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March 13, 2025 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:05:56
Episode 2777 CWSA 03/13/25

God's Debris: The Complete Works, Amazon https://tinyurl.com/GodsDebrisCompleteWorksFind my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.comContent:Politics, Rosie O'Donnell, Anti-Tesla Domestic Terrorism, Elon Musk, Stranded Astronauts, Tariffs, Democrat Cut-Paste Messaging, Bernie Sanders Oligarch Fears, Democrat Theatre Kids, Performative Democrat Protests, Trans-Boys Pregnancy, Steve Bannon, Gavin Newsom, Rahm Emanuel 2028, Perkins Coie Security Clearances, DOGE EPA FCC Impact, Howard Lutnick, Ukraine Cease Fire, President Trump, President Putin, Ukraine AI Drone Warfare, Drone Swarm Warfare, For-Profit Science Publications, CR Senate Vote, CR Cloture Vote, Kevin O'Leary DOE, Teachers Union Objectives, ActBlue Money Laundering Allegations, Newsom's Bust Funding, Voter ID Study, Police Chief John Pelletier, 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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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time.
But if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice, a stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine of the day makes everything better.
It's called a simultaneous sip, and it happens.
Right now.
Go.
So good.
So good.
Well, there's nothing that makes me happier than watching President Trump mock Rosie O'Donnell.
So yesterday, by coincidence, after Rosie O'Donnell announced that she's moving to Ireland...
The Prime Minister of Ireland was in the White House, and the President's talking to the Prime Minister, and Trump says, quote, Ireland is known for very happy, fun-loving people.
Why in the world would you let Rosie O'Donnell move to Ireland?
Why would you let her move?
She's going to ruin the whole country.
Oh, well, I've got one data point that's not scientific, but according to Matt Van Swal, he was just talking to, I guess yesterday, he was talking to a sales rep for Tesla, and the sales he was talking to a sales rep for Tesla, and the sales rep said it's one of the busiest days they've ever had So after Trump bought his Tesla, a lot of people apparently followed suit.
So Tesla had one of his best days ever.
I have a feeling that's going to continue for a little while.
So, we'll see.
You know, one of the biggest changes for Tesla is it did seem like it was a little bit of a climate change lover kind of a car.
So, I think Republicans were a little bit, you know, I'll take my gas-powered truck.
Thank you.
I don't need your electric cars.
But now that it's so clearly a political thing, a whole bunch of Trump lovers are saying, oh yeah, it's a great car.
Are you kidding me?
Everybody wants one.
So if you add the Democrats who just like a good car to the Republicans who might buy one partly for political reasons, it could actually end up being good for Tesla.
Net.
Maybe.
We'll see.
Could go either way.
Well, Mike Johnson, House Speaker Mike Johnson, he says that Congress is going to investigate, quote, the domestic terrorism against the Tesla dealerships and charging stations because there's been vandalism, destruction, and set fires and all that stuff.
And, yeah, domestic terrorism.
That's exactly right.
At what point does the domestic terrorism, though, become a RICO? Does there have to be...
Like, do you have to steal something to make it RICO? But if you have a large, organized, well-funded group whose job it is to destroy these Tesla places, even if they don't have directions to, say, set it on fire or vandalize it, they know what's happening.
So if the organizers know that their actions will cause vandalism at various places, At what point does it become RICO if we have visibility to the entire funding apparatus and everything else?
Anyway.
So Elon Musk is trying again to get the courts to agree to his $56 billion Tesla pay package that was disapproved by a lower court.
And the thing that occurred to me today is if he gets a $56 billion payday, Do you know how much taxes that means?
So, you know, I don't know his whole tax situation, but it could be 37% of that goes to federal taxes.
It would be one of the greatest gains for the government in terms of paying down the debt.
Almost nothing would be more immediately impactful than just paying Elon Musk the amount that he's owed.
And then he's going to pay billions of dollars in taxes, I think.
Speaking of Elon, I guess yesterday they tried to launch the rocket to go get the astronauts that are stranded on the International Space Station, but they had a little technical problem.
It looks like they might try again on Friday morning.
And I'm wondering, will Democrats come out in favor of leaving them stranded?
Now that sounds like a joke, right?
Oh, the Democrats disagree with everything, no matter how logical it is.
So maybe they'll be opposed to Elon Musk saving the lives and rescuing the astronauts.
But Biden actually was opposed.
That's a real thing.
And one imagines that Biden wasn't the only one.
He just didn't want Elon Musk to get a win.
So he left his astronauts up there.
Do you think those astronauts are Democrats or Republicans when they come back?
I've got a feeling that they left the Earth as Democrats, but they're coming back as hardcore Republicans.
Let me tell you my rule.
If I ever get stranded in an international space station and the party that I belong to decides they don't want to come get me...
And the other party says, I'll do it.
And they send up a rocket and they save me.
I'm switching parties right away.
It's like, okay, okay, you got my vote.
Got my vote.
Anyway, I'd like to give you a tariff update.
You know, a lot of stuff's happening in tariffs.
And the tariff update goes like this.
There's some countries have some tariffs against us.
Trump put some tariffs on them.
But then they put some tariffs on us.
Then they negotiated some of it.
Some of the tariffs went away.
