Find my Dilbert 2025 Calendar at: https://dilbert.com/God's Debris: The Complete Works, Amazonhttps://tinyurl.com/GodsDebrisCompleteWorksFind my "extra" content on Locals:https://ScottAdams.Locals.comContent:Politics, Hostage Envoy Adam Boehler, Biden Admin Economy Numbers, Pam Bondi, Governor Hochul, Bill O'Reilly, Mayor Adams Pardon, Pod Save America, Democrat Empty Attacks, Scott Jennings, Ayanna Pressley, Reparations Cost Analysis, Mike Benz, USAID, Musical Artist Statecraft, AP White House Credentials, DOGE Findings, Reuters Large Scale Social Deception Payment, President Trump, Lee Zeldin, EPA 20B Parked, Federal Empty Buildings, GOP Budget Idiocy, AI Companionship, AI Copyright Infringement, Ukraine War Ending, Scott Bessent, Ukraine Minerals, President Putin, Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, includingmicro-lessons on lots of useful topicsto build your talent stack, please seescottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
Difficulty today, so I'm just streaming on my phone until the battery runs out.
I've got my laptop open, so I'm doing a higher quality feed at the same time on Locals.
If you go to scottadams.locals.com, you could watch it there if you like that concept.
All right, what time is it?
No, I guess it's time for a show.
Hold on.
Do do do.
Do do do do.
Just assume that nothing's going to go right this morning.
That's how it's looking so far.
I can't see the comments of anybody but locals right now, but feel free to comment away.
Got 1,500 people on X? Excellent.
How many we have on locals?
668?
Good.
All right.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time.
But if you want to take this up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chelsea stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of dopamine to the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And yes, it's going to happen right now.
Right now.
If you were expecting to be watching this on YouTube or Rumble, that won't be happening this morning.
But we'll probably post the finished show after it's live.
Might take a little while.
Well, story number one.
There's a study out of the University of Zurich that shows that hypnosis does alter brain activity and neurochemistry.
Do you know who they could have asked?
Huh, I wonder if hypnosis will alter brain activity and neurochemistry.
Do you know who could have answered that question?
Every hypnotist for the last hundred years.
Every one of them.
It's the most basic thing you learn.
If hypnosis didn't have any effect on your actual brain, it wouldn't be doing anything.
There are a lot of people who think that hypnosis is just...
What is it that Penn Jillette says?
I think he said some while ago the hypnosis was two people lying to each other.
The hypnotist pretending to be a hypnotist and the subject pretending to be hypnotized.
But no, there is a change in the brain.
And that's the longest known thing that every hypnotist has known.
It's just obvious.
Anyway, there's another tragic...
Terrorist attack, it looks like.
Over in Germany, an Afghan man drove a car into a big crowd.
He's injured, I think, at least 28 people, some of them really badly.
We don't know anything about the motives yet, but, yeah.
I'll tell you, the car-related attacks, they seem to kill as many or more people than bombs.
So maybe this is the beginning of a very long, terrible trend.
I don't know.
Let's talk about hostage releases, because that's a better story.
So I was listening to the U.S. envoy for hostages, and his name is not written down on my notes.
So just imagine I said the name of the person.
Today's just a disaster.
I feel like everything today is just not going to work.
So that might be funny.
That might be entertaining in its own way.
Yeah, the most important thing I was going to write down was the name of the person.
Who is the United States envoy for hostages?
Yeah, that guy.
Okay.
So you were saying that one of the reasons that Trump is successful getting hostages back is that...
He's saying that, quote, when you hold our citizens, we'll come after you at any cost.
That's sort of the Trump message.
If you hold our citizens, we'll come after you at any cost.
Now, that is exactly the right...
Now, it's not Wyckoff.
It's not Wyckoff or Grinnell.
All right, never mind.
Stop guessing Wyckoff or Grinnell.
That will still be wrong no matter how many times you write it down.
All right.
I shouldn't have even brought it up.
But the right framing is that hostages are not really a negotiating tool, at least with the United States, because we're going to take everything you have if you take our hostages.
We'll take everything you have.
What happened when Trump put the extra threat on?
Well, now Hamas is getting a little flexible.
He says they're going to release some more hostages by Saturday, maybe, which was Trump's deadline.
Now, that's not all the hostages.
Trump has said if you don't release them all, there's going to be hell to pay.
So if there's something they're holding back, in theory, they're still hell to pay.
Now, what would be hell to pay?
Probably just unleashing Israel and saying, all right, we're out.
We're out.
Whatever Israel wants to do is fine.
We'll even give them money to do it.
Do you think Hamas wants to hear that?
That Israel just has a free pass and the United States won't put any pressure on them to ease up?
That would be the ultimate nightmare for Hamas.
But I think that's where they're heading.
They're heading to their ultimate nightmare.
There was a story in Politico by Eugene Ludwig titled, Voters Were Right About the Economy, The Data Was Wrong.
Anybody who's watched this show, we always knew the data was wrong.
It's not because you heard it from me.
Didn't you all know the data was wrong?
