moving sideways?
Because she said she wants to work on other stuff.
So, why is that down?
Maybe the other stuff is better.
Isn't that up?
Anyway, it was a weird choice of words.
But she's being replaced, at least temporarily, with a, of course I check, a white woman.
And I said to myself, hmm, replaced with a white woman.
Now, I don't see an indication that the white woman is a lesbian.
And so is that diverse enough for MSNBC? You know, women are good.
They like women.
But I think they like women who, you know, if you're going to be in prime time, you've got to be a little extra.
A woman in black.
A woman, gay, you know, lesbian.
So I don't know.
It was a white woman.
And so I was first thinking, I don't know.
I don't think they've nailed that because it's a white woman and she just doesn't seem entirely on brand.
But then I saw what eyewear she was wearing, her glasses, and then I understood.
Let me explain it to you without showing you the glasses.
You know if somebody walks around the corner, you make an instant judgment.
If somebody walks around the corner with glasses like mine, I'm hoping they say, oh, there's a guy with glasses.
And that's it.
Right?
But I'm just going to tell you what would happen if the new head of MSNBC, which again might be temporary, if you saw her coming around the corner, you would instantly see her glasses, the type and style, and you would say to yourself, oh, God.
So if you haven't looked her up yet, do this and have a good laugh.
Just go look at what glasses she's wearing and then ask yourself what you would do if she walked around the corner in any context.
Any context.
She walks around the corner and you look at her and you go, just the glasses.
Oh, God.
Check it out.
You'll think it's funny.
Anyway, Hamas says they reached a deal with Israel to release a third of the hostages.
There's some people who say that didn't happen.
I don't know.
Maybe.
But I'm wondering if Israel is figuring out the ultimate prisoner exchange.
So as I understand it, Israel typically will give up lots of people for every one person that they get in return.
So it might be 50 to 1, 10 to 1. So there's going to be a whole bunch of people that Israel thinks belong in jail that would be returned.
My first impression was, how's that right?
I mean, you know, it seems like you're just making it worse.
There's the picture.
But I wonder if Israel is so clever that they're going to return all the hostages to the war zone so they can kill them more effectively later.
So it'd be better to kill them than to keep them in jail.
so it feels like they're going to get their prisoners back and take them to a safe place, but the ones that they wanted to keep in prison are probably the ones who want to go back to the war zone, which is probably exactly where Israel wants them to be so they can kill them.
I feel like Israel just found a way to kill their prisoners.
They just have to do it indirectly.
Stage one, we'll release them.
Stage two, we'll put them back in Gaza or where they want to go.
Stage three.
Goodbye.
Alright, I'm going to close with...
I'm going to throw in a bad idea.
Okay?
Now, the way I do this is that the bad idea, the purpose of it, is to make you think of the better idea.
So this is to make you think differently.
It's not that I necessarily think this is a good idea.
Because there may be some hidden problems, etc.
And here, it's an idea for Doge.
So right now, people pay 6.5% on their salary to Social Security.
So my idea is to make that go away.
That goes to zero.
So everybody who has a salary gets this instant 6.5% raise, which is more than 6.5% because, well, 6.5% raise.
So that would give everybody some extra cash so they would be able to spend a little bit more.
But how do you fund retirement?
Well, here's the bad idea, right?
Remember, I'm calling it a bad idea, but I don't know why.
So you'll tell me why it's bad because I'm pretty sure it's bad.
But if you look at the total value of the Fortune 500, you know, the total capitalization, it's value if you added up all the stock, basically.
It'd be over $50 trillion.
If you were to say, we've got to cover $1.3 trillion in Social Security payments at the moment and growing, how much of that stock would you have to effectively tax to pay for it?
So imagine if instead of anybody paying anything, that for several years, maybe up to 10, 5 to 10 years, suppose that we keep the old system in place.
While we're building up a new system, and the new system would look like this.
Once a year, every company in the Fortune 500 has to print some new stock, which would dilute their existing shareholders a little bit, and 2.5% of their capital value would go to a fund that would be for everybody's retirement.
Now, what you're saying is, Scott, you're just taking a tax away from the citizens.
And their paychecks.
And you're just giving it to their employers.
So, you know, doesn't it end up the same?
No, I'm not giving it to their employers.
I'm taxing the stockholders.
And if you own a lot of stock in the Fortune 500, nobody feels sorry for you.
So it's automatically, you know, a progressive tax.
The people who own the most assets would be hit the hardest.
But...
Since the stock market goes up 8% a year or more, it sort of still is okay.
