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Content:
Politics, FDA Bans Red Dye 3, Justice Alito, Dr. Drew, YouTube's Reeducation Training, Walgreen's Diverse Location Closures, Pam Bondi Confirmation Hearing, Joy Reid, Vivek Ramaswamy, DOGE Importance, President Maduro, Senator Fetterman, Greenland Resources, Biden Farewell Address, Joe Scarborough's Biden insights, Trump Effect, Canada US Cooperation, Hamas Hostage Deal, Ari Melber's Super Frown, Darrin Bell Arrest, Pulitzer Prize, CNN Defamation Lawsuit, Zachary Young, David Axelrod, TikTok Pending Ban, China's DJI Drones, OpenAI Whistleblower, Suchir Balaji, Panama Canal Chinafication, Taiwan China Tension, Scott Adams
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...that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains.
All you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask or vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine of the day thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
Go.
So good.
Has Starship taken off yet?
That happens today, right?
There's going to be a consequential launch of Starship 7, SpaceX.
And this one, I guess, is going to take some payloads up.
It's going to take a payload up first time.
And they'll be testing things like multiple re-entry and return to Earth and see if Elon Musk's giant tweezers can catch it again.
Giant tweezers.
You call it giant chopsticks, but that's racist.
They're really giant tweezers.
The FDA has banned red dye number three, according to the AP. So 35 years after it was borrowed in cosmetics, I guess it was argued that it was different when you ate it.
Well, it causes cancer if it touches the outside of your skin, but it's okay to eat it.
Do I have any skin on the inside of my body?
Stop asking questions.
Not the skin, per se, but let's say tissue.
All right, I wonder, is this the Kennedy effect?
Does it strike you as kind of a big coincidence that the easiest thing the FDA could have ever banned, it was the easiest, that it got done just before?
RFK Jr. gets into office and who said he would ban it?
Is the entire reason that they're banning it now to make sure that RFK Jr. doesn't get an easy win?
Because that's messed up.
Although sooner is better.
So sooner is better.
But it looks kind of messed up, doesn't it?
To me, it looks like this is entirely politicized.
They got the right answer, I'm pretty sure.
But the timing.
I don't know what could make me hate the FDA more, that it took 35 years to do this, or that when they finally did it, apparently the only reason is that RFK Jr. is coming into office and he's just going to rip them apart.
I don't know if he'll rip them apart, but you know what I mean.
Yeah, I think this is the Kennedy effect.
And you could argue.
Therefore, by extension, it would be a Trump effect.
But not really the one I wanted.
Well, I do want it, because I wanted this band.
But the fact that it's just purely political, that's not giving me any confidence.
Anyway, or it could be just the biggest coincidence in the world of when it happened.
Well, Meta has a new AI model for translating speech, and you say to yourself, Scott...
They've been able to translate speech on the internet for a long time.
So why is this even a story?
Well, apparently the old way or the common way to translate speech is first it turns it into text and then it turns it into the other language and then it translates it.
So they figured out somehow to use AI to just directly translate so it doesn't go through the intermediate steps.
And apparently that makes it nearly instant.
Imagine having a conversation with somebody.
Not the language where you're just talking into your phone and the translation is not instant, but let's say it got there in one second.
That would be really transformative.
You could have a reasonable phone call, a reasonable phone call with somebody, or a Zoom call, I guess, first, with somebody who didn't speak the language and it almost wouldn't make a difference.
That little, I don't know exactly the delay, but if there's like a second or something, it's still going to be Mildly annoying, but you'd have perfect ability to communicate.
That's really a game changer.
You know, the things that sneak up on you are the things that just sort of get better every year, so you're not really paying attention.
But then there's one year where it's not about just getting a little better.
It's now just a completely different application.
It's so good.
That's one of these.
Anyway, 100 different languages.
Very impressive.
Justice Alito, he's a Supreme Court justice, of course, and he's talking about there's a case before them, some kind of free speech versus porn situation, and I guess Pornhub is part of the conversation in the Supreme Court.
And this is actually a real thing that Justice Alito asked in public in the Supreme Court.
He said, is it like the old Playboy magazine?
You have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. Yeah.
Yeah.
There's Justice Alito acting like he has no idea what Pornhub is.
Now, I'm not saying he's ever used it, but it reminded me of a couple of stories.
Number one, the first thing I did when I got out of college and entered the real world, it was almost the first thing.
I got a subscription to Playboy magazine.
Because I thought to myself, wait a minute.
This was pre-internet, I hate to say.
Pre-internet.
And I thought, are you telling me that all I have to do is give them money and they will send me pictures of beautiful naked women like once a month?
And it's just like for a little bit of money?
And I thought I died and went to heaven.
I was so happy to be an adult.
And then I started getting it.
And of course it was...
Just as good as I'd hoped.
Again, pre-internet.
But somewhere along that time, because I never really cancelled it, and time goes by, and I start reading the articles.
And then sooner or later, I was the article.
So I was one of the big interviews, so I was featured in Playboy, and it was just an interview.
I didn't have to take off my clothes.
And eventually, the internet comes in, and of course it saturates the world with a tremendous amount of porn.
To the point where looking at the pictures in the magazine didn't seem interesting at all.
Sure, you know, I mean, if it was right in front of you, you'd look at it.
But this is actually true.
There's no exaggeration in this.
Toward the end of my many years subscription, I actually didn't look at the pictures.
That's literally true, I swear to God.
And it wasn't because I didn't like looking at that kind of picture.
It's just that...
The internet was full of it.
But the internet didn't have good articles all the time.
So the articles were genuinely very good.
That's a true statement.
So believe it or not, that's a real thing.
Which, you know, at the moment, Playboy is not doing so well.
