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March 5, 2025 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:29:29
Episode 2769 CWSA 03/05/25

Find my Dilbert 2025 Calendar at: https://dilbert.com/God's Debris: The Complete Works, Amazon https://tinyurl.com/GodsDebrisCompleteWorksFind my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.comContent:Politics, Secretary Lutnick, Mexico Canada Tariffs, Canada Cancels Starlink, Elon Musk, President Trump, President Trump's Congress Speech, DJ Daniel Cancer Surviver, Speaker Mike Johnson, Democrat Theatre Kids, Trump Nicknames, Pocahontas Elizabeth Warren, Social Security Age Controversy, Ukraine Lasting Peace, President Zelensky, China Shipbuilding, David Sachs, Nicole Wallace, Elissa Slotkin, Green Charity $20B Funds, Suspicious Charity Naming, Jon Stewart Elon Interview, Ben Shapiro, Derek Chauvin Pardon Effort, Democrats Hive Mentality Video, Senator Cory Booker, President Trump's Talent Stack, Senator Chris Murphy, Chuck Todd's Biden Myth, Anti-Russia Cyber Report, RFK Jr., Harmful Food Additives, Hockey Stick Climate Graph, Michael Mann, Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.

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We're doing TV time now, where all the time is weird.
A little better.
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'd like to take your experience up two levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chelsea, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and it's going to happen right now.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
The universe has been reset.
Everything's good.
Of course, we'll talk about the president's speech.
But first, I was trying out Grok's voice mode today.
So I guess if you have the app, I think it's only on the app, the special app for Grok.
It's free, the voice mode.
So you can have conversations with it, but you can set it for what kind of voice you're getting back.
So you can set it for an assistant mode where it's, you know, just kind of friendly and helpful.
But it's got a sexy mode, and it's got romantic mode, and it's got argumentative mode.
And I'm trying to figure out how to make them all work at the same time so it feels like a wife.
All right, well, I'll let that just sit there for a while.
But it looks fun.
It's worth a try.
I don't know if it's happened yet, but Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who I'm liking a lot, by the way.
Have you heard Lutnick talk?
You know, there's some people that you just hear them talk and you say, are you really that smart?
You talk like a smart person.
Lutnick is one of those.
When he talks, I think, huh, I can see how you got rich.
Makes sense.
You're pretty smart.
Anyway, he's a...
He's saying that the tariffs on Mexico and Canada probably are going to be resolved, meaning that there'll be some kind of middle ground, meaning there's some kind of accommodation, meaning we'll figure out how to work with each other as soon as today.
Now, in theory, that should have been good for the stock markets, but we'll see.
There's a lot of roiling going on.
So, in theory, The tariffs, which were big, 25% on everything but energy, I think, they were really just to get some kind of little extra energy for an agreement, especially about stopping the fentanyl trade.
So one could imagine if Canada and or Mexico said, wait, wait, instead of these terrible tariffs, how about we do a little bit more?
Stopping that fentanyl.
And then that would be something you could negotiate with.
So in theory, we'll have some kind of accommodation there, but, you know, it might be optimistic to say it's going to happen today.
But Lotnik, I think, was warning the markets to not, you know, don't incorporate this as some kind of a permanent situation.
So that was exactly the right thing to do.
He might be off on how quickly they can resolve it, but...
Maybe not.
Maybe it's just one day.
It's possible.
Meanwhile, the Premier of Ontario in Canada has cancelled Elon Musk's Starlink.
I feel like companies keep punishing, or countries keep punishing themselves.
Well, we're going to cut off our own access to really inexpensive internet.
Take that.
All right.
Okay.
It's also funny to me that people think that it's obvious that Elon Musk has found some way to monetize being involved, this involved in the Trump administration.
If I can give you any business advice at all, it goes like this.
Associating yourself with Trump.
Pretty much guarantees you lose half of your market.
Nobody who understands anything about business would have said, you know what?
You know what would be really good for business?
As if I associate with half of the country instead of the whole country.
There was no way that Musk didn't understand that it would be risky.
It doesn't even matter which side.
It would work either way.
But I feel like the Democrats don't understand enough about business to know that if you're good at business, you wouldn't do this for business reasons.
The only way it makes sense for Elon to be so involved for business reasons is because he thinks he needs to save the entire country.
Given that it's America, it would have a big ripple effect on the rest of the world.
Elon's trying to save the world.
Now, if you say, oh, I think he's only trying to save the world because he'll make money.
I say, you're a freaking idiot.
Saving the world is good enough.
You don't need a reason on top of it.
I'm going to save the world.
But I figured out a way to get a grift out of this.
I've got a scam working that once I've saved the world, I think I'm going to make revenue with my existing companies.
Yes, that's exactly what he's going to do.
He's going to make revenue in his existing companies if he can save the whole freaking world.
Because it is an existential threat.
And Doge is the only thing that has any chance...
Of preserving America.
America doesn't have a chance.
This is an existential risk, the debt.
And there's only one person who has the balls and maybe the capability, we hope, to actually make a difference on the debt.
So there's that.
Anyway, Trump gave his big speech, which is not a State of the Union because he's only just got there.
So I guess the first one is more just a speech.
So he pushed the Golden Age theme, which I love, and he pushed the common sense revolution that he says is...
Wait, I just saw something go by.
All right.
And the Common Sense Revolution, they say, is now part of a global movement.
Now, I love that because it's really hard for anybody in any country to be opposed to common sense.
In order to be opposed to common sense, you'd have to, I don't know, what, dress all in pink and wear stupid signs?
Okay, Democrats can be opposed to common sense because they literally found a way to agree with only the 20% issues where 80% of the country is on one side, but they're like, oh no, we can't be on Trump's side with the 80% of the public.
So watch this.
And I guess Trump talked about energy and all the energy stuff he's doing.
Something about egg prices.
Have you noticed that everybody wants egg prices to go down, but nobody has any idea how that would happen?
Now, I get that energy prices would be good for everything, but is Trump doing anything for egg prices?
Directly?
I'm not aware of it.
Do the Democrats have an alternative egg plan?
You know what I'd love?
I'd love for Trump to say, you know what?
It really is hard to get egg prices down.
Would any of you Democrats like to work with me to come up with an egg price reduction plan?
Because I'd love to see your thinking.
What?
Oh, the pink dresses.
Is that how you bring the egg prices down?
No?
No?
Is it the little signs that you hold up?
Is it the weird protests?
Is it funding?
Charities that we've never heard of in other countries?
What is your plan for bringing down the egg prices?
So, if I were Trump, I would see if he could get the Democrats to commit to an egg price reduction scheme, and then he could react to it.
He'd say, you know what?
This is actually a pretty good idea.
Let's do it.
Or, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.
There's got to be a better way.