Because they kept saying, I don't know what you're talking about.
This data said you should be happy and have lots of money.
But people would say, I can't afford eggs and gas.
And then the Biden administration would say, yes, you can.
Look at the data.
And people would say, I'm pretty sure I know what's in my pocket.
You don't know what's in my pocket, and I don't have enough money for eggs and gas.
Oh, yes, you do.
Just look at these high-level statistics.
So, of course, time goes by, and then finally we can learn that it was all fake.
Now, here's something I've been telling you for a long time, but I finally figured out a better way to say it.
I've been saying for a long time, wait until you find out that all data that is important is fake.
All data that's important, you know, not something that, let's say, a scientist did for a little study that nobody cared about, right?
That's probably okay.
Or it might be.
But anything that's big and important, like the economy, those are all fake numbers.
And there's a reason for that.
There's a systemic reason why all the important numbers, the important ones, just limiting it to the important ones, are fake.
Do you know what the reason is?
Well, it's like this.
You don't want the fox to be your only source of data of how many chickens are left.
Does that make sense?
Because we always put the fox in charge of counting the chickens.
And then you're like, do we still have 18 chickens?
No, no.
We have 14 chickens, says the fox.
And then you say, what?
Did he eat those four chickens?
And the fox says, I don't know what you're talking about.
There's no data that says we ate any chickens.
There's just 14 chickens.
All right.
We'll check back tomorrow.
There are eight chickens.
What are you doing?
Are you eating those chickens again?
I don't even know what you're talking about.
There's no document that shows any chickens we're eating.
It's just eight chickens.
So you can take the fox and the chicken analogy to pretty much everything.
Who told us that vaccinations were perfectly safe?
The fox.
We didn't get it from anywhere except the company that is making money from selling it, right?
Was there some independent analysis that I'm not aware of?
No.
No.
So in every case, The only people who are close enough to know what the real numbers are are the foxes.
They're the ones in charge of the numbers.
And the foxes are the ones that are stealing and lying and shaving things to make it biased in one direction or the other.
So there's a systemic reason.
It's not a coincidence that all data, all data that's important is fake.
It has to be because it's coming from the fox.
As soon as you realize that all the data comes from the fox and not from the chickens, then everything makes sense.
And if you find an exception where the chickens are in charge of counting themselves, let me know about that because I've never heard of it.
Never heard of it.
It's always the fox counting the chickens.
And that's where we're at.
That's why you need Doge.
Because Doge lets the rooster count the chickens.
I'm torturing that analogy.
All right, well, you probably know that Trump was suing the Pulitzer Committee for giving Pulitzer prizes to the Russia collusion liars in the press.
But worse than that, I guess they said something else.
Let's see.
There was something they said after the war that Trump didn't like.
And apparently...
This is going to go forward, so there were some challenges to it that have been overcome.
But the appeals court, the Florida appeals court, says the burden of proof that there was actual malice seems to be made.
In other words, it wouldn't go forward if there was no evidence of malice, meaning that they did it intentionally.
But apparently there's evidence they did it intentionally, that it was just basically a defamed jump.
Now, this is interesting.
This is really interesting.
Because I don't know what kind of evidence they have that would demonstrate malice.
We know what they did, but how do you get in their heads?
There might be some kind of document, or maybe a witness or something, who said, oh yeah, we did this just to get Trump.
So I haven't heard that.
I'm just speculating.
But maybe.
Maybe that's what's happening.
We'll see.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi, She's filing some charges against the bad people in New York.
The bad people in New York.
Now, this is over the question of prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens.
So the idea would be that they're not cooperating with the federal government to protect American citizens, and that's their job, and they need to do that.
Now, I guess this is a criminal action.
It's not a civil, right?
If Pam Bondi is filing charges, it's not a civil suit, it's a criminal.
So they're in real trouble.
But the people who are in trouble are the governor, Kathy Hochul, the Attorney General, Letitia James, who, as we know, has been targeting Trump and decided to make up some reasons that he allegedly broke some laws.
So Letitia James is sort of one of the...
She's like a Sith Lord.
We'll come after Trump.
And if I don't get him, the next Sith Lord will.
Ayanna Pressley will get you.
She's a supervillain if I don't.
So I don't know how many anti-Trump people can actually have a persona that looks exactly like a supervillain.
It's weird that there's two of them.
I mean, if only Ayanna Pressley dressed intentionally like a supervillain, which she does for reasons I don't understand, that would be unique enough.
But you have two Democrats who have total Sith Lord supervillain vibe.
I've never seen that before.
It's weird.
Anyway.
Then also the DMV commissioner.
I think that has something to do with issuing driver's license to...
Two non-citizens, I'm guessing.
But it gets more interesting.
Now you say to yourself, huh, huh, it's kind of a coincidence, isn't it?
Oh, I think, isn't Alan Bragg part of this, or is it just Letitia James?
Yeah, Alan Bragg is part of it too, I think.
Although I didn't see that in the list, so I may be conflating two different stories.
So Bill O'Reilly.
