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March 6, 2025 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:26:41
Episode 2770 CWSA 03/06/25

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, Grok 3 Hoax Spotting, AI Voice Trust, Pacing Technique, OpenAI Conversion Ruling, Elon Musk, Bionic Touch Aware Hand, Dept. of Education EO, Ian Carroll, Epstein Files, JFK Files, Transgender Mice Funding, RFK Jr., Vaccine Safety Testing, Affordability Czar, Chicken Life Cycle, Oil Prices Decline, Analyst Sarah Adams, Abbey Gate Terrorist, Senator Fetterman's Democrat Review, Ayanna Pressley Theatrics, Democrat Theatre Kids, Biological Males Female Sports, Chris Cuomo, Governor Walz Advises Canada, OMG Undercover State Farm, President Trump's Advisors, President Trump, China Anti-Fentanyl Efforts, Fentanyl Smuggling, American Kid Challenges, Traditional Wives, Modern Family Challenges, Intelligence Sharing Pause Ukraine, Hamas US Hostages, 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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Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
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Wasn't my best sip, but it was still great.
And Well, did you know that Grok, AI, allegedly can now, according to Maria Nawfal, he's doing a little write-up, according to Elon Musk, Grok can identify frauds.
Let's say you get an email from a Nigerian prince.
You could say, hmm, I wonder if that Nigerian prince really needs my money to free his fortune.
And then you could run it through Grok, and Grok would say, No, Nigerian princes are not real.
It is a scam.
And it can spot phishing, phishing as in P-H-I-S-H, phishing scams and all kinds of red flags.
But what I wondered is, can Grok spot hoaxes?
So, of course, I asked about the Find People hoax, and it got it completely correct.
And I asked myself, Do you think that Grok got the fine people hoax completely correct by itself?
Do you think he just looked at the facts and decided, yep, that's a hoax?
I don't think there's any chance of that because I don't think the large language models can do that.
I think the large language models would just look at the predominant opinion and unfortunately it would still look like there were more people saying it was real because most of the media would say that.
So I think that Grok is being, let's say, the finger is on the scale, just like all the AIs, except that the finger on the scale of Grok is trying to be accurate.
I think some of the other AIs, if somebody puts their finger on it, is to keep the propaganda there.
But in this case, the fine people hoax is definitely a hoax.
And so if there's a little bit of programming in there to make sure that it gets that one right, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
But it makes me wonder if it can spot hoaxes in general.
Because, you know, I've taught you the two-on-the-nose rule.
I've taught you the one anonymous source rule.
You know, I've given you all these rules for spotting hoaxes.
Can Grok do that?
I'll bet no.
But I'll bet it could do it someday, and I'll bet it could be trained to do it.
If the only thing he did was say, all right, there's a few people who are good at spotting hoaxes, so just look at their feed and try to imitate them, do what they would have done, then I think he could get there pretty quickly.
For example, in this next story, there was a meta-analysis.
To see if the public is good at detecting fake news.
Oh, here you go.
Do you think the public's good at detecting fake news?
Well, somebody did a meta-analysis to find out if the public is good at spotting fake news.
Do you see the joke yet?
As I've taught you, meta-analysis is not real.
It's fake science.
Whether people can spot fake news.
If the people in this study didn't know that they were part of a meta-analysis, well, they probably should have known.
No, actually, if it's meta-analysis, it means they're looking at studies that other people already completed.
So, no.
Meta-analysis is like horoscopes.
And I've given you the long explanation of why.
But as soon as you see meta-analysis, just discount it.
Just say, nah.
I mean, it could be true because a lot of questions are yes, no.
Are people good at this?
Yes, no.
So meta-analysis can be correct, but so can a coin flip.
It's basically a coin flip because a human being decides what's in the analysis and what's not.
That's the whole trick.
And if it's based on the assumption of the person doing it as opposed to just the data...
It's not really a real analysis.
So, for example, if there's one big study that overwhelms all the other studies, a meta-analysis looks at all the studies and says, all right, you know, one study might be unreliable, but if I look at the average of the studies, you know, I'll get something useful.
No, you won't.
Because let's say one study is big and you're looking at them and you go, oh, well, We'll throw that big study in there because it's so big, but then all the little ones don't even matter because the big one would overwhelm it.
Or you say, hmm, this one study says that everything's wrong and these other studies say things are the other direction.
Then you use your judgment and say, huh, I think this one study that disagrees with the other ones was poorly done, in my opinion, because of reasons.
And the other ones might be poorly done, but...
Maybe you don't care or they agree with you.
So meta-analysis, as soon as you hear those words, run away.
So could AI do that yet?
Could AI do what I just did?
And say, oh, yeah, meta-analysis, that's your trigger for not trusting it.
Don't think so.
Not yet, but it could.
It seems well within what would be possible.
According to a new study, so researchers found out that this is from a source called PLOS One.
I've never heard of it.
So I'm trying to give credit, but I don't know who that is.
It turns out, according to the study, humans are more likely to trust an AI voice that sounds like them.
So if you listen to an AI voice that sounded sort of like you, You would trust it more than if it sounded sort of like some stranger you never met.
Now, did they need to do that study?
Nope.
They could have just asked me.
It's one of the most well-known, well-documented, well-understood phenomena in the entire world, and it's called pacing.
Pacing.
PLOS One is a scientific journal.
Thank you, Owen.
So pacing is when you match the person you're trying to persuade.
But the matching could come in a lot of forms.
One form would be if you do the same body language.
This one is good in a meeting with your boss.
Let's say your boss is leaning on the table like I am with both arms.
You do the same thing.
Your boss won't even notice.
Let's say the boss does this.
You do the same thing.
Boss won't even notice.
Let's say you can detect the breathing pattern of your boss.
Match it.
Just breathe, inhale when they inhale, exhale when they exhale, and do as much as you can.
Let's say your boss has a certain way of talking.
My best example is some people like to use a lot of war analogies, like, oh, I jumped on that hand grenade, or we'll take that hill tomorrow, or we'll die on that hill.
And if you hear that, you just start using some of your own war analogies.
It's like, well, it looks like we're going to be battling them today.
So that's called pacing.
So although a human can't easily reproduce the voice sound of another human, you didn't have to study it.
I could have told you with complete certainty, as could 100% of hypnotists.
Every hypnotist in the world would have said, oh, yeah, obviously, if you can match somebody's voice, that would be killer.
So, yeah, you didn't have to study it.
Just ask me.
Meanwhile, OpenAI, according to TechCrunch, Kyle Wiggers is writing, that they're planning to charge for agents.
And the charges can be up to $20,000 per month.
To have an AI-driven agent.
Now, an agent would be something like a little humanoid entity that might help you with programming.
Or it might be a little humanoid sort of entity that would help you with sales leads or stuff like that.