But then we tariffed them.
And then they tariffed us.
Then we went up 200%.
Then they went up 50%.
And then there was a tariff.
And then there was not a tariff.
And then there was a tariff.
It's almost a waste of time to give you any update on tariffs.
Because it's changing so quickly.
And, you know, it's sort of a negotiation.
So I guess we're not going to be able to cheaply get alcohol from Europe.
How much does that affect you?
If I said to you, damn it, no more French wine and champagne.
You're going to have to drink that California stuff.
Do you think you could live with that?
I don't know if you're aware of this, but...
California makes really good wine.
I'm not in favor of alcohol, by the way, but it's a free country.
So I'm kind of wondering, at what point do the tariffs start costing me money in any category that I care about?
Like, how long does it take before that works its way through the economy?
I don't know.
It seems like they keep tariffing things.
That don't immediately affect me.
Because even if they do things that affect the price of cars, if I were to buy a car this month, it's already built.
So, I'd have to wait several months before the cost of a car went up?
I don't know.
So, we'll see.
But, according to The Hill, The CEO of Goldman Sachs said this about tariffs.
This is David Solomon.
He said that the business community, quote, understands what Trump is trying to do with levies on various goods, meaning tariffs.
He says that Trump is more engaged with the business community than his White House predecessor, Biden.
Now, that's kind of a big deal, to get the head of Goldman Sachs to not say anything negative about tariffs.
That's a big deal because it would be so easy to say, well, it's causing some chaos or there's uncertainty in the markets.
It'd be so easy to come up with something negative to say.
But when Goldman Sachs decides to say, yeah, the business community understands why he's doing it, that's a really big statement.
So I think this is telling us something.
Meanwhile, inflation was down, as you know.
And you probably noticed, if you're on X, that once again the Democrats were doing the identical messages.
Have you seen that?
So they're doing identical messages about...
Well, actually identical.
They were copy-paste.
I think there were 50 different Democrats who had the same message.
I don't even know what it was.
It was boring.
But then somebody said, oh yeah, oh yeah.
Well, Republicans knew that too, and it showed a whole bunch of messages from people who noted that egg prices were down, gas prices were down, and inflation and mortgage rates were down.
And so the Democrat who found all those was saying, yeah, see, you guys do the same thing, except none of them were cut and paste.
Every one of them was written individually, and it was the headline that day.
All they were doing is talking about the good news that was in the headlines, which is what we all do.
If there's good economic news and it favors your team, of course you're going to tweet about it or post about it.
But here's what I think about the inflation looking good.
And I guess jobs are kind of pretty close to in line to what we expected, jobless claims.
It basically gives Trump...
A month of breathing room.
Because until and if things start turning the other way, people are going to say, oh, well, it looks like that tariff stuff didn't really change anything.
At least it didn't make anything more expensive.
So the best news is not just that the interest rates are down and eggs and gas are less expensive.
The good news is he gives Trump Another 30 days of operating space.
And if he gets two in a row, I wouldn't predict that, but it's possible.
If he gets two months in a row where things look down in terms of prices, he's going to have a lot of wiggle room.
After two months of threatening every kind of tariff in the world, if prices go down, and they could, because a lot of it is based on expectations for the You know, the future economy.
So if the economy looks like it's a little soft, prices can go down.
I don't know if that's directly what's affecting it.
I suspect that with gas and with eggs has more to do with just something specific to those domains.
So I was watching Bernie Sanders do some event.
He's going around talking to big groups.
He gave an interview.
This is what Bernie Sanders says about the Trump administration.
He says it's the scariest time in his life.
And I thought, really?
This is the scariest time in your life?
Why?
And he said, blah, blah, blah, oligarchs.
So the Democrats are trying to find this way to bond with their base.
You know, really talk like the regular person.
Do you know any regular person who complains about oligarchs?
Have you ever heard that?
I've never heard that once.
I've never heard, like, just an ordinary voter say something like, you know, there are a few things I like about the world, but, man, it's a scary time because of the oligarchs.
I would go so far as to say that 70% of the entire Democrat base Thinks that oligarch is one of the chemicals that RFK Jr. is trying to remove from food.
It's the weakest, dumbest, completely disconnected from any kind of reality thing.
It's the scariest time of his life.
Blah, blah, blah, oligarchs.
Bernie's lost it.
He's completely lost it.
Have you seen the compilation clips?
On X or other places, where it shows the prominent Democrats literally saying, we've got to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse in our big social programs.
And they're very careful to say, no, no, we're not talking about cutting benefits.
We're only talking about getting rid of the waste, fraud, and corruption and abuse.
And it's literally exactly what Doge is saying, exactly what Trump is saying.
It couldn't be more obvious that the Democrats are a performative group.
And have you noticed that people started to use those words?
That they're kind of theater kids and they're performing?
Because they showed the same amount of enthusiasm for cutting waste, fraud, and abuse as they do now for criticizing Musk.
For cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse.
Now they have to throw in that, oh, you should use a scalpel and not a chainsaw, like that's useful.
So they can pretend they have some reason, but not really.
I don't think the Democrats have any core beliefs at this point.
I think they just do what they think they can perform best.
Yeah, I think I can sell this trans everything.
Let's try to sell that.