He had a hypothesis.
He was on a news station with Chris Cuomo.
And this is just some speculation from Bill Reilly, but he is very experienced.
And he is sniffing some stuff out, but he doesn't have proof.
So what I'm going to say, I want you to understand that Bill Reilly wants you to know he doesn't have any proof of this.
It's just something he's feeling.
That the real target of all this might be Letitia James and Elvin Bragg, the two people who came after Trump.
And it's also possible that the reason, and again, this is just speculation, there's no evidence of this whatsoever, that Mayor Adams got his pardon from Trump, maybe because he knows where the bodies are buried with Elvin Bragg and Letitia James.
Now, I don't know if he would, but if somebody did know where the bodies were buried, he'd be a top guess, I would think.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
So it does look like maybe the Trump administration is circling the bad elements.
Now, if we didn't know for sure that these are lawfare people, the people who tried to lawfare Trump, I would not be in favor of kind of going after them.
But what they did was so inappropriate in our constitutional situation that it's effectively criminal without maybe breaking any laws.
But in effect, it's criminal.
So, yeah, you should go after them as hard as possible.
Meanwhile, Democrats still trying to figure out what's wrong with Democrats.
And on Pod Save America, this is one of the big Democrat podcasts.
And the gas of ex-Obama people on there, they're very Democrat.
So if I didn't mention it, they're very, very Democrat, like super Democrat.
And as you can imagine, they've been big critics of Trump.
Guess what they said yesterday?
Trump is doing what we should have done.
Quote, Trump is moving so fast.
They hit the ground running in a serious way.
It's like genuinely impressive.
Remember, this is...
This is the most Democrat anti-Trump people you've ever heard.
It's genuinely impressive.
Impressive, and then they throw in this.
Impressive in a dark and sinister way, but nonetheless impressive.
So even when they're fully understanding that he's doing some good stuff, they have to throw in a little propaganda phrase.
Well, dark and sinister.
Did I mention it's dark and sinister?
Yeah, he's doing everything right, but...
But maybe there's a dark and sinister undertone to it.
All the Democrats have are vague statements that can't be supported by anything.
So they go on, quote, We all know that government is slow.
We all know that government can be inefficient.
We all know that the bureaucracy can be bloated.
We all worked in the effing White House.
We tried to reorganize the government.
We tried to find efficiency.
It's hard to do.
And then one of them said, some of this is pretty annoying because it's some of the stuff we should have done.
Now, I do appreciate the honesty of this.
So I'm going to call out that this is a very honest take, except for the dark and sinister part.
Yeah.
Yeah, they should have done it.
They couldn't do it.
And then they're watching it being done right in front of them.
So I thought I'd start a list.
Of all the empty attacks, the things that Democrats say about Trump that don't have any meat to them whatsoever.
It's just stuff to scare you.
So now we've got dark and sinister that whatever he's doing, oh, whatever he's doing on the surface, it looks perfect.
Nothing wrong with it on the surface, but underneath, underneath, we believe it's dark and sinister.
And then they've got...
You know, sure, Trump might be saving the republic and ending wars, but really it's just preparation for stealing your democracy and setting up a kleptocracy.
Stealing your democracy, setting up a kleptocracy, the kleptocracy is exactly what they're dismantling.
And then there's Dan Goldman.
There's no accountability or oversight.
With the Doge project.
There's no accountability or oversight.
Well, here's the problem of having politicians talk about things that make sense.
They can't do it.
I'm pretty sure that in the history of audits of big companies, there's not one time that the CEO went along with the audit, with the auditors.
So when a big company does its own audit, they'll often audit themselves.
Do you think the CEO follows him around and say, what do you got there, Bob?
Did you find a document?
What's it say?
What's it say?
Oh!
All right.
Now what do you got?
What's that?
Can you read that to me?
There's no world in which the CEO is informed about the audit while it's going on, except for the big stuff.
So the auditor might say, we found this, we found that, we found that.
But is the CEO saying, give me the document to prove it?
Or is the CEO saying, all right, when you're done with the audit, write it up and then tell me everything you found?
I think the most normal way that Doge should be working is that Musk should answer questions every day, which he does.
What did you find?
What are you looking at?
And he says so.
But the onus is on him and Doge to provide documents when he's done.
Now, will everything that he says preliminarily...
Turn out to be, will it check out?
Not everything.
No, this is a messy process and it has to be because there's no way to do a clean process.
So you either give up or you do it messy.
There's only two possibilities.
We don't want to give up.
So there's that.
And then the other one is CNN's running with this one.
There's no actual evidence of fraud.
What do you mean there's no actual evidence?
Do you need a court case?
They're doing the same thing they did with the election.
Well, there's no actual evidence, just because everything looks sketchy.
But there's no actual court who said that.
So, let's see, we've got dark and sinister, we've got stealing your democracy, setting up a kleptocracy, no accountability or oversight, and no actual evidence of fraud.
What do all of those things have in common?
There's not a single American citizen who gives a shit about any of it.
Give me my straw.
Get rid of these pennies.
