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It was something I should have clicked, but today I remembered.
All right, let me make sure I can see all your comments, and then we're going to have a good time.
There we go.
Perfectly.
Looks like the stock market's up.
Things are looking good for Tesla stock.
All right.
Did you know that up to three cups of coffee a day may reduce heart disease risk, according to NoRidge?
But that's not the exciting part.
Apparently, the study says that coffee can reduce all cause, any cause of death.
So if you drink coffee, there's a 12% chance of dying.
From anything.
Now, this was good news because I like to keep a coffee maker next to the gun safe.
So you should do that too.
Keep some coffee near the gun safe.
You get an extra 12% safety if you get a home invasion.
You know, the gun is good for protecting your house.
But, you know, 12% better.
Chance of survival if you do the coffee.
You know, I think that's science.
French press is acceptable.
I'll be doing...
Like a sign language thing, except for NPCs.
So whenever I say something that needs to be translated into NPC, I'll do that.
So when I said you should have a coffee maker next to your gun safe, the NPCs would say, French press is better.
So that's translation for NPCs.
After the show today, remember to look for...
A Spaces event with Owen Gregorian, who will be on X doing his Spaces.
That's the audio-only thing.
So if you go to Owen's Spaces, yeah, if you go to Owen's X account, you'll find it.
Owen Gregorian.
Just search for it if you can't find it.
Naval had a funny exchange on X. This is one of my favorite exchanges.
So Naval starts with a post.
He says, if you're a high-agency person, there's never been a better time to be alive.
And I'm thinking, huh, yeah, that's probably true, if you're a high-agency person.
Because when there's so much change, you know, AI and robots and all that, in theory, there should be enormous opportunities like we've never seen before.
So yeah, if you're a high-agency, in other words, you're highly competent and...
You know, you're willing to do things on your own without being prompted.
You're a high-agency person.
There's never been a better time to be alive.
And some random guy goes into the comments and says he wants to help Naval think better.
Now, if you've been following my stream, you know that Naval is one of the smartest people on the planet.
So, random comment guy.
Comes into the comments after Naval says, if you're a high agency person, there's never been a better time to be alive.
Random guy says, I think it depends more on where you live than when you live.
Naval comments to that comment.
If you're a high agency, the first decision you make is where you live.
And mic drop.
Yes.
If you're a high agency person, you wouldn't even ask that question.
You would move to where you need to be to do whatever it is you need to do.
How do I know that's true?
Well, Neval moved to the Bay Area because that's where the action is.
I moved to the Bay Area because growing up in upstate New York wasn't going to give me much.
And I'm a high agency person.
So the first thing you do is get out of wherever you are.
I get to someplace better.
Good advice.
Meanwhile, according to Clarence Oxford of Biofuel Daily, you all read that, right?
There's a new breakthrough, scientific breakthrough, that converts CO2 using electricity into protein-rich food.
So, this is something I've been thinking about for years.
I've been thinking, what would happen?
If somebody figured out how to take the CO2 out of the air and turn it into a commercial product.
Now, that's already happening, but the commercial products are kind of weird little industrial places where you use some derivative of CO2. But it's not like something that you and I would be using.
But what if somebody really does commercialize this and there's a way to make a protein, like a healthy protein you could eat?
Just out of the sky.
Just suck it out of the air.
Well, I'd like to take a moment to do the sign language for the NPCs.
Don't you know that the CO2 is really plant food?
And if you take the plant food out, the entire world will die because the plant food is not there to eat the plants, which would be growing from the CO2. So, yeah, all we have to do is make a way to eat the air, and somebody will suck all of the air out of the sky until there's no CO2 left, and all our plants will die, and we'll starve to death.
But otherwise, it's all good news.
Meanwhile, China plans to put a solar farm in space to orbit the Earth, and it would be like a kilometer-wide solar panel up in space, and then it would beam down the energy.
So it can be used on Earth.
And it should be as much power as, you know, basically as much energy as all the oil ever extracted.
So this one project for China should make more energy than all the oil that's ever been extracted.
I'd like to start by saying, I don't believe that.
That doesn't even sound a little bit true.
I mean, it might be cool and it might work, but...
Really?
It's going to be more than all the...
No.
Then, they're expected to be completed by 2035, coinciding with their plans to have a lunar research base going to the moon.
So the space race is on.
And, you know, if the United States planned to make a gigantic solar thing in space...
Wouldn't you worry that that's a little too easy to shoot down and a little too easy to get hit by some debris?
