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Thank you, Paul.
Oh.
I know you don't like it when I say thank you, but I always appreciate it.
It's not trivial.
So thank you.
Well, so this morning, Jeff Bezos sent a letter to his...
Washington Post team.
And this is just about one of the most interesting things I've seen in a long time.
So, as you know, the Washington Post gets accused of being sort of a leftist tool.
And then Bezos is not really super political.
You know, he's more about just making stuff work.
So here's what he wrote to his team, and then he's posting it so we can see it too.
And I thought I would read it, because it's the sort of thing, if you paraphrase it, you're not going to get it right.
Because there's some nuance here.
So let me just read it.
Jeff Bezos, he says, I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning.
I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
Now, the opinion pages are where you get the real bias stuff.
He says, we're going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets.
Good so far.
We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
So if there's anybody who is opposed to personal liberty or free markets, they're just not going to have an opinion in the Washington Post.
Okay.
He goes, there was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views.
Today, the internet does that job.
So he's basically saying, we're not going to try to cover all views.
And he says, here's the fun part.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so.
Our country did not get here by being typical.
And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else.
Freedom is ethical.
It minimizes coercion and practical.
It drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
All true.
And then just listen to this.
He said, I offered David Shipley, so I guess he is the editor of the opinion page.
He goes, I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter.
I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't, quote, hell yes, then it had to be no.
After careful consideration, David decided to step away.
He didn't like this new editorial direction.
And he said, this is a significant shift.
It won't be easy, and it will require 100% commitment.
I respect this decision.
We'll be searching for a new opinion editor to own this new direction.
Oh, my God.
I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America.
I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas.
Yup, they are underserved in the news and opinion stuff.
I'm excited for us together.
Blah, blah, blah.
Jeff.
Now, does that feel like a big deal to you?
Because it kind of does to me.
I mean, you know, Bezos' voice is, you know, bigger than most people's.
That doesn't mean that the Washington Post is completely reformed, but wow, I've got this weird tickle on my nose.
Ever have a nose tickle?
What's up with that?
Just tickles.
All right.
Did you know that the legal age of marriage in China is 22 for men?
In China, you have to be 22 before you can get married, and 20 for women.
How sexist.
But now one of their political leaders, a member of the National Committee, the CPPCC, is trying to put a proposal together that would lower it to 18 because they're having a childbirth problem.
And does that surprise you?
How many of you knew that you couldn't get married in China until you're 22 if you're a guy?
So that's one small thing they can do.
Apparently China has lost population for three years in a row, so it's pretty dire.
Now, I once talked about a different problem that China has with marriage.
And I don't know if I have this right, but it's something like this.
People are authorized to work in the place they live.
So if you wanted to fall in love with somebody who lived in a different city but wasn't too far away, you kind of can't, in any practical way, end up living in the same place and married.
Because you're both only authorized to work in your area.
So if you go to the other area, one of you can't work.
And since the young people kind of both need to work in China, it just makes it...
Basically, economically impossible unless you meet somebody who's your neighbor.
So, China does a lot of things wrong in terms of promoting population, but it looks like they may be trying hard to fix that.
According to Breitbart News, Neil Monroe, there's a shocking poll by Harvard Harris that says that 75% of Democrats 75% say Joe Biden's migration flood was an accident.
Do you ever just feel sorry for Democrats that they haven't heard any true news in years?
Can you imagine what that would be like?
They're living this, you know, and there's fake news on both sides, so it's not completely limited to one side.
But imagine thinking, how could he even have this opinion?
That Joe Biden's migration flood was accidental.
It was the most planned and executed and all hands on deck.
Every single executive order, every single decision, every single everything, every bit of it was to open the border.
And it's the most, probably one of the most well-documented facts in American history.
And 75% of Democrats are like, what?
I never heard of that.
That can't be true.
I think maybe it's just hard for them to understand what just happened.
Uh-oh.
Looks like I'm being...
Create an app to fly in there.
Okay.
Oh, Elon Musk is mocking.
I think he's mocking my post where I was posting about the 75% of Democrats not knowing it.
Anyway, remember I always warn you, wait until you find out about climate models.
Now, most of my viewers are a little skeptical of climate change, or at least the models.
I don't know if the climate is changing.
I don't trust the models.
And in the context of learning that every part of America is corrupt, just all of it, the judges, we'll talk about this, but the judges, the media is corrupt because the Democrats didn't even know that the border was open intentionally.
So the news is broken.
The science is broken in five different ways.
Healthcare is rigged.
The FDA is...
Got this revolving door, or maybe it's a one-way trip, to the big pharma.
And every time we learn about anything, from NGOs to government funding to whose spouse is collecting money while the other spouse is voting for it, everything is corrupt.
Just from finance to healthcare to science and everything.
And yet we still wake up in the morning and 80% of the country goes, well, thank goodness the climate models are real.
There really isn't the slightest chance they're real.
If you've lived in the real world for five minutes or more, everything about this just screams of all the things you should not believe.
The climate model should be right at the top.
And you don't even have to be an expert.
Let me give you a couple of stories.
You may have heard these, but these are criticisms of the climate models.
So there's a study, let's see, Climate Change Dispatch is writing about this, Kenneth Richards.
So there's this new study.
It's actually 2024, but it's not that early into 2025 yet.
So it's a new-ish study.
It says satellite data shows that ocean evaporation is declining, which is the opposite of what the models say.
Now, you might say to me, well, I mean, that's just one variable, right?
So maybe the ocean evaporation.
It was not such a big thing.
No, the ocean evaporation is like the biggest variable.
So because the models are iterative, in the beginning of the model, it might say CO2 will be this level and heat will be this level.
And then later, it'll say CO2 is increased and the heat is increased.
But also other variables, such as ice melting will be different in the future.
And one of the biggest ones is that the climate warming should cause an increase in ocean evaporation.
It's one of the most basic assumptions built into climate models.
It's maybe the biggest one.
