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Well, the Trump administration says it's looking for some big deals for eggs from Turkey and South Korea and maybe at least one other place, according to The Hill.
Now, you might say to me, Scott, how can you allow a story about turkey and eggs Do not pretend that they're turkey eggs.
Well, I can do it, because I'm a professional.
The rest of you will have to make terrible jokes at home about turkey and eggs.
But really, they're chicken eggs.
They're completely chicken eggs.
Now, I didn't know that eggs could last that long.
I don't know how you preserve an egg long enough to get it across an ocean, but apparently that's a thing.
So we're going to have that.
And also, apparently, according to the Agricultural Secretary, Brooke Rollins, the American fleet of chickens is ready to poop out some eggs very soon.
So within just maybe a couple of months, we'll have our fleet of chickens up and running.
Now, what you don't know is that they won't be real chickens.
They'll just be drones.
Yeah, we're replacing all of our real chickens with drones made in Ukraine.
No, that's not true.
That's not true.
They're real chickens, as far as you know.
Might be run by AI.
No, no, they're real.
They're real chickens.
So we should have a chicken solution pretty soon.
It's kind of weird that that became such a big issue, because it seems like that's the one thing that...
Either party would have been able to solve.
You know, the long-term cost of eggs, probably it was going to get solved in the next four years, no matter who was in charge.
But I do think the Republicans put more horsepower into it.
A little more work to make it happen.
No way to know, but probably.
Well, according to Breitbart News, Simon Kent is writing that Trump is going to meet with the UAE, or he did meet with the UAE, and they've committed to a $1.4 trillion investment framework in the U.S. Now,
as usual, it's a 10-year deal, so people like to give me the big number.
Still, that's a gigantic deal.
You know, even over 10 years.
So, that's good.
Now, here's my question.
Was it always true that other countries were on a regular basis making big decisions about investing in the United States?
Or is this really a Trump thing?
Is Trump the reason that all these companies and all these other countries...
Are saying, yes, yes, give me a deal, or I'm going to invest large amounts of money in America?
I don't know.
It looks like it's Trump, doesn't it?
It doesn't look like it's baseline.
And the more of these that you see, the more of these there will be.
Because when people get the idea, oh, if I do a big investment in America, America is going to be a little bit friendlier to me, and that might be good for me.
So, yeah.
I think you're going to see a lot more of that.
Here's a story that'll kind of blow your mind.
Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but it seems true enough.
According to ZME Science, it's a publication, it's possible that the population of the world, or at least the rural population of the world, has been undercounted by Over 50%.
So apparently it's really hard to count people in, let's say, lesser civilized living conditions because they don't have ID.
They're not registered on any kind of government database and you can't see them.
So even if you try to see them from space by satellite, they'd be under the tree cover or whatever.
This was first discovered by researchers from Elto University in Finland who were only trying to look into how many people would get displaced by big dam projects.
So if you're doing a big dam project, no, it's a big dam project, not a big dam project.
But apparently those usually displace a lot of the locals.
And the researchers wanted to find out how bad the displacement was.
And so they went to count the number of people who used to be there to compare it to the number that were there after the dam is done.
And they found out there's no real way to know how many people are there.
Just think about that.
And not only that, but our estimates apparently are just wildly just guesses.
Off my lot.
They said on average, the data sets undercounted rural populations by 53%.
In some cases, the estimates were off by as much as 84%.
The population of an area was off by 84%.
Now, do you know where I'm going to go with this?
Can you guess the next thing I'm going to say?
We'll see how well you know me.
This will be a test of my...
Predictability. What's the next thing I'm going to say?
Does anybody have it yet?
So, how do you think we do when we're measuring the temperature of the world every place on the planet?
You just found out that we can't even count the people, and that was all made up.
Even counting the people.
One of the things that you would just kind of assume we had under control?
No. No, it was just, we were just guessing.
Do you remember when you were younger and you thought nutrition had been exhaustively studied and the government was telling you what was safe to eat?
Do you remember that?
It turns out it was just all bullshit.
The food pyramid was upside down and it was just based on industry food people trying to sell you cereal or something.