But it also reminds me of a time I went to a D.A.R.E. program for adults.
When I was a stepdad of younger kids, and they would have a program where just the parents would come in to learn what, maybe how to spot their kids getting into drugs or stuff.
And one of the questions was the police officer who was giving the class, he held up this bag of white powder that may have been cocaine or may have been a simulation of cocaine, I don't know.
He goes, all right, class, class of adults.
He goes, Who can tell me?
Take a guess what this would cost if you bought it on the street.
Now, I've never bought cocaine, so I have no idea what cocaine costs.
But the last thing I was going to do in front of a class full of police was get an accurate answer to what it cost.
So my first impulse was to answer, raise my hand just to throw off the scent.
I'd be like, hmm.
Big bag, baggy full of cocaine.
What would that cost?
I go, $14?
You know, just to make sure they didn't stake out my house.
All right.
Speaking of free speech, Dr. Drew.
This is terrible, but funny because it's so freaking bad.
Dr. Drew's been having this issue with his YouTube episodes being...
Banned, I don't know what the right word is, banned or demonetized or something removed, I think, on YouTube.
So it's not his entire account, just some specific ones.
And I guess they had some medical conversations about, guess what?
You don't even have to wonder what it's about, right?
So it's something about probably vaccinations.
So the bad part...
It was that real, credible doctors couldn't have a conversation that involved their best thinking based on the best information available.
That was not allowed.
Let me just say that again.
Two credible doctors were not allowed to have a conversation that utilized the best information available to both of them and their opinions on it.
That was not allowed.
Because YouTube decided that their opinion of what was true was superior.
Was it their doctors that decided?
I don't know.
But here's the punchline.
YouTube is demanding that Dr. True go to some kind of re-education camp.
You fucking idiots.
You fucking idiots.
YouTube.
It's like you think that they can't be worse.
But let me give you this advice.
YouTube.
If you decide that this is the way you want to go forward and you've got to send credible people giving their opinions on the most current information, if that's not allowed and you have to retrain them, Could you at least not use the most communist word for retraining?
I'm going to send you to a re-education camp.
And this is like what happened to Jordan Peterson with that stupid Toronto idiots that said he had to be re-educated and they couldn't figure out how to do it.
Like nobody was even willing to re-educate him because it was so fucking stupid that nobody even wanted to be in that seat.
All right.
So here's what I'd like.
And, you know, Dr. Drew, if you're listening, I hope this isn't too inconvenient.
I'd love you to get re-educated.
And just tell us who it was that re-educated you.
And just do a show on that.
Just do a show how they wanted to re-educate you so that two doctors can't have a conversation about the newest information on medical stuff.
Yeah, let's re-educate us.
Then maybe, Dr. Ju, you can share it with us.
So we'll all get re-educated, too.
Oh, my God.
Just be a little less communist, please.
Anyway, I hope that works out.
And it's not what it looks like.
But I'm sure it's what it looks like.
Meanwhile, according to Unusual Whales and Accountant X, Walgreens.
Has decided that its anti-shoplifting strategy didn't work out.
So the CEO is explaining that when you lock things up, you don't sell as many of them.
Now, I'm sure it helped with the shoplifting.
That was the reason.
But people don't buy things if they're locked up.
Have you ever had that experience?
Have you ever gone into a store and you were thinking, you know, I should pick this up and they say it's locked up?
You don't know who's working.
You don't know how long it would take to get it.
And you go, ah, Amazon.
Anybody?
If I'm in Walgreens and there's something I want that's locked up, I'm not going to wait.
I might pick my phone up out of my pocket, type in the name of that thing and push a button and walk away.
But I'm not going to wait for you to come over.
If you could unlock this faster than I can push four buttons on Amazon, yeah, go ahead.
But you can't do it faster than I can push four buttons.
So Walgreens, that's a good strategy you got there.
Now, to their credit, trying something is worth trying.
So let me give them full credit.
If you don't know what to do, but you think, well, maybe we could try locking this stuff up, see what happens.
I'm always in favor of people trying stuff and then backing off if it doesn't work.
And it looks like that's what's happening.
It turns out that the other part of their strategy is to close 450 more stores in 2025. This is after closing a number of them already.
And what do you think is the criteria for closing stores?
Well, they closed the stores that were less profitable.
So they picked a profitability number and they said, all right, all the ones below that were going to close.
Where do you think those were?
Where do you think all the unprofitable Walgreens were?
You want to take a guess?
Well, San Francisco had a lot of them.
No surprise.
Oakland.
Baltimore.
Baltimore.
Sacramento.
Now, some of them look like maybe they just weren't doing well in general, but a lot of them look like they were in the most diverse markets.
So, Walgreens.
To its credit, it has one of the most robust DEI programs.
So on the plus side, Walgreens DEI is really good.
They got a heck of a good DEI program.
It's really robust.
On the other hand, they're using the, some call it the cartoonist strategy of get the fuck out of the diverse markets because you can't survive there.
You know, they call it something else, but it's basically the Scott Adams theory.
And it goes well with their DEI program.
Good combination.
Over at the Wall Street Journal, Colin Borchers is writing about DEI hurting the careers of some people and wondering if the pullback in DEI under Trump might help people get more employment that they might have been discriminated against for.
But Colin points out that the Pew Research Center, Found out that more than a third of Americans believe DEI in the workplace hurts white men.
Wow, more than a third.
Let's say a third.
Wouldn't that be every white man?
One third of the public that they would interview about this, of the working public?
Isn't one third exactly the number of white people?
White men.
Isn't it?
It's almost exactly the same number.
Huh.
Surprising.
I'm so surprised.
And do you know why?