And it was off by a factor of 10. It wasn't even in the right direction.
So, now remember, studies, no matter what the studies say, Maybe there's a 50% chance that any given study is right.
So even the skeptical ones could be wrong.
It's not like all the skeptical ones are correct and all the pro-climate change ones are wrong.
But just know that the biggest, and this is a published study, so it's in PNAS, and it seems to indicate very strongly based on What looked like a pretty extensive look at the data,
that the most basic prediction is not even close enough by a magnitude of more than 10. Now, if that's true, and of course, you know, studies could be wrong, but if that's true, then there's just no credibility to the climate models.
Here's another one.
This is being written by Charles Rotter in What's Up With That?
So, did you know that our temperature records have been homogenized?
So, the biggest, most important data set, I would think, for the climate models is what was the temperature before, and then what is the temperature now, on average?
You know, the Earth's total temperature.
But did you know that because there are a variety of Irregular things that happen with the data, they often need to make corrections, you know, adjustments.
They call it homogenizing the data so that if they can, they try to get everybody to be on the same page about how to tweak the data from what it actually says to maybe something closer to what they think it says.
So they're literally changing it from what the data says to what they think it should say.
That's called homogenizing the data.
And apparently this is not just one study.
Apparently it's just the data.
The data doesn't even exist.
Meaning that there's no actual agreed-upon data for the temperature.
There's agreed-upon data sets.
But everybody recognizes that there are enough known errors in the data, they have to make corrections.
But there are different ways you could correct it.
So they don't even agree on how would you correct it?
Should you correct it?
Now, here's my take.
Anybody who's lived in the real world and had a job where they had to measure anything, you already know that they can't measure the temperature of the Earth over decades.
Accurately enough to know that it's changing in what direction.
That's just not a thing.
It's nothing that the best scientists in the world, with huge funding and all good intentions, it's just way beyond human capability.
Way beyond.
It has nothing to do with science.
It has to do with the fact that it's a big, messy system.
And if you've got this big, messy system with...
Different temperatures, and you've got the heat island effect, and somebody's trying to correct for it, and some of the temperature measurement places, the paint on the enclosure has faded, which actually changes the temperature.
So they have to adjust for all kinds of things, like different equipment and heat island and paint and all that.
So no, they don't know the temperature of the Earth over...
That's not a thing.
It couldn't be a thing.
It's a ridiculous assumption.
So I'll say it again.
If you listen to me about the specifics of what I think is wrong with climate change, I could have all that wrong.
It's possible that both of these skeptical studies are off base.
But I don't need them.
I don't need them.
The only thing I need is that I've lived in the real world.
These are not doable things.
There's no such thing as a complicated climate model.
It's going to predict the future of the temperature, or even that you could measure the temperature in the whole Earth and get all the warm spots.
Really check it out.
These are not real things.
So just wait till you find out.
Wait till you find out.
Because I think it'll happen in your lifetime.
There will be a day when the news collectively says, all right, we've got to admit, it was never real.
That's definitely common.
Because everything else is not real.
Well, here's a non-surprise.
The Obama-nominated judge, Gateway Pundit's writing about this, Ben Q, who blocked Trump's ICE raids, is married to a far-left open borders activist, funded by George Soros.
Now...
It seems that, and Elon Musk pointed this out, he said the other day, it's always the spouse.
So we also have this problem where members of Congress will vote for funding for, let's say, an NGO, and then you find out that one of their spouses is actually on the NGO and making a lot of money, or is consulting for it, or is attached to it somehow.
So here's what I think is interesting.
When the founders of the country developed the Constitution, They probably never contemplated a situation where both the husband and the wife would have high-end jobs because that wasn't a thing.
You know, the guy had a job and the wife did wife stuff and you never had to worry about this.
So for probably, I don't know, the first hundred years, there was no risk of this whatsoever because the spouse was never really in a position to make any...
You know, kind of sketchy money.
But now you have all these high-powered couples.
And if you have a high-powered couple, you just so easily can have one of them in charge of funding things and the other one in charge of spending the money from it.
So, you know, the judges are just part of it.
But also the whole NGO structure.
There's a whole lot of spouse stuff going on.
We actually need some kind of either legislation to at least reveal these connections or a change to the Constitution.
But just think about this.
The Constitution was created before this was even a contemplated risk because you didn't have two high-powered spouses.
It just wasn't a thing.
Now, to me, that's really fascinating.
Anyway, so somehow we've got to fix that.
Maybe it's just sunlight.
Maybe you can't make it illegal, per se, but you could know if it's happening.
That would help a lot.
Anyway, so in response to that, there's a, according to the National Pulse, there's a new bill, Representative Daryl Issa, Republican, California.
Is it Issa or Issa?
Issa, I think.
He's introducing a bill aimed at limiting the reach of injunctions issued by federal judges.
One of the things that Elon Musk said a few times is that if any federal judge anywhere can stop anything that's happening anywhere else, you don't really have a real system.
I mean, you don't have any kind of democratic republic because all it takes is one corrupt judge.
Corrupt, I would say.
I'm using that not in just a legal sense, but corrupt in the sense that they're political as opposed to following the law.
And how hard would it be to find one political judge who would give you anything you want, especially if you can reward them through their spouse?
Apparently, it's really easy.
You can always find a Soros judge somewhere who is willing to do anything.
So if you can stop the elected people by having one judge anywhere decide that the whole country has to do what they say, you don't really have a workable system.
So I don't know the details of this, but Daryl Issa's bill is trying to address that, I believe.
This gets a little over my pay grade to know the ins and outs of this legally, but that would be great.
So I like the fact that it's being addressed.
I don't know if that's the exact answer to it.
And I also have to ask this question.
How many corrupt judges would you have to have in your system before you would even think it's necessary to have new legislation to stop them from doing this thing?
It kind of means the whole judge system is infested with weasels.
It can't be there's two or three in the country, because that'd be a different problem.