So let me put this challenge out to the public.
And I'd love to see Trump do something like it.
Just ask the public.
What would you do?
Actually, maybe this is even an Elon Musk thing, or maybe it could start with him.
How do you reduce egg prices?
I mean, have more chickens and, you know, the obvious stuff.
But is there anything the government can do?
That makes sense.
That would lower your egg prices.
Subsidize them?
I don't know.
I'd love to hear it.
And then the other thing that was a big surprise to me in the speech was Trump's going big on American shipbuilding.
We'll talk about that separately.
But here's what I loved.
Trump starts his speech by saying, quote, I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations, or announce the answer, the answers to the greatest economy in history, or the stoppage of crime to the lowest level ever recorded.
And these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements.
Now, these are imaginary achievements, but...
And then he went on.
So Democrats sitting before me, just this one night, why not join us in celebrating so many incredible wins for America for the good of our nation?
Let's work together and let's truly make America great again.
Now, obviously, they weren't going to do that because they came there to be protesters and, you know, ruining his flow.
But what he did was he framed them.
He basically framed them.
So instead of, I'm giving a speech and they think I'm a big old liar and so they're trying to make a point, you frame them as not even able to agree with things you everybody should agree with.
Now, do you think that they proved at some time during the night that the Democrats prove him right by showing that there were things that anybody should agree with, just anybody should agree with?
And did they disagree with that one thing that anybody should have agreed with?
Yes, they did.
They fell exactly into his frame.
They fell into the frame of finding the one thing, the one thing that nobody, nobody could disagree with.
They found a way.
And it was when he introduced the 13-year-old boy who had survived, I guess, brain cancer.
As a kid, you know, had a real tough, tough start in life.
But the little kid who, and it's important to the rest of the story, was black.
And he's still black.
And the kids there with his father, who looked awesome, looked like, I assume that was his father, who looked like, you know, just this great supportive dad who'd gotten him to this point.
And I guess the son really liked police officers, wanted to be one.
And I think he'd gotten some honorary You know, police officer badges or something from various police departments who were just being supportive of the fact that he just loved police.
And so Trump comes up with this idea of having him in the audience telling his story.
And there's nothing political about it.
It's literally just awesome kid, survived a terrible thing, loves the police, and the police showing love back.
So Trump announces that they're going to make him part of the Secret Service.
Now, obviously, these are ceremonial kind of positions.
And I think he had that new head of the Secret Service go up there and give him basically an ID, like a little wallet ID thing that says he's part of the Secret Service.
And then there was a moment that was the best moment.
So I think the kid's name was DJ. And the kid just looks at it, and he's just like blown away.
It's like the happiest thing.
It's just what he loves.
And he just goes in for the hug.
He just grabs this guy you'd never met, this white guy who's just head of the Secret Service, I believe.
And the 13-year-old just grabs him and hugs him.
Like, hugs him cheek to cheek.
And then you see the head of the Secret Service.
I guess that's who he was.
If you know his name, give it to me.
I'll say it.
And he's loving it.
Like, it's just this moment where there's just two human beings having a genuine hug.
And it was great.
So what do you think the Democrats did to that?
It was really the ultimate trap.
It was the ultimate, ultimate trap.
This little moment was, first of all, it was contrived in the sense that Trump knew that if you put these elements together, it's going to be an emotional impact.
So it was contrived in that way.
But it was also completely genuine in the sense that the emotions of the kid...
And the emotions of the gentleman who gave him the little Secret Service ID, those were real emotions.
And there was spontaneity to it, and it was genuine, it was authentic, even given the setup, which was artificial.
Sean Curran?
Is that the name of the Secret Service guy?
Yeah, so there's this beautiful moment.
So, then on MSNBC, you switch to MSNBC, and they're trying to find something wrong with it.
And Rachel Maddow, she's got some damn thing.
She's acting like Trump's taking credit for curing the kid's brain cancer, so she's all disgusted.
80% of the entire country is like, oh my God, that was good.
Like, that's a moment.
That's what I like to see.
And they've got to be on the other side of it.
And so, what did Nicole Wallace say?
I have to find the Nicole Wallace thing.
I'm jumping ahead here.
That was my favorite moment.
Anyway, she had some complaints about it.
We'll get to that.
Nicole Wallace.
Now, I don't think that this is the most important part of the speech, but it was hilarious how he set the frame and set the trap, and then they fell right into it.
Anyway.
Then Representative Green...
Who's a Democrat that you might recognize as the one who always wants to impeach Trump on his first day of office.
So he's put in for a bunch of impeachment acts.
But he gets up and I guess he started yelling, but he wasn't microphone, so on video it didn't look like he was making much of a dent.
But he refused to sit down.
And then I'm watching Speaker of the House Johnson.
He was sitting behind the president for the speech with J.D. Vance in the back.
And Johnson, you could see him getting ready for action because it would be his job to get order in the House.
And so I see him reach over and he turns his microphone toward himself and I'm like, oh, it's on.
It's on.
This is going to be good.
And I was more interested in how he did it.
Like, you know, could he pull it off?
A dignified way?
Could he get Green to sit down?
And what I saw was even better than that.
Like, he waited, and then he gavels in, and it looked like Trump was sort of expecting it.
And so Trump stands back and just lets it happen.
And then Representative Johnson gavels in, and then he reads something that he had prepared, obviously.
That said something like, you know, the members will show decorum in the room, blah, blah, blah.
And that didn't make a difference.
So Green just kept yelling.
And then Johnson said, you know, essentially, if we can't restore order, you know, the sergeant-at-arms will be asked to restore order.
Now, that kind of means escort him out.
But that didn't take.
So he had to do it again.
And eventually the sergeants at arm, I guess, came down and just sort of gently guided Representative Green out.
And I'm sure Green was expecting it because he was pushing it to try to get the maximum effect.
But here's what I like the best.
I figured out who would be the best casting for the next Starship captain for Star Trek.
You know, there's always another Star Trek spinoff.
But Representative Johnson, he has the perfect Starship captain voice.
It's just such a command voice.
I just absolutely love to hear him talk.
But we usually hear him talk about boring, you know, budget things and diplomatic things and stuff.
But when he had to talk, I won't say like a tough guy, but rather like a captain.
He talked like a captain.
It was matter-of-fact, but it was powerful.
It was forceful.
He didn't leave any wiggle room.
There was no up-talk in it.
He basically just laid it out.
This is what's going to happen.
If you do it again, you'll be removed.
It was excellent.
It was just great TV. By the way, the whole thing was great TV. I don't think I've ever anticipated one of these types of speeches as much as this.
If you were watching from the very beginning, there seemed to be almost an electricity in the air.
I was watching a little CNN before it went live, before Trump actually showed up.