It's the white men who know that this is hurting white men, but the others don't seem to act like they know it.
Many of them are lying because DEI is good for them and bad for white men, and maybe they don't want to ruin that situation, which would actually be totally reasonable.
That's not a criticism.
If you're in a situation that favors people like you and disfavors other people, You know, unless you're some kind of weird activist, you're just going to say, well, that's okay.
I think that's perfect.
But pretty much 100% of white men who have jobs are completely aware that DEI is a disaster for white men.
So, just know that.
Pam Bondi was answering questions as part of her nomination process to Attorney General.
And she ran into...
I watched one clip.
I didn't watch the whole thing, but...
She did great.
The clips I saw, I absolutely love how confident and clearly and smartly she was answering questions.
And it's worth noting, because Trump says it all the time, that whole, what's he call it?
Basically, he likes people who are good on TV. Wow, is she good on TV. Hegseth?
How about him?
Wow, is he good on TV, obviously.
But Bondi?
Wow!
That's some serious TV skills.
But here's, I've got one advice.
I've never seen anybody do what I'm going to suggest, so I don't know if it'll work.
But I just want to throw it out there.
It's a persuasion lesson.
So one of the things that happens during these hostile questioning, because, you know, half of the people asking questions are the other team.
They like to do the thing where they say, I want a yes or no.
Did you kill that squirrel?
Well, Senator, yes or no, yes or no.
Well, it's complicated.
No, yes or no, yes or no, yes or no, yes or no.
Well, you see the context.
Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no.
Have you watched those?
And the whole thing is to get them to say yes or no because they know that the yes or the no would be out of context.
And then they can attack it and turn it into something.
So nobody wants to give the yes or no, because it would be basically career suicide, because then you'd be quoted for it.
But, so what Bondi did is, I'm going to call it the best I've seen normies handle the question.
So she's a normie as opposed to a, let's say, trained persuader.
She's not Trump.
I'm pretty sure Trump would have handled this differently.
And I'm going to tell you how I think he would have handled it, or a version of it.
And I'm going to tell you how I would handle it, because I use this technique online all the time.
If somebody says, are you still beating your spouse?
And you know that yes, yes or no?
Yes or no?
Are you still beating your spouse?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Because either the yes or the no are bad for you, because it sounds like you're still beating your spouse.
And what you really want to say is, well, actually, I've never even been accused of beating my spouse.
That's not even a question.
Don't want to answer it.
Oh, yes or no?
Yes or no?
The Democrats.
Here's what you should do instead.
Well, first of all, what Pam Bondi did is the best I've seen normal politicians do, which is aggressively talk over the person who's trying to cut you off to make sure that you're pushing back.
So she did a real good job of not backing down, pushing back, showing that the question was unreasonable by her pushback, and showing that he was just a ridiculous turd and she was just trying to answer serious questions.
Now, so if I were to grade her performance according to normal people, A+. For a normal person and a normal politician, that's about as good as you can do.
But...
You know what it's not?
It's not only Rosie O'Donnell.
That's what Trump did.
When Trump got his question that was only going to be good or bad, only going to be bad, it didn't matter what he said.
It was just going to be bad for him.
It would be the quote of the day.
Instead of going with their frame, he left the frame.
Pam Bondi stayed in the frame.
That question is the question, and she's trying to respond, but she wants to give a longer answer.
You're not letting me.
That would be the traditional, but staying in the frame.
Trump leaves the frame, and that works every time.
Let me tell you how I would leave the frame if I were in their position and somebody gave me that yes or no, yes or no, yes or no question.
I would say, Senator, could you ask a better question?
Oh, I'm asking this question.
I'm asking this question.
Yes or no?
Yeah, I heard the question.
Could you ask a better one?
Oh, yes or no.
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Oh, yes or no?
I hear you, Senator.
I'm just asking because everybody's dedicated their time to this.
I just wondered if you have a better question.
And then you use up all of his time.
You use up all of his time.
You turn him into the guy where the quote is, can you ask a better question?
Because here's why this works.
Everybody listening to the exchange knows that the question is the flawed part.
Everybody knows it.
Why doesn't anybody call it out?
And why doesn't anybody demand that if you're going to put your time into this process, you're going to need better questions?
A better question is a high ground.
It just says you're not capable of being here.
But if you can step up, I'd be happy to ask you a question.
That's a kill shot.
Now, not everybody could pull that off, but that would be, roughly speaking, that would be a Trump way to do it.
Here's what I think Trump would say.
First of all, he's not going to get a question like this ever, now that he's president.
But if he did, I think he'd say something like, you know, this is an example why you're useless.
We all came here today, and that's the best you could do?
That is your best performance in asking a question that the public is interested in?
So I think he would just break the frame.
You've got to go after his technique, not answer anything about the question.
Well, Joy Reid brought on a Democrat that apparently ran against Bondi and lost.
So, man, if you're going to bring somebody on to say some bad things about somebody, what you want is somebody who was on the other team, a Democrat, and ran against her and lost.
Right?
Because that guy's going to come with some fire, right?
Well, that didn't work out.
It turns out that after he lost to her in the race, she hired him.
She hired him.
In other words, she hired him because he was good at his job and she didn't care that he was a Democrat because she was about getting the best job.
And then, to prove that she hired the right guy and that it was about his qualifications and it was not about Democrat or Republican, He basically proves it right by saying that she's very tethered to the law.
She's not obsessed with Democrat or Republican.
She cares about the law.
She's really good at it.
He used the phrase tethered to the law, like she's never going to leave the law, and that she would not do any lawfare because there's just no way.
That's just not her.
And then it got better because Reid said, what about the enemies list?
She lied when she said there's no enemies list.