But apparently there's just all kinds of weasels who got into these positions and can stop the entire country from functioning.
So yeah, we've got to stop that.
Let's stop that.
Christy Noem found, I guess, some of the leakers who have been tipping off the illegal migrants that the ICE raid was coming.
And they've already been spotted and identified and already been fired.
Now, can you imagine that?
Imagine working for the Homeland Security and actually tipping off the subject of the raids, which puts the people doing the raids in totally lethal danger.
It's almost unbelievable.
That it could even exist.
And it doesn't even seem like firing is strong enough.
Shouldn't jail be the right answer?
Like, I don't know if there's a specific law that was violated, but if you're thwarting the law of the United States and in the process putting real people in real danger, like serious, serious danger, like you're going to be killed kind of danger, that's a lot bigger than just getting fired.
I just hope there's something bigger than that that they can do.
Now, one of the ways that, I guess, Kristi Noem and company are spotting these people is they're using a polygraph and also searching internal communications.
And I guess the other thing I would ask is, if you were such a weasel that you were going to leak that kind of dangerous information, would you put it in an email?
And the funny thing is, you might.
Yep, yeah, you might.
Or at least some indications that would tip off who to do the polygraph on.
Now, how many of you know that polygraphs don't work?
But they do work.
So polygraphs are interesting from a persuasion perspective because the reason they're not accepted in court is that they're not reliable.
And yet they're used in a very widespread way.
Government and other organizations to find leakers and find traders and stuff like that.
So how can it be true at the same time that it's not reliable enough for any court in the United States?
There's not a single court in the United States that would accept a polygraph.
And yet, it's a useful tool.
How can both of those be true?
And the answer is that it's more about the polygraph operator.
So the polygraph operator...
Creates this, I'll call it an illusion, that the polygraph does work.
And then the way they ask the questions and the way they react to the answers will spook the subject such that they somewhat accidentally spill the goods.
So you can detect that people are trying to beat the system or they're too nervous to be in it or their behavior is a little weird, and then you could call it out.
Even if it's not there, you could call it out.
So one of the things you could do is say, you know, did you do this bad thing?
And then the answer comes on the polygraph, and only the polygraph operator sees the answer.
So if the polygraph operator sees there's no indication of a lie, but they think this might be a lie, and again, remember, the polygraph is not accurate enough to detect all lies.
So the operator can say, hmm.
I'm going to ask that question again.
Imagine if you were lying and the operator, without telling you what they saw, they just look at the result because it's in real time.
It's happening while they're there.
And the operator just looks at it and goes, huh.
Let me ask that a different way.
Basically, you're saying you've been busted.
And that's when I think people crack.
And they're like, oh, no, I didn't mean that I didn't do it.
I mean that I didn't do that, or I didn't do it that day.
And then it just all falls apart.
So if you put them in a position where it looks like you know they're lying, they're going to try to cover the lie, change their answer a little bit so it's not a lie, and they're going to start panicking a little bit.
And then you can spot a liar.
So here's what you need to know about polygraph.
It's mostly about the operator and how they influence the process.
It's not so much the machine, but the machine is part of it.
And it can identify some lies.
So it's not like it never works.
It does work sometimes.
You just don't know when.
Well, Texas Governor Abbott, according to Fox News, Peter Pinedo is reporting.
Apparently there's this place called Colony Ridge that's Outside of Houston, I think.
And it's got so many migrants living there that it's practically Spanish language and the cartels have set up a base.
And there's just a lot of, almost like they've captured territory.
Not quite.
But very similar to cartels holding territory.
And what's good is that Homeland Security and Texas have been Identifying this, and there are other places like this, where there's a big concentration of migrants, they have a lot in common, let's say Spanish language, and cartels.
So, I don't know if we fully understand how close we were to being just conquered by the cartels.
Because they don't need to have much of a bite into your country before they can run the whole thing.
Because remember...
They can scare people from running from office.
They can illegally fund people they want to be in office.
They can kill people they don't like.
They can threaten.
They do know how to take over places.
And if you simply get too many of them in one place, they don't assimilate.
They're more likely to say, well, we're sort of like our own country here, and start expressing their own desires that way.
Whether or not migrants are the biggest problem in the world or just a boon to our economy and helping us do things that we weren't getting done, it's all about the number.
If it's a, I don't want to say small, but if it's a smaller number, everything works better.
Oh, we got some extra workers and they assimilated.
But if you get a whole bunch of people kind of soon and they cluster in one place, Then you've got a problem because they don't even need to learn the language.
And next thing you know, the cartels are in charge and expanding their reach because they're getting money from the population and they can hide within it.
So yeah, we were, and maybe it's too late, but we're definitely on the cusp of a complete cartel takeover.
I don't think we'll ever understand how close it was that if Trump had lost, I think we would just be owned by the cartels in another four or five years, or at least some important parts of the country.
So Trump introduced this idea of a gold card, he calls it.
So if you're a non-American citizen, but you're rich, you can pay $5 million and get this gold card that's going to give green card-like privileges and a path to American citizenship.
It would only be for wealthy people who would be coming here and creating investments and jobs.
So they'd have to be additive to the country.
It can't be just because they want to.
But then Trump said something that only Trump could say.
And if anyone else in the world had said what I'm going to tell you he said, you could know that the whole world would blow up.
It would be the biggest story in the country.
But because Trump has worn us all down by doing so many things and also saying so many things, you just don't have the time to go after every one of them.
But this is just, this is only Trump could say this.
So when he was introducing this gold card idea, he was asked if this would apply to Russian oligarchs.
You know, if you're a Russian oligarch, can you just apply for this and become an American citizen?
Here's what Trump says.
And only he can say this.
He goes, yeah, possibly.
Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs.
They're very nice people.
Name one other person on the whole planet who could have said that sentence.
Yeah, possibly.
Some of those Russian oligarchs are very nice people.
Now, I'm not even disputing whether or not there are any nice oligarchs.
The only thing funny is he's the only person in the world who could have said that.