Now, they would cost different.
The prices would be different.
So if you had the best software developer, it might be $10,000 a month.
If you had...
Some lower-level function that a human could do.
Let's say that the AI agent costs are probably similar to what a human would cost, but lower cost.
So ideally, you would save money.
I'm going to bet against it working.
So I don't doubt that there will be a product and there will be a release, but I'm quite certain...
With my total lack of knowledge of AI, I still feel quite certain that the large language models will never be able to be a reliable agent because of the hallucinations and the lack of knowledge about current things and the complete inability to even look at a file and tell you what's in it.
Just the most basic things I can't do.
So I think what's going to happen...
Is that the AI portion will just be the user interface.
And that whatever is the agent is going to be a whole set of non-AI programs, which could be very extensive.
And so if you put them together, it might be a good agent.
But it won't be the AI that's doing the agent part.
It'll just be user interface to a whole bunch of specialized programming for each of these domains.
That's what I think.
I think the LLM is just a user interface, and it's going to be tough to get past that.
But as long as the other programs are solid, the agents might be good.
It's just that they'd have to develop a whole new technology, not use AI to do the whole thing.
That's what I think.
I would love to be wrong about that, by the way.
Well, a judge has denied...
Elon Musk requests to block OpenAI in their conversion from a non-profit to a for-profit company.
Now, before you say, wow, I guess that's over.
I guess OpenAI got what it wanted.
The judge is only denying blocking it now.
And the reason for the denial is that it's not obvious that if it went to court, it would go one way or the other.
So, apparently, I don't know enough about the law to give you the fine details, but the basic idea is that the judge would have probably blocked it if, looking at the facts, the judge said, all right, if this goes to trial, it's going to get blocked by the court, you know, by the jury or the judge after a trial, so I might as well block it now.
Because it's almost certainly going to go in that direction, and there's no reason to let them go too far down that road if you know they're going to, let's say, 90% of the chance they're going to get blocked.
But the judge called it a toss-up.
He goes, I think this one's a coin flip.
So that doesn't mean that this is a done deal.
It means that the judge can't determine that it will definitely go in one way or the other.
At least a 50% chance, according to one judge, that Elon Musk will be able to block them from turning into a for-profit.
Now, it feels to me that OpenAI has way too much backing and money and geniuses working for it that it could get in this situation, which is an existential risk to the entire company.
Not have a way through it.
So, of course, they're up against Elon Musk with all of his resources and all of his brains and all of his personal involvement.
And I think his case is really strong.
If he gave a gazillion dollars as part of the founding thing and the part of the agreement for taking that money was it would remain non-profit.
Which was really the central thing he wanted.
It was the central thing.
He didn't say, go build an AI. He said, if we're going to build an AI, it's got to be open source and non-profit.
So it does look like fraud to me.
And I don't know what argument they would use to make it not fraud.
If you take 50 million or whatever it was.
From somebody with a given set of assumptions that are agreed, and the most important one, the most important one is to stay non-profit, and then you violate that?
How could you possibly win that case in court?
Now, obviously, the judge is smarter than I am, so the judge thinks it's a coin toss, but it doesn't look like one to me.
To me, it doesn't look like a coin toss, but we'll find out what happens.
Anyway, this was reported by Julia Shapiro in The Hill.
So, this is cool.
Johns Hopkins University has developed a bionic hand that knows what it's touching.
So, just by touching, it can tell what it has in his hand.
Now, that's a big deal.
Now, of course, I have an obvious question.
If the robot hand knows what it's touching, can it also make eye contact at the same time?
And can I get two of them?
Well, never mind.
But I think they found the first killer application, if you know what I mean.
Let's just say, if this thing really is that good with its hands, a lot of single guys are going to get a domestic robot.
To help with the dishes and to fold their laundry.
You know what I love about this story?
The thing I love about this story is that 100% of the men listening to it were instantly, you instantly got to the joke before I finished the sentence.
And the women are like, wait, what?
All right.
Trump is expected to sign an executive order to eliminate the Department of Education, post-millennials reporting on this.
So you think it's finally going to happen?
How many years have I been alive listening to the, oh, Republicans are going to get rid of the Department of Education, and then nothing happens?
This looks like it's going to happen.
I think this is actually going to happen.
It might happen really quickly.
Now, Democrats, of course, who don't understand how anything works, will say, well, it's the end of education.
I guess nobody's going to get an education down, especially the brown people.
So it looks like it's racist, too.
And did I mention it's a little bit sexist?
We don't even know how.
So that's common.
But I'm pretty sure this is nothing but reorganizing how we...
How we do things and putting control in the States.
So I don't know how much money it will save because I would think some of that budget ends up at the States, but we'll see.
So Ian Carroll, who some of you know as a very colorful and interesting internet personality.
He's usually working on the conspiracy theories.
Whether they're true conspiracy theories or not, we don't know.
But he's kind of into the interesting part of the news.
And he's talked quite a bit about the Epstein files.
And he thinks the Epstein files are never coming out.
Now, a hybrid of that, which I've said, is there will be lots of files, and they might come out, but not the good stuff.
I think that no matter how many files we get to see...
We're just not going to see the good stuff.
And what Ian Carroll believes is that the files would be so deeply destructive to Israel that there's just no way we're going to release them because we're too tight with Israel.
Israel has too much of a connection to the United States, let's say.
You can say they have too much control over the government.
That would be The other way to look at it, I'm just going to say we have too tight a connection, because you end up in the same place.
The only part I can be sure of is that we have a tight connection.
So if, for example, Israel said, whisper, whisper, you know, this would be the worst thing in the world for Israel, and therefore it would destroy our relationship, we could not survive the release of this.
I don't know if that's going to happen, by the way.
I'm not on the side that thinks he was only working for Israel.
If you're Epstein and you're doing what he's been accused of doing, do you think you're going to be faithful to one master?
Why?
What would cause him to be faithful to one master?
I can't think of a reason.
Because remember, he's unfaithful in every other way.
He'd be the ultimate liar, con man, sexual abuser, on a scale we've rarely ever seen.
So do you think that if his bosses were in Israel, that he wouldn't also do some work for the United States, maybe also some work for the UK? You don't think so?
I think he would sell it to whoever he could sell it to, and he would gain influence by doing a favor for them.
So it might be he had maybe a preferred boss, and if it turned out that it was Israel, nobody would be surprised.
But I feel like there's something closer to freelancing happening, no matter how he got started.
So I feel like there's lots of reasons not to release the good stuff, and it's not just about Israel.
Well, also, we're being told the JFK files are coming any minute.
There's a website that's already up, and so that's where all the JFK files will be put, and we can look at them and find out all the nothing.
I expect to find out absolutely nothing from the JFK files.