Now, MSNBC, Joy Reid, talking to a Democrat who lost to Pam Bondi, and then she comes up with this damning thing where she said there's no enemies list.
What did the Democrat, who was supposed to say bad things about Bondi, respond to that with?
He said, well, actually, she said that there's no enemies list in the Department of Justice.
Basically, he just defended her answer.
He defended her character, he defended her answer, and he defended her skills.
And that's it.
It was a complete flop, because it turns out that Pam Bondi hired the right guy.
And when he got to, I'm going to say reciprocity, right?
I always tell you, reciprocity is a big deal.
So she hired this guy because she thought he had the skill.
He does.
And he paid back.
I hear Trump, according to the New York Post, Trump is supporting Vivek Ramaswamy to take over J.D. Vance's Ohio Senate seat.
Now, he'd have to be picked by the governor, so we don't know if they even would.
But I think that's just an expression that Trump has a lot of...
Trust in Vivek.
I don't think that's where he would want to go right away, and I hope he's not, because I really, really think that the Doge thing is, on a scale of 1 to 10, getting another strong senator, that's a 4. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's good.
I want another really strong senator.
That'd be great.
But Doge is a 10. Or a 12 on the risk of 1 to 10. And Vivek is a 12 out of 10. So if you could pair one of the most capable, smartest, energetic people who have all the right incentives to work on the hardest problem that needs exactly that, I wouldn't waste him on the Senate.
Because if he brings Doge home, he can have any job he wants.
So, I don't know.
I hope he doesn't.
Go to the Senate.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan dictator Maduro, according to Blaze Media, he's threatened to invade Puerto Rico.
He said, that's what Maduro said, the freedom of Puerto Rico is pending and we will achieve it with Brazilian troops.
He's the dictator of Venezuela.
But he's going to free Puerto Rico with Brazilian troops.
To make sure they stop being colonized.
Venezuela, Brazilian troops, prevent them from being colonized.
Okay, well, I'm not sure how that all fits together.
But I have an update also on Maduro's life expectancy after threatening to invade a United States territory.
Life expectancy January 21st.
Meanwhile, John Fetterman said after talking to Trump at Mar-a-Lago that he's all in on Trump acquiring Greenland.
So Fetterman, he's all in on Greenland.
Now, I know what many of you have warned me.
Watch out for that Fetterman.
He's a snake.
He's just saying things to get support, but really he's a radical dem or whatever he is.
And I understand that.
And I understand the argument about not giving any oxygen to the team that's overall evil.
I get that.
But you do have to make it possible that people can change sides and that they can do it with honor and respect.
So I tend to prefer to err on giving them credit for any change in your direction because incentives matter.
So if you reward somebody for moving one step toward you, maybe someday you get another step.
Incentives matter.
So while I completely get that in some cases it's better not to give the bad team any credit whatsoever, I think Fetterman is one of the exceptions.
And I think Trump noticed it too, because Trump gave him essentially a glowing endorsement for his intelligence.
And I think Trump loves the uniqueness with which he...
Not that he likes his style, but if you see Fetterman standing out because of his dress, I think Trump would appreciate how much that makes him different and how much it brings attention to him.
So I feel like it completely, to me, it's completely understandable that they could get along productively.
Meanwhile, IFL Science is talking about how many resources Greenland has.
Why the United States might be interested.
I guess they have 25 or 34 minerals that would be considered critical raw materials.
It's got stuff like gold and silver that you need for tech, not just collecting.
And stuff that you need for battery technology like cobalt and copper and nickel and lithium.
And it's long been predicted that they had oil.
But companies have been looking for it for a long time, and finally Greenland just said, ah, give up.
So they're speculating that there's substantial oil, but nobody's found it yet.
Could we?
Could the United States find it?
I don't know.
Maybe.
So it's starting to feel like something's going to happen.
I don't think there's going to be a state or anything, but I feel like some kind of strategic partnership is coming.
So Biden did his farewell address.
I couldn't even watch it because, you know, what am I really watching?
If he were a real president with a real brain and he had some goodbye address, I'd be like, oh, yeah, maybe I'll watch that.
I feel like Biden barely exists, that giving him any attention at this point seems like a waste of time.
Like, what's the upside of that?
So he babbled through his speech.
It was recorded, of course, because he couldn't do it live.
And he babbled about the risk of the tech billionaires because apparently their billionaires are not in tech.
So when they controlled the tech billionaires, like Zuckerberg, then the billionaires were no risk whatsoever.
But as soon as the tech billionaires started saying, not just that they thought Trump was okay, but rather that they were just going to think independently and not take the brainwashing from the media, that that was a problem.
That they're no longer brainwashed by the fine people hoax primarily.
So Biden, you are as useless as you've ever been.
He's leaving office as Trump's popularity reached the highest it's ever been.
So Biden was at his lowest popularity while Trump's at his highest.
That's what I call a good day.
If you're Trump, how much would you love that the guy you replaced is at his lowest approval while you're at your highest?
That's just a good week.
Meanwhile, Joe Scarborough over at MSNBC, he wanted to defend his prior opinion about Joe Biden being completely mentally sharp, you know, the thing he's been mocked for the most, and he doubled down.
Oh, yes.
I spent two and a half hours to three hours with Joe Biden.
Yeah, and we're talking in depth about foreign policy matters, and he was sharp as anyone I've spoken to, and he's spoken like a man who's been doing this since he was 29. Have I mentioned that the audience for Morning Joe tunes in to get his insight?
They tune in to get his insight.
Because he has access behind the scenes, and he knows people we don't, and he's been in the business a long time.
So he would have insights.
One of his insights was that Biden's brain is just fine.