And then they'll act really hurt and worried and concerned.
And none of it's real.
It's just completely not real.
It's all performative.
And that's what happens when the 50 Democrats all do the same message on X. It's performative.
They're not even pretending it's their own opinions.
It's literally just the script that they've been handed, and they just print the script.
So, there is such a big difference now between the parties, and it's not just on policy.
As far as I can tell, and I would love to know if somebody has a counterexample of this, there might be, but I swear it seems like Republicans just do what Republicans always would do.
They want to cut your taxes, they want to get rid of the regulations, they want smaller government, they want to get rid of the...
Department of Education.
They want to move things to the states and the federal government.
And those things seem like the things they've always wanted and they always made sense from their perspective.
And they're still talking about it.
To me, that seems completely genuine.
Now, you could argue it's a good policy or a bad policy, but you can't argue that they really believe those things and they're trying to pursue them.
Whereas the Democrats, It's all like theater kids killing a president.
It's John Wilkes Booth times 100. Because if you think about it, a lot of the Democrat work was just trying to take Trump out.
It's the same as John Wilkes Booth.
It's a theater guy.
He was literally an actor.
It's literally just theater people.
Going after a president.
It's the damnedest thing.
To imagine that these parties are somehow equivalent, and that it's just a difference of which policies you like.
Nothing like that is happening.
There is one side that is purely acting, and the moment they need to act the other way, they will.
Turn on a dime.
Republicans don't do that at all.
Republicans are pretty dug in on what it means to be a Republican.
Anyway.
So DOGE has canceled a National Institute of Health grant that was trying to prevent pregnancy in transgender boys.
Let me say that again.
DOGE canceled a grant that was meant to prevent pregnancy in transgender boys.
Now, you know how they always say, you've got to cut with a scalpel, not a chainsaw?
There's going to be now a wave of pregnant boys that could have been prevented if they just used a scalpel instead of a chainsaw.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
I also wonder, have you noticed the lack of complaining?
That even though tons of things are being cut, the complaining is just the professional actors.
The people who literally are, you know, Democrat elected officials who are just acting.
Or the people on the news who are just acting.
But I don't see any real people who are going to protest because boys are going to have more babies.
Trans boys.
So I feel like there's a whole lot of giving up on the Democrat side.
As in, yeah, you know.
We don't really want to fight about that.
Yeah, you can have that one.
Yeah, okay.
You can get rid of the fraud, waste, and abuse.
Sure.
Anyway.
It also seems to me that all the Democrat organizations and all the grants, they all seem criminal to me.
Just everything seems criminal.
We'll talk about ActBlue and we've talked about USAID. We've talked about the tens of thousands of NGOs.
They all seem criminal.
And it's so consistent.
And it makes me wonder, are there also equivalents like that on the Republican side of the world?
And maybe I just don't hear about it.
Is everything corrupt?
You know, once it reaches a certain scale.
Or is just everything that Democrats do corrupt?
And I'm trying not to say it like a...
You know, like I'm just taking sides.
I'm just observing.
It seems to me that every single time anybody digs into anything Democrats are doing, it looks corrupt.
Corrupt as hell.
So, maybe it's 100%.
So, Steve Bannon went on Governor Newsom's podcast, and here's something that Newsom said.
He said, the grievance narrative that comes from Trump This notion that he's a victim.
And Steve Bannon chimes in with, they did try to put him in prison for 300 years, right?
See, this is the downside of Gavin Newsom having a podcast.
Because that is the right answer.
Why is Trump always acting like he's a victim?
You tried to put him in jail for nothing for 300 years.
You may have thrown the election in 2020, that's what Steve Bannon says.
And I love the fact that Steve Bannon can just go on a major podcast with a major Democrat and just say, we believe the 2020 election was rigged.
Now, I don't have proof of that, but what are the odds that every single thing that we've looked into is rigged and corrupt, except the election?
Everything else?
Just everything else, but not the election.
It's kind of hard to believe that it would be the one thing that's not corrupt.
Anyway, former Chicago mayor, according to the Gateway Pundit, Rahm Emanuel is maybe allegedly angling to be a presidential candidate.
Here's my take on that.
Uh-oh.
Now...
I've been telling you that all the Democrats need is a charismatic, good candidate.
If they just had a good candidate, then suddenly they would be competitive, like right on the block.
And the fact that seemingly they don't have any skills whatsoever.
But Rahm Emanuel, he's got the whole package.
He's got experience.
He's got connections.
He's deeply connected to the Obama world.
So he could probably raise money like crazy.
And he's also funny.
And that's a problem.
If you're a Republican, that's a problem.
He's funny.
He's common sense.
And he's smart as hell.
So I wouldn't want to run against him, honestly.
Yeah, he's got the whole package.
Now, I never really thought about him as a potential presidential candidate, but as soon as I saw that name, I said, uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
That's an actual serious candidate.
Now, if you compare him to, let's say, Gavin Newsom, Gavin Newsom also has some political skill, but he also has tons of scandal because he presided over a city that went to hell, San Francisco, and then a state that went to hell.
So, you know.
I don't think Rahm Emanuel has quite those problems.
So I'd worry about him.
The big question would be, could the Democrats back another older white guy?
Do you think an older white guy can get elected now as president?