So no.
And do you remember when you thought that vaccinations were tested in a gold standard randomized controlled trial?
And that after the testing, even once it got approved, That they would do ongoing continuous testing to make sure it was still safe?
Do you remember when you just assumed that was true?
Nope. Nope, that was never true.
So, I'm going to say again because I think it's hilarious.
At least hilarious to me.
Wait till Democrats find out about climate models.
Just wait till they find out.
That the most foundational thing to their entire movement, completely made up.
You can't even count the number of people on Earth, much less measure the temperature everywhere on Earth for decades.
That is so not something that humans can do.
It's so not even close.
And the fact that they've sold it to the American, even the scientific community, even the scientific community.
Has been convinced that we can measure the temperature of the Earth over time.
Wow. Well, another fun news, U.S. Commerce Secretary Lutnik, he was talking to the All In Pod guys, went to Washington, and said the U.S. has already sold 1,000 gold cards.
So those are the cards that we sell to rich people to give them a sort of a...
Fast start to being citizens, if they want to be U.S. citizens.
And that would be $5 billion.
A thousand of those gold cards would be income to the United States of $5 billion.
But maybe even better, if you're bringing in all these rich people, you know, they tend to hire people and they spend money and they start businesses.
This gold card thing might be way better than I thought.
We'll see.
We'll see.
Hey, notes.
Don't stick together.
Meanwhile, Columbia University has folded to the Trump demands.
So the Trump administration was withholding $400 million of federal funding until Columbia...
Made some specific changes to fight anti-Semitism, which according to the Trump administration, they had not done enough of.
And, you know, there were a lot of anti-Israel protests, which seemed very more anti-Jewish protests.
And so the Trump administration was all over them.
And apparently the university has agreed to everything.
I'm not sure I was expecting that.
But $400 million, I guess that's a lot of pressure.
And the things that were being asked for were, don't let one class of people be discriminated against to the point of physical danger.
That wasn't a big ask, really.
But still, I thought there'd be more pushback.
But Columbia University on Friday said, yep, every single thing you ask for, we're going to give you.
So we'll see.
Wall Street Journal was reporting on that, and Just the News was also.
According to New York Times writer Ezra Klein, and he's making a lot of news because he has a new book out.
And as you know, the Democrats are in bad shape.
They don't have leadership, and they don't have a direction.
So when one of them writes a book, that gets a lot of attention.
I think the news says, finally, we found our leader.
So let's talk about Ezra Klein and some of the things he found.
One of the things he found is that Trump's ability to get male voters was way bigger than people expected.
And when I say way bigger than people expected, I mean everybody except me.
I think it was 2016 when I started saying, you realize what's happening?
Democrats are becoming the party of women.
And do you remember that?
Now, I don't know if I'm the first political pundit to say we're turning into the male party and the female party.
But I was way ahead of the curve.
Probably, I don't know, eight years ahead.
Here we are.
So here are some of the numbers that Klein was talking about.
He says, what's crazy is if you look at people under the age of 30, The gender gap has exploded.
So 18-year-old men were 23 percentage points more likely to support Trump than 18-year-old women, which is completely unprecedented.
Actually, this was Shore.
Shore would be his co-author.
I'm not sure who Shore is.
But part of the mystery...
Is that it's happening in other countries.
So if you think, oh, it's a Trump thing.
You know, Trump has just a way of attracting men because he has sort of a male energy vibe to him.
Apparently, we're seeing a similar kind of shift in Canada, the UK, and Norway.
Would you like to know the real answer?
You know, I always joke when I see scientific stuff.
And I always joke, it's sort of my ongoing joke, well, you couldn't just ask me because your conclusion is so obvious you didn't need to do the study at all.
This is one of those, this is so obvious you didn't need to do the study at all.
Does anybody want to take a crack at it before I give you the right answer?
So what's the right answer to why in various different countries, so it's not the individual leaders, It's not the leaders.
It's not Trump per se.
But why is it in various countries, at the same time, the men are moving in one direction and the women are moving in another?
Why do you think that is?
I'm looking at your comments.
Tate and Rogan?