Now, if you were watching somebody for their insights, and it was the only person in the world that couldn't tell that Biden's brain was fried, would you tune in again for the next insight?
Would you trust that next insight?
All right.
According to The Hill, Rachel Frazen?
I don't know.
Canada wants to get into some kind of mineral partnership with the U.S. Now, the context is Trump saying, hey, maybe we'll make you a state and we're going to tariff you like crazy, unless you want it to be a state.
But if you're going to be sort of a trade nemesis in any way, well, maybe we'll tariff you until you change your mind.
So what happens under that context?
It's something called the Trump effect.
I think you've heard of it.
And here's what Canada is putting together.
So they're coming up with a plan.
I guess it's the resource minister.
Coming up with a plan to work with the United States on partnerships for energy and minerals.
So Canada would still be Canada under this plan, but the United States would be adding whatever we add to the mining and mineral exploration and be some kind of sharing, I guess.
And it would involve Canada, quote, accelerating the production of things like gallium and germanium, which have defense applications, etc.
And the partnership could extend to oil and nuclear energy.
And you say, nuclear energy?
Why do we need Canada for that?
Well, it turns out that Canada is one of the sources of uranium.
So they're one of the world's sources for uranium.
And that maybe they would do the uranium.
They'd provide the uranium.
We'd do the enrichment in the United States.
And everybody wins.
Now, do you think that Canada would be, you know, queuing up this big trade partnership deal?
If Trump hadn't said, my first offer is to make you a state.
Well, you can't do that.
Well, how about I just tariff you instead?
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
You can't do that.
You can't tariff us to death.
Well, we can make you a state.
Then there would be no tariff.
No, no, no, no.
You can't make us a state.
So, what do you do?
You get your smartest people together and say, is there anything we can offer that's short of us becoming a state and short of us getting tariff to death?
Is there anything we can offer that would look like, oh, the United States is getting what it wants, Canada is getting what it wants?
So this is that.
This is them essentially negotiating against themselves.
So Trump basically just created a frame.
That you guys aren't stepping up to what we expect from our neighbor from the north, and maybe we should just absorb you.
And so they're trying to step up in a way that would be very dear to Trump's central motivations, which is minerals and oil and making sure the United States has a strong position, doesn't have to depend on China.
So that seems like the Trump effect.
Meanwhile, the Hamas hostage deal that we thought was going to happen looks like Netanyahu is pulling back on that.
We don't know if that's temporary or not.
But he is doing some more war fighting and says that Hamas isn't doing their end.
I don't know what that is.
So Biden and Trump both trying to take credit for the release of what would be one-third of the hostages, including some dead bodies, I guess.
And so they're both fighting for credit, and I'm not on board.
I'm just not on board with that.
I'm not happy with getting one-third of the people back.
Now, if you got one-third of the people back and you can't even keep that deal, that's a failure.
That's a complete failure.
That's a complete failure of Biden.
It's a complete failure of Netanyahu, although Netanyahu has a larger goal, so maybe he's not failing.
And I don't think Trump succeeded.
Because, you know, Trump will take credit for getting one-third home.
Politically, that makes sense to take credit for it.
And, of course, Biden will take credit if he gets one-third home.
I'm not even a little bit happy with one-third, except for the families.
Obviously, for the one-third that might be released and their families, yes.
Yes, we want all that.
So I want them to be released.
And I'd like to see this deal completed.
But I'm not going to call this a success.
So when is one out of three a success?
Like, maybe a baseball player?
You know, if you're batting one out of three, that looks pretty good.
But I'm not taking credit for, you know, if we go into any kind of negotiations with them over the future of Gaza, and they're still holding prisoners?
No.
Now, unless we're getting all the Americans out, and then I'd feel different.
If we get all the Americans out, then maybe you talk about Gaza.
Maybe that's different, but Israel shouldn't put up with that.
Israel should say, we want 100%, or we're going to break you.
So, also MSNBC, they brought on a, so an Erie Milber show, brought on a former Clinton investor.
David Ross.
Now, a former Clinton ambassador, talking about the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, you could reliably expect that a Democrat, especially one associated with the Clintons, is going to give the credit to Biden and say that Trump is just a blowhard, right?
That's why you have somebody like that on MSNBC, to say things that MSNBC wants them to say.
Instead, the Ambassador Ross said, why now?
It's because of the Trump effect.
Netanyahu wasn't going to say yes, but then he did.
But that changed, right?
I think that changed this morning.
Netanyahu actually turned.
But what's interesting about it is that he brings on a notable Democrat, and even the notable Democrat is saying, yeah, Trump got this done.
Trump got this done.
Now, the funny part...
If you get to see the video, I think I've reposted it this morning, you have to watch Ari Melber's face when the interview goes exactly the opposite of what would be ideal for their audience.
So I don't know if I can do it.
So as soon as Melber hears it, he gives it to this frown.
But it's like the biggest frown, like my mouth doesn't even do it.
It almost looks like a joke frown.
You have to see it visually to get the full beauty.
I've never seen his face turn a smile upside down so fast.
It's all good news at the time it was being reported before it got delayed.
It looked like it was just all good news.
Hostages coming back, at least some of them.
Trump effect caused it.
And Ari is just like, oh, this is going off the rails.
It's too good for Trump.
We will lose what's left of our audience.
Glenn Greenwald was pointing out that the New York Times had a headline right after Trump won, so a few months ago.
And the headline was, Trump's win is likely to prolong Gaza talks uncertainty.
Well, so we're mocking them for guessing the opposite of what happened, but...
Really, the headline says it's going to prolong the uncertainty.
You know, but Trump works on uncertainty.
So it's half true.
He would intentionally increase the uncertainty because it's a negotiating point.