It just doesn't feel like it's safe.
And I also wonder, how do you beam energy from space to Earth?
Do you beam it on a microwave?
What is the mechanism by which you beam it?
And also I wonder, what happens if the beam gets misplaced?
So presumably that beam would have to be very targeted towards some kind of thing that could turn that beam into energy, earthly energy.
But wouldn't it also be a death ray?
If you were creating so much energy from this space-based thing and you had to beam it with some kind of energy beam down to Earth, wouldn't that energy beam be...
Configurable to be a space laser and destroy anything they want?
Or am I wrong about that?
So I wouldn't be surprised if something happens to their solar farm, if you know what I mean.
Hey, it's a bummer what happened to your solar farm that's really a space-based weapon.
Maybe.
As you know, the presidential inauguration has been moved indoors, but the only people who will be allowed in now, to the indoor part, would be the politicians.
Boring.
The rest of them will have to go to the nearby stadium where Trump will show up after.
But I guess they'll watch it at Capital One Arena.
Is Capital One Arena covered or uncovered?
Is that a covered or uncovered space?
They're not just taking all the non-politicians and making them stand in the cold in another place, are they?
Can somebody tell me if it's covered?
Because that really changes the story if it's not.
All right.
Well, look in the comments.
You'll find out.
They're saying that Michelle Obama is not going to go.
I heard different things about Barack Obama.
Is Barack Obama going to the inauguration or no?
If he goes, he'll be going without Michelle Obama.
But I know they were going to have a number of balls.
No, shut up.
No, I'm talking about where you dance and listen to music.
Yeah, there'll be a number of balls.
But Michelle won't be there.
No, they're not related.
Stop it.
Shut up.
That's not even funny.
Those two comments are not related.
They'll be balls.
But Michelle won't go there.
Those are just two separate stories.
If you're putting them together, you're a terrible person.
You're a terrible person.
Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson reminds us it's been six months since the Butler assassination attempt on Trump, and what we know about it so far is nothing.
Nothing.
We don't know anything.
Six months later.
Is there any doubt that this guy was associated either?
With some other country that our people don't want to mention yet, for whatever reason.
Or there was just obviously an insider job, meaning somebody in our government and or intelligence agency and or Democrat was behind it.
Do you really think we don't know anything about this?
I mean, the public doesn't.
But do you believe that the authorities don't know anything about it?
I don't know.
I guess we couldn't crack into his...
Phone apps.
So I guess there's nothing we can do.
Didn't find any emails.
I guess we're done here.
Really?
I'll tell you what I would do if I were Trump.
I would ask to talk to him.
I'd make sure it's safe.
He's behind a bar or something.
Or all chained up or whatever it takes.
But if I were Trump, I'd want to talk to him.
Because I'd want to ask, why didn't you do this?
It's really hard to...
Have terrible thoughts about somebody who you tried to kill who checks in on you and says, I just really want to understand why.
Did you believe?
Did you believe the news?
Did you think I was going to steal your democracy?
Oh, you think he's dead?
Yeah.
So, all right, let's make a prediction.
He will commit suicide in jail.
What do you think?
So, I don't think he's gone yet.
But do you think there'll be a sudden, unexplained suicide in jail that one day the cameras don't work and everybody fell asleep?
I don't know.
It feels like that play is coming.
We should see.
But Trump's charisma is like a superpower.
If the actual president of the United States that you shot came to visit you in jail and ask you some questions because he genuinely just wanted to know.
I'm just curious.
Now, the kid isn't going to give up any secrets, right?
If somebody helped him, that's not going to happen.
But wouldn't you like to know if this was just all him?
Because I think that would come through.
Like, you would see the hatred or something.
You'd say, oh, I get it.
This was all you.
You know, even if there was somebody else helping, it would look like at least he was just doing it for his own reasons, maybe with help.
I'd want to know that.
New York Times did a story about the...
The Hiding of Biden's Mental Decline.
I remember the Wall Street Journal did this story.
They talked to 50 sources and found all these stories about Joe Biden was mentally incompetent and certainly wasn't making any decisions and nobody was really in charge.
New York Times should have been doing the same story, but they found that Biden was actually fine.
Yeah, yeah, he mixes up a word now and then, but who doesn't?
And yeah, well, he's older.
So they had to cut back his schedule a little bit.
But basically, he made sound decisions, according to the New York Times.
Don't you think...
I was listening to Mark Halperin talking about this on his podcast.
And don't you think that it makes the New York Times look worse?
Because we're not in any uncertainty.