No. No, because, remember, it's international, and they don't have the same impact on every country.
Men are for security.
That's close.
You're knocking on the door.
Let's see.
Women are mentally ill, says DM.
CIA, DEI.
Okay. You're all in the right area.
You're very close.
Let me say it to you in the simplest possible way.
Men do not like to be ruled by batshit crazy women with batshit crazy policies.
Anything else that you say about this topic is a complete waste of time.
Let me say it again, just so you hear it clearly.
Men of every age, but the young ones probably are more flexible to change their opinion and change their party.
Men, especially young ones, Don't want to be ruled by batshit crazy women with batshit crazy policies.
Now, hear me clearly.
I'm not saying that all women are batshit crazy, so don't hear that.
But the ones in charge, for whatever reason, are unusually batshit crazy, and their policies are clearly batshit crazy.
Hey, let's open up the border and eat bugs and get rid of your gas car.
Kill all the nuclear power plants and decrease your military until somebody can own you.
It's just batshit crazy stuff that apparently young women are saying some version of go girl.
Yeah, I just love it when women are in charge.
So I think women are just being drawn to women leaders because they think they're being heard.
And men are saying, are you kidding?
You look like you have mental illness.
You don't even look like a leader.
Why are you saying things that are crazy?
Why are you doing things that are clearly bad for me?
Why are you overtly discriminating against white men?
But it's not even the white men.
So apparently Trump won with men in every category.
And I think he even won with women, if you don't count women of color.
So, I think Democrats only want in one category, women of color.
So, clearly, men are tired of being discriminated against, and women have no idea that they've been part of the brutal discrimination regime for decades.
And men are just done.
We're just absolutely done.
And at the moment, since men are not being recruited into the military, they don't have a bigger mission.
So if they're just standing around looking at the news and looking at their own life, they say, why can't I get a job there if I'm a man?
And then they look at the leaders and they say, why are these ideas so crazy?
Like opening the borders?
That's not a difference of opinion.
That's batshit crazy versus common sense.
To imagine that these are some kind of political difference, that's a stretch.
Yeah, you're talking absolute mental illness and incompetence and gross discrimination against males.
Of course you're going to get this.
It was the most predictable thing that could have ever happened.
So just ask me next time you get confused about this gender stuff.
I'll clear it up.
Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer is being accused of saying the quiet part out loud.
I think we overused that phrase.
But Jim Hoft at the Gateway Pundit is writing about this.
So Schumer was on one of the TV shows, and he said that they've got 235, quote, progressive judges.
And he said, yes, our democracy is at risk because Donald Trump...
Shows that he wishes to violate the laws in many, many different ways.
And then he says, the good news here is that we did put 235 judges, progressive judges, judges not under the control of Trump last year on the bench, and they're ruling against Trump time after time after time.
Now, this kind of brings into question the definition of a judge, doesn't it?
If Chuck Schumer Knew when he picked these 235 judges that they would be spring-loaded to vote against Trump?
And he doesn't think that conservatives would have done it?
Really? I feel like conservatives can be a little bit unpredictable because they're trying to interpret the original meaning of the Constitution.
And you can imagine...
Some would have a slightly different view of what the original interpretation was.
So conservatives tend to be at least a little bit unpredictable.
You know, they can cross lines when they say, okay, this is just too far for me.
You know, I think the Constitution would have gone this way.
But on the left, that doesn't seem to be what's going on.
It seems to me that they're just purely anti-Trump.
And it wouldn't matter what he did or what the argument was.
They're going to just oppose him.
Now, isn't that the opposite of a judge?
Shouldn't a judge be a little bit unpredictable?
As in, okay, well, they're definitely going to look at the facts, and they're going to look at the Constitution, and they'll make a judgment based on the law and the Constitution.
But that doesn't seem to be what's going on.
It seems to me that they were literally picked because they would oppose Trump.
That would be the opposite of a judge.
A judge should be using, you know, just the data and the facts and the law and the Constitution.
But if Chuck Schumer knew when he picked these judges that they would oppose Trump, I don't think he means just when there's some technical violation of the law.