But I like to say that reality is whatever predicts best.
So if you predicted the Trump effect would make things better, you win.
If you predicted that Trump would make things go worse, You lose.
So New York Times appears to be closer to the wrong prediction side than the right prediction side.
Well, in the news, a cartoonist named Darren Bell.
He's a black cartoonist.
He was a BLM activist.
He was the first black cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize.
So he did comics Canderville and Rudy Park.
And they're still on Washington Post websites.
Let's see.
What did he get?
He got in trouble for...
Oh, he was pedophile.
Now, the specific charges were possession of child-related materials that are highly illegal.
Now, you know what I always say.
No matter how bad the charge is, in the United States, you're innocent until proven guilty.
Now, you've heard me say that a million times, right?
So, innocent until proven guilty.
The only thing we know is that he was accused.
Yeah, I wonder, did Darren Bell say anything when I got canceled by the Washington Post, his newspaper?
I wonder.
Let me see.
Let me check that out.
Oh, yeah, he did.
Yeah, Darren Bell dumped on me and never contacted me.
Which he could have easily done to ask me what the context was.
Instead, he just dunked on me.
So it's interesting.
He treated me as I was guilty, presumed guilty.
Okay, I'm rethinking this.
He's guilty as shit, and I hope he fries.
All right.
And by the way, winning the Pulitzer Prize is complete bullshit.
Do you know what it takes to win the Pulitzer Prize?
Let me explain how the meeting went.
We're really going to need this to give this to a black guy, because most cartoonists are white, and so it's just like one white guy after another.
Like, who do we have as a person of color?
All right, we found an Hispanic.
Now, Hispanic is good, moving in the right direction, but we really need a black cartoonist.
And then they look at the black cartoonist, and let me be honest.
The most notable black cartoonists are terrible.
There really aren't any good black cartoonists.
This is well known among the cartoon industry.
Now, it's not because they're black.
It's not because of any genes or anything like that.
It's just a fact.
I'm not making any larger statement about being black.
That has nothing to do with this.
It's just a fact.
That if you're trying to give the Pulitzer Prize, which is just a bullshit prize, a little group of people decide what comic they like that week or that year, I guess, and then they give them the prize.
It has absolutely no legitimacy.
It's not based on all the cartoonists voting or the public weighed in.
It's nothing like that.
It's this little group of people who just say, you know, we better give it to a black guy this time.
Now, I wasn't in the room, but I can pretty well guarantee you that because he was a black cartoonist, that's why he won the Pulitzer Prize.
The Pulitzer Prize is almost as disgraced as somebody who got caught with a bunch of child-related content.
So, there's that.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Turley is writing about the CNN's...
Lawsuit where they're defending Jake Tapper and themselves from accusations that they, what's the word, defamed?
I'm no lawyer, so I may be using the wrong words.
But they defamed somebody who was a guest on their show and their correspondent was interviewing him regarding Afghanistan.
And the person they interviewed was over there doing useful things and trying to help, but for reasons that are not clear.
The correspondent, and then I think Jake Tapper may have mirrored the correspondent, decided that they would treat the guy that they were interviewing, who, as far as anybody knows, was just trying to help people, no criminal, nothing like that.
They tried to treat him like he was part of the story they were telling about really bad people doing bad things over there.
Now, details don't matter, but just imagine whatever is the worst thing you can think of, you know, it's in that category.
The poor guy goes on their network, does them a favor, you know, being content on their show, and also is only doing good things as far as we know.
Like, he's positive impact over there.
And they decided to lump him in.
This is the accusation.
They decided to lump him in, and they decided to go after him and actually destroy him.
And apparently there's emails to that effect.
Now, they didn't have the information that would support their going after him, but they very clearly said they were.
And then they did this trick, totally points this out.
You've heard of this before.
So the press, when they're going to publish, about two hours before they push the publish button, they'll wait until they write it to the end, and then they'll contact the person they're writing about and saying, do you have any comment?
Now, the reason they wait until it's right toward publication is to make sure the person doesn't have enough time to comment.
And then when they say, none of that's true, too late.
You've already published it.
Now, this is a well-known standard trick.
They always do it if it's a hit piece.
And they don't even always do it, but when they do it, it's just part of the hit piece thing.
And then they can go on the air and say, well, we tried to reach...
Mr. So-and-so, but he had no comment in time for the publication, which makes it sound like he doesn't have an argument, doesn't it?
But he tricked him.
He responded within two hours.
What do you think the correspondent, the person who was the first one to accuse this guy, I guess, what do you think he said in writing when the person who is the most important person in the story responded, which is, of course, exactly what you should want, if you're being honest?
You want him to respond.
Do you know what the response was?
Effing Young just texted.
Young is the name of the guy.
Effing Young just texted because he ruined their whole play.
He got back to it within two hours.
Anyway.
So then here's the funniest part.
The defense for CNN, Is David Axelrod.
He's leading the defense.
I guess the other defense attorney just got taken off the job for being crazy.
And, I don't know, being crazy is too far.
That's an oversimplification.
So David Axelrod, who, if you follow politics, you know is a well-known consultant type to the Democrats.
I don't know how much he's practiced law lately.
Kind of a strange choice to be...
I don't know.
Maybe he's a terrific lawyer who turned into a political consultant, but I'm not aware that he did a lot of practicing.
Did he?
Maybe he did.
I'm not up on it.
But anyway, so Axelrod gets up there and he's accusing the accuser of being a liar.
He goes, you called...
Oh, so he just goes off on a rant.
And he's waving a document and saying, you know, you claim this lies.
It's lies.
It's lies.
So Axelrod was having his moment, his theatrical moment.
You lied about this.
You lied about that.