Solve the war in Ukraine.
Cut the budget.
There's a pretty long list of things I do care about.
But nowhere on that list is the dark and sinister stealing your democracy.
Oh, he's also stealing your privacy.
They're stealing my privacy.
Oh, there's no accountability or oversight.
No actual evidence of fraud.
It's pretty weak.
Weak sauce.
Well, here's something I hate.
I hate waking up and being the second funniest Scott.
I'm kind of used to being the funniest Scott.
You know, at least in the news business.
There aren't too many funny Scots.
But Scott Jennings is just lapping me lately.
I just had a belly laugh over this one.
So Scott Jennings is commenting this morning over someone else's post.
So, well, it was a story, actually, on Fox News.
So his comment, I'll just read it in the order that it's written.
So Scott Jennings posts on X. He says, Trump, let's cut taxes, shrink the government, and unleash American energy.
And then he says, Democrats.
And he points to the Fox News story that says the House Democrats are reintroducing reparations.
Reparations legislation.
So Representative Ayanna Pressley, super villain, says reparations are a necessary step in achieving justice.
Now, would it be fair to say Democrats are not good at reading the room?
Was this really the time to introduce reparations?
Probably not the right timing.
Probably just a little off on the timing.
But I would go further than that.
And I would love to see somebody in the Trump administration calculate reparations.
Because I'm pretty sure it's going to show that the money's already been paid three times.
Because you know what would be in that calculation, right?
You'd first have to calculate how descendants of slavery would have done if they'd stayed in Africa versus how they would do over here.
And then specifically the descendants, not the actual slaves.
The slaves are unhappy, right?
So everybody agrees there was nothing good about being a slave.
But the descendants of slaves ended up in a better place than maybe they would have been.
Now, that's no reason for slavery.
We all agree slavery is bad.
Slavery is bad.
But if you were going to calculate, you'd have to calculate any social payments made.
You'd have to calculate how much everybody added to the economy versus subtracted from the economy.
You'd have to do differences in law enforcement costs for different demographic groups.
You'd have to bring everything into it.
And I don't know if it would be a positive number or negative by the time you're done with an actual honest analysis.
If somebody actually did calculate reparations honestly, would you believe it?
Whatever number they came up with?
No.
Because I just got done telling you that all data that matters is fake.
So whoever does the calculating for reparations, it's going to come up with a fake number.
So if it's somebody who's pro-reparations, they'll just ignore a whole bunch of things and come up with a number that says, yo, that's a lot of money.
If it's somebody who's biased against reparations, Such as me.
If I calculated, it would show that it's already been paid three times.
So there's no such thing as the true number, and there's no such thing as data for anything important that's real.
This is no exception.
But certainly I would have included 50 years of discrimination against white males.
I mean, that's pretty expensive.
And along those lines, Fox News is reporting that there's an Illinois university being sued because the professor says he was fired for objecting to race-based hiring, University of Illinois in Chicago.
So Professor Stephen Kleinschmidt, he said he wasn't buying into being a racist.
He probably just thought he wanted to be a professor.
And then they said, but you're also...
You know, can you be a racist?
And then he said, how about no?
How about no?
I won't be a racist with you.
And that was the lawsuit.
I think he might win.
Trump says reciprocal tariffs are coming out today.
I guess that means that everybody who's tariffing us for anything is going to get the same back.
I don't know how any of this is going to work out.
But I do see it as a negotiating tactic.
And so far, Trump's shown that he can navigate these negotiating tactics.
All right.
So we'll see.
Tulsi Gabbard got confirmed.
Is it true that McConnell voted no on Tulsi Gabbard?
That's a little suspicious, isn't it?
Just a little suspicious.
It makes you think he might be hiding something.
But the half-dead turtles are no.
RFK Jr., I guess the vote on him is a tie, and we're expecting J.D. Vance to go break the tie, and it should be confirmed today-ish.
I don't know if it's today.
All right.
So it looks like we'll get Tulsi and we'll get RFK Jr., and wow.
I just have to say wow.
Good job.
Good job getting both of them.
Mike Benz was on Joe Rogan's show.
Probably three hours of goodness there.
But one of the things that popped out was Mike Benz talking about how USAID and the intelligence communities have historically trained some musical artists, both in our country and in other countries, to be part of their, I guess, political narrative that the intelligence community wants to push.
Or to do it for statecraft reasons.
Now, some of the names he named, including working with Dua Lipa, so I guess there was something early in her career where she had some kind of USAID connection.
Pussy Riot in Russia, and he said possibly Taylor Swift.
There's no evidence that Taylor Swift was connected to any of this, but there is a video of somebody in the intelligence community.
Suggesting that she would be the type of person that they would want to influence.
There's no evidence that they have.
So you probably heard that the AP, Associated Press, they lost their, I think they lost their White House press access because they refused to call the Gulf of America the Gulf of America.
They're sticking with the old way, Gulf of Mexico.
And I didn't really understand why.
Like, why would they be the one entity that does that?