About what Biden's brain was since the beginning.
It's not like we're wondering.
So if we know what the truth is, it was clearly degraded from day one.
I mean, I called it out.
I can see it.
If I could see it and I wasn't even behind the curtain, everybody could see it.
So the New York Times has found the only way that they can reduce their credibility, and it's frankly an embarrassment.
And as Halperin points out, they printed the claims of Biden aides and Biden friends as if they were true.
If you only ask the people who like him, what do you think they're going to say?
Oh, yeah, he was fine.
We didn't notice a thing.
And that passes as reporting.
That's what that is.
Okay.
Speaking of the news, postmillennial Katie Davis Court is reporting that CBS is thinking about settling Trump's lawsuit over the fact that CBS, on 60 Minutes, their TV show, they edited Kamala's response by putting in a completely different response to the question because her real response was a bit, let's say, inelegant and incompetent.
And given that we have the video of what her real response was, so there's not really any question on the facts.
Yep, here's the original.
Yep, here's what they edited to make it look better.
Now, the claim is that that was election interference.
And I understand why CBS might want to settle, because they don't want to give up all their communications.
If they don't settle, then Trump can get their emails and see what they're really saying behind the scenes.
So they might be saying, you know, for a few million dollars, wouldn't it be better if nobody read our internal communications?
So you might win this, but the question I ask is, how is this different from every other fake news?
If I turn on CNN or MSNBC, it's nothing but fake news.
It's just one fake thing after another.
Narrative, narrative, narrative, anti-context, leave out the good things, don't talk about the bad things.
How is that not?
Election interference.
CBS had one show in which I personally wouldn't have even noticed the edit.
Do you think anybody voted for or didn't vote for because of that one answer?
If you put me on the jury, I'm not even sure I would find them guilty.
Because I'd say, seriously?
It's bad.
It's bad that they edit it.
But election interference?
Even if they intended it, it couldn't possibly have happened.
One answer?
All they did is make one answer look like it was coherent, a little more coherent than the actual one.
That's not that bad.
It seems like there's so many other things that were election interference from the laptop signatories right down the list.
So I don't really understand the standard for what makes fake news interference.
I don't think there is a standard.
So honestly, if you put me on the jury, I'd say innocent.
Probably.
I mean, I haven't heard of the facts, so the jury is probably only looking to see if there's factual support.
But still, factual or not, it couldn't have made much difference.
Well, just to prove her incompetence, you probably heard that Kamala Harris posted that...
The Equal Rights Amendment is the 28th Amendment and is the law of the land.
Now, that's because Joe Biden signed some kind of executive order to make the 28th Amendment the law of the land.
Except there's a reader note on X that goes like this.
There is no 28th Amendment.
The president does not have the authority to declare amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and the National Archivist is not ratifying it.
Now, how do you explain that the staffs for both Biden and Kamala Harris, there was not anybody on the staff willing to say, you can't change the Constitution with an executive order, that literally everybody knew?
How did they not say, oh, don't post that, or don't say that, or don't sign that executive order?
The only explanation I have is that they hate Joe Biden and they hate Kamala Harris.
Because I've got a feeling that relations have soured between the campaign and the staff and the politicians.
So it seems to me that their staff just totally threw them under the bus and may have actually been laughing about it.
It's like, yeah, I just let them say that you can change the Constitution.
With an executive order.
Now, maybe it's because all those people are looking for jobs and that there was nobody around to ask because they're all looking for jobs.
But it kind of looks intentional.
It's so over the top for what an ordinary mistake would be.
It's not ordinary.
And this is miles away from anything ordinary to say that the president can change the Constitution with an executive order.
Everybody knows that's not true.
Except those two?
Are they really that dumb?
Did we see for the first time a genuine peek behind the curtain?
Because you think, you know, if you're using some common sense, you kind of think, well, you know, they're all up to speed behind the curtain, but, you know, Biden is a little slow and Kamala doesn't communicate that well.
But what if this 28th Amendment thing is telling you what it was really like?
Like, just absolutely flat-out stupid.
Because it could be.
That could be the reality.
They were both just flat-out stupid.
One of them has a mental cognitive problem, which is a little different.
Some say Kamala Harris is going to get a big book deal.
Who would buy her book?
What exactly would the biggest loser in the world have to tell me?
Don't be like me.
I don't know.
We heard yesterday that Schumer was one of the active ones trying to get Biden to drop out.
I guess he went all the way to Biden's house and told him that his legacy would be better if he dropped out and blah, blah, blah.