You don't think that after, what is it, 50 years, whatever the hell it is, you don't think that the good stuff's been removed or scrubbed or was never there in the first place?
Don't you think that the only things that are in the file are the things that the bad guys wanted in the file?
Because the bad guys had complete control.
The people who probably were behind it seemed to have had complete control over everything at that point.
Why would they allow for decades the very proof that would put them in jail?
Why would they allow that to even exist?
You know, if they did the Warren Commission and that was fake, which most of us think was fake, why would they put real information in the files anywhere?
It doesn't make any sense.
So I'm going to say no real chance we'll see anything new and useful about JFK and or the Epstein files.
Now, there might be plenty to talk about, which would be different.
So there might be like, oh, There was an alien spaceship that landed at the same time as the assassination.
And then we'll be, oh, maybe the aliens did it.
Yeah, yeah, it's the aliens did it.
And we'll just go down some stupid rabbit hole.
Same with Epstein.
There'll be like one name of somebody who's already deceased.
And we'll be like, well, really?
He was friends with that serial killer who's deceased?
Maybe the serial killer is part of the story, and we'll just go down some stupid rabbit hole.
So there might be something that grabs our attention, but I don't think it's going to clear anything up.
Meanwhile, this is funny.
Do you remember when President Trump was reading off all the wastes of money when he did his speech to Congress?
And there was all these weird things.
And one of the items was, That the U.S. was spending $8 million for making mice transgender.
So when CNN did their fact-checking, they fact-checked that as fake.
Fake that we were spending actually $8 million to make mice transgender.
But then they had to take it off their fact-check.
Because apparently it's true.
Now, I love...
That their assumption about Trump is that he exaggerates everything.
So, you know, you could call it exaggeration or hyperbole.
They might call it lying.
So when they say something like this, it just fits their pattern of, oh, he's exaggerating.
There's no way.
There's no way literally, literally, that they spent $8 million or had an $8 million budget for turning mice trans.
But apparently they did.
So they had to change their website.
Libs of TikTok was calling that out.
RFK Jr. was on Fox News lately, and I just like this statement because there's so much controversy and question about RFK Jr. and whether he's going to use science or ignore the science.
And I think he does a good job of saying exactly what he plans to do.
And he said, quote, we're going to be honest with the American people for the first time in history.
Okay.
That's a hell of a good start.
And he says, about all of the tests and all the studies.
Wait, are you suggesting, RFK Jr., that the government has not been honest about all the tests and all the studies?
Yes, we know that to be true.
They have not been honest about it.
Have you ever had a conversation with a normie?
About vaccination testing?
It's a wild ride.
So they'll say something like, oh, I don't like RFK Jr. because he's against vaccinations.
And vaccinations have been tested and studied for, you know, decades so that we know they're safe.
And they'll say something like, no, they weren't.
Oh, yeah, they're studied for decades.
We follow them.
So we even, not only do we know the short-term effects, But we know the long-term effects because of all the studies that go on for decades after they're released.
And I say, there are no studies after they're released.
No, no, no.
It's not like the COVID ones where they just did a little bit of studying at first, but then they just released it, and then they didn't know what was happening in the long term.
And I say, that's all of them.
None of them were studied for the long term.
And normies will just flip out.
Tell you you're wrong, change the subject, run away, never talk to you again.
Anyway, so, and then he goes on, he says, and that's going to anger some people who want an ideological approach to public health.
That is correct.
The Democrats are on the automatic against anything MAGA or MAHA, and so the Democrats are once again going to be...
It just gets funnier every time it happens.
Once again, Democrats are going to be forced into this box where they're against testing drugs to see if they're safe, which is precisely the thing they thought was happening, and their entire worldview is based on the thought that science has already deeply tested all these things.
Once they learn...
That the only person who's in favor of deeply testing them and testing them right and testing them over the long term is RFK Jayden Jr. He's the only one who embraces their actual philosophy.
They don't know that their philosophy has never been used.
Big Pharma just doesn't use the, let's test it forever and make sure it's safe and test it in combination with these things.
Study what happens if you take a bunch of shots versus you just get one if you're a baby.
Nope.
Nope.
That's not happening, but people think it is.
According to Unusual Whales on X, the U.S. is going to appoint some kind of affordability czar and created an affordability council.
Now, what exactly are they going to do?
Because if the free market Can't make stuff affordable?
What would an affordability czar do that would help?
Now, I heard the other day something I'd never heard before.
So give me a fact check on this.
I haven't looked at anything but the comments on it.
Somebody said that we get a lot of our eggs from turkey.
Now, I don't mean turkeys are laying eggs, which would be funny.
I mean, they do.
What I mean is that the country of Turkey is apparently a big egg producer.
Is that real?
And that we've already, you know, increased our number of eggs that we're asking, you know, some gigantic amount to make up for the shortfall.
Is that true?
I'd love to know more about that.
So maybe, maybe an affordability czar could do stuff like...
Well, we don't usually get our eggs from, I don't know, Canada or something, but now we will.
So there might be some regulations that need to be loosened, something like that.
Yeah.
Dressing, not eggs.
Yeah, I'd never heard we get our eggs from turkey, so I'm not 100% sure it's true.
And then somebody clarified for me something that I had gotten completely wrong.
So this is me doing a fact check on my prior reporting.
I looked up how long it takes a baby chicken to grow up and create its own eggs.
It looked like it wasn't very long.
It looked like it was basically a few months and your hen can make chickens.
I'm sorry, or your chicken can make eggs.
So I thought, well, why would we ever have to wait more than two months?
Because obviously the high price of eggs would mean that, you know, as long as we're not afraid of the bird flu.
Let's see.
Perplexity says, yes, eggs are being imported from Turkey to the U.S. Set to export 420 million eggs.
I'm surprised that eggs can last that long.
Doesn't that surprise you?
You know, because the shipping is not going to be short from Turkey.
I don't think they fly them in.
So I'm a little surprised about that.
But apparently somebody said that I was wrong about it only taking a few months for a baby chicken to grow up into a hen that can make more eggs.
Because I guess it takes longer than that.
So maybe they can start laying eggs.
In a few months, but maybe they're not productive, meaning that they can't produce much or it's not the right kind of egg or it's not what you would want to buy at the grocery store.
So I think it just takes longer.
So the U.S. should be back in eggs just in the normal free market way, but it might take over a year.
It could be closer to two years.
The free market will clearly, clearly adjust to the fact that eggs cost a lot and there's a shortage, so let's make more chickens.
It's just going to take a little while.
Anyway, if you have the right affordabilities, maybe you could make a difference.
I just don't know exactly what kind of things they would do.
Meanwhile, oil prices have gone down to a three-year low.
According to Financial Times, Tom Wilson is reporting.