And you'll totally get away with it.
Now, of course, there'll be the usual amount of, oh, he's so pro-Russian.
He's so pro-Russian that he loves the oligarchs.
I think you have to see that he's in a negotiation with Russia, and the oligarchs probably do have a little bit of influence over the boss.
And if he happens to be saying some nice things about the oligarchs and some nice things about Putin and some nice things about Russia, it should only be understood in the context of negotiating.
So you can be tough as long as you're respectful.
So he's being tough and respectful at the same time.
It's the perfect combination.
But again, he's the only person who can do that.
Nobody else can even get away with that.
Now, there's some risk that maybe some spies would buy their way into the country, but I feel like the spies could get in a lot easier.
Like, they don't really need to pay $5 million for anything.
There's probably plenty of spies.
If you're thinking about, somebody mentioned that you would only have to get 7 million people.
And it would pay off our entire $35 trillion debt.
But I asked AI, how many people who are not in the United States have at least $20 million net worth?
Because that would be, you know, the population of people might be willing to spend $5 million to be an American citizen.
And even if you had $20 million, $5 million is, you know, that's a big price for, you know.
For the one drink minimum to enter the United States.
So there are not many people, but I would estimate, and ChatGPT didn't know exactly what that number was, but they're not 7 million.
It might be 20,000 in that range of people who had enough money and are not Americans.
But at 20,000, how many really need to be American citizens and care enough to even bother trying?
So I'm guessing the total population of people would be in the hundreds.
And even that wouldn't be right away.
So it's a fairly small thing.
Fairly small.
But what I like about it the most is that it's part of poaching the best people from other countries.
Now, I know there's some MAGA people who say, under no circumstances do I want to bring in more people from another country, and I don't care how much they're going to add or you think they're going to add.
No people from other countries.
That conversation is worth having if you want to have it.
In my opinion, poaching, and I guess I agree with Trump on this, poaching the best people from other countries is just sort of always a good idea.
I just think that works every time.
Because the best people from other countries, and maybe it's their best entrepreneurs, maybe it's just their rich people.
Because the rich people...
Can add a lot to wherever they live.
You know, they hire a lot of people, they start businesses, they invest.
So I appreciate the people who say, let's just make it a zero, because otherwise, you know, it's a slippery slope.
I get that.
But I'm not on that page.
I think the economics suggests that if you're smart about it, it's really additive.
All right, this is funny.
I think all the news is funny today.
Did anybody notice that yet?
All the news is sort of really interesting, but also kind of funny because of how stupid things are.
But here's my favorite one.
Do you remember James Carville?
He had lots of advice for the Democrats and nobody was listening.
And then his latest play, this is his actual advice, is that the Democrats just have to do nothing and wait for Trump to become less popular.
That's one of their smartest advisors.
One of the smartest advisors is telling Democrats their best play is to don't say anything or do anything and wait for Trump to become less popular.
How has that worked out so far?
Now, I think we all expect...
That Trump's popularity will take a little bit of a dip and might even be a substantial one.
And that he's doing a lot of things that could only pay off in the long run.
So history might like him a lot better than any poll of the moment.
But he's not even that low.
His popularity is looking pretty strong.
And when you look at the top policies, he just commands them.
I mean, he's well over, I guess, 60%.
Most of the important things.
And those are big numbers.
So it makes the Democrat strategy of doing nothing sound hilarious, but it's not just doing nothing.
So Hakeem Jeffries was on the Jake Tapper show, and Jake was giving him some pushback about...
I guess I'm pushed back about the viability of the Democrat Party because it just looks like it's falling apart.
And here's what Hakeem Jeffries said.
He simply lied about the Republicans' plan to cut Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare.
Now, I'll need a fact check.
Is it true that that's a lie?
Because I don't know.
You know, the right say, there's no cuts in those things.
And the left says, oh yeah, he's making deep cuts in those things.
So I don't know which one's true.
But if I had to go by history, history suggests that if this were true, that the news would be saying it, not just the Democrat leaders.
Don't you think?
Because I haven't seen a news story that said the Republicans want to cut those things.
I've only seen the Democrat leader say it, which would suggest it's just their newest hoax.
So their newest hoax is that the Republicans are going to cut things that they're definitely not going to cut.
Now, I'll take a fact check on that if it turns out I'm wrong and there is some plan to cut those things.
And I'm not talking about waste, fraud, and abuse.
I think everybody would be okay with cutting that.
But the accusation is that they would just cut surfaces.
Of these well-loved things.
And maybe they would, but I'm not aware of that being a plan.
So he basically said that Trump's policies, this is what Hakeem Jeffries said to Tapper, he said that Trump's policies were, quote, deeply unpopular with the American people.
And then Tapper showed him...
The popularity of the Democratic Party compared to the popularity of the Republicans.
The Democrats are like 20% popularity, or approval, I guess.
And the Republicans are around 40%.
And the policies, as I just said, are just wildly popular.
Some of the most popular things in a bipartisan way you've ever seen in this country.
So it looks like the Democrats are not going to do nothing, like Carville suggests.
They're also going to add hoaxes.
So their hoaxes, which they hope will be supported by their fake news, is that Trump is doing unpopular things, exactly the opposite of all reality.
And even CNN called them out and showed the chart saying, yeah, popularity, you're not quite on point there on that popularity point.
The funny thing is that Hakeem Jeffries is one of their strongest players.
He's considered one of the good ones.
Like, you know, really knows what he's doing.
But the Democrat strategy of doing nothing and waiting for Trump to become less popular is just fall-down hilarious.
Because it really screams, we got nothing.
Let's just wait and see if the other side falls apart.
So it's like wishful thinking, fiction, fantasy, imagination.
Does that sound familiar?
As I've often said, the Democrat approach to everything is to literally imagine what could go wrong and make up hoaxes about what's going wrong at the moment.
So it's a completely imaginary world that they can sell to their base and the base will buy it because they bought it before.