And even CNN seemed to be buzzing with some kind of energy that wasn't typical.
Certainly wouldn't have had with Biden.
So then Melania does her entry.
And I'm thinking to myself, when was the last time a first lady did an entry that was that perfect for the show?
Just sort of perfect.
Like, she just has that elegance and grace kind of thing going on that's unusual.
So she's perfect.
The setup is perfect, the lighting, the room, the camera work, just the anticipation, the buzzing.
Then Trump comes in and starts working, and there's this protester with a little sign.
One of the pink-dressed women gets up so that as Trump has to work his way through the aisle to get up to the podium, you're forced to see her with her little sign, and her sign says, this is not normal.
On this little white sign.
But the funny thing is, it looked like it could be talking about herself as much as Trump.
So that part was funny.
Yeah, this is not normal.
I guess some Republican grabbed it out of her hand and just tossed it or something.
I don't even know if that's legal.
Can you grab something out of somebody's hand?
But I didn't see it on camera, the grabbing out of the hand part.
But that was funny.
And at first, I didn't know why Trump gave the stink eye to somebody because he was sort of glad-handing and saying hi to everybody.
And then he did this look to the right and just gave this look.
And then he looks away.
And I think he was looking at the pink suit lady.
Anyway, what else happened?
So basically, you know, I've been...
Making fun of the Democrats for not being authentic, where Trump is completely owning the authenticity part of the argument.
And so the Democrats, in order to be more authentic, they have this entire theater kid skit.
They're trying to put on a competing play so that they get more attention than Trump does.
So they're dressing all in pink and they got their little...
The little signs that say stuff like, Musk steals.
Even the little signs are stupid.
So they got these little douchebaggy signs and their little douchebaggy pink outfits.
And CNN did an instant poll to see how the public was taking it.
Especially the Democrats interrupting.
And 80% said the Democrats interrupting was inappropriate.
It means they couldn't even get their own team on their side.
They were just so wrong in every way.
And then CBS News, YouGov, did a poll and found that 76% of the viewers approved of Trump's speech.
76%!
How in the hell do you get 76% to approve of any president's speech?
Is that even real?
Now, I realize these are not the most scientific polls.
They're kind of instant polls.
But even a non-scientific instant poll, if it's on CBS or if it's on CNN, you sort of expect it to lean in one direction, but it leaned pretty hard in the other direction.
So that whole 80-20 thing kicked in again.
The Democrats found the only thing they could have done, which 80% of the public would disagree with, in the context of being the party that's being accused of always being on the wrong side of every 80-20, they created a whole new topic, which is the disturbance of the president's speech, and they turned it into an 80-20 against themselves.
While they're being accused of being the idiots who can't figure out an 80-20 topic.
It could not have been funnier.
Anyway.
So all the theater kids got together and put on their little douchebag play.
And it didn't work out.
And then Trump.
You know, of course, I've always been a big fan of Trump's nicknames.
But I have to be honest.
There was one nickname that when he first came up with it, I felt, you know, this doesn't feel like it's up to his usual standard.
And I never, I just didn't embrace it.
And it was Pocahontas.
Now, I'm not sure why I didn't like it.
I guess it was maybe, I don't know, filters too on the nose or...
Somehow disrespectful to Native Americans or something.
I don't know.
I didn't have a specific complaint.
But that one, I felt like, you know, not really on point.
But what I've learned is that if you stay in character and you relentlessly stay in character and you just never leave your character, which is what Trump does better than anybody, you can eventually normalize anything.
And Trump has normalized his nickname thing to the point where if he didn't do it, you'd be disappointed.
And my best analogy to this is John McEnroe, tennis player.
So if you're not old enough to remember, John McEnroe was like a bad boy brat, always complaining about the refs and yelling stuff like, you can't be serious.
And everybody loved to hate him because it was just so inappropriate.
You're not supposed to do that.
Tennis is supposed to be a dignified sport, sort of like politics.
Politics is supposed to be a dignified thing.
But there's Trump giving all these nicknames, and there's McEnroe yelling at refs.
Oh, you don't yell at refs at every little call you don't like?
Come on!
But eventually, since McEnroe was just always McEnroe, By the time he was playing the seniors tour, he'd have to throw in some complaints, even if he didn't care, because people expected it, and it was just part of the act.
So once you are relentless and you're authentic, authentic is the thing.
McEnroe was authentic.
He really felt the things he was saying, and everything about it was just him.
That was just his personality.
He has this personality that if you're first exposed to it, you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on here?
That's way too far.
You've gone way too far.
But by the time he got to the, essentially, State of the Union that wasn't one because he just started, he's in the most dignified room in the world, doing the most dignified thing you could ever do, which is a presidential address.
And he starts talking about Ukraine.
And how some people want Ukraine to last forever.
And then he calls out Pocahontas.
He goes, well, you know, maybe Pocahontas.
And by the time he throws a Pocahontas into the State of the Union, you just have to surrender to it.
You have to just give up.
You have to go.
All right.
You just have to give up.
And you just got to go, okay.
She's Pocahontas.
There's nothing we can do about it.
And now it's just funny.
And somehow he normalized that to the point where you just couldn't complain about it.
And even she tried to smile when the camera hit her.
I don't know if she was smiling on the inside, but I'd like to think that even Elizabeth Warren could understand the moment, and that was funny.
Anyway, so then one of Trump's moments was he started talking about the potential for fraud in the government spending.
He was talking about the Social Security list of people who were getting Social Security.
He starts with, you know, there are, I don't know, over 4 million people who are getting paid from Social Security, he says, who are over 100 but younger than 109. And you hear that number, you're like, holy cow, all those people, they might be getting it.
Now, let me say, I don't know if that means that people are getting paid.
It might mean that there's just a data error in the database.
And some other database, you know, corrects for it somewhere else.
So I'm not sure that it's an indication of actual crime or corruption.
But what it definitely is, is something that everybody can understand when he talks about it, which is what makes Trump special.
Like, even his critics will say, we've got to find somebody who talks like the people.
Trump talks like the people.
And he's just...
So good at it.
This is another example.
So then he starts going to the list.
He's like, and then you've got this many people on this age.
And he just keeps getting older and older in the ages.
So he gets to like the middle of his list.
He's like, between the ages of 160 and 169. And now it's just hilarious because everybody knows, you know, maybe there's somebody who's over 100. There could be people over 100 who are collecting Social Security, but there's nobody over 160, and certainly not 121,000 of them.
And then he just keeps going until he gets to people who, I guess it was one person over 300 years old, according to the database, not reality.
Now, again, it's not my understanding that we know for sure, That these are indications of fraud.
And I've heard an argument that they're not.
But everybody understands that if your big database of who should be getting money has errors like this in it, you've got a problem.