Well, their argument is that they're an international news entity, and if the other countries around the world don't know what the Gulf of America is, they can't refer to it that way because, you know, it would be against their style guide.
So they have a style guide that they'll, I guess, they'll use whatever is most internationally recognized.
That also means that they're not doing America first.
America first would be use America's names for stuff and let the other countries work it out.
I mean, you could always put it in parentheses.
It used to be called the Gulf of Mexico.
So it's not the worst defense in the world, but it does feel like they're not quite on Team America here.
So Trump's letting them know, I guess.
Here's a story.
I hope there's more context to this one, because if it's exactly what it looks like, it's pretty bad.
So apparently Reuters, which does a lot more than news stuff, according to the Muse account I was reading, that Doge found a document that actually says that a part of Reuters was being paid a lot of money.
For doing what is actually listed on the invoice.
This is actually on the invoice.
Large-scale social deception.
What?
Is that real?
Did our government pay Reuters to implement a large-scale social deception?
Now, before I say that that's true, it's been reported.
But before I say it's true, I'd kind of want to hear what Reuters said about it, which I haven't seen yet.
Do you think Reuters is going to say something like, no, no, no, we were supposed to guard against, so we were working against large-scale social deception.
It's just listed that way on the invoice.
So now we're against large-scale deception.
We're trying to end it.
Do you think that's possible?
You know, it wouldn't be too weird if...
Something on an invoice was ambiguous.
But it would really be weird to me if they put in direct words, which are on the invoice, large-scale social deception.
I'm going to put a pin in that one and wait for the other side of the story.
But it's what it looks like on the surface.
Well, Trump is calling out the Politico and the New York Times for accepting some...
Millions of dollars, I guess, each from USAID. And Trump asks, what's that for?
Like, why is the government paying you?
Are they paying you to do fake news?
Are they paying you to get good stories about themselves?
And he wants to claw back.
So again, we don't know why these entities were receiving money, but it all looks sketchy.
So I do like...
That Trump is going to treat it like it's sketchy?
And, you know, go after it?
I feel like Trump can sniff out corruption and fraud faster than the average person.
Because he's really good at knowing what bullshit looks like.
And he can just recognize it anywhere.
So, he's probably seen some bullshit there.
Now, according to...
This is incredible.
So, Lee Zeldin...
Did a video in which he's claiming that they've discovered a staggering $20 billion that the Biden regime, they call it, laundered to NGOs.
So what it sounds like is there was a video, I think it was Project Veritas, at an undercover video in which the Democrats and the EPA were saying, oh yeah, we're throwing the gold bars off the Titanic.
What they meant was, we're trying to spend money as quickly as possible before Trump finds out what's going on.
And so they parked $20 billion in some kind of a financial institution so they could get it out of the door.
And then once it's out the door, it could be allocated to their evil ways, I guess.
But they wanted to, like, pretend it was already gone.
So they did some kind of intermediary little trick to make it look like it was already gone and couldn't be clawed back.
But it might get clawed back.
We'll find out.
Now, if this is all true, this would be an example of a staggering amount of corruption.
Is it illegal?
I don't know.
I don't know what law specifically it breaks, but it's certainly corrupt.
Anyway, apparently our government is planning to sell hundreds of federal government buildings, according to Wired.
Now, I don't think that's going to settle the budget or anything, but there are 500 or more buildings that don't seem to have a use.
500 federal buildings?
That are sort of empty or not being utilized in any great way.
500. Over 500. That's just shocking.
So, yeah, let's close those buildings.
All right, here's the most troubling story of the day, according to me.
According to the New York Post, the House GOP, they've got a budget plan they've put together for Trump.
They're looking for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
Now, that would be over some number of years.
$4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
But, so far you're saying, hmm, I like that.
But the budget cuts would be more like $2 trillion.
So, again, there may be some confusion about what time window you're looking at.
Some might be what's happening this year, and some might be...
A 10-year kind of number.
So you have to be careful if it's a one-year or a 10-year number.
But is there a problem?
How in the world is Trump going to get away with increasing our public debt by $2 trillion, which is what it would be?
Now, I get that I like tax cuts, and I get that I like budget cuts.
But if your tax cuts are tremendously bigger than your budget cuts, you're making the deficit worse by trillions.
Now, depending on the time span we're looking at, it could be that the $2 trillion that's going to be added to the budget, maybe it's spread over several years, and if you keep cutting the budget during those years, you might get to a much better situation than it looks like.
In a direct line calculation.
So, yeah, I don't know if the tariffs are going to, I don't think the tariffs are going to make up the difference.
But maybe.
But let me tell you, as a numbers person, somebody who's, you know, my early career before any of this was the finance guy.
In two big corporations, not the finance guy, but a finance guy.
And I was always working with, you know, big projections and numbers and what's going to happen in 10 years, more like five years.
But I don't see how this works.
To me, it's been looking for a while, like the amount that Trump wants to add to the budget because they want to add $300 billion a year for border security and national defense.
No, I understand that.
The border security especially.