I don't think that's what's going on.
I think they just oppose him on everything all the time.
So basically Schumer has destroyed...
Let me say that again.
Schumer sounds like quite intentionally, with the other Democrats, destroyed an entire branch of government because he hired so many people who are completely willing to just make a political decision instead of a legal or constitutional decision.
That is really...
Not the way the system is supposed to run.
Anyway, I'll take a fact check.
It does seem to me that conservative judges are usually predictable, but I feel like they still only have arguments that are based on the Constitution, and I just don't see that on the other side.
All right.
So Trump has said that, according to Just the News, Misty Saveri's writing, that he announced that there are a draft of contracts being drawn up that would divide the land in Ukraine, and that the idea is that we might be kind of close to some kind of a deal with Russia,
and it would involve trading land for peace.
Well, actually, probably Russia just keeping the land it has for peace.
Do you believe that?
Remember I told you yesterday there are two ways to negotiate the end of this war that definitely won't work.
One of the ways is to not have Ukraine at the table when the deal is made.
Because if Ukraine is not at the table, then even if you try to force them to accept it, They're going to find partners in Europe to disagree, and they're going to push back, and they're going to drag their feet.
They're first going to say yes, but then later they'll say no.
And it just won't get done.
So you'll never get a deal if you don't have the Ukrainians at the table.
So that's one way you'll never get a deal.
The other way you'll never get a deal is to put the Ukrainians at the table.
Because we know, Zelensky anyway, will ask for something that's a non-starter.
And I don't think he's negotiating.
I think he just needs things that are impossible and could never have.
So the two ways that you'll never get a deal is if Ukraine is involved in the negotiating or Ukraine is not involved in the negotiating.
And those are the only two conditions.
So there are only two ways to go.
And neither of them could possibly work even on paper.
Like if I simply described to you the situation, you'd say, oh, well, that wouldn't work either way.
And that's where we are.
So unless Trump has some plan for, let's say, trading out Zelensky or blackmailing him or bribing him or threatening him, I don't see how this could ever work.
Now, Putin is quoted, we don't know if it's a real quote, but quoted as saying that negotiations would be long and very difficult.
So Putin's not seeing anything happening quickly.
It could be that we're just dealing with Trump's usually optimism.
He's just trying to will it into existence, which he can do.
He has that ability to will something into existence that you thought was impossible.
I hate to be in a situation where I would bet against Trump being able to make a deal.
Because it feels like later you would just feel dumb.
It's like, what was I thinking?
Why did I think he couldn't make a deal?
But I'm going to say that unless something big changes, a very big variable, I don't know which one, but unless some big variable changes, there's nothing there that looks like it could be a deal.
As long as Ukraine is involved or Ukraine is not involved.
The two situations that can't work.
Anyway, that's my take.
So you've heard this before, but I guess it's confirmed that Bill Maher is going to go to a meeting with President Trump at the White House.
Kid Rock, who knows both of them, set it up.
Now, I saw a bunch of people saying it's a big mistake.
Because you're just, you know, giving Bill Maher attention and, you know, nothing good can come of it.
And I disagree.
I disagree.
There was definitely a time when it would have been a bad idea.
But if you watch Bill Maher's show, even the most recent one on Friday, he's very much trying to find a common sense high ground.
And it looks like a real, to me it looks like a real attempt to find a common sense high ground.
So he mentions, if you ask him, and he said it even on Friday, Maher did, he can list several things that Democrats did that are just stupid and couldn't possibly ever help them win a race.
So that's progress.
It seems to me that Bill Maher's...
Primary disagreement with Trump are based on something personal from their past.
And then there's always the, he's going to steal your democracy, the weird stuff.
The things that he hasn't done, but you imagine he might do in the future.
Now, some of it's based on things you imagine he did in the past.
So if you imagine that January 6th was an insurrection, well, I don't know if you can be helped.
Because if you start from that point of view, you're starting with fake news.
Do you know what the fake news never did?
Have you ever seen all the interviews with the protesters to ask them why they were there?
No, you haven't.
Never. Just think about the dog not barking.