Anyway, so that's a lot of giving up in that strategy.
I think it's hilarious.
So the House has passed a budget.
So I guess that means the Senate gets to play with it and might tweak it, but there's some chance that the Republicans will get a budget.
Thomas Massey did not vote for it.
Probably the only one, only Republican who didn't vote for it.
Because as he points out, even though it extends the five-year tax holiday, which means not raising taxes to Pre-Trumpian level from his first term, I guess.
It doesn't cut enough to reduce the deficit.
So, as Massey said, that even under the best-case assumptions, which never happen, and Massey is completely right about that, under the best-case assumptions, which never happen, they're going to increase the budget at $300 billion per year.
Now, I can't imagine That the discretionary spending is going to be nothing, right?
Because there's always a war.
There's always some damn thing.
So he voted against it.
And I'm on board with that.
I'm on board with that.
I like that he operates on principle.
He basically said you've got one job.
You know, don't increase the...
Man, it's getting loud out there.
Don't increase the...
Deficit, and then they increase the deficit.
Or at least they increased what would be the total debt.
So, we'll see what the Senate does.
This is a situation where I can't support the Republican approach.
They have one job.
Get the budget under control.
Now, it could be...
That as a doge does its work, because it's a little early in that process, it could be that there's a point in the future where we have the budget, but we don't have to spend it all.
Now, that would be amazing.
So maybe the budget says it's going to cost $300 billion.
Let's say Trump amazingly does not increase discretionary spending.
Discretionary spending means it wasn't in the budget.
But we're going to do it anyway by running up the debt.
I don't know.
Maybe there's a chance it all could work out.
But what I'd like to see is Elon Musk talking honestly about the budget and how it relates to Doge over time.
I think Elon's being quiet about this because I don't think he has anything supportive to say about this budget.
Now, I can't read minds.
So, you know, don't blame him.
This is just me.
I'm speculating that if a few days go by, and give me a fact check on this because I could be wrong about this, but if a few days go by and you don't see him weighing in, Elon Musk, and saying this is a good budget or this is a step in the right direction or if you add Doge to this, we'll be okay.
If he just is quiet about it, I would suspect that he's not a fan because he's not quiet about anything.
Trump signed some healthcare price transparency thing in executive order.
I guess we had this before, but Biden slow walked in or reversed it or paused it or something.
And it makes hospitals and other healthcare people disclose their actual prices so that people can shop based on price.
Now, that's free market.
If Jeff Bezos gets his way, And he gets the Washington Post to talk about personal freedoms and open markets, free markets.
We should see the Washington Post write something that says, there it is.
There's a step in the right direction.
Because you can't really have a free market if the sellers are allowed to hide their prices.
So, in yesterday's world, the Washington Post would have said, well, here's another overstep by the...
The White House, they've gone too far, didn't work before, won't work again.
You know, it would just be reflexive anti-Trump.
But if Bezos makes this change and he says we're going to write about free markets because we like America, he might have an opinion person who says, you know, this is just a good idea.
We don't know how well it'll work.
We don't know how fast.
But it couldn't possibly be wrong.
To have more information about your own prices.
Trump also signed an executive order to end the security clearances of members of a law firm called Covington& Burling if those members were helping Jack Smith in his, I'm going to call it lawfare, cases against Trump.
Now, those cases have been dropped.
Trump's removing the security clearance of anybody who worked there and helped Jack Smith.
Now, on one hand, this does sound a little revenge-y, and I'm not in favor of just pure revenge.
There have to be real bad behavior before I'm okay going after anybody for anything.
But this does seem like really bad behavior, and it does seem to me that all the people involved would have known That they're involved in something closer to lawfare than law.
They were all sophisticated operators.
They would clearly know what they were involved in.
If they had been somehow forced to do it, or they didn't know what was possibly going on, and they just fell into it somehow, well, maybe.
But I think they all knew exactly what they were doing.
And it wasn't cool.
So I'm in favor of this.
The Washington Times is reporting, and it's based on a whistleblower, so I don't assume this is true.
But, you know, use your own judgment, because I usually say if there's an anonymous whistleblower, that's not good enough.
And I want to keep that as standard for both sides.
But the allegation is that That the whistleblower personally knew, somebody who knew, that James Comey had authorized sort of an off-the-books honeypot operation in 2015 against the Trump administration.
Now, a honeypot means that you have, let's say, undercover FBI agents, and they're attractive women, usually.
It could be gay guys if they're trying to honeypot a gay guy.
So whatever they need to honeypot the right kind of person.
And they wouldn't necessarily be sleeping with anybody to honeypot them, but they might be flirting a little bit.
And maybe people would give up a little extra secrets because they're trying to impress the attractive honeypot.
So I don't know if this is true, but it's a...
Pretty explosive allegation that Comey might have done an off-the-books, and it would have been illegal, I guess, an off-the-books honeypot operation.
And that's without knowing there was any specific thing they were looking for.
They would have been just fishing for something to go after Trump for.
Very illegal sounding.
Now, when I hear about this, again, remember it's an anonymous whistleblower, so that's the lowest level of proof.
But what if it is true?
It just sort of reminds me that think about all the things we didn't know, and then time goes by, and then we, whoa, I didn't know that.
How many things do we not know that are, let's say, as bad as this allegation?
But are really happening or really happened.
Just think about what is the percentage of things we find out eventually versus the percentage of bad behavior, you know, criminal behavior, theft, etc.
that we just never find out.
Do you think we find 80% of the bad behavior eventually?
Or do you think it's closer to 1%?
Because I wonder.
I feel like it might be closer to 1% and that there might be something like A hundred times more problems than we've ever seen or identified.
That'll keep you up at night.
Well, Data Republican goes by that name on X. It was on NewsNation and Data Republican got doxed because I guess she's doing too good a job analyzing the data and finding sketchy stuff.
But she was on NewsNation and she said that There was one NGO that claimed to promote democracy.
And to do that, they received $17 million.