But allegedly and reportedly, Schumer actually told Biden that his own pollsters, the internal polls that you and I don't get to see, gave him only a 5% chance of beating Trump.
So that was about the time they were talking about getting rid of him.
And I'm told by the news that Biden was unaware that his own internal polling only gave him 5%.
Now, if I told you that out of context, you'd say, well, that's not true.
Of course he knows what the polling says.
He's paying for it.
They pay for it because they really care what it says.
But now that you've heard that they...
They think they changed the Constitution with an executive order?
I feel like anything's possible.
Anything's possible.
It could be that Biden was never shown the polling.
And then the next question is, what else are they not telling him?
Or didn't they tell him?
If they didn't tell him his own polling, what was going on?
And the only reason I can think that they wouldn't tell him that is probably because they hated him.
Or they didn't tell him anything, so it was no different than everything else.
I don't know.
According to Jeffrey Epstein's old cellmate, the feds offered Epstein a deal for coming up with some dirt on Trump.
And Epstein didn't have any.
Now, that's coming from somebody who's a four-time murderer, so I'm not sure you can trust him, but I think he was an ex-cop.
And apparently, again, this is hearsay, so I don't know how much credibility to put it.
But according to the cellmate, Epstein told them, he says, but the government told me, I don't have to prove what I say about Trump.
As long as Trump's people can't disprove it.
And that Epstein considered, quote, making stuff up to save his skin.
What?
Now again, remember, this is not a source that you should put too much credibility in.
Prison guy, murdered four people, who knows?
But I'd certainly like to know if that was true.
Wouldn't you?
Meanwhile, James Comer says he's referring Hunter Biden and James Biden for criminal prosecution.
Based on, I assume, either lying to Congress or something about the crime family.
But I'm a little confused.
Isn't Hunter pardoned of everything?
Or are they outside the window or outside the domain that he's pardoned for?
So I don't know how the Hunter part works.
But I assume that the brother, James, James Biden, will get a pardon maybe today.
Biden can still do a pardon today, right?
I think it's coming.
Well, here's a story that blew my mind.
Robbie Starbuck, as you know, he's been really successful in getting companies to roll back their DEI programs.
But he looked into the U.S. State Department.
And they've got a whole DEI group.
And so you say to yourself, well, you know, a lot of places have DEI groups, and they're just making sure that diversity is handled appropriately.
So on paper, it sounds pretty good, doesn't it?
If you want diversity, hire some people to make sure it got done.
Start measuring it.
All good.
I wonder what went wrong.
Let's see.
Here are some of the things, according to Robbie Starbuck.
That they actually spent money for.
I'm going to read them quickly, mostly so you can see how many of them there are.
This was your tax dollars went to commemorating Black Consciousness Month through LGBTQ plus culture.
I don't even know what that means.
They created best practices to promote preferred pronoun usage.
Fine.
I hope I didn't spend too much money for that one.
They launched an all-ages DEI library in Cambodia.
Cambodia?
They made DEI part of all civil service and performance evaluations, so that advancing the DEI stuff became the responsibility of all civil and foreign service employees.
And they had lots of training on something they call allyship.
Allyship.
Which I think means...
White people, white men helping everybody else discriminate against white men?
What else would it mean?
Are the black people not on the same team?
Are the women not on the same team with each other?
So why do you need allyship?
As far as I can tell, all it means is...
Well, I won't over-interpret it.
We also paid for the career development of women in Gambia.
Because that's what you thought you got when you funded DEI in the State Department, was career development for women in Gambia.
Also, there was inclusive language training in Panama, because people were not using inclusive language about the LGBTQ stuff, the Panamanians.
Panamanians were just using all the wrong words.
So I'm glad we stepped in and got them to use the right words.
My tax dollar is perfectly used.
Let's see, they had DEI workshops in Belgrade, which one does.
They had a DEI Hall of Fame in New Delhi.
That's weird, because that's exactly where I would have put it.
The DEI Hall of Fame, I'd say.
Where would you put that?
Old Delhi?
No, no, New Delhi.
They changed the name of the Foreign Services, which used to be called Oral Assessment, to Officer Assessment, because the term Oral Assessment...
May have excluded nonverbal people.
Oh, I thought it was only excluding heterosexuals, but my head was in a totally different place.
They created a DEI award.
Man, I hope I get it.
Stated in the state amidst the focusing recruitment efforts to paid internships on, quote, minority-serving institutions and women's colleges, which is probably illegal.