Now, the problem might be you need better data, or the problem might be there's massive corruption going on, and this is showing where some of it is.
Apparently, Bernie Sanders did his own response video that nobody wanted.
And nobody wanted to hear Bernie Sanders.
He wasn't the official response person, because that was Slotnik, who did it later.
But Bernie makes his own video, and he decides to focus on the part about the Social Security ages.
And so Bernie has now joined the crazy eyes part of the Democrat Party, where his eyes are literally, Like, crazy.
They're all crazy.
And he goes, nobody, nobody who is 150 years old or 200 years old or 300 years old is receiving Social Security checks.
Now, Bernie, I don't know why I need to explain this to you, but I don't think Trump's point...
Was that we have a lot of really old people in America who are receiving Social Security.
It wasn't his point that there are real people who are 300 years old who have received a lot of Social Security.
No.
His point was, either the data is bad, and that's a problem, or there might be some corruption indicated by this.
But the best that Birding can do is to emphatically remind us, That nobody, nobody who is 150 years old or 200 years old or 300 years old is receiving Social Security checks.
Now, he looked like he was suffering dementia.
So I'm just going to put it out there.
I'm no medical expert, but everybody reaches an age where things don't work so well.
I have to say, Bernie looks like he's reached that age.
So imagine being a Democrat and watching Trump do this master class in showmanship that was really first rate.
I mean, it was good.
And then you're like, oh, okay, he was good.
We'll give him that.
We will acknowledge that Trump knows how to put it on the show.
Okay.
All right.
We're going to give him that.
But watch this.
Watch when our crack field of Democrats takes him down.
And then Bernie comes on.
Oh, there's nobody who's 300 years old.
And you're just sitting there saying, oh, God.
Oh, no, shoot me.
Oh, God.
Why do I have to be on this team?
So that was great.
And other news on the speech.
Trump said that he got a letter from Zelensky that he just got before the speech, I guess.
And he said the letter reads, Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.
So that's Trump quoting the letter.
And Trump said, I appreciate that he sent this letter.
I just got a little while ago.
Now, if you remember what Trump said, he said, you're not ready for this minerals deal.
Because you're still talking about like war lasting forever and you're just not ready for peace.
So I need something that says, I want to make peace really soon.
And Zelensky gets the message and he sends a thing that says he's ready to come to the table to bring lasting peace closer as soon as possible.
So that's what he needed.
Lasting peace.
Soon as possible.
Put that in the letter.
Send me the letter.
Let me read the letter.
And then we're good.
Then something can happen.
I love the clarity of that.
The clarity was perfect.
Because Trump said exactly what was wrong.
He told him exactly how to fix it.
And if he fixed it, peace to Ukraine.
And so Zelensky finally, it couldn't have been more clear exactly what he needed to do, put exactly those words in a letter, sent it exactly to him.
Trump gave him the credit that he essentially had promised, if you can do this, things will be good.
And then Trump did the thing which we love Trump about, is that although his enemies call him transactional, Those who are not his enemies call him a dealmaker.
He likes making deals.
So if you can just get on the frame of we're going to make a deal and you don't be ridiculous about it, we're going to make a deal.
So maybe back on track.
We'll see where that goes.
So most of the speech was more, let's say, I don't want to say anti-China, because that feels like the wrong frame, but rather, I'd say framing China as the biggest challenge I'd say framing China as the biggest challenge to America in the future.
the near future, starting today.
And I didn't catch anything that was anti-Russian, but I did fall asleep during part of it.
Was there any anti-Russian stuff in the speech?
Because I don't think there was, which would be sort of a change from normal presidents lately.
Certainly it would be a change from Biden.
But there was a whole bunch of, again, I don't want to say anti-China, but let's say taking China seriously as the other big power in the world.
So he had tariffs on China, and of course, China's going to respond to the tariffs.
He talked about building a missile defense.
You could argue that that includes anybody who might send a missile, but who are we really worried about?
We shouldn't be worried about anybody attacking the homeland, but I wouldn't mind having a missile defense, just in case.
He talked about the Panama ports.
Resting control from China.
They got a little too much control there.
He talked about putting a tax on Chinese ships who come into port in America.
He talked about taxes on Chinese cranes.
I guess the cranes that load and unload the containers.
And he talked about putting America heavily back into the ship building business, both commercial and military.
Now, here's another one of those things where I wonder if this is one of those cases where somebody smart said something and it bubbled all the way up to the presidency and turned into policy.
Because that only happens with Trump.
Trump has the best network of geniuses at this point.
People who are just really, really smart, who say really, really smart stuff, and...
The smart stuff bubbles all the way up to the top.
And then it makes a difference.
Because it was only, was it a week or two?
I saw an axe.
There was a post by, I think it was Balaji Srinivasan, who would be one of the smartest people in the country, frankly.
And he was talking about the difference in shipbuilding capability of China versus...
Basically, everybody else in the world.
So China has built this massive shipbuilding capability, and it's both for commercial vessels and military vessels.
Now, in that America has sort of deprecated its own ability, so I think we have very little ability to build ships at the moment relative to China.
So if we want to have any influence over the oceans, And that's a big part of the globe is the ocean.
And if you want to be, you know, selling and buying stuff all over the world, you're going to need a lot of military ability in the oceans.
So Trump has made that a priority to become a major shipbuilder.
And I kind of wonder if that came from, you know, one post on X. Because it was such a stark and shocking set of data that I'd never heard before.
I had no idea that we were basically not good at building ships anymore and that China had become really good at it, which is scary.
That's a real scary thing.
So it's possible that that was just one of those things again, or it might be that maybe a lot of people were aware of it and turned it into a thing.
All right.
So I'm kind of excited about that because to the extent that we can do anything with tax breaks or whatever it is to make shipbuilding big, I think that's exactly the right instinct.
And it doesn't have to be all for military because we're going to be living on the sea and doing a lot in the sea for a long time.
I saw a summary of Trump's speech by David Sachs.
I'll just read it because it's a good summary.
So Sachs said, this was the theme of the night.
Democrats sat sullen-faced as President Trump described one sensible policy after another.
Democrats took the 20% side of every 80-20 issue.
Trump even explained the trap that Democrats were about to fall into, and they still fell into it.
Yeah, as I said earlier.
Anyway.
Oh, here's the Nicole Wallace thing.
So, Nicole Wallace, after the speech, said that she had lots of good feelings about the kid DJ, the one who got the Secret Service badge there.
And, you know, she had the normal good feelings about it.
It's good.
But then she goes, quote about DJ. I hope he has a long life as a law enforcement officer, but I hope he never has to defend the United States Capitol against Donald Trump's supporters.
And then she says, this is wild.
And if he does, I hope he isn't one of the six who loses his life to suicide.
It's like, is there any way they could lose harder?