So the government gave them $17 million.
Or it came from some other entity that had been funded by the government, because you know how that works.
But they got $17 million.
And the only thing that they created with their $17 million was they made a terrible Muppet Show.
And they made these Muppet Show videos.
They had, you know, like 200 views.
So whatever that Muppet Show thing was, it doesn't look like it was ever even intended to be real.
It looks like just a thing they could say so they could get money.
The NGO was co-founded by Norm Eisen.
Remember I always tell you to look for the players, not the play.
If the only thing you know is what happened, you don't know anything.
You have to know who did it.
Once you know who did it, then the what happened always has a completely different context.
So let me just say this.
If this NGO had been founded by somebody you never heard of, just maybe somebody trying to make a buck, it wouldn't be a big deal.
But Norm Eisen is a name that comes up a lot.
And I don't want to get sued, so I'm not going to make some accusations because, you know, he's a lawyer.
It's dangerous territory.
But if you ever want to find out what's what, that would be a good name to do some searches on, to find out what he's been involved in, etc.
And I think you'd find that he's always in the middle of the worst behavior on the Democrat side.
There's a small group of people who are just always involved in whatever the worst thing is you can imagine.
And his name just pops up in so many stories.
And until you see that name, you're like, well, this could be just a, oh, oh, it's Norm Eisen.
So I'm not even going to tell you all the things he's accused of.
I'll let you research that yourself, and your jaw is going to drop, and your brains will fall out.
Anyway, $17 million for a puppet show.
So where'd the rest of the money go, says Data Republican.
Meanwhile, along the same lines, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, he's a Democrat, he backed legislation that would give millions of dollars to a non-profit called Ocean Conservancy.
Now that's fine, right?
Don't you like oceans to be conserved?
We all like that.
That's probably a really good NGO. See, I wonder if there's anything sketchy about it.
Oh, yeah, well, they were serviced by a consulting company.
So there was a consulting company that got paid millions of dollars for consulting for this NGO. But that's okay.
There's nothing wrong with that.
You know, it's very common to hire consultants for stuff.
See if there's anything else about it.
Wait, one of the consultants was...
Shelton Whitehouse's spouse.
So his spouse worked for the consulting company that made millions of dollars, and the senator voted to fund it.
Now, he wasn't the only one who voted for it, otherwise it wouldn't have been funded, so there must have been a lot of votes for it.
But you do have to ask yourself, why didn't he recuse himself?
And did he get his peers to vote for it?
Did he say, hey, I'll owe you a favor if you do this for me?
I don't know.
But because we don't know, it really shouldn't be acceptable that any of this happens.
And again, I go back to the founders of the country.
They never anticipated that there would be so many power couples where both of them would have high-end jobs and one of them could funnel money to the other one, which is basically paying yourself.
So, as Elon Musk said, it's always the spouse.
It's always the spouse.
That's how they launder money.
So, speaking of that, the New York Times and Washington Post and CBS, they're all talking about this story of how there are these bipartisan, and this is the important part, bipartisan town halls.
Where even the Republicans were saying, my goodness, we can't put up with this Trump and this Doge stuff.
And if you saw that reporting, and you said to yourself, wow, it's bipartisan.
Even the Republicans are turning against Trump.
Would you have known that these were fake?
That's right.
They were just organized by far-left entities, funded by all the wrong people.
They were fake.
So I guess Soros gives money to move on and something called Indivisible to stage fake opposition.
So that's the Washington Free Beacon is reporting on that.
Okay.
Now, here's what I've been telling you.
All large gatherings are fake.
I think all of them.
And then some of you said, but what about the Tea Party or whatever?
Now, I don't think the individuals are fake.
In this case, they might have been fake.
But often the individuals are sincere.
It's just that the thing never would have been organized, never would have been funded, and never would have been pulled off if it had been left to grassroots people to do it on their own.
It feels like there's always some shadowy Funding.
Or it just doesn't happen.
So this is more of that.
Shadowy funding.
Well, there's some explosive allegations about Swalwell.
Representative Swalwell, who I believe is my representative.
I lose track.
I think he's my representative in California.
And apparently he went to...
Here's the allegations.
We don't know the details yet.
But according to Nick Sorter, who's...
I don't know how to describe him.
Maybe independent journalist.
He's one of the people on X who's always breaking news.
So he goes to a restaurant with his wife.
It's like 10 o'clock at night and it's practically empty.
And then Swalwell comes staggering in or he got drunk as soon as he got there.
That was unclear.
But he got super drunk and he ended up at the table right next to him even though the whole restaurant was kind of empty.
Because he's drunk, he's talking very loudly.
And apparently Nick turned on his phone and recorded it.
And he was there with some...
Here's the allegation.
So I don't know yet.
I'd like to hear the recording myself.
But the allegation is that he was dining with lobbyists, I guess.
And he was getting really drunk and talking loudly about...
How to cheat on his wife and some just, you know, awful things.
Things you wouldn't say unless you were super drunk.
And I will go a little bit further.
If the allegations of how he acted are true, he is probably more than a guy who had a few drinks that one time.
My experience is that nobody acts like that if the allegations are true.
Again, I wasn't there.
But if the allegations are true, and we'll know pretty soon because there's a recording that's going to come out, that would suggest a drinking problem.
That doesn't suggest somebody had too many that one day.
It's strongly indicative of a deep problem.
We'll see.
But here's the funny thing.
So Swalwell posted.
Not about this topic, but separately he posted and he said, today I stood on the steps of the Capitol with my Democratic colleagues to say hell no to Trump's reckless budget.
And then he showed four photos that showed different angles of him and other Democrats standing on the steps of the Capitol.
And I saw that and I said, you know, look how easy it is to claim your accomplishments for the week.
Swalwell just did it.
There's one of his accomplishments.
He stood on some steps.
He did.
Yeah.
No, he really did.
He stood on some steps.
Other people stood on some steps, too.
He's not the only one, but he stood on some steps.