Created a new racial equity framework for how the State Department works overseas.
Okay, yep, I'm sure we needed that.
Created and distributed trainings on how to interact with non-binary identifying people and on colorism.
So, good use of my money to teach people how to handle the colorism.
Gave U.S. citizens the option to put X, the letter X, on their passport instead of male or female.
Good, good.
They launched DEI mentorship programs, which would be a way to say, let's give something to everybody except white men.
Creating new guidance for transgender people so that they can use whatever bathrooms they want.
I'm actually sensitive to the bathroom one.
I do want a world where everybody can comfortably use a public bathroom.
I don't think we have that world, and I don't think the quick fix is...
Just let anybody use any bathroom.
But I'm sensitive to that one.
So I'm an ally.
I'm part of the allyship.
Everybody should have a bathroom that they're comfortable to use.
If we had infinite money, that would be great.
So this story just blows my mind.
So you saw the publicity where Elon Musk said he was going to help bring Wi-Fi to the fire area in L.A. And so he got a bunch of cyber trucks.
Loaded him up with food and security guard and some Wi-Fi devices for Starlink.
And then he was going to place them around the area so everybody could go somewhere where they'd get Wi-Fi.
And then somebody on Karen Bass's, Mayor Karen Bass's office, heard about it.
And Karen Bass said she refused the help because, quote, she was not interested in solving this problem if it involved Elon Musk.
That allegedly really happened.
Now, this is a sort of story that maybe you'd want at least another source.
So I'm not 100% sure it went down just like this.
It's a little too on the nose.
A little too on the nose.
But if it's even close to being true, that would certainly be shocking.
The Wall Street Journal reports that The reason that Los Angeles had not prepared properly for the fires was that it was a mishmash of government agencies that failed to keep public lands in and around L.A. safe from wildfires.
A mishmash of government agencies.
You know, I remember when I was a kid and I thought that the government of the United States was some kind of a democratic republic.
Kind of a situation.
And then I reach my current age, only to find out that our government is a, quote, mishmash of government agencies.
Which does sound right, doesn't it?
If you're going to try to rebuild your house in LA, who are you going to deal with?
A mishmash of government agencies.
And you won't know how to satisfy any of it.
Anyway.
I just got a homework assignment from an overseas publisher who has one of my older books, and they said they have some royalties, but for whatever reason, I haven't filled out the paperwork to receive it.
And they sent me the paperwork, and it has to be done by hand, so it's not something you type on on the computer.
You have to print it out, multiple pages, just filled with things I have to fill out, which I can't do, because my hand doesn't work.
Burned it down drawing.
So it is so completely bureaucratic that I ask them how much the royalties are.
Because there is a number below which I'm going to say, why don't you just keep it?
Like if this is your process, I don't even want your money.
Because I'm not going to spend $1,000 of my time to make $100 in royalties.
And that's what they're asking me to do.
So yes, the bureaucracy, the mishmash, it's everywhere.
The ex-Oakland mayor, Sheng Tao, has been criminally indicted.
He's being accused of bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud, and corruption, according to the FBI. So the L.A. mayor is bad.
The Oakland mayor is bad.
I guess that's a giant coincidence, isn't it?
Here's what I think.
I think the people that go into these jobs do it to make money.
I think sometimes maybe people are interested in, I don't know, helping the community or it's a launching board to a higher office or something.
But I feel like the majority of them just know that if they can get elected and they get in the right place, they can skim money off of all the public funds that need to be going to different vendors.
So they just send it to their favorite vendor who then sends them a little gift that you can't tell is related.
So, I think that it's systemic.
Meaning that if we keep thinking, oh, we got a bad egg here.
Oh, there's another bad egg.
Why is it every time we look for the egg, there's a bad one?
Huh.
Every single time we look into any city, we find all this corruption.
It's because they're all corrupt.
My guess is that 100% of city governments are corrupt.
Like, seriously corrupt.
100%.
That's a system problem.
That's not a people problem.
That if you treat it as a goal, the goal would be no corruption.
But there's no system to get there.
Except, you know, you catch a few, but there's just a few.
Do you think the next governor of Oakland is going to be clean?
And the one after that?
Why?
If the...
If the larger purpose of even running for office in the first place is to get in on the graft gravy train, you almost need to have local management that doesn't live there so they don't have all the criminal connections they need to skim.
It's almost like you need the Swiss to come in and run your cities and say, all right, Swiss are going to run the city, but don't contact them.
You can't talk to them.