You lied about that.
And then the plaintiff attorney just destroyed it by just mentioning the timing.
Well, actually, that was before this or after that.
It was completely debunked.
The entire escapade was just wiped off the table by the fact that it was not supported by fairly easily found facts.
So it was so bad that the judge actually said to Axelrod, and I've never heard anything like this before, he said, quote, this is the judge.
He said, you called him a liar multiple times there, he told Axelrod.
And he said he owed an apology to the plaintiff.
After telling CNN that, quote, this isn't kindergarten, he added, right now, your credibility with me, Mr. Axelrod, is about none.
Have you ever seen a judge demand that the lawyer apologize to the plaintiff?
That's as hard as you can fail as a lawyer, isn't it?
Can you fail harder than that?
And imagine being on the jury, and basically the judge just said, this team is a bunch of idiots.
That's what he said.
He said, this one side is a bunch of idiots.
He didn't say anything about the other side.
You're on a jury, and you hear the judge say very clearly, you guys are just idiots.
You're like kindergarten.
You better apologize.
Oh, my God.
I don't think this could be worse.
For CNN. Wow.
Meanwhile, TikTok is planned to be banned on the 19th?
Yeah.
But Trump is talking about some kind of executive order to save it.
I think people don't believe that that would be effective to save it.
So in a few days, we could see that TikTok becomes first orphaned.
So keep running, but you can't upload any new content.
And so you could keep watching what was already there for a while, but presumably that'll go away after a while.
So I don't know what's going to happen.
Trump says he wants to save it, but he also did well on TikTok.
And I think Trump found the exact sweet spot.
The exact sweet spot was saying you want to save it.
Trying a little bit.
An executive order isn't much work.
You just sign it.
And then say, I tried.
You know, I tried, but other people got rid of it.
That's perfect.
Politically, it's perfect.
Because he's on the side of the young who wanted to keep it.
But, you know, what can you do?
All right.
So, as I told you, the Chinese drone-making company that makes just a vast amount of the total drones in the world, and especially in the United States, called DJI, they got rid of their geofencing policy, which is what prevented their drones from going over sensitive installations in the United States and elsewhere, I assume.
And there are other drones that did not have that geofencing.
So, on one hand...
All they're doing is normalizing to their competition.
On the other hand, their competition is not China.
If China wants to go over our military stuff, and we suspect they might have some way to control the software and the drones, I don't know.
I don't know how much of a risk that is.
But it seems to me that this would be the time to ban...
Chinese drones in America.
Can we really not make drones yet?
Are you telling me that an American company can't make a drone that's good?
I feel like America should be able to make drones.
It's not exactly a bunch of secret technology or anything.
We'll see what happens with that.
Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson had on the mother of the OpenAI whistleblower who was murdered in his apartment in San Francisco just a few days after it became known that he was that dangerous to OpenAI.
And so here's what she said.
The mother of Sushir Balaji, who was the whistleblower, she told Tucker...
My son had documents against OpenAI.
They attacked him and killed him.
Now, she doesn't know that OpenAI was behind it.
That's not known.
It's a reasonable, you know, guess.
So I wouldn't rule it out.
And apparently the documents that the whistleblower had would have proven that OpenAI was, quote, committing crimes.
I don't know what kind.
And so right after the New York Times said he had documents that would basically put open AI in an existential threat, he got killed a few days later.
Now, that would be too much of a coincidence for anybody to overlook, and I'm sure that his mother is feeling the same way.
But I'm going to add a little bit of context, just a little bit.
The CEOs of normal companies are not really murderers by nature.
And I've spent a little time with Sam Altman, you know, just one-on-one, chatting with him for a while.
And I don't have the best, you know, it's not like anybody's perfect at judging human character.
But if he's a murderer, that would be pretty surprising.
So if you imagine that the head of it ordered a hit, no.
I give that zero chance.
And I'd love to hear from anybody besides Sam Altman's sister, who's a special case, but I'd love to hear anybody who knows him well give me an opinion.
Am I wrong?
He would be almost toward the bottom of the list of somebody you think would go kill somebody.
He's a pretty gentle soul.
I mean, in terms of business, he's a shark.
So could I be wrong?
Because if he's a shark in business, did I read him wrong?
I don't know.
Am I that bad at judging human character?
So I'm going to add a wrinkle to this.
Wrinkle number one.
There are individuals who have investments probably that...
You know, maybe so valuable that they would be willing to kill just on their own, whether OpenAI was in favor of it or hated it or didn't know about it or anything.
So, first of all, you can't rule out anybody who's just an investor.
And I don't know the exact investment architecture there to know if anybody stands out.
Also, we've been told very clearly, Marc Andreessen informed us, That the intelligence apparatus of the United States is said directly to the people in the venture capital community, don't fund a bunch of little AI companies because we're not going to let them work.
We're going to make sure there are just a few, they're big ones, like OpenAI, and we're going to basically have, they didn't say this, but it's obvious, we're going to have our fingerprint on it because it's too dangerous to just let the free market do whatever it wants.
Now, that's actually, I hate to say it, that's not irresponsible.
That's not irresponsible.
The reason we have an intelligence group is to do the stuff that maybe if you put it up for a vote, people will say don't do that, but it's kind of necessary.
It feels kind of necessary, even though I hate it, and even though the risk and the downside of it are just through the roof.
It just does feel necessary that the intelligence people would have to have a strong grip on AI, at least for now, because we don't know if it becomes a weapon.
We don't know if it becomes dangerous.
We don't know what it does to persuasion and brainwashing.
I think from their perspective, let me say it a different way.
Let me say it a different way.
If I say it like it's my opinion, then I think that's out of my league.
So let me change that.