It was impressive that he ever became mayor of Chicago.
But president?
I don't know.
I'm not sure if the Democrat coalition would...
You know, they had some special feeling for Biden that didn't always make sense to me.
So I don't think Rahm Emanuel would have that Biden, you know, sort of affection.
But that'd be a problem because, you know, they're all about the diversity.
And if they run another white guy, it's going to be sort of a glaring, glaring non-diversity situation.
Anyway, the other problem with Rahm Emanuel, and I'm not sure about this.
Give me a fact check on this.
But when I've seen him in public, and he's criticizing Republicans, I don't think he makes stuff up, which would make him unique among Democrats.
Democrats generally just lie.
So they say, oh, Doge is going to cut your social services.
But the truth is, The only cuts they're looking for are the waste, fraud, and abuse, which wouldn't cut anybody's services.
In fact, might protect them because there would be more money to actually pay people.
So if he doesn't lie, could he win?
Because mostly what Democrats have is those kind of lies.
Oh, Trump is a dictator.
I don't know.
Would Rahm Emanuel say that?
It's so stupid.
Trump's going to cut your Social Security.
He's not.
Well, he wouldn't be running against Trump, but let's say whoever he's running against, would he say that that person is going to be cutting all your social services when he knows that it's not going to happen?
I don't know.
So he'd be an interesting one, but I'd worry about him a little bit.
Meanwhile, so here's a good example.
In Axios, there's a headline that says, Doge is taking its wrecking ball to the Social Security Administration, the agency responsible for overseeing retirement and disability benefits for 73 million Americans.
Now, if you saw the headline, it would look like they're cutting benefits to people who get Social Security, right?
That's not the story.
The story is that they're cutting the staff and they have very old...
You know, computer systems.
And so there are some issues about whether it can just function with fewer people.
I imagine it can.
I'm not too worried about it.
But that's a sort of lie.
It wasn't a lie, technically, because the article describes what they're talking about.
But that's the sort of thing that the Democrats have to run on.
They have to just make stuff up because they don't have real stuff.
Because otherwise they're running against common sense.
So they have to assign stupid opinions to Republicans just so they have something to complain about.
Oh, I think he wants to kill all the babies.
What?
Nobody said anything like that.
Oh, yeah.
I'm pretty sure he's indicated he wants to kill all the babies.
No.
All right.
There's a story about the former CEO of Barclays, the bank.
That apparently he had sex with Epstein's assistant.
We don't know how old that was.
But the funny part about it was, so he's admitted in court.
I don't know what the court case was about, but he admitted that he was involved in the Jeffrey Epstein world there.
And they're looking to ban him from the industry, blah, blah, blah.
But apparently they discovered a thousand emails.
Like, really friendly emails to Jeffrey Epstein.
And he says he doesn't remember them.
He sent a thousand emails.
I don't remember doing that.
Really?
Really?
I sent some emails?
Huh.
I don't have any memory of that.
There were a thousand of them.
Yeah.
So he doesn't remember.
Just daily.
Now, I'd be lying if I didn't tell you this.
Barclays Bank went after me once in the past, and because it's a court situation, I can't tell you the details.
But, oh my God, do I hate that bank.
Let's just say that my point of view is quite supportable.
And Barclays, can't tell you what that was about, but...
I do not like that bank.
So I don't want to be too happy because they're ex-CEO. He's not the current CEO. Got in trouble with Epstein, but on the other hand, it was hard not to enjoy it.
Meanwhile, you know the law firm Perkins Coie?
Am I saying that right?
Coie?
I used to think it was Coy, but Perkins Coie.
So they're the ones who were behind Hillary Clinton's Russia, you know, the Russia collusion hoax, and some other things that Republicans don't like.
And so Trump administration yanked their security clearances.
But there is some kind of a challenge.
They found a judge, of course.
You know, one of the top law firms in Washington, of course, they found a judge who was willing to try to block it.
To block the actions that the Trump administration is taking against them.
But I saw one article that says that Perkins Coie is not challenging the removal of their security clearances.
But then I saw another article that says they are.
So, I don't know.
It could be that they might want to say, well, it can't be every single person who works here.
Maybe it should only apply to the people who worked on that project.
But other people say.
Looks like we've got Mr. Fart is back in the house.
So if we can find a way to block him again.
Why some people decide that that's the thing they're going to do?
Unbelievable.
It's a problem in the comments.
All right.
But one lawyer, Perkins Cui, said that all of the trouble that the Trump administration is giving their law firm, especially the security clearance part, I think, represents it's like a tsunami waiting to hit the firm.
So they do think it could just ruin their business entirely.
But as Julie Kelly points out, Beryl Howell, I guess this is a judge, who oversaw the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the phony Trump-Russia collusion.
And now she's the same person who's presiding over the Perkins-Cooey lawsuit against the president.
Now, doesn't that seem like some kind of weird coincidence or, you know, some kind of conflict of interest?
So she was on the...
The Robert Mueller case, and now she's on this Perkins Coie thing, and the Perkins Coie people were involved with the Russia collusion hoax, so that's sort of an only in D.C. thing, Julie mentions.
Well, in other news, the EPA is getting rid of a whole bunch of rules, and one of them is the endangerment finding.