But you're going to add that expense, and then you're going to cut taxes, and the amount that Doge can cut out won't be anywhere near the amount that we lost in tax revenue.
So it's not like this is going to goose the economy enough.
So let me just say it directly.
As far as I can tell, the House GOP, is not on the same page with Doge.
I don't think they're on the same page.
I think Elon Musk needs to tell us if this budget goes through and if Doge does an amazing job and gets rid of one or two trillion dollars in expenses, do we fix our problem?
Or do we just make it worse by voting in a bunch of expensive things?
I don't feel like we have a plan.
It looks to me like there's two separate tracks, and one destroys the other one.
So Doge is a great track, if nothing else changed.
But if you add, why don't we wildly cut taxes and add expenses, at the same time as Doge, and the things you're cutting and adding far exceed the amount of budget reductions?
Somebody needs to explain to us, from the Trump administration, how the fuck this works.
Because I'm getting a little mad about it.
I mean, maybe the public doesn't follow these things closely enough to know that this can't work.
They're basically presenting us a fucking doom scenario in which we all die for sure.
Can you give me any hope?
Because this budget just tells me we're going to let you all die.
That's the budget.
The budget is you're all fucking dead.
Because the whole reason that Doge exists is because our budget is out of control.
Our debt is out of control.
So if you're going to give us another fucking plan that says, oh, you're going to be dead in a few years, fuck you.
And that's for the Trump administration.
Fuck you.
Because that's not what we signed up for.
We signed up for less debt.
Give us fucking less debt.
However you have to do it.
Whatever you need to do.
Give us fucking less debt.
Because this looks like you've planned to kill us.
You've planned to fucking kill us.
That's what the news is telling me.
Now, if I'm reading it wrong, and I'm doing the numbers wrong, I would love to be corrected.
But it doesn't look like it.
It looks like you planned to kill us.
And we didn't fight this hard to get a Republican administration so the Republican administration can fucking kill us.
Figure it out.
Fucking figure it out.
Don't do this.
I am so out if they don't balance the budget or make a good try.
It's got to be at least a good try.
We're not seeing anything that looks like a good try.
We're looking like...
It looks like they're screwing Doge.
It looks like they're screwing Musk by giving him a no-win situation.
Not cool.
Not cool.
Anyway, I would love to know that my rant was completely embarrassing and shameful and that I'm just getting the numbers wrong.
But I don't think I am.
So we need some answers.
According to Brett Adcock, I can't believe there's a guy who owns the figure robot company.
These are humanoid-looking robots.
They don't have genitalia, but the founder of the company is named Adcock.
I mean, come on.
Humanoid robots with no genitalia made by somebody called Adcock.
Somebody's going to add a cock.
Maybe it's aftermarket, but anyway, so what Adcock says, he says, quote, in our lifetime, you will see more humanoid robots than humans when you're out and about.
Trying to resist.
Trying to resist.
I wake up every morning trying to resist making any reference to Skynet.
No, only NPCs say Skynet when you say the robots will outnumber the humans.
Don't do it, Scott.
Don't do it.
Try to resist.
Don't say Skynet or else you're an NPC. Skynet.
Skynet.
Skynet.
I couldn't resist.
I'm sorry I'm weak.
I'm weak.
I don't have much else to say about that story except stop making me think of Skynet.
Because as soon as I read this, that there will be more robots out and about than humans, my first question is, is that because we made more robots?
That'd be the best case scenario.
Or are there just fewer humans?
There are a couple different ways you can get there.
Well, how can there be fewer humans?
Well, here's one way, even without Skynet.
Turns out, according to the conversation, Anne May Duane is writing, that teenagers are using AI companions, and they're saying it's easier than seeing humans.
AI companions.
So teenagers are falling in love with chatbots.
Well, who was it who told you 20 years ago That when the AI got good enough, that people would prefer the AI. I did.
Yeah, I told you that people would prefer it.
But I'll be more specific.
Here's my calculation.
I believe the top 10% of attractive people will have options of being with the other attractive people.
But the bottom 90% of attractive people, which...
I'm certainly in the bottom 90%.
But the bottom 90% are going to just prefer AI because the AI will not disappoint them.
We really do, no joke, have a situation that we're not quite ready for.
I don't even know if it's bad.
I mean, if the bottom 90% are happier, well, okay.
Maybe that is a good solution.
But, no, I think we're already at a point where only the top 10% are likely to reproduce, and everybody else is just going to be robotting up.
That's what I think.
So, speaking of AI, Thomson Reuters won their first major AI copyright case, according to Wired.
So, I guess they found that there was some specific AI company.
What is it?
Not one of the big ones.
It doesn't matter.
A smaller AI company you've never heard of.
Apparently, there's evidence that they may have trained their model using some proprietary stuff from Thomson Reuters.
And it looks like the judge ruled in Thomson Reuters' favor.
Said that the AI company's copyright, or no, their copyright was indeed infringed.
Oh, it's by Ross Intelligence.
Ross Intelligence, that's the name of the AI company.
So it was specifically for legal stuff.
I guess that's what the AI was.