They just had to dig really deep to find some problem with that.
Anyway, and then the response came from Senator Lisa Slatkin of Michigan.
And I didn't know she was a former CIA agent.
So...
Anyway, she was complaining about the Doge employees having access to tax returns and health information and your bank account.
But the thing that people get wrong about human motivation, Democrats get this wrong, about human motivation, is when you talk about the richest man in the world, what would be the worst thing you could do business-wise?
From a risk management perspective, what would be the worst thing that the richest man in the world could do?
The worst thing would be to say that you're trying to help the government with cutting costs, but really, you get caught doing something that's the opposite, like stealing.
That's the worst thing that could happen.
You would lose everything.
What?
What person who's the richest person in the world would get involved in anything that would have a gigantic, gigantic downside risk?
Now, what's the upside risk?
He's already the richest man in the world.
Probably is on his way to be the first trillionaire.
Do you know what he could do if he wanted to stay the richest man in the world and even get richer?
Stay out of politics completely.
But nobody in their right mind, who is already in that position financially, would create a situation where everybody's watching, and if he did something insane, like try to use his access to steal money from the government, how could that be dumber?
So watching people look at one of the smartest people in the country and richest, Musk, And assuming that he would do the dumbest thing that anybody would possibly do in that situation is so pathetically dumb that I almost don't have words to describe it.
I just shake my head and think, okay.
I don't know how you think that that would make sense in his world.
In fact, if I had to make a list of all the people on the planet, That I would trust the most if I lost my wallet, it would be Elon Musk.
If you dropped your wallet on the sidewalk and he was the first one to find it, the chance of you getting it back with all of the money in it is 100%.
First of all, he wouldn't let you not get your wallet back.
Like you'd give it to somebody and say, make sure they get this wallet back.
And secondly, there isn't any chance he's going to steal any money from it.
None.
Zero chance.
So that's how I feel about him in the government.
It's hard to imagine somebody who would be less of a risk.
Now, the Doge employees themselves, I suppose everybody who has access to anything has some kind of risk.
But, you know, do I have less trust in the Doge people?
Than I have in the government employees who have been there forever and have access to those same systems?
What would be the reasoning with which I would say, oh, the regular employees of the government are all honest and good people, but the Doge people are not?
Like, what would be any evidence that we increased any risk to these databases?
I don't know.
There's just no connecting tissue.
Because it's not like nobody had access until Doge did.
How many people do you think have access to all of our systems?
It's got to be quite a few.
Anyway.
So, here's some other stuff.
According to investing.com, The European Union has postponed its plans to gradually phase out Russian gas.
So I think you're going to see Europe, there seems to be some kind of a acknowledgement that Russian energy is going to be important to Europe and maybe it'll stay that way.
Now, I don't think that that would happen unless people saw that Russia and the United States were moving toward...
Something that could be a more productive relationship in the future, whatever that looks like.
Now, I have to, again, I hate that I always have to put all the qualifiers on this, but I don't love Putin.
I understand that he is dangerous.
I know he's a dictator.
He's a murderer.
I know he's not to be trusted.
Okay, are we good?
Did I say all the right things?
Now I can just say what I want to say.
Putin is really good on the persuasion stuff.
Just really good.
And the fact that he's been doing joint military exercises with China, I don't think that means he really wants to be in any kind of a joint military action with China.
Like, for what?
Is he going to join China in attacking Australia someday?
I don't see it.
Is he going to join China in attacking America someday?
It's hard to imagine that.
But it's really good for making sure that America says, you know, you'd be better off if you were our friend instead of China's friend.
And I think maybe that's what he always wanted.
Which is to have China and the United States fight over who's a better friend to Putin.
And I think he got it.
I think he accomplished it.
Now, you could say Putin is the evil monster that you want him to be.
No argument whatsoever.
I'll let you have your opinion of him, and that has nothing to do with my opinion.
My opinion is that just from a pure persuasion perspective, damn, he's good.
He's just really good.
And you can't take that away from him.
He's got skills.
And I do think that that's one of the things that bonds him with Trump, is that they can see the player.
And I think that they really appreciate that there's somebody who appreciates them.
Because I'll bet you they have a solid appreciation of the skill set of the other.
That's what it looks like to me.
Anyway, there's a story on...
Apparently, right after the Biden administration was about to end, but before it did, you already heard this, that $20 billion got funneled into these new charities and these green charities that you never heard of.
New York Post has a story about this, but Mario Norfolk did a great job of summarizing it on X. So here are some of the...
Charities that this $20 billion got speedily funneled into.
One group is called the Climate United Fund, and they got $7 billion, but has no federal filings or IRS records.
So it just sort of appeared.
And of course, you all know what the Climate United Fund does, right?
Because those are the three words that sound good.
Fund, united, climate.
I like the climate.
But are they united?
Yes, they are united.
But you're going to need money.
Is there any kind of a...
Yes, there's a fund.
Climate united fund.
And then there's another one that got $2 billion called the Power Forward Communities.
Well, is that a good thing?
How could it not be a good thing?
It's got communities right in the name.
It's got forward.
We all want to move forward, not backwards.
And it's got power.
Power right in the name.
And apparently the Department of Justice and FBI are now investigating, looking at their bank accounts and such.
We'll see what happens.
But here's what I love about the story.
I love when...
You finally see enough in the news where a pattern can form in your head.
And the pattern here is that the most suspicious-sounding charities, the ones that get government money, they all have the following characteristic.
They're made up of three words, the name of the organization, and they're three random-sounding good words.
That if you saw any one of the words individually, you'd say, hmm, that's a good word.
But if you put the three of them together, so you can take these two, the Climate United Fund and the Power Forward Communities, both three words, both all good words that don't mean much, but you can even interchange them.
I've just started a charity.
It's called the Communities Forward Fund.
Or the United Power Forward?
You could basically just throw it all together and you got your charity name.
It just has to sound good.
Comically suspicious names.
That's what I'd have AI looking for.
Social Security Administration, speaking of them, they just said that they could reduce their own budget by $800 million per year.
Now, I think there's an ex-head of the social services, who is a Democrat, of course, who says, oh, no, if you did that, it would only be months before the entire thing collapsed.
But I said to myself, how in the world is the Social Security Administration, just the administration, not the payments?
We're not talking about the payments.
That's a whole different budget.
But just the people who manage the payments.
How is that so big that they can cut $800 million out of it and think it would still work?
Like, what would be left?
And doesn't your common sense tell you that they're way overstaffed?
Right?
Because if you took away...
Obviously, it's mostly just data and a computer.
But how many special cases are there that you need that many staff for what is kind of an automated process?
Because once you've programmed in, what's the current law?
Okay, if you're this age, you get this.
You put it in the rules.