So this is a finding.
Alex Epstein is talking about this on X. It's a finding that allowed Obama and Biden to ban gas cars and shut down power plants and slow U.S. oil growth and lock up our limitless natural gas, says Alex.
And they're doing a lot more, but this one seems like a big one.
So how much do you think this is going to make a difference to our economy?
If the EPA is sort of reduced in its impact, well, we should all be worried that things go too far and something will get polluted.
But as Lee Zeldin points out out of the EPA, they're very concerned to make sure that they're not making the air or the water dirtier, but they want to get rid of just the BS part of the regulations.
It should make a huge difference.
At the same time, According to The Verge, the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, is asking the public for suggestions about how the FCC should get rid of regulations.
And I love that.
I love getting the public involved because the public has a much better idea what stopped them from doing the thing they wanted to do.
So you're going to find small companies and big companies saying, oh.
I've got an idea.
We tried to build this thing and we couldn't do it because of the, I don't know, one thing or another.
So if you could just get rid of that rule, that'd be good.
So I love this.
I love the fact that he's involving the public because the public does know what things are the biggest problems and it's transparent.
So if the FCC and the EPA make massive changes to deregulate, The business community is just going to love that.
So I would say that things are looking really good for the long run of our economy, better than I've ever seen it, actually.
Let me double down on that.
The current things that are being done under the Trump administration are, in my opinion, the most positive things I've ever seen happen in one compressed period of time.
I've never seen anything this amazingly good, from reducing regulations to even the tariff stuff.
I think it's going to work out.
In the short run, lots of uncertainty.
In the short run, stock markets say, we don't like uncertainty, so they plunge.
That's all built in.
And if you can get one thing right about the economy, it's to make sure that you got the long run right.
Even if it has a little bit of pain in the short run.
That's the hardest thing to do.
It's something you'd have to do if you had a mandate and you were your second term and you were determined to get it right.
So this situation is so unusual.
If you add doge, you know, the cost cutting and really just finding out what kind of total corruption was in our system.
I'm almost as interested in the corruption.
And the money laundering and the shadow government that was caused by all the NGOs, as I am about the cost cutting.
These are amazingly, amazingly positive trends.
Now, will the courts block everybody from doing everything they want?
It looks like it.
The courts are trying to block just everything.
Anything that Elon Musk wants to do, anything that Trump wants to do, somebody's going to find a friendly judge who will try to block it.
But I've never seen anything this positive in my entire life.
Nothing with this much impact that could make a big difference in the long run.
Trump's proposing an idea to, according to Howard Lutnick, U.S. Commerce Secretary, Trump's thinking about...
Making everybody who earns under $150,000 a year pay no federal income tax.
Now, that's a stretch goal.
I don't think that one's going to happen right away.
But it would include, I guess it assumes that we'd be making more money from other countries, as in tariffs, etc.
And here's the idea of forcing countries to pay a membership fee to sell in America.
Now, I don't think that's going to happen, but the fact that Trump would say you have to have a membership fee to even sell stuff in America, well, that's kind of awesome.
It seems like such a big idea.
That my first impression is, oh, you're never going to get away with that.
Then my second impression is, but why not?
If America is the best economy to sell into, you know, we've got the biggest consumer base of people who actually spend money, then maybe there should be a cover charge.
I think you should have a two-drink minimum and a cover charge for getting into the American markets.
Two-drink minimum.
So we'll see if he can get away with that.
I don't even know if he's getting away with no tax on tips, but this would be a pretty big deal.
Let's talk about Russia and Ukraine.
So as you know, Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire, and Russia said, well, that's crazy talk, because a ceasefire just allows Ukraine to regroup, and since Russia thinks it's winning, they just recaptured a town in Kursk.
So they think that they're winning.
They say, no, we'll talk about a big peace deal where everything is included, but no, no ceasefire.
Now, if you remember my prediction, it was that he's going to have to agree to the ceasefire, even though he doesn't want to, to keep his relationship with Trump productive.
Because if Trump...
Puts his reputation on the ceasefire, which he's doing.
And then Putin is the reason it doesn't happen.
Trump's not going to be happy.
And when Trump's not happy, you know it, right?
It's not going to be a silent, well, in my head, I'm unhappy.
No.
Trump's already talking about massive sanctions on Russia.
I don't know what's left to sanction, but it seems like they would have sanctioned everything sanctionable by now.
But Trump is already talking about essentially putting the screws on Russia.
So, I'm going to double down on my non-standard prediction.
If I were making a standard prediction, I would say, huh, this ceasefire looks like a bad idea for Putin.
Putin's very smart.
He knows it's a bad idea because Ukraine will just put together their forces and come at them harder.
And so logic says that Putin would reject this, which he has.
But I'm going to go with my feeling that the only chance Putin has of getting a good outcome is to work productively with Trump.
And Trump's making a very small ask.
It's a very small ask to take a month off of fighting.
I think Putin might cave.
And I think he has to do it to maintain the relationship.
And that's something that Trump brings to the table.
He makes sure that you know that you don't get anything until you're dealing with him respectfully and seriously.
That's really powerful.
So if you had to bet on it, you should bet against me.
Because like I said, it's a bad deal for Russia.
Russia knows it.
Putin's no idiot.