Now, remember I warned you that if you're worried about AI suddenly taking over or anything, AI is going to have a tough path through all the lawsuits because everybody who's not getting rich from AI is going to be trying to sue it to stop it.
And although it looks like this case was kind of clean, that they could more easily prove that somebody trained on their materials without permission, I feel like all the general AIs are just going to get sued and sued and sued until it's tough to do business.
So I think that's what's going to slow them down, lawsuits.
Well, meanwhile, Ukraine is...
Going the obvious way.
How many of you already knew how to end the war in Ukraine?
For years.
If I had asked you, hey, stranger, what would you do to end the war in Ukraine?
Almost everybody would say, well, Zelensky is going to need to get flexible about losing some land.
Russia is probably going to keep what they've already gotten.
And probably the only way the war ends is if Ukraine makes some kind of commitment not to join NATO. Right?
You and I could have done that.
And it looks like that's exactly what's going to happen, is that there will be a land for peace deal, probably.
We don't know any details yet, so we're just speculating still.
And, of course, there's no way the NATO thing can stick.
They're going to have to back off on that.
But, as you know, Scott Besant was sent over there, head of the Treasury, to work on a deal where America would benefit from the mineral resources of Ukraine and sort of pay it back.
But my understanding is, just before I went live today, I believe that Ukraine backed out.
So I think they got talked down of giving up their minerals.
So I don't know who talked about it.
But as of now, they're negotiating and saying, nope, no minerals.
What do you think Trump's going to say to Ukraine before he starts negotiating with Putin?
Well, I don't know, but I think it's going to go something like this.
If we do have access to your minerals, then you can guarantee that there'll be some, you know, American interest in keeping Ukraine a sovereign country.
If we don't have access to your minerals, you're just an expense and you're on your own.
Well, that should loosen them up a little bit, don't you think?
Because I think that's exactly the situation.
We're either going to turn you into a profit center or you're on your own because we're not going to pay forever for something we don't need and don't want.
All right, looking at...
Yeah.
I think Zelensky is probably just negotiating.
But he doesn't have a strong hand, so we'll see how that goes.
This is what Trump said himself about his conversations.
I guess he had a big phone call with Putin.
I'll just read it, because I want to tell you what both of them are doing right.
I've decided that the three most persuasive leaders, in terms of technique, who actually understand persuasion, are Trump number one, best in the world, Putin number two.
You don't have to like Putin.
This is not a pro-Putin statement.
I'm just saying that his persuasion skills are way above average.
And then I'd say Bukele from El Salvador.
So I put him in the third spot.
But all of them are world-class persuaders, just completely indifferent.
They're in a level of their own.
If you look at Canada, Justin Trudeau, no skill at all.
No skill.
Great Britain, no skill at all.
Germany, no skill at all.
But America, Putin, and Bukele, lots of skill.
So I'll read what Trump said in his Truth Post, and we'll pick it apart for the persuasion lesson, okay?
So Trump said in the Truth Post, I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with Vladimir Putin of Russia.
Number one.
He's now essentially considering Putin a peer that he can work with, and they're already making success.
So this is a little bit of claiming success, but also a little bit of allocating success to both of them equally.
This is technique.
He didn't say, I got something, we're going to get something.
He said that the two of us working together looks like something productive is going to come out of it.
Perfect.
Perfect persuasion.
Then he says, we discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, energy, artificial intelligence, the power of the dollar, and various other subjects.
Perfect.
Because the way that you make an agreement that other people can't figure out how to do is you bring in other elements.
Now, we don't know that he's done that, but that would be the perfect technique.
Oh, well, if ending the war with Ukraine, you're not quite there yet?
How about if we throw in something else?
Something else you care about.
Or the other way, we can deny you something else you care about.
So you bring in these other variables that are big to just make it easier for the other side to say yes.
Good technique.
If you kept the conversation to the narrow topic of Ukraine versus Russia, it might not be enough.
Because, you know, both sides are a little stuck in their positions, or have been.
We'll see if they're still stuck.
So that's perfect, bringing in those other topics.
Then Trump says, we both reflected on the great history of our nations, in all capital letters, or capitalized, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering that Russia lost tens of millions of people, and we, likewise, lost so many.
Now, we didn't lose tens of millions, but here he is acknowledging that Russia is a great nation.
That is good.
That's good technique.
Because what is one of the things that Putin wants to get out of all of this business?
Putin wants to get out of it that Russia is a great nation.
That's not the only thing, of course.
They have legitimate interests.
But it does seem very important.
To both Putin and probably Russians, that they're treated with full respect.
And if you consider that, you know, Russia was big reason that, well, the biggest reason that Hitler was defeated, that is worth calling out.
You know, it's not like Stalin was a good guy or anything, but showing some respect for tremendous sacrifice, tremendous sacrifice on your I don't know, your partner, I'd say in this case.
I don't want to say adversary.
Good technique.
Perfect technique.
Now, he's made it easier for Putin to make a deal because he's given him one thing that he wants, which is we're going to treat you like a real leader of a real important country and you have our full respect.