And so the Brent type of oil has dropped below $70 a barrel because of a larger-than-expected increase in U.S. crude stocks.
So are we already going to see?
A big difference in oil prices, which would then work through the entire economy fairly quickly.
I don't know.
And then my question is, OPEC had just announced it was going to do a major increase in production.
Is OPEC still going to do a major increase at the same time prices reached a three-year low?
Or is that still high enough where they think, yeah, still worth doing a little extra production?
So oil prices are just so hard to predict.
There's politics in there, and there's free market in there, and there's physical constraints in there.
There's a lot going on.
But I would say, as Trump often says, oil is like the liquid gold.
He quotes the Beverly Hillbillies.
Liquid gold.
Anyway, it could be that if the only thing you did is get all kinds of oil going in all kinds of ways from OPEC doing more because we twisted their arm maybe behind the scenes and the US doing more because the constraints have been lifted by the Republican administration.
If the only things you did were those things.
You should see prices coming down within a year.
You know, one of the things that Trump has done, but I think he could do better, in his speech he did say, you know, there would be, in his own words, he said there would be temporary pain, but you have to get through it to get to the good stuff.
And I think maybe he needs to reinforce that.
Maybe just a little bit stronger than that.
It's really hard for somebody like Trump, who's optimist, optimist, optimist, to tell you that you're going to have to suffer for a little while.
So he might have the right instinct by downplaying that as much as possible, because it's going to happen whether people feel bad about it or not.
It's just going to happen.
But I feel it would be a little more transparent if he said, yeah, the only way we're going to get prices down.
Is to do some things that are going to be pretty hard to take in the short run.
And if he could offer anything that would give people relief in the short run on food prices or anything else, you know, that would be great.
So maybe if you had some way to make the short run a little bit easier to survive, then people would understand that waiting for the long run, which might only be a year or two.
It's worth doing.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon says it's going to use AI to speed up their military decision-making.
We've heard that before.
The Hill is reporting on this today.
And, of course, that seems necessary.
Like, I don't think you can get around it.
And I believe that humans will still be making the real decisions.
But instead of a human looking for a target, You know, a target's going to pop up and the AI is going to say, this is probably something you should shoot.
And then the human gets to decide, yeah, that does look like something I ought to shoot.
So if we don't do it, the enemies will do it.
So it has to be done.
There's definitely a risk to it, of course.
So Trump has announced that we've captured the ISIS terrorist guy who did the Abbey Gate attack.
That was as we're leaving Afghanistan, the terrible attack at the base there.
And that that terrorist is on, well, I wouldn't call him terrorist, just say ISIS. And that he's on his way back to the United States.
But ex-CIA agent Sarah Adams, who made a lot of, got a lot of publicity being on Sean Ryan's show, she knows, she worked as an ex- She's a CIA person.
She worked apparently enough in that domain that she knows that it's the wrong guy.
So apparently we're bringing the wrong guy in and pretending that we think he's the mastermind of that big killing.
And she says, nope, here's the list of who it really was.
So she's got the goods.
She's giving you the names of the people that it really was.
She's ex-CIA, and she seemed to have worked in that domain, so she's not guessing.
So he might have been there, they think, but he wasn't the mastermind.
So we'll see.
So far, I don't have any reason to think that Sarah Adams would be lying about that.
It sounds like something she knows about.
So we'll see.
I always wondered how we really know how anybody did anything.
So maybe that's the answer to my question.
All right.
So according to...
There's a survey showing that more Americans think that President Trump is changing the U.S. economy for the worse, for the worse, not the better, by a slight majority.
Now...
What survey was this?
Well, it was a survey by NPR and PBS and Marist polling.
So do you trust something that comes up with a negative view of Trump if it comes from NPR and PBS? If you're paying attention at all, you know that those are two entities that are seriously anti-Trump all the time and that Trump is criticized mercilessly.
You couldn't even come up with any source that would be less trustable or less credible on this or any other topic, really.
But here are some other things.
If you ask the general public, is Trump doing things that are good for the economy?
What does the general public know about economics?
They kind of know what their prices are today.
So that's really a different question from, is he doing things that are good for the economy?
Because that would include it's going to make things worse for a little while, but you have to do it to get to the better place that will be way, way, way better.
Now, how much of the public understands that?
That the normal way of things is there's going to be cost up front to get any benefits later?
Very few.
How many people understand tariffs?
I don't.
So if you ask me, is he doing a good job with those tariffs, I would take the Dana Perino view, which is, well, let's wait and see, because it's just unfathomable.
We don't know how much is going to be just a quick negotiation.
We don't know how much is going to be permanent.
We don't know how many companies will respond by moving production here or how long it would take.
So many variables.
So many unknowns.
How in the world can the public know if the economy and the decisions made about it are heading in the right direction?
Even the experts don't know that.
I mean, they have opinions.
But I'll bet you could get 100 economists to look at what's happening right now from the Trump administration, and they would just line up by...
I think they would line up almost entirely by whether they're Democrats or Republicans.
So what do you think the public's doing?
Probably lining up almost exactly by the party that they support.
So John Fetterman continues to try to be that voice of common sense, you know, the only person in the Democrat side who makes sense.
He was talking about how the Democrats did their The little pink outfits and their paddles with the little signs on it and all the acting out during the president's address to Congress.
And here's what he posted on X. He called the Democrats and their behavior a sad cavalcade of self-owns and unhinged petulance.
He's talking about his own side.
It only makes Trump look more presidential and restrained.
Yup.
We're becoming the metaphorical car alarms that nobody pays attention to, and it may not be the winning message.
Now, Amphetamine also agreed with Trump on getting tough against Hamas because the hostages have not been released.
So it looks like...
Oh, and also, jumping in a little bit, Governor Newsom.
Who's got his little podcast.
He's also moving to the middle, it seems.
He had Charlie Kirk on his show.
Okay, that's unusual.
His little podcast.
And apparently Newsom is opposed.
I don't know if he always was.
But at the moment, he says he's opposed to biological men playing in women's sports.
So you can see the people who want to angle for some kind of presidential run.
We assume that they're doing that.
We don't know for sure.
But it looks like they just have to find something like common sense.
And if they're not willing to do the easy stuff, and the trans issue with sports, that's an easy one.
The public is very well decided which way they're going on that.
So I don't take too seriously the people who are doing the...
Oh, I'm right in the middle.
I'm a common sense guy too.
So I'm not buying it as genuine, but there's no doubt they have to do it.
But when I listen to Fetterman, you know, mocking his own side for being like a car alarm that nobody listens to and unhinged and petulant, I compare it to the James Carville plan where he finally just gave up and said, yeah, yeah, the smartest thing we can do.
That's my Carville impression.
The smartest thing we can do is just do nothing.
Do nothing.
Just wait for Trump to implode.