But I think keeping the relationship with Trump productive, I think that has a greater value than even whatever advantages Ukraine got by the ceasefire.
Now, speaking of Ukraine, apparently their drone warfare is really making a difference.
So something like 60% of all the destruction that Ukraine is doing on the...
Military of Russia is with drones.
And I guess they're using a lot of AI drones that are way better.
So even when they get jammed, they can just sort of look at the ground and say, well, I'm jammed, but I know where I'm going because I'm just looking at the ground and I've got these landmarks and I know what to attack.
But what's not working, apparently, is swarms.
You know how all of us non-experts It's going to be swarms.
There's going to be these giant swarms of drones.
Turns out that these swarms don't work too well with current technology because the signals interfere.
So there's just too many signals in too small a place.
So weirdly, swarms haven't worked yet.
One assumes they'll figure that out eventually.
But at the moment, it's more like individual drones with AI. And they're tough to stop.
All right.
So let's talk about science journals.
Here's something I didn't know.
So you probably know, I've talked about it a bunch of times, how science has a reproducibility problem, where if somebody gets a peer-reviewed study into a science publication, Later, if somebody says, let's see if we can reproduce these results, and usually they can't, or at least half the time they can't.
So that suggests that a lot of what we think is science is literally just bullshit.
Probably half of it.
Some would say more.
But I didn't realize that there's a structural reason for it.
And the structural reason, and I was just learning this today, did you know that...
It used to be that the scientific journals were basically a bunch of well-meaning scientists who would say, well, if you couldn't come to the conference, here's a little newsletter basically that says what got presented at the conference.
Now, that was probably a mostly honest system where people were doing honest science.
Not right every time, but at least they were honestly doing science.
And the scientists would say, hey, I think more people should have access to this.
So we'll put together a little publication, non-profit, and we'll just make sure everybody sees it.
So that's the way it used to be.
Apparently today, the vast majority of scientific studies are in for-profit publications.
For-profit publications.
Do you see the problem already?
The for-profit publications want to publish as much as possible and charge as much as possible.
They can charge you up to like a million dollars a year if you're a big university just to have their papers.
And once you make it for-profit, don't you think they're going to accept a lot of papers that wouldn't have been accepted otherwise?
Don't you think?
And I think that's exactly what's happening.
So as long as the industry is incentivized by the number of studies that get published, you're going to get a lot more fake studies because they're going to sort of, even if they don't say so, you can imagine that they would lower their standard because everybody's got their own objectives for their job.
You know, there's going to be some editor.
Who can't publish the magazine without a lot of studies in it.
So the more studies, the more money.
I think they're going to get a little loose.
A little bit looser than what they accept.
So that seems to be an enormous problem in science right now.
And I don't think that there's a solution to it.
I don't believe anybody has recommended any kind of solution.
But at this point, if you were to draw this system up on paper, you would know that this is going to lead to massive corruption.
It's designed right into the system.
As long as you follow the money, you've got to assume they're going to accept more than they would have otherwise.
Anyway, so as you know, the Congress can't make any decisions on budgets.
So they do these continuing resolution things that just say, oh, we'll keep the budget basically the way it was because we can't decide, but we'll decide later.
And so that's what the Republicans are trying to do.
But Democrats point out, Adam Schiff pointed this out, this is not a normal continuing resolution because it's not just continue on.
The Republicans made some...
Fairly Republican-y changes.
So spending more on national defense, for example.
But the total amount is essentially what it was.
So the continuing resolution part where it's just we keep the same budget amount, at least they kept that.
But within the details, they did move stuff around in a Republican way.
So now it looks like there might be some question whether the Democrats will support it in the Senate, and Schumer's saying it doesn't have the votes.
But then John Thune, the Senate, what do you call it, the Senate leader, he's going to go for a cloture vote.
How many of you know what that is?
Cloture?
I had to ask my AI what it was just to make sure.
I thought I sort of knew.
But it means that they're going to go for a vote.
They would say they're going to limit the debate.
And then they get a vote.
And I guess you need 60 senators to say that you agree with cloture so that they can all, I don't know, go on vacation or whatever it is that they need to do.
And I don't know if that's going to work.
I don't know if that's going to work.
But once again, it looks like the Democrats are in that performative mode where they're just going to pretend it's the end of the world and they're going to put in a lot of acts.
So we'll watch that.
Kevin O'Leary, you know him as Mr. Wonderful.
He was on CNN last night and he was talking about teachers unions being bad.
And he said, our reading and math scores are the worst in the G7 in terms of how many dollars we spend to advance our children.
Why?
Unions that keep mediocre teachers in place when we should be firing them.
So I'm going to double down on that because, of course, I say the same thing.
I think the biggest existential threat to the country, except for debt, debt's number one, is the teachers' unions.
Because they're clearly creating a situation in which the test scores are down, learning is down, and America is falling behind its peers.
I'm pretty sure that's all the teachers' unions.
Because if you had any kind of competition, competition almost certainly would have improved things.
So given that the teachers' union, their two biggest objectives are to benefit teachers.
That's what a union does.
It benefits the teachers.
But in this case, it's a special case where they're also benefiting the Democratic Party.
So they're the biggest donors and supporters of the Democratic Party.