It's just that there's some things we need and we're not going to back down.
That is really good.
Then he says, we each talked about the strengths of our respective nations and the great benefit that we'll someday have in working together.
There it is.
That's classic Trump.
When Trump talks to North Korea, he doesn't say, only, we will bomb you to the Stone Age if you do something bad.
What just happened?
Holy shit.
Trump just fired all federal prosecutors appointed by Biden?
Holy shit.
All of them?
I don't even know the implications of that.
Wow.
All right, we'll catch up with that after the show.
All right, but anyway, the thing that Trump does when he negotiates with another country, he doesn't just say, we're going to kill you if you don't do what we want.
He says, if we could work together, we could both get richer.
That's really strong.
And I don't believe anybody has said to Russia, That someday we could work together and it'll be a great benefit to both countries.
Now, I don't know specifically what he has in mind, but don't you think that if we were, let's say, if we could find a way not to be at each other's throats, that we could make some money and be safer?
I think so.
I think so.
So that's classic Trump and good technique.
And then Trump says, but first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the war with Russia-Ukraine.
Again, just perfect.
I mean, I might sound like just a fanboy at this point, but I'm showing you the actual technique.
I'm not just saying he's awesome.
I'm showing you the details.
This, again, is the right frame.
Trump has been right on framing this from the start.
Because if you stay in the frame of we want fewer people to die, there's a solution.
If you leave that frame into, oh, NATO, 10 years, oh, blah, blah, blah, degrade Russia's military, oh, Russia had a good reason, or didn't they have a good reason?
Nothing.
You got nothing.
But if you can agree to enter the frame of saving lives, then you've got something to work with.
So that's pure Trump, pure perfect.
And then he says, this is what Trump says, he says, President Putin even used my very strong campaign motto of common sense.
So apparently Putin appealed to common sense, knowing that he was echoing Trump's great unifying campaign idea.
So there's nothing more unifying than common sense, because nobody can disagree with it.
It's common sense.
So it's the ultimate high ground.
It very much worked domestically.
But here's an example of Putin being that good persuader.
So you notice that Putin seems to be on board with all of the framing that Trump has mentioned.
We don't know, but there was no sense of an objection.
So if he is, then he knows what a good frame looks like, and he's willing to enter it.
A good frame would be, can we include all these other interests?
That's a good frame.
Can we just figure out how to stop killing people?
That's a good frame.
So Putin knows that.
But he's also using a technique called mirroring.
So he's mirroring back Trump's favorite thing, common sense.
That is a strong technique, because it's also a sign of respect, and it makes you feel like the two of you don't have much distance.
It's almost like you're one person.
Because you're both having the same thought.
Yeah, common sense.
Let's do that common sense thing.
Very strong.
That's why Putin's good at this.
So, yeah.
And then that great benefit of working together.
It's a carrot, not just a stick.
It's all perfect.
So, will Trump get it done?
Don't know.
But if he does get it done, and he gets also a mineral deal, you know, a rare earth mineral deal with Zelensky, Trump might be able to do the thing that is so Trumpy.
Here's what I mean.
Ending the war would be a real major accomplishment, especially if he did it in a month.
It would be one of the great accomplishments of a president.
But, is that enough?
To just amazingly end a war that couldn't be ended by other people?
It's not enough.
Trump wants to turn Ukraine into a profit center.
Get our money back.
Now, I don't know if he's going to do that.
I don't know if that's going to work.
But if he ends the war in a month and turns Ukraine into a profit center, that's standing ovation.
That's just like make room on Mount Rushmore.
Like, nobody could do that.
Like, no president would even try to do that.
Nobody would even think that it was worth doing.
Nobody would even put, like, one minute of...
Energy into trying it.
But I think he could get it done.
So, that's why we voted for him.
Alright.
So, those are all the comments I have.
My prepared remarks.
If you're joining late.
A little bit of technical difficulty probably on my end.
So, we're only streaming today on...
And on Locals.
And I believe we'll be able to put the recorded version on YouTube and Rumble later.
All right.
I'm seeing something going by in the comments.
Zuby said in a post, we've collectively suffered through TDS for 10 we've collectively suffered through TDS for 10 years, and now we must also suffer through EDS, which would be, I guess, Elon Musk, instead of Trump derangement syndrome.
And Elon Musk says, what if I get EDS too?
That's funny.
RFK vote is 32 yay to 24 nay.
You shoveled two driveways while listening.
Good for you.
Hey, we're going to let the X people stay for a minute.
So this is the after show.
Normally, I would just do this for the subscribers of mine on Locals.
But since you were so nice on X to stay with us this long, we'll keep you live for another minute or so.
All right, usually I just look through the comments and see if there's anything to comment on that I missed.
Yeah, you are correct.
If it gets to a bigger audience, I'm happy with it.
All right.
I don't have much else to talk about, I guess.
So I'm going to say goodbye to the folks on X. Thanks for joining.
I hope your sound was good.
The microphone's not actually connected to my phone, but it's connected for the locals' people.