Now you ask yourself, but Scott, nobody's going to invest in the Fortune 500, which is the biggest investment vehicle right now, because you're degrading the return.
To which I say, no, the Fortune 500 is 2.5% better than all the alternatives.
All it does is make them equal.
And if you wanted to do what's easy and safe, you'd buy that, which is what I do.
Most of my money is in the Fortune 500. So, on one hand, it's a transfer of a dollar for a dollar from one part of society to another.
So it's from the people who need to buy things to the people who add extra money and put it in the stock market.
So the first thing is...
The people who are the employees have extra money, so they spend more.
Who is the main beneficiary of employees having more money to spend?
It's the Fortune 500. So the Fortune 500 could potentially put 2.5%, well, dilute its value to add some stock and it'd be 2%, 2.5%, pay it every year, but...
The economy would be so juiced that their profits would probably go up to a half percent, you know, or some compensating amount.
So if you tax the people who don't have money, the result is people spend less.
That's bad for the Fortune 500. If you let them spend more, they're happier because they're buying stuff they need.
And the Fortune 500 has a massive amount, one point trillion extra spending.
That just didn't exist.
So, my question is this.
Is that better?
Because from the government's perspective, they would be kind of out of the business of Social Security.
They might be still managing the payments and stuff like that and policing it, but it wouldn't be part of the budget.
So, it wouldn't be something you paid.
And it wouldn't be something that the government took from your salary and gave to the retirement.
Now, it'd have to be adjusted for the fact that there are more retirees and everything else.
But my main question is this.
If you look at all the pluses and minuses, it's the same amount of money that goes to the retirees.
But since the stock you collect would, especially if you built up five to ten years of these collections, the stock you collect, Would go up on its own, and you're not giving it out the same day that you're getting it.
So you would have the possibility that if you collected a few trillion, the several trillion could sit there gaining just as things gain, and then you're basically keeping up with inflation and better.
So I do not claim that I've thought of everything, and these are all good ideas.
This is more of a buy Greenland idea.
So, see what I'm doing?
This is a buy Greenland.
This is the external revenue service.
It's the same persuasion.
First, I'm going to make you think, well, maybe it's a thing.
And then you'll say, what are the pluses and the minuses?
And then we'll have a productive conversation.
Eventually, smarter people will get involved, a lot smarter than me, and then they'll decide if that's good or bad.
But you're not going to have that conversation, and it won't remind you of a better one unless you first say, I wonder if that's a thing.
Is that a thing?
And it could be that it turns into some hybrid where you get stock sometimes instead of payments.
Maybe you can opt in.
That sort of thing.
Who knows?
But first, just imagine that it's a thing.
That you could get rid of the Social Security tax and you might do something that's some kind of an equivalent with the Fortune 500. Oh, here's the part I forgot to tell you that's actually very important.
Do you know why companies like to get into the Fortune 500?
It's because their stock goes up.
Once you're in the 500, you have an enduring systemic advantage over everybody who's not in the top 500. Because the big funds...
All by the top 500. So the moment your stock goes into it, every stock index fund buys that and your price goes up, in theory.
So why does the 501st company get none of that benefit?
Is that fair?
So taxing the Fortune 500, you're basically taking from them only the unfair advantage they get by being in the top 500. Do Democrats hate that?
No.
We all kind of hate that the elites have special privileges we don't.
Being in the top 500 is a special privilege for a company.
It's not like other things.
So if the only thing you're doing is modifying this special privilege so it's a little closer to other companies, that doesn't feel unfair.
And especially since the Fortune 500 gets the most benefit.
From anything that gooses the economy in a legitimate way.
So it's surprisingly robust idea, isn't it?
I don't think I've got the math right, and I've probably forgotten some things.
But the funny part is it's not instantly rejectable.
It doesn't mean it's good.
I would be very surprised if it's a clean, good idea.
But I added to the mix trying to be helpful.
Now, I remind you...
One of the superpowers I claim to hold is resistance to embarrassment.
So, do you think I would bring this up unless I had almost complete resistance to embarrassment?
Nope.
Nope.
Because I'm probably five minutes away from somebody saying, you idiot, you forgot X. And then I'm going to say, oh man, you're right.
I totally forgot X. Will I be embarrassed?
Not even a little.
So I can add this to the collective thinking with the thinking that maybe it sparks somebody's better idea.
Maybe it just makes it look possible.
And I don't worry about the embarrassment.
That's just free.
There's no risk to me.
So, learn to be not embarrassed, and you will be a much better value to the people around you.
That's all I got for you today.
I'm going to say hi to the locals people privately in 30 seconds.