Once you've done that, as a current recipient of Social Security, I recently just like...
Two months ago, I think, I decided to turn it on.
And so they already have all of my information that I've been paying forever because they send me reports so I know that they have it.
So they have everything that they need to know about me.
And then I fill out some forms.
And then they know that I want to get paid.
They know what to pay me.
The computer does.
No humans need to be involved.
And then I get checks.
Which part of that required a human beyond setting up the computers in the first place?
And I'm thinking to myself, man, the only way you could get to such a large organization is if you got there sort of incrementally increasing the budget 10% a year every time you could.
But if you were to build this today from scratch, don't you think it would be...
Six programmers and then a big computer budget.
Like, why do you need this many special cases?
I don't know.
Maybe it's to take care of all those people who are 300 years old and collecting checks, according to Bernie.
Well, here's something that's fun.
Jon Stewart had offered to interview Elon Musk, but Elon said he has some requirements.
One of the requirements was, It would be unedited.
So, unedited.
Good.
And I think there was some other requirement, but being unedited, I think, would be the primary one.
And so, it looks like this might happen because Stuart's agreed to the conditions.
As Stuart said, after thinking about his offer, meaning unedited, I thought, You know, hey, that's actually how the in-studio interviews normally air.
It's unedited.
So sure, we'd be delighted.
And he said he would do it any length of time, which is another thing typically you wouldn't do on a TV show.
Normally, there's always that time.
But this is a special case.
So if 90 minutes is the right amount of time, they'll do it 90 minutes.
If 15 is right, 15. I like that.
But here's what I think about this.
This might be the best interview of all time.
It has that potential.
And here's why.
You don't have to like Jon Stewart in general.
You don't have to like his political views.
You can say what you want to say about him.
You can say, oh, he's not...
You know, he's a snake in the grass, and he might act reasonable sometimes, but any minute he could turn on you.
Whatever you want to say.
But here's what I say.
He, as far as I can tell, Jon Stewart is unwilling to be stupid in public.
I can't watch him privately.
Probably it's the same.
But publicly, I've been watching him for a long time, and he doesn't want to act stupid in public.
And by that I mean he would not reject common sense.
Musk only has common sense.
Only.
There's probably nobody in the world who could do a better job of saying, this is why we're doing it, and this just makes common sense.
Musk is the champion of common sense.
I have real reasons.
Here are my reasons.
And if you disagree with me, I'll rethink it.
Like if you have a good argument, I'll rethink it.
Stuart's the same.
I believe that Stuart, if he heard something he'd never heard before, which is very possible, like an argument that he just never heard before, I think that he would in real time say, okay, you know what?
That's actually a pretty good answer.
And there's nobody, almost nobody, in the entire world that I think is capable of that.
And that's a big compliment.
So it's a compliment to showmanship and what I think is public honesty.
So I think this could be one of the biggest things we've ever seen in America.
Because you're never going to get these two kinds of personalities sitting down together.
It just doesn't happen.
So the thing about Musk is he's not going to lie.
And he's going to have a reason for everything he does, and it's going to be a damn good reason.
Now, that doesn't mean he's never made a mistake.
You know, I mean, I can't think of one offhand, but humans, you know, humans make mistakes.
And he doesn't say, I don't make mistakes.
So, Musk, like Jon Stewart, very unique in that if Jon Stewart said in real time, okay, but...
You haven't thought of this or you haven't thought of that.
And it was a good point.
I believe you would see Elon Musk say, that's a good point.
Yeah, let me think about that.
But I think that works both ways.
If Musk had a good point, I think that Stewart would say, okay, actually, that's a good point.
Let me think about it.
So I've never seen even the potential.
For this much goodness in a podcast.
I mean, I would clear my schedule to watch this at any length because of the uniqueness of the characters and then the double uniqueness of putting them together.
So I'm yes, yes, yes, hell yes on this happening.
I hope it does.
Could be huge for the country.
Ben Shapiro has started a petition to call for the pardon of Derek Chauvin, convicted for killing George Floyd.
Now, I can't say enough about how impressed I am.
Because, you know, if you have things working for you...
Like Ben Shapiro does.
He's got a good situation where he's a respected commentator.
He's got a platform that looks like it's successful to me.
And he's in one of those situations where you don't take risks this big.
This is a big freaking risk to put your name behind essentially what would be Taking George Floyd from being a saint down to a more normal situation and also supporting the white guy who got sent to jail.
So this is a big risk.
So let me say this about Ben Shapiro.
This is brave.
This is brave.
It's perfectly timed.
Oh, this is exactly the right time to do it.
And it's well-argued.
So I've seen his argument.
It's well-argued.
And it's absolutely right.
It's morally, ethically, and in every way that America cares, it's right.
It's time.
I'm all in.
I'm all in.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I have less to lose.
I'm already disgraced, so it's not a big risk for me to say I'm all in.
But it's a bigger risk for Ben Shapiro.
So all respect to that.
Full respect.
So you probably saw on social media, changing the topic, there were videos of, I guess there were 22 senators eventually, who did what sounded like identical little videos.
Where it was just them talking to the camera, and they each had this little douchebag microphone that doesn't look right when you're holding it like that.
You've just got this little thing in your two little fingers, and you're leaning forward in your chair, and you're talking passionately.
And of course, the Democrats are all the theater kids, so it all looks like they were acting.
But it took about five seconds for the Internet to say, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You're not the only person saying something like that.
And then there would be a split screen.
And if you watched it develop during the day in real time, it was hilarious.
Somebody noticed, wait a minute, there are two senators who seem to be doing something similar.
And then like an hour later, wait a minute, wait a minute, it's more than two.
I think there are four of them.
And then they show the four of them and they'd be talking at the same time at pretty much the same words.
And then it just kept increasing.
Until it was like this screen full of people all talking at the same time with the same little message and the same little douchebag microphone.
And so Elon Musk had posted that he would give a free Cybertruck to whoever could positively identify who wrote it because they were trying to find the author who was behind it.
But it turns out it was Cory Booker.
So Cory Booker organized it.
And I guess they decided he was the best they had to try to come up with a social media strategy because they weren't happy with their social media strategy.
And I guess Chuck Schumer wasn't the greatest social media leader.
So they're like, oh, we need somebody young and cool to do our social media.
So Cory Booker puts that together, which effectively was all the theater kids doing a play.
Like what they do.
And before I knew who was behind it, I decided that it was somebody either inexperienced or young.
And here's what I picked up.
This is sort of a writer's trick.
Because for each of them, all 22 of them, they had the same sort of opening tagline that was, shit that ain't true.
That's what you just saw.
So it starts with a Trump saying he was going to lower prices on day one, and then it would switch to one of the senators saying, shit that ain't true.
That's what you just saw.
I think they may have bleeped the shit part or not.