So if those are your two top priorities, how in the world would you even expect that scores would be better?
And they're all performative.
You know, that Randy Weingarten, she's the most performative actress you've ever seen.
And she gets all excited, and she says things that generally might not get through your fact-checker.
So now she's all upset about the Department of Education being gutted, even though it shouldn't make any difference to the states, because the things that matter, they would just hand the money to the states.
The things that didn't make any difference to anybody, they'll cut.
Probably won't make any difference at all.
So it just gets rid of some bureaucracy at the federal level.
But, yeah, I agree with Kevin O'Leary.
He's right on...
And the fact that we don't talk about this every day, I think it's because it's this slow-moving disaster, sort of like the debt.
You know, you could push that debt thing down the road for years, which we did.
But at some point, when the amount of interest on the debt...
It's going to be bigger than our spending for national defense, which is sort of where we're at.
Then suddenly, you've got to do a doge or you've got to do something drastic.
So I don't know if the schools would ever reach that point.
Because, you know, next year is going to sort of look like this year and the one after.
Maybe it's a little worse, but not that much worse.
I don't know that it ever reaches that critical point where you just say, all right, stop everything.
We've got to tear this whole system apart one way or another.
I don't know how.
But I think the main thing is school choice.
I would love to think that there's something better than that.
But probably at the moment, school choice is the thing.
So we'll see if that makes a difference.
Well, I told you about ActBlue.
So ActBlue is the Democrat organization that allegedly is collecting small donations from all over the country and using it to help fund Democrats.
But it appears that at least it's partially a money laundering operation.
So James O'Keefe found a specific situation where there was one house.
They had donated $16,000 to Democrat Jasmine Crockett, except they were retired and had no income.
So James O'Keefe sent his person to knock on the door, and I guess they said, we didn't give any money to Jasmine Crockett.
Don't know what you're talking about.
And so I do think we have evidence that I find convincing.
That ActBlue is not acting as blue as they should be.
That didn't make any sense.
But again, if ActBlue is corrupt, and all the NGOs were corrupt, and the USAID was corrupt, and the Biden crime family was corrupt, and everything in Congress seems corrupt, thank goodness that 2020 election was pristine, huh?
To imagine That it's not all corrupt.
It's just such a stretch at this point.
Anyway, remember the story about that book that said that Gavin Newsom funded his own bust to be put in the...
Where would it be?
Put in some government building inside the San Francisco City Hall.
And remember I told you...
That story is a little bit too on the nose.
And the too on the nose part is that you imagine that Newsom is sort of narcissistic and would care about that enough that he would fake that other people wanted the bust.
Oh, it's other people, not me.
So the story was a little too perfect.
And then I told you that books about this sort of thing are kind of low.
Low credibility.
If you've seen all the books about, you know, the Trump administration, you know that most of those are just total bullshit.
So why would it be different if somebody wrote a book about Democrats?
Well, I mean, I don't know what percentage of the book was accurate and what it wasn't, but I did warn you that there's going to be another side to that story.
And sure enough...
Newsom has basically denied that he had anything to do with funding it.
There were some entities connected with Newsom that gave some money.
He may or may not have known about it.
He did pose for the bust, so he knew the bust was being done.
But I kind of believe him, that he wasn't really directly involved in funding it.
Just know there's always two stories.
So that one, I think, maybe leans in his direction.
Recently found out, according to Just the News, that during the time that Barack Obama was president and Biden was vice president, that a lot of highly secure things were just emailed to Biden with his private email.
So Biden, the guy who had these stacks of boxes of secure stuff in his garage, apparently was just using his regular email that was at an alias, but they were just emailing him important national secrets, highly sensitive things, just on email.
Now, don't you assume that that means our adversaries capture that?
Is there much chance that the best hackers in other countries can't get into regular email?
I don't know.
It's just amazing.
The level of incompetence from the whole Biden situation is just incredible.
Well, according to Bloomberg, The Trump administration is going to follow up on something that the Biden administration started, which means that it's a bipartisan thing, to go after Microsoft for antitrusts.
Now, I don't know what that includes, because Microsoft is such a big, sprawling organization.
But there have always been allegations that they were involved in some kind of anti-competitive stuff.
So I don't know what these specific allegations are, but it's notable.
That the Biden administration started it and the Trump administration is going to continue it.
So it does suggest that there's something there.
We'll find out how much that matters.
According to the Washington Examiner, there's a study out of Wisconsin that shows that requiring voter ID does not suppress the vote ahead of ballot decisions.
Now, I don't know that they can really study that, but they found out that...
When they enacted voter ID laws in Wisconsin, their turnout increased by 1.5%.
But do you see what's wrong with that?
It increased by 1.5%.
The real question is, how much would it have increased by itself?
So it's not like voter ID increased it.
And if the argument is that voter ID would suppress it, then really what you need to know is, well, if it was 1.5 with voter ID, what would it have been without voter ID? Now, since I'm completely in the camp that says voter ID is required, and I don't think there's a single person who doesn't...
I don't think there's a single person who's a legal resident, wants to vote, and can't figure out how to get an ID. I just don't think they exist.
So I agree with the conclusion of the study, although I don't think they studied it in a way that I find compelling.
But I agree.