I'm just being hyperbolic.
But, yeah, we need a new way to run our local cities because I think the system just guarantees that they become corrupt over time, which would be now.
All right, here's some persuasion advice.
I've been watching the hearings for the confirmations of Trump's people, and I notice they're all getting this question, did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?
Now, I've seen Capable answers, but not a home run yet.
And this is a gotcha question, right?
So the point is to create a soundbite that they can use against you and use against Trump.
So instead of answering, you know, yes or no, and then they cut you off, did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?
Here's the correct answer.
And it took me a while to write it.
It took me a while to write it.
So it does matter.
Which words you use and how brief it is.
So brevity is really important here.
So that's a persuasion trick.
If I made it like a paragraph long, what you should say instead, you wouldn't remember it and you wouldn't use it.
So I'm trying to boil it down so everybody who reads this once will go, oh yeah, that is the right answer.
Here's the correct answer to, did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?
Joe Biden won the election based on our current system.
But our election systems are not transparent enough to detect all forms of cheating.
That's why half the country is skeptical of the results if it doesn't go their way.
So that last part, half the country is skeptical if it doesn't go their way, kind of says both sides question every election, which is our current situation.
And if you say Joe Biden won, according to our current system, That gives you an escape from all the individual claims, and it also gives you some freedom from being connected to Trump says he won.
Instead of saying Trump was right or Trump was wrong, you say, in our country, the losing side always thinks he's rigged.
Joy Reid was saying that Trump's victory this time was rigged.
By not things in terms of the vote, but rigged in terms of, I don't know, some kind of public stuff.
And once you sell the idea...
So here's the problem, as somebody pointed out earlier.
The question is trying to make you think past the sale.
The sale is that the election was fair.
That's an assumption by the person asking the question.
So don't answer the question.
Go right after the assumption.
But you start by saying Joe Biden won the election.
But you limit it to the election the way it's designed.
And then you say, we don't have an election where you could tell for sure who won.
That's why, no matter who wins, half of the country thinks it's not credible.
So, if Trump also thought it wasn't credible, he would be in the same category with half of the country.
And if somebody, some Democrat thinks that an election is not credible, they would be in good company with lots of people who believe the same thing.
So that's my upgrade.
I know some people don't like me talking about Bill Maher and his transition to a Trump supporter where he's not there yet, but it's fun watching to see how close he gets.
But I watched the show yesterday, and there's definitely a change.
Definitely a change.
And here's a change, and I want you to look for it.
Now, I hope that Bill Maher doesn't hear me say this, because then he'll change what he's doing.
But look for this pattern.
If the topic is a policy or competence, Bill Maher says, you know, Trump was right about that.
He said Trump was right about clearing the forests, for example.
So he gives examples.
Yeah.
When Trump says the border was more secure under him, I think Bill Maher would say, yeah, yeah, it's crazy letting everybody in.
So when you're talking about something real, Bill Maher usually says, yeah, Trump's right about that.
But when he's criticizing Trump, which he does in equal amount, the criticisms are not based on anything real.
The criticisms are things like, I'm worried about him stealing my democracy.
Okay, that's not real.
His character.
All right.
All right?
And that matters how?
So watch how his criticisms stay the same, like his hatred of Trump and all that.
But when he talks about anything that matters, a policy or basic competence to be present, he's kind of leaning toward giving him an A. Now, obviously, there would still be things that a Democrat would like.
You know, Republican wouldn't like and vice versa.
But the things he talks about, the top priorities, yeah.
And then you add that to Jamie Dimon saying that negotiating with tariffs is actually a perfectly acceptable and smart thing to do.
It's getting really hard to be a Democrat.
It's just getting so embarrassingly hard that you have to say stuff like, you steal my democracy.
It just sounds silly.
Anyway.
So Vivek Ramaswamy is, all the smart people say, he's going to announce a run for Ohio governor, but not until he gets some accomplishments at Doge.
I'm going to say I'm not thrilled with this.
I do think Vivek would be a good governor, and I think he'd be a good senator if he ever got a chance of that.
But I feel like it's also a perfect stepping stone to the presidency.
Yeah, because the thing that Vivek didn't have is a government experience where he was managing something.
So a governor is better than a senator because governors manage.
Senators just say yes, no, and talk to the press.
So it makes sense for his career.
It definitely makes sense for the age of his children.
So since he lives in Ohio, it probably gives him...
A lot more reason to be in Ohio and a lot less reason to be in D.C. So that's probably good for his family, good for his career.