And that made a difference.
Now, I don't know who your representative is, but did your representative stand on any steps yesterday?
Probably not.
No.
But I'm lucky, because my representative stood on steps.
Good job there.
Well, there's a creepy story about people on some kind of message board, and it was CIA people, and there were kinks involved, and a bunch of colorful characters.
And since I don't do kink shaming, just people are people.
Let them be there.
I haven't been interested in the story, but apparently Tulsi Gabbard...
Has identified the people who were on that message board and already fired them.
So that's all I want to say about that.
I don't want to talk about the details because if it's not your kink, it's just the creepiest story in the world.
And if it is your kink, I don't want to hear about it.
I don't have a problem with anything you want to do, but I don't want to hear about it.
All right, here's my persuasion tip of the day.
Have you noticed that the Democrats are using chaos and saying, oh, there's a lot of chaos going on, Doge and Trump and chaos and chaos.
And you wonder why they use that one word?
Well, first of all, it's obviously a published talking point.
There is no way that that's happening organically.
This is yet again the Democrats listening to somebody who knows what they're doing, telling them what to say.
The reason they say chaos is because they don't have to prove it, and it's scary to seniors.
So senior citizens, the last thing they want is chaos.
They don't want a lot of change.
If they're comfortably retired, they can't really go back to work if something goes terribly wrong.
So chaos is the scariest thing.
If you're on a fixed income and retire, you don't want any chaos.
You're just barely making things meet.
So from a political persuasion perspective, it's clever.
And it looks like the work of a professional.
So when you hear it, just know that that's not a sincere opinion of the speaker.
It's just because somebody said this is a good word.
That's why they do it.
But let me give you some context about Doge and all the chaos.
So here are some of the things that the Democrats were saying about Doge.
The problem is not that they don't want to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse.
I mean, who would be in favor of those things?
So they're really in favor of the way it's being done.
The way it's being done.
And here's what they say.
You should use a scalpel, not a chainsaw.
They're cutting too much muscle.
People will suffer.
Employee morale is down.
There's not enough communication.
With the employees, there's conflict and the bureaucracy is fighting back and it's a mess and it's humiliating to some people and there's bullying, harassing.
Everyone except the people doing it know a better way to do it and things are not being thought through.
There's not enough empathy.
Have you heard all of those things?
So that's basically the Democrat approach.
Now, that sounds like a lot of chaos, right?
So one of the problems that I've always noted with the popular media is that they don't have real-world experience.
They have media experience, and that's a very special kind of business, so they probably know everything about their own industry, but they don't really know what's it like to work as some other big company that has other big processes.
So let me tell you how the real world works.
100% of the time, if you're trying to do big cuts or a big merger or a big reorganization, all of which are common, I've been through them.
I work for a bank that got taken over by another bank.
I think I've told you this story before, but it's relevant.
We were told, this is the communication we got as employees, we were told, don't worry about your job if you're good at it.
Because we're going to use a scalpel, not a chainsaw.
They didn't use those words, but that's what they communicated in essence.
So we're going to look at everybody individually.
And if you're a good employee, don't worry that there might be duplication in the company that's acquiring you, which normally would mean you'd get fired.
Rather, we want to keep all the good people.
So if you're good, don't worry.
You've got a job.
What do you think happened as soon as the deal closed?
They fired everyone in my department.
Now, I was the lucky one because they were discriminating against me for being white and male, so I just left.
So I wasn't fired, but only because I just quit.
Everyone else that I left behind, every one of them fired.
So were they lying when they said we're going to use a scalpel?
Yes, they were.
They were lying.
They didn't want people to revolt.
And they wanted you to feel comfortable.
So they did a really good job of communicating, except the communication was a lie.
Now, how do you think we felt?
Well, the employees who left behind.
Do you think they thought they were humiliated and bullied?
Do you think they thought it was chaos?
Do you think they thought the communication was poor?
Do you think they thought that there wasn't enough empathy being shown?
Do you think?
Yeah, it's all those things.
Everything that people are saying about Doge is 100% common to every large change in any large organization.
There's not a single thing that people say about Doge that isn't said about every organization that makes a big change that involves firing people.
No exceptions.
So, does the media know that?
I think they don't.
I think a lot of people in the media are not really experienced.
And when they say, ooh, the employees are reporting that morale is low and the communication is bad and that nobody knows what they're doing.
That's everything, all the time, every single time.
If you don't know that that's universal, you would think that there's chaos.
If you knew it's 100% universal, everybody's going to feel exactly this way, then you'd say, I guess that's the only way to get from here to there.
That's what I say.
It's the only way to get from here to there.
And yes, it's messy.
But there's no second way.
There is no second way.
It's always this messy, period.
Whether it works or doesn't work, it's always this messy.
All right.
So, chaos.
So meanwhile, Ukraine apparently has agreed to some kind of mineral deal with the United States, and Zelensky might even come to D.C. on Friday, possibly, to sign it.
I'm not sure the deal is done, because we've been surprised before.
But put this in context.
Trump has managed to get Ukraine, and now even Russia, through Putin, to both be competing.
To be business partners with the United States in major projects.
Just hold that in your head.
It was a month ago that the frame in Ukraine and Russia was, we're at war and we don't know how to stop.
Now that's still true, but there's always more than one way to look at things.
Trump has changed the frame to, I think you two should really compete to see who can be our best business partner.
Now, I'm not naive, so I know that anything that Putin says has to be taken with a, you know, it might be a trick.
His long-term objectives might be evil.
I get it.
I get it.
You can't trust Putin.
But the same would be true of Zelensky.
I get it.
I get it.
We can't trust him.
But just think about how the frame changed.
Who else could do that?
Who else could be entertaining gigantic mineral and aluminum offers from both of those countries who are at war at the same time?
It's almost impossible to even imagine that this is happening.
Now, that doesn't mean that the deals work and they're good deals and doesn't mean that we'll do any deals with Russia.
I don't know about that.