I don't know.
So here's the writer's trick.
The writer's trick is this, and maybe it's a communicator's trick as well.
You can swear.
If you do it once, and it's something that's really important, and you just want to bring attention to it.
Or, if you're somebody like Trump, who's sort of incorporated into his personality that if he gives a rally speech, he might lay an S-bomb on you.
He doesn't do Fs.
But maybe a hell, maybe a damn, maybe an S. If you use it judiciously, it can be an accent that works.
I remember several years ago, there was a best-selling book.
I can't remember it, but it had an F in the title.
It was something F this or I don't know, I forget.
But it became a best-selling book.
And then about a year later, I was walking through a bookstore and there were all these books with the F word in the title.
Because they had decided that maybe what sold that other book was it had an F-word in the title.
No.
No.
That's not what sold that other book.
No.
No.
It probably was a great book, and it had also a tension-getting title.
But if you take the It's a Great Book out of the equation, you can't sell it just because you could put an F-word in the title.
That would be the worst idea in the world.
And I don't think the other books sold much.
They did not become bestsellers.
But here, if you're going to do something that you've got 22 senators signing up for, you can't put this artificial swear word in there.
Oh, there it is.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F. Yeah.
Thank you.
That was the original book.
And then everybody said, oh, it's putting F in the title of my book.
That's what will work.
No.
Nope.
It was...
Maybe it was just a good book.
But as soon as I saw that all of these senators were asked to swear, and it didn't matter what the senators' personalities were or if it worked for them or was compatible with their character or their moral or ethical framing of the world, that's just amateur time.
Anybody who doesn't know how to use a curse word in communications or writing, that's amateur.
Somebody who could use one and get away with it and make it actually work, like the title of that book, that was an expert.
That's a great writer.
So you could tell right away that it was amateur work.
I don't know if Cory Booker wrote it.
I'm guessing he didn't.
He probably just had some young person write it.
And then the mistake was to overuse the S word, because why bother?
Anyway, watching the Democrats pretend to understand social media is hilarious, because it used to be that the Democrats, didn't the Democrats sort of control the youth vote?
And now they're so anti-youth, I mean, with Pelosi and Schumer and God, that they had to go to Cory Booker to get their young person, and the best he could come up with was terrible.
So it got spotted and mocked right away.
And Scott Jennings, who is the Republican superstar who appears on CNN and embarrasses their panel of idiots every day.
Here's how he summed it up.
He goes, voters, we need more authenticity in our politicians, Democrats.
He points out this totally artificial communications.
So the Democrats need more authenticity, and the closest they could come to it was making 22 people curse the same way.
I don't know how you can get further from the mark.
That was impressively bad.
Meanwhile, The Hill had an article.
About how Democrats are looking for an outsider to run for president.
I guess they decided that of their many, many Democrat politicians, they didn't have any who were worth a damn.
So they've got to look for like an outsider.
Now, remember I just told you the story about somebody put the F word in the title of a best-selling book.
So then all the dumb people said, I've got it.
It's the F word in the title of the book.
So they copied the wrong thing.
And here again, they're copying the wrong thing.
Trump won as an outsider, but not because he's an outsider.
That's not why.
He won because everything he does makes more sense than his competition.
He won because he's incredibly good at communicating.
He won because his policies are really, really popular.
He won because he's really, really smart, and he's brave beyond anything we've ever seen in a president.
Fight, fight, fight.
So if you take all of those qualities of Trump, let's call it his skill stack, from his knowledge of how to put on a show, to knowing how to get loyalty, to knowing how to make a deal, I mean, his skill stack is a mile high.
There are very few people who have assembled anything like...
The number of skills and knowledge sets that Trump has acquired over his life.
And he just keeps adding to it.
I mean, still at his current age, he's adding skills.
Like he's learning crypto.
Trump could probably already talk better about crypto than most of the Democratic politicians.
So if you've got somebody who's a learning machine, he has no sense of embarrassment.
He's brave beyond anything we've ever seen in that kind of an office.
Can take incredible shame, can fight through the lawfare, the attempted assassinations.
I mean, come on.
This is a once-in-a-thousand-year person.
So what do the Democrats take away from that?
Here's what they take away from it.
Huh.
It's because he's an outsider.
We'll get ourselves an outsider.
That's not even close to what's going on.
You just have one person with this enormous set of skills that work together really well.
That's why he wins.
That's it.
You can't just go get yourself one of those.
You would already know exactly who it was if one of those people existed.
But they're throwing in names like Mark Cuban and Stephen A. Smith and Fetterman.
I think that they're completely on the wrong page.
In the end, they're going to come up with whoever they think does the best job of pretending to be authentic.
I think that's the extent of their visibility of what's going on.
Huh.
Let's get an outsider who can pretend to be authentic.
Now, I don't know if Democrats can ever win with a...
Mark Cuban or Fetterman, because if they look like they're too much white men, I just don't know if it works.
I think Biden might have been the last dinosaur to squeak by in the Democratic Party.
Anyway, one of the people who some think, NBC has an article about this, is that Chris Murphy, Democrat Chris Murphy, He's been on TV a lot.
You've seen him doing a lot of anti-Trump stuff, and he's just all over the place.
But the thinking is that he's already running a shadow campaign for president.
Now, he would not be an outsider, but he would at least be a, let's say, somewhat skilled insider.
But my question is this.
Why do the Democrats have so many people who look like movie villains?
questions.
Because Chris Murphy, you just look at his eyes and you say to yourself, oh my god, that's like pure evil.
Now, I'm not saying he is, I don't know, one way or the other.
But he has the look, like if he came into the casting office and you were looking for the most evil-looking person you could ever hire for your movie, I'm pretty sure he would get the job.
And I don't really know, are there a lot of Republicans who look like they could be movie evil?
Think of John Brennan.
You know, John Brennan has that face.
That is a movie evil face.
Who is that?
Eliana Presley, who's got the shaved head, which she pulls off, by the way, the shaved head.
She wears the Superman villain outfits, which actually look great on her.
If I'm judging her from a fashion and appearance perspective, she's actually terrific.
I'm actually impressed.
She does a great job of creating a look.
But the net effect of the look is Superman villain.
I've just never seen so many people in one party.
Who could be cast as movie villains?
Like, what is up with that?
Meanwhile, Red State, an article by Bob Hogue, is talking about how Chuck Todd, who was on NBC forever, was just dumping on Biden for being a bad human being, basically.
And he was speaking with Steve Schmidt, who was one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project, which...
I think even Steve Schmidt had to get out of that because it was just so...
It was like living in a sphincter.
He had to get away.
But here's what Chuck Todd said about Biden.
Of course, it's too little too late, but it's fun to talk about.
He goes, I have to tell you something about Joe Biden.