There's no way that voter ID is a bad thing.
According to Technical University in Munich, some people figured out how to make AI learning 100 times faster.
You've probably heard, how many times have I told you a story like that?
But this one is, instead of using their usual iterative method of training, they have some kind of probabilistic scheme.
And they can get just as good responses by not just doing everything, but rather probabilistically knowing what to do to train it.
So that's the idiot's explanation.
Just know that there's something out there that already works.
It's not speculative.
It already works.
And it increases the efficiency by 100 times.
Now, this is just one of many stories that I've read that have that same quality.
It's like, oh, there's a new chip.
There's a new DeepSeq.
DeepSeq is one of those that's a whole different way to train cheaper.
So I've got a feeling that the cost of getting into the AI business is going to drop to the point where...
I don't even know if the big companies can keep any kind of advantage.
At some point, especially if you have AIs that are being trained on other AIs, I feel like it's going to be hard for the biggest AI companies to keep a moat to keep other people from just knocking them off.
So we'll see.
There's a story I wasn't going to get into about a specific police chief.
Who happened to be the chief of police in Las Vegas at the same time as Stephen Paddock did that mass shooting of the music festival.
But then he left that job and he went to Maui, where he became the police chief during the Lahaina fire.
Now, how could anybody be that unlucky?
Imagine being the police chief in Las Vegas.
You're thinking, ah, Las Vegas.
Seems like a pretty good place to be a police chief.
And then you have the biggest mass shooting, and of course he was blamed for not investigating it enough.
And then he goes to Maui, and he's thinking to himself, nothing ever happens in Maui.
I mean, it's basically no crime.
And then there's Lahaina Fire, and I guess he got some criticism for that.
But now he's been named as a co-defendant in a lawsuit that involves Sean Diddy Combs.
How could one person get in that much trouble?
How is it even possible that one person could go from the Las Vegas shooting to the line of fire to getting in trouble with Diddy?
And by the way, I don't have a criticism of this police chief.
It could be just really bad luck.
You know, it could be that the Diddy thing is just an association of an association and doesn't mean anything.
It could be that the Las Vegas and Lahaina thing, everybody's criticizing everybody, so maybe it wasn't that bad.
But that's a heck of a lot of trouble for one person to be into.
Well, yeah, I see in the comments somebody saying he's corrupt.
But really?
To me, that just looks like horrible luck.
Whether or not he did a good job in those cases, I can't judge.
But that looks like really bad luck.
Anyway, we'll keep an innocent until proven guilty opinion on that.
All right.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is all I have today.
I guess we'll watch the tariffs.
The tariffs will be on, the tariffs will be off.
But I'm quite convinced...
That what Trump is doing with tariffs is looking better and better, and I feel like I also understand it now.
And by understanding it, I said this yesterday, I think what he's doing is making sure that other countries treat it like it's their top priority to figure out how to deal with us in terms of trade.
And if that's the only thing the tariffs do, is scare the bejesus out of other countries, and they say, all right, all right.
Let's talk about our whole tariff situation.
That's a big win.
Because the way it looks, now this might be just the American spin on things, but the way it looks is that we have been screwed by other countries for a long time.
And if we sat down and said, all right, look at all the things you're doing to us, and look at the few things we're doing to you, this is totally imbalanced.
I don't think that any country wanted to have that conversation because it feels like they all thought they were getting away with a little bit of something.
And if Trump only just shines this giant light on the imbalance of the tariffs, it seems to me there's a good, good chance that he'll be able to negotiate better deals than we have.
And that would be amazing for our economy.
Just amazing.
The other thing is, you know, I mentioned earlier that Lutnik talked about a sort of a fee just to join the club to sell to America.
Maybe that's the faster way to do it.
Instead of negotiating every single tariff, maybe that's just too much work and there's lots of complexity there.
You just say, here's the deal.
If you want to be in our market, this is what you're going to pay per year.
Maybe.
So I like the fact that he's putting all those ideas out there.
It's all negotiable.
But if the one thing that Trump did was make sure that the other countries dropped their other priorities and said, uh-oh, uh-oh, we can't really go a month with a 50% or a 200% tariff on a key industry, so we're going to need to deal with this right away.
That's all he needs.
All he needs is I want your complete attention.
What is it that I've taught you about?
Persuasion.
Do you remember the first rule of persuasion?
It's the first rule.
It's the big one.
You've got to get their attention.
It's by far the most important one.
Because if you don't get somebody's attention, it doesn't matter if you're repeating and doing all the right things.
They're just not paying attention.
So Trump took this situation where really nobody was paying attention and made everybody pay attention.
So if you want to score it on persuasion, phase one, get their attention, 100%.
A+. A+. Now, that doesn't mean everything's going to work out.
But if you were just going to score phase one, 100% success.
Everybody's paying attention.
Everybody put it at their top priority.
Everybody is responding.
They're, of course, putting up a fight.
But boy, are they paying attention.
So that's an A+. And I think that's why Goldman Sachs and other big business people are giving Trump some room to operate, because I think they completely understand this.
First, you get their attention, and then we'll see what happens.
So that's all I got today.
I'll talk to the locals' people privately.
For the rest of you...
YouTube and Rumble and X. I'll see you tomorrow, same time, same place.
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