That's all you have to do.
Just wait for it to implode.
So do nothing.
Don't do anything.
And I'm thinking to myself, the don't do anything idea sounds like the dumbest thing in the world until you see what the Democrats do when they do something.
Every time they do something, it's so lame, it's so ridiculous, that even their own team is calling it unhinged and petulant and makes you look ridiculous.
That's their own team.
So yeah, Carville, I think I mocked Carville at first for saying that their best strategy is to do nothing.
But when you compare it to what they actually do when they do something, When they do something, it's always worse.
So yeah, James Carville might be the smartest person on the team.
Just do nothing.
Now, would that be enough for Trump to implode?
Well, implode might be too strong a word.
But do you think there's any chance that any president could go four years this aggressively without something coming off the rails?
Just in the normal course of...
It might not be some existential threat, but it could be that something, uh-oh, trade with China really went south in a bad way and we're running out of toilet paper.
You could imagine that happening, right?
I don't know what it would be.
It wouldn't necessarily be tariff-related, but you could imagine things getting even worse in Ukraine or Russia getting...
A little more adventurous than they would have been otherwise or something.
So just waiting for things to start looking bad in their normal course of a normal presidency, it's not the worst idea in the world for a strategy because they really have nobody who can do anything that works.
If you don't have a single competent person on your team...
Yeah, waiting until the other one makes mistakes and then criticizing it.
It's your best play.
Meanwhile, Ayanna Presley gets into this back and forth with James Comer at a hearing.
And, of course, she tried to do the thing where she was just talking over and using up the time that she wasn't allowed and acting bad.
And, of course, she was, again, dressed as her supervillain self, which I love.
But she gets into it and she's saying, data from Texas shows that U.S.-born Americans commit more, I won't use the words, but, you know, sex crimes and murder than immigrants.
And Comer finally had enough of her because it wasn't her time and she wasn't supposed to be speaking, I guess.
And Comer goes, this trend of you all trying to get thrown on a committee so you can get on MSNBC is going to end.
We're not going to put up with it.
I like how he framed it.
That you're all trying to get thrown out so that you can end up on MSNBC to tell you a story about how you got thrown out.
It does look like that's all it is.
Pure theater.
So of all the theater kids, because if you haven't noticed by now, the Republicans seem to do policies which they actually believe and have always believed, such as getting rid of the Department of Education.
They've always believed that.
So if they go ahead and do that, that's just Republicans being Republicans and authentic.
But the Democrats are almost entirely driven by these theater kids who do dress up and then they do an act.
And they bring their act to whatever event.
Oh, we're going to pretend they were the unhappiest people in the world.
Look at my face.
Oh, look at my sad face.
Did anybody notice my sad face?
Oh, you need arguments and data?
Well, I don't have any arguments and data, but look at my sad face.
I'm so disappointed in you.
Oh, so disappointed.
But the best one is Ayanna Presley.
Because I like that she goes the extra mile to match her wardrobe and style to her evil supervillain persona.
A lot of the other theater kids just think they can just sort of, you know, mumble through it, like Adam Schiff.
Oh, Adam Schiff.
Oh, everything that happens is bad if Trump does it.
And he does his theater kid thing, but he just wears a regular suit.
I'm thinking, well, you could learn a little bit about how to do wardrobe and hair.
And by the way, I love...
I actually love Ayanna Presley's whole vibe and look.
I think she does a great job of it.
Like, legitimately.
She's just really good at it, the fashion thing.
But the fashion she chose just looks like a supervillain.
And then she acts like one.
And I think, well, that's perfect.
You're committed.
I like the fact you're committed to the role.
But none of it looks real.
It doesn't look like she's even slightly committed to her own opinions.
It looks like she got the script.
And she's like, and in scene one, I will be talking over people until I get kicked out.
And in scene two, I will appear on Rachel Maddow's show.
It just looks like acting.
Chris Cuomo is mocking Democrats in Congress, saying that they picked another hill to die on.
There's a New York poll just came out.
67% of Democrats say biological men shouldn't play in a women's sport.
67% of Democrats are against biological men in women's sports.
And still, the leadership wants those biological men in women's sports.
What's the bad?
And so Chris Cuomo is on the side of reason.
It's like, okay, this is just crazy shit.
Now, I should tell you full disclosure, I'm very pro-Chris Cuomo.
Now, if you don't know why, when I got canceled, he was the only person in the big media world.
Who said, why don't you come on my show?
Because I'm actually curious, genuinely curious about what you had to say and what's behind it.
And he asked some tough questions, which I expected.
It's part of the process.
It's no problem.
But he let me talk.
He didn't cut me off.
He didn't insult me.
He gave me a full, complete vehicle to say what I wanted.
And wow, did I appreciate it.
Because, you know, I was in a pretty deep hole at that time.
So for anybody to be willing to, you know, reach into the deep hole and give me a genuine, fair airing of things with some pushback that was completely appropriate, I'll just always appreciate that.
So now you might say cynically, oh, it was good for ratings.
I don't know.
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.
But I appreciate it.
Tim Walsh allegedly has been advising Canada how to avoid and circumvent Trump's tariffs.
Can Democrats be any dumber?
What could be less useful than trying to thwart your very government?
Even if you don't like the idea, it's just not a good look.
To side with the other country.
Just not a good look.
And I think Tim is one of the silliest and most ridiculous of the Democrats.
So, he will not be your next president.
Meanwhile, James O'Keefe and his OMG group got another undercover win.
So with undercover cameras, they were talking to a state forum VP who admits that he's trying to exclude white people from employment.
And he says, I'm being biased away from my own kind because he's a white guy.
And he says he wants the 2040 workforce to be more Hispanic and Latino.
Now, of course, we all understand that he's trying to meet those diversity goals.
And as I often say, I like diversity.
It's just that when you force it, you get a worse result than if you didn't.
So if diversity happens because we do a great job of educating everybody and then the workforce looks just like the public, well, that would be a heck of a good thing.
That would be great.
But if you force it, you end up with taking identity over capability, and there's no way around that if you're really focused on that goal of hitting those targets.
So you're always going to go deeper into the unqualified than you wanted to, and you won't admit it while you're doing it, but you'll know when you do it.
It's just built into the system.
So what do you think of that?
State Farm.
As a white guy in power who's making sure that other white guys can't get the job he has, I'm going to say again, I have been grossly discriminated against in my two corporate careers and later in my TV career for being a white guy.
But all of that discrimination, as far as I know, came from old white guys who had already reached their position, and in order to stay in their positions, They had to pretend that they were so into diversity that they would discriminate against their own kind.
That's what this State Farm fucker is doing.
So let me just say, this guy's a piece of shit.
Like, I get that he's got these noble goals.
Oh, I have some noble goals.
And they're not even...