So forget my opinion.
If you're in the CIA, you want to control AI. Yes?
Let's simplify.
If you're in the CIA, you probably think it's at the top of your list of things to do.
You need to control the AI. So if you assume that it's at the top of the list and that they're the people who are literally murderers and they're literally the ones who make it look like, you know, it might have been an accident or suicide or something like that, they're really the top suspects.
Because I definitely think that our intelligence people would kill citizens of the United States if they thought that the entire structure of the industry was at risk.
So, would Sam Altman do it?
I don't see it.
I just don't see it.
Would the company order a hit without the top of the company knowing about it?
I don't know.
I mean, maybe.
Maybe.
You know, somebody, some underling just thought, I'm going to take care of this, I'll leave him out of it.
Maybe?
It doesn't seem super likely, but maybe.
But if you say the intelligence people had to do it for the good of the United States, as much as I hate that, you could certainly imagine that being normal.
I hate to say it, but that would be sort of normal.
So we will never find out the truth of this story.
All right.
I saw a post by an ex by Joey Manorino, who said he was on the way back from the airport, and he just landed in Panama, he said.
And on the way back from the airport in Panama, I've seen about five billboards with Chinese writing.
As soon as you see it in person, you immediately understand why Trump is going so hard after the Panama Canal.
Yep.
Yeah.
The Chinification of Panama is a risk.
I mean, it's a huge risk.
It's enormous risk.
So, before I thought all Trump wanted was a better deal for our ships in the Panama Canal.
Because apparently...
The cost for one ship to go through could be as much as half a million dollars.
And Trump would say, hey, we built that canal and sold it to you for a dollar.
We should get a deal compared to other countries.
Now, that's just good basic negotiating.
But the Chinification of Panama is by far the bigger problem, not the half a million dollars per ship.
So before knowing this...
Or at least getting this extra flavor on it.
I would have said, you know what?
If we could make a deal to maybe change who runs the Panama Canal so it's less China.
If we could maybe make a deal where we don't pay but other people do, that'd be good.
We don't need to put our military down there and exert our big old control over the whole country.
But now I think maybe we do.
Now I think maybe we do.
We might actually need to militarily intervene because there's no freaking way we're going to let Panama go completely under China's control if they're not already there.
So yes, if this is as big a problem as it looks, you know, without total information at my hands, Trump might need to go hard and you should get ready for that.
All right.
Yeah, you know, I hate to even bring it up, but China taking Taiwan is looking bigger and bigger.
But here's what I wonder.
Like, what would be the best thing that America could do if China decided to make a move on Taiwan?
Now, one would be just go to war.
Not ideal.
Not ideal.
The other would be to just walk away and say, all right, well, that was going to happen sooner or later.
No point in fighting over it.
The third opportunity is terrible, but I could see it happening, which is that if China moved in and it was clear that there was nothing that would happen to stop them, would the United States take out the chip manufacturing in Taiwan?
Just bomb it.
And the answer is, maybe.
It wouldn't stop them from rebuilding it in China or rebuilding it after China owns them, because you wouldn't be able to get rid of the expertise.
The people is what allows them to build a chip-making place.
But they could certainly slow them down, maybe until the United States could figure out how to compete on chips.
So, I wouldn't rule out that the entire chip-making industry in Taiwan would go up in smoke if China rolls in, because there's nothing else you can do.
And if our biggest problem is we need access to chips and we're going to lose it because China takes over and China's going to have all the good chips, which, by the way, they're not allowed to have.
They're not allowed to have the chips that are being built on the island they think they own.
Reverse this in your mind.
Imagine it's America, and let's say the Virgin Islands that we think we own is the only place that makes good chips, and they wouldn't sell it to the United States, but they would sell it to China.
Would we put up with that?
Would we say, well, you know, we think we own you.
I mean, that's not Taiwan.
It's not like the Virgin Islands.
So the analogy doesn't work.
But I'm trying to make you imagine what it would feel like if you had some of the most valuable things in the world on this island, the high-end chips, some of the most valuable things in the world, those chips.
Nobody else can make them.
Like if we could make them in the United States, we had the know-how, we'd be doing it.
We're trying, but I don't think we're that close.
So if you imagine what it's like, That you're China and you can't even buy the essential chips you need from the land that you think is yours in the first place?
I don't see how they don't make a move.
I don't see how they don't make a move.
I think it's just a matter of time.
And this might be the timing, except Trump's in office and I don't know.
So here's what could stop it.
Trump could say, China, there's one thing you need to know.
We're not going to let you take control of the chip manufacturing.
We'll bomb it to the ground.
The first moment a Chinese foot from China mainland reaches Taiwan, we're going to eliminate all the structures.
We'll tell the people to get out, because we don't want to kill any people.
They're our allies, after all.
But we will burn those factories.
So if you think that what you're doing is getting the chips, you're not.
You could take over the country because there's almost nothing we could do about that, given the proximity and all that.
But you're definitely not going to keep the chips.
So what would they say?
Well, here's that Trump unpredictability thing.
The unpredictability is they don't really know if we'd do that.
Would they take a chance?
Not if they're smart.
If they're smart, they'll wait another four years.
Because remember, China's timeline is longer than ours.
And if they say, all I have to do is wait four years and see if I've got a better opening, it wouldn't be smart to go as long as Trump has that threat over them and they believe that he's the only president who would ever do that.
Because it's so far out of the box.
It's so far out of the box.
We only think of defend Taiwan or not defend Taiwan.
Binary.
It's not binary at all.
You can ruin it so China isn't so happy about getting it in the first place, although they would be happy.
All right, so that's all I got for now.
And thanks for joining.
I'm going to say hi to the locals, people, privately.