So there were thousands of people involved, thousands of people charged with a crime.
And every bit of that...
Except for the violent stuff that nobody supports.
Every bit of that was based on what they were thinking when they did it.
If the January 6th people were thinking, oh, I want to overthrow the country, and even though Trump lost, and we all know he lost, we want to put him in charge like a king.
Now, if there were any significant number of people who had that thought, Then I would say, well, that does look like an insurrection.
I gotta say, if there's a whole bunch of people there, even the ones who weren't violent, if they said, yeah, we think Trump lost, but we wanted him to be in office anyway, so we're trying to make it happen, well, that would be an insurrection.
But do you know why you never saw that show, where they just took, let's say, 20 randomized people, non-violent, the non-violent ones, Who were nonetheless picked up for some kind of charge.
And just ask them, why were you there?
And you would find out that 100% of them, I think, would say, it looked like the election was rigged.
We just wanted a little time to look into it because it looked like it was so badly rigged, in our opinion, that you could probably find the problem pretty quickly if you just took a day to look into it.
Now, I don't think that's true.
Obviously, a lot of days have gone by and nobody's found the smoking gun of illegality.
Lots of smoking guns of, you know, what Zuckerberg spent on one election and blah, blah, blah.
But have you noticed that you don't see any kind of news where they just put together the people who were there, the nonviolent ones, and say, why were you there?
Everything about that narrative, and therefore everything, everything about what Democrats think of Republicans, is based on that lack of news.
Let me say it again.
The most dominant opinion that Democrats have about the Republican, well, the MAGA part of the party, is that they would support somebody...
Trump being a king and be against the Constitution because January 7th was an insurrection.
And yet, it would be the easiest thing to confirm or to debunk.
Just randomly get 20 people who attended and say, what were you thinking?
Why'd you do it?
Never happened.
Do you know another situation where that never happened?
Do you remember?
Do you remember the fine people hoax in Charlottesville?
And the question was, were there any people there who were just opposed or they wanted to keep the statues, but were not racists and were not supporting or marching with the racists?
Because if there were, then everything that Trump said makes perfect sense.
How easy would it have been?
To just say, oh, we're CNN.
If any of you are non-racists who went there just because you like the statues for historical reasons, we'd like to put some of you together in a little panel and you tell us why you were there.
That would be the easiest thing they could have done.
And what would those people have said?
Well, as far as I know, I'm the only person in the country who did that.
I put in a call on social media.
Hey, were there any non-racist people who just were there for their own purposes?
And the answer was yes.
And so I interviewed a few and, you know, one of them did say he would go public and I talked about it because I said, you know, I'm not going to let you throw your life away over this.
As much as I would love you to go public, I'm not going to let you.
You know, I'm not going to put you in that kind of danger.
So it was a situation where I couldn't go public.
But I'm sure if, you know, CNN or somebody else said, are there any non-racists who want to raise their hand?
It would have been easy to find a bunch.
Now, the ones I found were townies, people who lived in Charlottesville.
And they just saw in the news there was a thing at the park and they wanted to be part of it.
They didn't even know it was a neo-Nazi organization because they thought, well, it's like everything else in America.
Probably there's one of everything there.
So it's not like it's a closed environment.
So we'll just go down and be part of the fine people.
But when you see them do the same play with the January 6th, to ignore the easiest news you could ever collect, just...
Pull some people together.
Ask them what they were thinking.
That's it.
Ask them what they were thinking on Charlottesville.
Ask them what they were thinking on January 6th.
You'll never see it.
Because the Democrat position depends entirely on them telling you what you're thinking.
Oh, what you're really thinking is you're an insurrectionist.
What you're really thinking is that you're a neo-Nazi.
It would be the easiest thing to debunk that.
Just ask a bunch of people what they were thinking.
Real easy.
Very consequential of chances.
Yeah. So, it seems to me that Bill Maher meeting Trump could, it could, because Maher seems genuinely open to the common sense middle ground.
It could open something up.
It might make it a little bit harder for him to just hate Trump sort of in general.
But we'll see.
It could go either way.
It could just give Mill some material to mock Trump for having a button on his desk for a Diet Coke.