But the fact that Russia and Ukraine went from competing on the battlefield, which is still happening, to elevating it to competing in economics, And trying to be our good friend, you know, economically, is just mind-blowing.
I mean, only Trump could do that that quickly.
And a lot of it has to do with the fact that everybody calls him a dealmaker.
So if a dictator walks in, you say, oh, you're a dictator.
But if a dealmaker walks in, you say to yourself, oh, maybe I can make this work.
It's a completely different frame, and he brings it with him everywhere he goes.
So I asked Grok the following question.
In the last hundred years, has there ever been a case where an industrialized country went to war with another industrialized country when one of those countries was the biggest market for the other or the biggest supplier of natural resources?
Do you know what the answer was?
Once.
And it was when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
So prior to that, Japan was getting most of their oil from the United States.
So Japan was dependent on American oil and still attacked us.
So that's an exception, right?
Nope.
They attacked us after we cut off the oil.
So there is actually no example of any industrial country who ever attacked their biggest supplier or their biggest market.
Now, there are examples where they were doing business.
So there was business, but they weren't the biggest supplier or the biggest buyer.
So here's what I think is true.
And this is how I would see Trump's approach to war.
I think his approach, and again, I'm not a mind reader, but if I had to look at it in context, I would say this.
If you're doing a little bit of business with another country, the risk of war is, you know, the regular risk of war.
If you've got reasons to go to war, a little bit of business isn't going to stop you.
If you do a lot of business, it could go either way.
Isn't like, you know, you're depending completely on the other.
It's just a lot.
But if you get to the point where you're the biggest buyer or supplier to another country of something very important, let's say energy and food or something like that, then the odds of you going to war with each other might be close to zero because it just doesn't make sense.
Because wars are basically economics without the calculator.
As others have pointed out, the country with the best economy is usually going to win the war, if they have a proper military.
You know, Kuwait might be different.
But countries with proper economies can fund proper militaries, and that's usually the difference.
So, could it be that Trump's concept for peace...
You've got to force your most dangerous adversaries to do enough business with you that it just doesn't make sense to go to war.
I don't know.
I don't think any of us are smart enough to know when that works and when it doesn't and would it stop somebody like Putin and would it stop somebody like Hitler.
I don't know.
But I kind of like it better than permanent war.
It's like we've got to try something.
So I'm kind of tentatively supportive of that.
You know, I get the risks.
I fully understand the risks.
Well, here's some good news.
Joel Pollack is updating us in Breitbart that Lee Zeldin of the EPA is announcing that they finished the first part of the LA Fire Palisades Eaton Fire.
Of the hazardous material cleanup.
And that was expected that it might take 90 days or even up to a year.
And Trump basically said, no, everything's going to be faster.
Do everything faster.
But, you know, it's going to take up to a year.
No.
Do it faster.
And so Lee Zeldin got it done.
He got it done in 28 days.
They were shooting for 30. The smart people saying it was going to take 90 days to a year got it done in 28 days and was there in person to tell people.
Now, keep in mind, that's not enough to start rebuilding.
That's only the toxic, hazardous material.
So the EPA isn't doing the full cleanup.
They're just looking for things that are, you know, obviously this is toxic.
We're going to have to take care of this.
So things like, you know, batteries that caught on fire and that sort of thing.
But phase two, the debris removal, which you have to do before you can build.
The Army Corps of Engineers told Breitbart that it hopes the process could be finished within a year, which would be six months ahead of the original estimate of 18 months.
Now, this is a really good test of whether Trump can really use his magic to make even the state, in this case.
Well, the EPA would be his.
But can Trump really just make things work faster?
And I think the answer is probably yes.
Probably yes.
If he can cut the BS out and prioritize and make sure we know exactly what we want, those things do make a difference.
So it's still a horrible situation for all the fire survivors.
Who wants to wait another year?
At least it gives them hope.
So the difference between this could have been two to three years and now it might be a year-ish, that's a big difference mentally, financially, just in every way.
So I hope this is a good sign of what's ahead.
There's a new technology that's interesting.
It's being written about an interesting engineering.
Aman Tripathi.
And there's a new development, and I guess it's not theoretical, they've actually built this thing, where they can extract 14 liters of drinking water from even arid, dry air every day using only food scraps and solar power.
Now, the solar power part is important because normally you would need to plug it in and suck up a lot of power.
Suck water out of the air.
I have one of those, by the way.
I bought a unit just because I was curious.
So I'm making water out of the air right now.
Literally, I'm making water out of the air.
But it's plugged in.
So if you didn't need to plug it in, and then the real secret is that they can take any kind of food scrap.
It doesn't even need to be anything specific.
They can take any kind of food scrap, and the University of Texas has Austin researchers, Figure out how to turn the food scrap into a moisture attractor, I guess.
So it becomes the secret sauce within the machine that drags the water out of the air and converts it into clean water, even though it's food scraps.
That's just amazing.
But here's the mind-blowing one.
This next one will be a reminder that no matter how much you think things are going to stay the same, It only takes one smart person to change the whole freaking world.
Now, I don't know if this is one, but this is fun.
All right, listen to this story.
Now, the context is, you know that one of the biggest issues with China and Taiwan and AI is the cost and practicality of making chips.
So listen to this.
According to Cyrus Moulton at Northeastern Global News, there's a Northeastern professor who patented a NANU manufacturing process to slash chip production costs by 99%.
He built a printer to print your own chip.
You don't even have to be like a chip-making company.
It's a printer that can print your own chip.
We're right at the point where AI can design the chip for you, let's say a custom chip, and then you could print it just at home.
You could print your own chip.
And apparently it works.
It's not theoretical.
He already built it.
And it's 99% less cost.
Well, that would change just about everything.
That's incredible.
All right, ladies and gentlemen.
That's all I had to say today.
I'm going to say a few words to the local subscribers privately.
I hope you enjoyed the show, and I'll see you tomorrow, same time, same place, for more fun.