I'm not saying they're not noble.
I'm saying that in order to reach them, you have to discriminate against people like me.
He says he knows he's doing it.
Fuck you.
Just fuck you completely.
And your company has some explaining to do if he's still employed.
You have a lot of explaining to do if he's still employed.
And if you had a choice of using their insurance or somebody else's, well, that'd be an easy choice for me.
I wouldn't even consider them unless it was my last choice.
Might be.
Might be my last choice.
Well, so...
I guess Trump is going to delay some of the Mexico tariffs and Canada tariffs, and he's waiting for the largest automakers to make adjustments before they kick in.
How does any of that make sense?
What exactly are large automakers going to do in one month that makes any difference?
You can't do anything in a month.
So, I mean, maybe you can announce something?
You know, you could announce something maybe, but you couldn't do anything in a month.
So everything about the tariffs, I'm going to put it in the category of, uh, it could be a good idea, but it might not be.
But how do I tell?
You know, I mean, as I tell you way too often, I have a degree in economics and I've got an MBA from a top business school, Berkeley.
And I don't understand where the tariffs are going to take us.
But I do trust Trump on this.
Who said this?
Was it Greg Goffeld who put it this way?
And I agreed with it.
Trump's instincts have been unbelievably good.
If you were to look at all the things he called just years in advance.
Years in advance, everything from immigration to you name it.
He's been spot on about things that often I didn't fully understand.
This might be one of those situations.
And the thing that you can never be sure of is how much of it is exactly what he says it is, which is a revenue-raising thing.
Blah, blah, blah.
And how much of it is just pure negotiation?
And it probably will shake a bunch of people into doing things they weren't going to do before.
And a lot of it could be good for us.
I feel like trusting him is something he earned.
And I think, again, I'm quoting Goffeld here.
It seems to me that the things he's done are so unambiguously...
Designed for the good of America.
And that when I didn't understand it, sometimes it's just because I didn't understand it.
So again, I'll quote Dana Perino.
I think we need to just wait and see.
I don't know how long, but if anybody ever earned the right to try something that's outside the box, Trump earned it.
It's really easy for me to say, you know what, I'm just going to back up on this one because I think he just knows more than I do about this topic.
And he does have very smart, very high-end economic people with him.
I think that we've also seen that his advisors have been incredibly good since the campaign.
First term, not as good.
But the second term, oh my goodness, does he have smart people working for him.
You know, he's got, I don't have to name them, but you could come up with, it would take you no time at all to name six people who are key advisors who aren't just ordinary, but frickin' brilliant, right?
Now, if he's surrounded by that many people who are just, just flamingly, unusually, Spectacularly brilliant.
And they have a long track record of being that way.
And they're on board.
Because I don't think you could be pro-tariff and be that close to the president.
You couldn't be anti-tariff and be that close to the president without...
I think we would pick up on it.
Or I think he would take their advice.
So he must have at least convinced...
His closest, smartest people to be on board.
Now, I haven't heard Elon Musk talk about the tariffs a ton, which makes me a little bit nervous because he weighs in on everything.
I think he must have said something good about them at one point because I'm sure he's been asked.
But he's not really hitting that.
He's not banging that drum hard.
It's a little bit of a...
He may be in a wait-and-see mode as well, and he might also realize that if you judged it only from an economic perspective, you might be missing the bigger story, that it's a little bit like a game of chicken, where if Trump can convince the other countries that we're going to go to the wall and nothing's going to stop us, suddenly they should get really flexible.
Now, what Trump has right...
Is we seem to be in a position where, generally speaking, we would be less harmed by tariffs than the people we're tariffing.
So it's certainly true with Mexico, certainly true with Canada.
It's more of a jump ball with China.
But China doesn't want tariffs.
They certainly don't want them.
So I think his instincts are going to prove out to be right.
And I think you're going to see already flexibility because of it.
I think more companies will announce that they're going to bring their production to the U.S. because of it.
When Biden said, oh, we're going to unsure more companies, what exactly was he offering?
Well, Trump created an asset with tariffs.
And the asset is, if you keep producing in these other countries, you're welcome to do it, but it's not going to be economical anymore.
So if you tell the other countries it will never be economical again to produce in another country, well, then they're going to roll up their factory as fast as they can, even if it's expensive, and they're going to move it to the US. So in theory, he's created a framework that should do the most important thing that needs to be done, which is bring our stuff here.
Who was it?
Was it...
Balaji Srinivasan, I think, who was talking about the fastest way you could have a robust manufacturing base in the U.S. would be to just say that the area around Starbase, where Elon already has its manufacturing, solve it.
Just say that it's going to be sort of a no-regulation zone.
And I think the suggestion was that Elon Musk would be part of the...
Asset allocation stuff.
I'm not sure about that part, but I like the part about having a zone that is relatively free of regulations.
The only thing I don't like about it is if you put too much manufacturing in one smallish area, that one good natural disaster is much worse.
So, ideally...
It would be some kind of lack of regulations that could be applied to wherever it makes sense to put the factory, because sometimes you need to put it by energy, sometimes you need to put it closer to the city to ship, closer to a waterway to ship, something like that.
So I think it would be better, rather than to have a special economic zone, it might be better to just say, if you're bringing in your company to the United States, you're going to...
You're going to come into a very regulation-friendly environment.
So however that works.
China's spokesperson, at least somebody who says they're a Chinese spokesperson on X, was talking about fentanyl.
They're not too happy about that.
And said, the U.S., not anyone else, is responsible for the fentanyl crisis inside the U.S. In the spirit of humanity and goodwill toward the American people, we have taken robust steps to assist the U.S. in dealing with the issue.
Instead of recognizing our efforts, the U.S. has sought to smear and shift blame to China and is seeking to pressure and blackmail China with terror fikes.
They've been punishing us for helping them.
This is not going to solve the U.S.'s problem.
And we'll undermine our counter-narcotics dialogue and cooperation.
So, do you see what they did there?
There's a clever little trick where they tried to say that whoever's responsible is who should solve it.
That's not logical.
Let me give you an example.
If you have a risk of burglars in your neighborhood, and you get burgled, Whose responsibility is it?
Well, the burglar.
Our legal system says, no, if you're the burglar, you're responsible, not the homeowner.
But who can stop the burglar?
Only the homeowner.
If the homeowner needs bars in the window, do it.
If they need weapons, do it.
If they need a dog, do it.
If they need to make sure their doors are locked and secured, do it.
You can make your home less burglable, even though getting burgled is not your responsibility.
It's the responsibility of the burglar.
So when China says it's the responsibility of basically the addicts, that's true.
It's also not the right argument.
The argument is who can stop it.
And my understanding is that when they say they're helping, it's kind of fake.
Because I think they also know exactly the names of the people who are the big fentanyl dealers.