I like all that.
I mean, I like it for him that that looks like a good plan for him.
But I'll tell you, everything about my optimism is based on Doge.
It's the only thing I think we absolutely have to get right.
I mean, obviously some national security stuff like the border.
But in terms of...
The biggest threat to the country is the debt by far.
And anything that causes Vivek to work on that less or have his attention divided or not spend four years working on it because it's going to take a while, this is really bad for me.
I think it's good for Vivek, good for the family, and those are perfectly legitimate reasons to do anything.
I don't love the fact that he might be distracted by this.
Don't love that.
But best wishes to him, so I wish him the best.
According to everybody, Trump is planning to do some illegal immigrant arrests and ship people back on day one, and they're saying that Chicago will be the target.
And I thought to myself, Should you tell the target they're the target weeks before you target them?
I feel like the Chicago immigrants just had a lot of warning that they should move their location.
Maybe take a week off.
Visit Detroit for a week.
I don't know if you should say where you're going to start.
That seems like a bad idea.
Meanwhile, speaking of the fires in L.A., million-dollar listing TV show star Josh Altman.
He's been talking to a lot of people because they're calling him about real estate.
And he says up to 70% of the Palisades residents will not return because they're deeply underinsured.
So even the ones who had what you could call full insurance, it's not going to cover building a new foundation and cleanup and all that.
So he's thinking that people have just decided it.
It doesn't make sense to spend five years mucking around just in case it works out.
And that would have been my guess.
My guess is the people whose houses survive may be forced to stay because that's their best play.
So it's going to be a different place.
According to Ars Technica, the European Union is ordering the X platform.
To hand over its algorithm documents.
So Javier Espinoza and Andy Bounds are writing about this.
Now, the EC, European, I guess that would be commission, has also requested access to the information on how X moderates and amplifies content.
Now, on one hand, it does seem like a national priority to know how these social media things are influencing the public.
And on the other hand, it doesn't seem like social media is going to work in other countries.
So the TikTok ban, which goes into effect tomorrow unless something suddenly changes, is the platform or it's the template.
Once you know that TikTok can be banned in one country, even if its origin country still runs it, doesn't that mean it's going to happen everywhere?
How in the world is Europe going to let American platforms operate in Europe?
America just got rid of a Chinese platform.
Do the Europeans think that we wouldn't try to influence them?
Now, I don't think the X is doing that.
I don't think it's trying to influence in any kind of algorithmic way.
But it's going to feel like it.
If the head of the X, who has the most attention and the most posts, Retweets and everything.
If the biggest account is absolutely, definitely being political and absolutely, definitely showing his opinion on things and absolutely, definitely moves the needle because of the size of his reach, how in the world is anybody going to allow that in their country?
Now, I want it to.
I want it to succeed and I want it to succeed in every country, but I don't see a path.
I feel like every country is going to say, hey.
If the U.S. banned TikTok, how in the world are they going to complain if we ban their platform for the same reason?
That we think it might be too persuasive or give up too much of our information.
So I hate to say it, but I think the long term of social media networks is that they'll be country specific.
And it'll be the country that invented it.
Because then the intelligence people in that country can feel that they have enough control over the platform to get what they want.
That's the future.
I just don't see any way that social media will continue to be across all borders.
I can't see that in the future.
Argentina, allegedly, has reached its first budget surplus in 14 years, thanks to their new leader, who's an economist and what would you call him?
He's a populist?
Is he a populist?
This is President Mille.
But I'm going to still come down on the side of skepticism.
Everything Millet has done so far makes sense in terms of direction.
So yes, I think he's very capable.
And I think he's right on.
And he's got the energy and apparently the drive and the bravery.
He does seem to have the whole package.
And all of his policies look perfectly sensible to me.
Here's my problem.
It's happening too quickly.
It's a little fast.
Now, if you told me in five years, wow, things are better.
This guy really made us better over five years.
I would say, well, good.
That's why you got him.
I'm glad he did his job.
Took five years.
But things are hard to move.
You can't do that much.
But he just took a meat cleaver to pieces of the government, and the only thing we're hearing is the good news.
There's got to be some bad news.
Right?
So I'm just going to put a pin in this one and say, check back with me in a few years and we'll see if there's, maybe this was a little hyperbole.
It might be true that they reached a budget surplus.
It might not be true that the citizens are delighted and everything's working besides that.
Meanwhile, over in Iran, this is, I don't believe everything about this story, but the reporting is that Three of Iran's Supreme Court judges were shot by the same guy, some kind of a guard.