There's this mythology about Joe Biden that the man cared so much, it's all bullshit.
And then Todd said that Biden had created this myth over his 40-year career that he was an incredible family man.
And instead, what he really was was a craven political animal that was desperate, that considered a run for president every four years he was eligible.
Now, I think part of the complaint was he had some family issues, some addicts in the family.
The thinking was that his family needed him more than the country, maybe.
But it's interesting to watch Chuck Todd talk that way about Biden.
And I think what you're going to find is that every day that goes by will be another Democrat saying, okay, Biden was just the worst.
Train wreck in the history.
He was never good.
Behind closed doors, he was a monster.
You're just going to hear the worst things, and it's just beginning.
It's going to get worse.
Meanwhile, and I believe this, Bloomberg's reporting that the Pentagon denied a report that there was a halt in cyber operations versus Russia.
Now, remember, I talked about this maybe yesterday, and I was thinking that maybe, if it were true, that it was just offensive operations and that it might have been a mutual thing and maybe it was a trust-building thing with Russia to see if we can get to a bigger deal.
But it's more likely since, I guess, Secretary Pete Hegseth didn't do it.
So I think Hegseth denied that there was any change in cyber versus Russia.
So if Hank Seth denies it, I'm going to believe him.
And I guess the report didn't have the kind of backing that you think.
So I'm going to agree with Bloomberg on this.
I think that was fake news.
So anyway.
In other news, RFK Jr., he wants to eliminate a whole bunch of harmful additives in food.
The big reason that you might not want to at the moment, and this is going to be tough, a tough balance, is that removing food additives for food might make them more expensive, which seems counterintuitive, right?
You'd think, well, if we don't have to add all these chemicals, we can save money on all these chemicals.
But they must have something to do with preserving food longer, something like that.
Maybe tastes better.
I don't know.
But the thing that is the major driver of all these chemicals in your food, this is based on a story in the LA Times, is that it's the way we keep the food cost down.
So if your administration, the Trump administration, has promised that food prices will be going down at the same time you've got the Make America Healthy Again Efforts and RFK Jr. looking to get rid of these additives, which would make food prices potentially go up.
Although I'm not 100% sure that's true, but that's what's being reported at the moment.
So I wonder if there's any middle ground there.
Because there are people like me who would certainly pay more to have fewer chemicals.
And maybe you could let the market decide.
So instead of, let's say, instead of making everybody get rid of everything, what if you said, we want to encourage people who are in the same market to at least have an option where you don't have the chemicals.
And then the people can choose.
And if enough people choose the ones that's a little bit more expensive but doesn't have the health problems, well, then the market corrects, and then that becomes the less expensive thing over time.
But I wonder if there's a way to solve that, because it seems like there's a direct conflict between making the food safer and making it less expensive.
Here's a little update on a story that interests me more than maybe most of you.
But do you remember the hockey stick temperature calculations for climate change?
And Michael Mann was credited as the person who came up with that.
And the idea was that temperatures would increase over time, but there would be a point where the increase would become multiplied.
So it would go slow, slow, slow, and then wham!
And it would go straight up like a hockey stick.
Well, Mark Stein writing for the publication National Review ended up in a lawsuit because I guess Stein was criticizing the hockey stick data and Michael Mann wanted to basically establish it as legitimate and push back against critics.
So there was a lawsuit.
So Michael Mann sued.
And I may be getting some of the facts wrong here because there are a couple of...
It looks like maybe whatever Mark Stein did might have been separate but related to the National Review.
So it looked like there might have been two legal actions, one against the publication and one against the author.
But there's been some movement.
Now it's 13 years later.
13 years later, and a judge has reduced the $1 million defamation judgment, which man had won.
They reduced it from $1 million to $5,000.
Now, there's an article by Greg Piper in Just the News, so I'll recommend you to that.
So look for Just the News and look for the article by Greg Piper, and you'll get the correct version of this.
I think I'm butchering it a little bit.
But on top of that, I think that separately the National Review had been in court for the same reason and ended in a summary judgment in National Review's favor.
So the National Review ended up getting a judgment in which they would be paid half a million dollars in legal fees.
I'm not positive, but does this mean, so I guess I have a question as much as a statement.
Does this mean that Michael Mann, the scientist, the one who created the hockey stick thing, and I believe was the one who kicked off the lawsuits, does that mean that instead of winning a million, he got $5,000 and in the process also had to pay half a million to the other side?
Which would suggest he came out way behind, even though he won.
So he sort of won a little bit, but it looks like it became a financial nightmare, basically.
So I guess I could use some fact-checking on that, but 13 years, a lot has changed.
Or let me put it this way.
Our view of climate change is about ready to change.
So look for big changes in that domain.
There's a study, Sam Jones is writing in the Washington Post, that science has shown there's a link between swearing and pain tolerance.
And that people who swear when they're in pain, like you hit your thumb with a hammer or something, That the swearing decreases the pain.
Now, this is another one of those situations where you could have just asked me.
You didn't really have to study it.
Just ask me.
Yeah, swearing definitely helps with pain.
Don't know why.
There's a story about a Florida man who swallowed a...
$760,000 diamond from Tiffany's.
So he went into Tiffany's and must have grabbed a diamond and swallowed it.
And so when the police got there, he asked if he'd be charged for what's in his stomach.
And I don't know the legal ins and outs of this, but I think it depends if it was a duty-free store.
Anybody?
No?
Duty-free?
All right, I'll just leave that with you.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Israel is trying to neutralize what security officials see as a Turkish-backed Islamist threat trying to unify Syria.
To which I say, maybe I don't understand anything about the world, but why would Turkey want to...
Put a bunch of Turkish-backed, radical Islamist unifying Syria.
Does that look like something that would work out for them in the long run?
That's very suspicious.
Anyway, I just don't know how that could possibly work.
But hey.
All right, my last story.
Scientists are trying to revive the woolly mammoths.
They're trying to find a way to take some woolly mammoth DNA that they have.
And put it in some kind of, I don't know, Asian elephant and turn it into a woolly mammoth in the future.
Now, they've made some progress because they've created a woolly mice.
That's right.
They took regular mice and they made them woolly with woolly mammoth genes of some sort.
So, if you'd like a woolly mouse...
Now, talk about a dangerous experiment.
What would happen if, you know, the mouse stayed the same size as the mouse, it was just woolly?
But what if they'd gotten that just a little bit wrong?
Wouldn't you have an elephant-sized mouse?
Now, that's just what I need.
That's what I need, an elephant-sized mouse.
What could go wrong?
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's what I've got for you today.
Thanks for joining.
I know we went long.
I got stuff to do.
I'm going to say hi to the people on Locals and the rest of you.
Thanks for joining.
I'll see you tomorrow.
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