And I'm pretty sure they're still walking around, still alive.
So it seems to me that China is probably just pretending that they care.
And I think that Trump is done with that.
So I think what he's doing is saying, look, you can complain about whose responsibility is all day long, but you got a tariff.
But it's your responsibility.
Yep, yep, great.
You got a tariff.
But we're doing all we can.
Well, maybe it's not enough.
You got a tariff.
I like it.
So there's a case where I'm all in on the tariff.
Because I do not believe China is genuinely trying to solve the fentanyl problem.
And I'd like to see the U.S. describe that better than I did.
So I'd love to see somebody from the administration say, here's what they're not doing.
And then I think you'd see a list of things that you know they could do that they're not doing.
So telling us what they are doing is just propaganda, because it doesn't tell us what they could be doing that would make the big difference that they're not doing.
So only we could say that.
So I don't believe China one bit.
But don't ever fall for the, it's your responsibility.
It might be, but if you're not the one who can solve the problem, somebody else is going to get squeezed, and right now it's them.
And then here's a Mexican president with their propaganda on fentanyl.
So the president, Scheinbaum, Scheinbaum?
Yeah.
Said that U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that 80% of those arrested for fentanyl trafficking at U.S. ports of entry were U.S. citizens.
Oh, so I guess the implication here is that U.S. citizens are behind the fentanyl trade.
Nice try, Mexico.
Reject it.
Here's what we plan to do, or Trump plans to do, with those U.S. citizens who are bringing fentanyl across the border.
Kill them.
It's our current policy, at least preference.
It's not a policy yet, but it's our preference.
The preference is that if a U.S. citizen brings a big quantity of fentanyl across the border, we kill them.
Now, we do it legally through the death penalty and through the courts.
But yes, Scheinbaum, we plan to kill them.
Now, you still got to do your thing.
Because they didn't produce it themselves.
These Americans didn't own fentanyl labs in Mexico.
If they did, they would have been killed.
They're presumably working with the cartels, I assume.
But again, nice try, trying to change the topic.
As long as we're willing to kill every one of those people who brought...
And I'm in favor of that, by the way.
As long as it goes to the courts and it's a legal process.
Well, no.
I'm going to take it back.
My preference would be summary execution on site.
Meaning that if they pull somebody over, whether they're American or not, and they find a barrel of fentanyl pills, they should say, get on your knees, and we should put a bullet in their head and...
No matter who's watching.
And I'm very serious about that.
Because if somebody's got a barrel of fentanyl in their car, I don't want to hear that they didn't know it was there.
Like, if you can't prevent a barrel of fentanyl from being in your car, and maybe you do a little bit of work to find out it's not an American family on vacation that got somehow...
I don't know, blackmailed or something.
So there may be a little bit of question asking.
But if it's somebody you already have, maybe they've been on your radar and you suspected them, and then you pulled them over at the border and they got a trunk full of fentanyl, I say bullet in the head.
To me, that's a terrorist that you caught in the act.
It's a terrorist.
Terrorist you caught in the act.
Summary execution.
I've never said that about anybody else.
But I think we have to say it's bullet in the head.
There's no court.
We don't need it.
We're just fucking killing you.
That's my preference.
Especially the Americans.
I'll do the Americans first.
According to Maria Knopf, I was talking about the new survey that came out that America is choosing Netflix and chill over marriage.
There's a whole bunch of statistics about how people are not getting married like they used to and don't want to have kids like they used to.
Researchers say there's a connection conundrum.
There's more tech and less actual connections and blah, blah, blah.
And this is, I guess, on Fox.
And the source is Heritage Foundation.
And I'm trying to understand in the most simple way, I'm trying to understand why it is that everything changed.
And I think the problem is so many things changed.
So let me just run through the problems with having kids these days.
Careers and families don't mix very well.
Because if both the parents are working full-time and the kids are doing homework full-time, you barely see them.
So all the things that used to be good about family connections doesn't really work if both of you are working.
Now, I'm not against both people working.
I'm just going to describe the problem.
What's the difference?
In today's world, kids absolutely hate being with adults.
And the only thing they seem to care about is spending time with their friends.
If you've seen any modern child, they don't want to spend a freaking minute with you after a certain age.
When they're young, they do.
But at around 12 or 13, they're desperate to get away from you.
So how satisfying is that?
Not very.
How about the...
The homework that kids get these days.
So it's not unusual that they come home and they start doing homework and they don't even, like, eat together.
So the family doesn't even eat together.
You don't even spend, like, one hour at least at the same table.
Like, people will grab some food and go back to their bedroom and say they're doing homework and just do homework until it's, like, 11 o'clock at night, maybe because they're not doing it as quickly as they could.
So homework has ruined home life.
It's just ruined it.
Now, if you haven't experienced that, it's way different than it was when I was a kid.
Do you know how much homework I did as a kid?
None.
None.
We were assigned homework, but we also had enough time during the day that I could do all of my homework.
So if I had one study period and, you know, an extra 15 minutes at lunch, I could bang out all of my homework.
I didn't even bring books home.
I just never did homework.
I did all the homework.
I just never did it at home.
Didn't need to.
And then the other problem is that your spouse is your biggest obstacle to success.
Have you ever noticed that?
If you have a spouse, In the old days, your spouse was the thing that was your biggest contributor to your success.
And I'm not saying we should go back to those days, but if the woman kept up the house and made sure you had some social connections and dinner was on the table and the kids were all there and they were all dressed and happy to see you, then the family and the wife were supporting the...
And the husband could really lean into work and make money and support the family.
And so it was designed so that sides were helping each other.
But suppose you have two high-powered, successful, well-educated, assertive people married to each other.
Almost everything that one does becomes a drag on the other one.
I need to work late.
So you need to pick up the kids, but I also need to work late.
So it becomes basically a competition.
Not because anybody's a bad person.
It's just the system.
Two high-powered people are going to be trying to maximize their careers and find out they can't do it, and that the biggest problem is the other person.
The very opposite of what it used to be.
Then there's divorce is too easy, especially when both are working.
If you have two incomes and either one of you could live on your own if you had to, it kind of makes divorce a little bit too attractive.
So in the old days, it was just terrible to be divorced, and so people didn't do it.
It just wasn't an option that would work for anybody.
Today, you rarely see your kids after they're age of 13. And I don't know how satisfying is that.
I remember talking to a friend of mine and saying when his kid was going off to college, I said, yeah, what's it going to be like to have an empty house?
And he laughed and said, it's been an empty house since the kid was 13 because we just never see him.
Like, he comes home from school, grabs a snack, and then leaves to go with his friends, and then shows up at bedtime.
It's been an empty house for years.
So why would you have that kid?
Like, where's the part where everybody's so happy in their family situation?
It's completely different.