So allegedly it was a guard who shot three of the Supreme Court justices.
Two of them died.
One of them's wounded.
Now this is a report on Visegrad 24. That's an account on X. And both judges were apparently known to be hardliners.
And they were known as the hangmen.
So apparently they sent so many people to their deaths that they were basically just killers.
Now, here's the part I don't believe.
I don't believe that this guard just decided he'd had enough of the hardliners and decided to shoot them.
Does that sound real?
I feel like there's more to that story.
Now, the part I believe is that probably...
Some people in the Supreme Court got shot.
I'm not sure we're hearing the real reason or everything about that guy, but we'll find out.
However, if anything like that is true, it might suggest something like, do you remember the healthcare murderer guy?
I can't remember his name.
That good-looking guy who killed the CEO of UnitedHealth.
You know how, when that happened, we first thought, oh, that's just a crime.
It's terrible.
Tragedy.
Bad for the family.
Bad for the victim.
Bad for the system.
It was just all bad.
And then you check social media, and people are like, well, I kind of like that guy.
And you say, wait, which guy?
The poor victim?
No, the person who killed him.
And all of us who are more, let's say, traditionally minded, we say, Well, there can't be many people who think that, right?
There can't be a lot of people who would have the same opinion that it was good that somebody got murdered.
And the longer you go, you realize there are a lot of people with that opinion.
Now, I don't think they're serious people in the sense that it's easy to say you support something that already happened.
I don't think they would support doing more of it if you ask them.
But I wonder if...
If this is the first indication that the public is done, that's why it's being reported, that he was just a patriot and he was just done with all the corruption or whatever it was, fundamentalism or something.
But we'll see.
Now, after I'm done, which I'm just about done, Make sure that you check into the Spaces on X. So Spaces is the audio feature where people can hear each other talk.
Owen Gregorian will be hosting a Spaces that will be roughly based on the show, but I'm sure you can talk about what you want to.
And make sure you catch that.
Just search for Owen Gregorian and you'll find it.
Or you can look in my feed on X and you'll see I retweeted him.
Here's a link to it.
All right.
How did Vivek get rich, Scott?
Well, you don't know.
So all the people who are saying that Vivek got rich in a sketchy way, they've heard one version of it.
But you haven't heard Vivek's version.
I think I've only heard it on maybe one CNBC show where he was a guest.
But if you don't know his version, you don't know anything.
So don't act like you're all holier than me.
Oh, tell me how he made his money.
Well, I think I know, but I'll bet you don't.
So maybe you should look into that a little bit more.
See if you can find both sides.
If you can find both sides, then I will listen to your opinion.
But it doesn't sound like you found both sides.
But I know the issue.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
You can trust your intuition.
How do you know your intuition isn't racist?
How do you check on that?
Intuition isn't a real thing.
It's not a real thing.
Intuition is just how you feel.
Sometimes you feel the right way, sometimes you feel the wrong way, but no, intuition is not a thing.
Sometimes it's a thing if what it really is is pattern recognition.
If it's pattern recognition but you don't know what the pattern is, you just feel it, that could be real because it's based on a real thing, a pattern.
But if you're just looking at him and you've decided, I can't trust him because he's brown or whatever the hell you're thinking, that doesn't seem realistic.
Oh, the butler was killed at the scene.
I did that whole thing about the butler guy and I forgot he was killed at the scene.
You all let me say that.
You were probably yelling at me when I did it, right?
See, this is one of those situations where having no sense of shame is like gold.
Imagine how I'd feel if I felt shame or embarrassment.
Nope.
Don't feel it a bit?
No.
No, it was just a stupid error I made in public.
I don't care a bit.
So you should learn something from that.
Don't learn anything about the assassination attempt from me.
Which is when the other guy's alive, right?
Ruth?
The golf course guy's alive.
I don't think he's worth talking to.
You know, the problem with the...
A lot of the political stories is there are so many duplicates.
Like, I can't keep any of the law affairs straight.
All the law affairs sound the same to me.
And then it's starting to be that the assassination attempts are starting to sound the same.
So it's like, oh, there's a white guy, he had a gun, tried to kill the president.
They all sound the same.
That's funny.
I can't wait to see the comments.
Scott, you idiot!
You fool!
As soon as I saw the comment, which I didn't see until just now, as soon as I saw the comment that he was killed, I thought, uh-oh.
Oh, that's funny.
All right, everybody.
I'm going to talk to the locals people privately just for a few minutes.