I don't think families eat dinner together, hardly ever, because everybody's got six different things they have to do after work or after school.
Now, of course, there are exceptions.
But it used to be that pretty much everybody ate dinner together.
You know, in my family, we had a dinner time.
It was 5 o'clock, sometimes 5.30, but we were always told what the time was.
And it was not optional.
It was not optional.
You were going to be there, every one of you, and you were going to be there at 5 o'clock.
And you were going to eat whatever was cooked for you.
And it was probably the single most family bonding thing that you could do.
But I don't see much of that lately.
Of course, people can't afford to get a home with a nice yard.
So that makes everything worse.
There are too many internet temptations.
That's worse.
I think if you add women to the workplace, you know what the biggest problem?
Well, I don't know if it's the biggest.
Probably.
The biggest problem of adding women to the workplace is affairs.
If you go to work and you're surrounded by attractive people with the same interests as you because they have similar kind of careers, how is that not going to lead into massive affairs?
And the answer is, it does.
It does exactly that.
In the old days, if you went to work and it was a bunch of dudes, Because the wives were doing something else.
You'd have to take turns harassing the one secretary.
I'm just joking.
That's a joke.
You didn't take turns harassing the secretary.
You just took a number.
No, no, I'm joking.
You did not do that, and don't harass anybody.
Anyway, and the more freedom that women have from the old bounds of the old patriarchy...
The more freedom that women get, the fewer babies they have.
It just sort of, there's no way around that.
So I'm not saying we should go back to the 50s.
So if that's what you're hearing, I'm not saying that.
I'm saying I have no idea how to solve it.
Because we're definitely not going back to the 50s.
And this definitely doesn't work.
But it's not one thing.
It's just the whole society, from economics to expectations to...
Women in the workplace, which again, of course, I'm in favor of.
There's not one part of this that works for the long term because we need to produce babies and we need to keep families together.
None of this does it.
So if you're looking for this simple solution, there is none.
You know, a lot of people say, oh, let's just make tax breaks so that, you know, you get a tax break for having a kid.
Maybe that'll work in Hungary, but there's not a chance it's going to work here because of all these other things.
You can't solve all of those other problems, and these are all really deep problems.
So, we'll see.
Meanwhile, Putin has invited Netanyahu from Israel to attend the Victory Day Parade in Moscow.
Now, I didn't see if Netanyahu said yes, but I'm going to guess he probably will.
And what I like about this is that Putin is giving sort of a master class in persuasion at the same time that Trump is.
And Netanyahu, I would say, easily the equal in persuasion.
One of the best persuaders is Netanyahu.
Putin is so smart to do this.
Because on one hand, making friends with America's friends...
That's definitely going to have an effect on us, right?
You know, given that there's a sizable and important Jewish population in the United States who has good feelings about Israel, if Netanyahu says, you know what, I am going to go visit your Victory Day parade, and if he gets along with Putin and there's nice pictures, it's just going to be one more reason, hey, maybe we should be Putin's friend.
So again, if you're new to this, I'm not saying Putin's a good guy.
Let's allow that we know who Putin is.
We're not under any weird beliefs that he turned into Mother Teresa overnight.
But if you just look at his game, his persuasion game, befriending Israel in sort of a serious way is not only good for him economically, good for him persuasion-wise, good for him...
Just good for him in every way.
It's just such a smart move that it's hard for me to ignore it.
He just keeps getting the right move, and he's just good at it.
Anyway, so that's happening.
According to the BBC News, the U.S. is pausing intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
Do you think that's real?
Do you think that we're going to pause intelligence sharing with Ukraine?
I feel like the first thing I think is, I'm not sure we could pull it off if we tried.
Because don't you think that within our intelligence community, there would be enough people who don't want it to be paused, that if anything important came up, they'd make sure it got to the Ukraine.
Because it's the intelligence community.
You think they don't have any way to get a message to Ukraine?
Without our own government knowing they did it?
Of course they do.
They would just have to want to.
That's all.
So first of all, I don't believe we have the ability to pause any intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
I just don't think we have that ability.
But if we did, I feel like we'd make an exception if it were anything important.
So I think maybe it's just for a show and maybe...
Maybe put a little more pressure on Ukraine to do what we want them to do.
We'll see.
Hamas has already told Trump that there's no hostage release within a ceasefire.
Trump is really pissed, and he's saying it's their last warning.
And if they don't free the remaining Israeli hostages, there's going to be real hell to pay.
And Trump said that it is over for Hamas terrorists who do not comply.
And that's sort of just doubling down on what he's already said, which didn't make any difference whatsoever.
So I would love to tell you I've got this brilliant idea about what the U.S. should do.
But unfortunately, the only thing you could do is just bomb the whole place and kill the hostages and the Hamas fighters at the same time.
I'm going to give you the darkest view of strategy.
This is dark.
And I definitely would not want this to happen if I were a family member of any hostage.
I wouldn't want this to happen at all.
We might have to just say we're done with the whole hostage situation and then Israel just takes care of whatever they need to do.
At some point, the hostages will be in such bad shape, if they're alive at all, that it's not like they're going to leave and have a happy life.
This is permanent damage, physically, emotionally, mentally.
And at some point, somebody might make the dark, dark decision, and I'm not recommending it.
Because that would be just ethically and morally wrong.
But in terms of strategy, at some point, we're going to say even the hostages maybe would prefer a quick end.
Because being held another year or two underground, I'd rather be dead.
So if you put me in that situation, I don't think I'd be praying for release in a year.
I think I'd be praying for, can you end this as quickly as possible?
So if there were some way to do that, the darkest military strategy is to understand that the so-called hostages are maybe beyond the point where even they would want to be saved.
Now, of course, there will always be some people who are going to prefer life under every situation.
And maybe they have loved ones that they're caring about more than themselves.
That might matter.
But we're getting sort of running out of options here.
So I'm not going to give Israel any recommendations.
I'll just note that Hamas' fuse is starting to run out because they don't have infinite time.
To keep saying, if you wait a little bit longer or you give us a ceasefire, I don't think it's going to work anymore.
I think we may have reached the limit of what we can productively do for the hostages.
And that's the darkest thing I'll ever say, probably.
So again, it's not a recommendation.
Because to recommend it would be immoral and unethical and deeply evil.
But it's also war.
And there's also a common sense element that says, are we going to help these hostages by keeping them prisoners underground for what?
Another year?
Another two years?
Is that good for them?
Is it good for anybody?
I don't know.
No good answers.
There's no clean answers.
So probably whoever is willing to be the most evil.
Might get the outcome they want.
All right, that's all I've got for you today.
Just full of news today.
What time is it?
Yeah, it's time to be done.
I'm going to say a few words privately to the people on Locals, the rest of you.
Thanks for joining.
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