Who knows?
But speaking of Mar, that Ezra Klein guy I was talking about.
He was on the show, because I guess he's got a book out now that's called Abundance, that's getting a lot of buzz.
Now, the Democrats, as you know, don't have any leadership, and they seem to be rallying around this book.
So, Maher, again, trying to find that logical middle ground, was supporting the idea of needing to cut over-regulation.
Here's what their newest, smartest guy, Ezra Klein, said about that.
He said that you don't want to use the word deregulate, that Democrats should stop talking about deregulation because the word has a bad meaning to them, and that instead they should talk about some rules are good and some are bad.
Now, do you know what that sounds like?
That sounds like another...
Prominent Democrat saying, the only thing wrong is our message.
Again, the only thing wrong is the word?
No, it's not the word.
The word was never the problem.
Everybody likes deregulation if they've ever tried to get anything done.
The only people who wouldn't like deregulation are people who've never had to get anything done in the real world.
You know, people just collecting a check or However they live.
But if you tried to build something, I think Bill Maher tried to change his roof to make it less burnable and ran into the regulation wall.
So even Bill Maher thinks we have too many regulations and he says California needs an Elon Musk to deregulate it.
Now that's about as far as you could possibly go into the total common sense part of the world.
Yes, common sense.
Doge is getting rid of too many regulations.
Yes, we need one in California, because California has too many regulations.
And what does Klein say about that?
He changes the subject.
There's their best and brightest at the moment.
And he says, He says that the real weakness for Trump is the economy, so that the Democrats should be talking about the economy.
So he basically completely ignores that gigantic common sense area that Marr is trying to populate, and he just won't go there, because common sense doesn't win it for Democrats.
But you can say things about Trump's handling of the economy that the average person won't know if you're right or wrong.
So they can say things like, Oh, he's using a chainsaw instead of a scalpel.
Well, that doesn't mean anything, and it also doesn't tell you which one was the right tool.
Maybe he is using a chainsaw instead of a scalpel.
Now, can you tell me what was the right tool?
What was the right tool?
And what do you base that on?
It's just ridiculous wordplay.
It's just throwing words at something.
There's no argument there whatsoever.
If the argument was 100% of the time people try to go hard, it doesn't work out.
Well, that could be easily debunked because there are plenty of cases where the smartest people in the world will tell you, you know, it's better to go fast and make some mistakes and then fix them.
So even their most basic thing they say is not based on any argument whatsoever.
It's just hoping that their base...
Doesn't know the difference.
And then Ezra says that Trump's weak on the economy because he's going to do poorly on the economy.
What exactly would be Ezra Klein's qualifications for judging Trump on economics?
Well, I looked at his educational background and it's political science.
So how does he know that Trump's doing poorly on economics?
And what area would that be?
Would it be tariffs that they pretend they don't understand as a negotiating position?
If your opinion is that Trump will be bad on economics because you personally don't understand that the tariff thing is a negotiating stick, that's just you being bad at understanding things.
That has nothing to do with Trump being bad at economics because we don't know how that's going to turn out.
But like I said yesterday, if you were to fast forward two years, do you think our trade deals will be worse than they were before the tariffs?
Does anybody think that?
Do you think they'll be the same?
Almost certainly.
You know, nothing's 100%.
But almost certainly, all of this tariff stuff is going to result in getting stuff we want.
Either more help on fentanyl at the border.
Or better trade deals?
And we're already seeing movement in that direction.
So, is Ezra Klein the tariff expert?
What about inflation?
What about all this cost-cutting and deregulation?
I don't know any business person who's against any of that.
So, what exactly are the places that Ezra Klein is looking at to suggest that Donald Trump is bad economics?
I don't see it.
To me, it looks like every move he's made has been on point, from the gold card to tariffs to eggs from Turkey and South Korea to opening up our energy markets to bringing all these big investments in from other countries and possibly unwinding our financial involvement in Ukraine.
So where's the bad economy part?
What is he even looking at?
These are such weak leadership claims.
They're absolutely empty.
They've got nothing to them, and there's nobody even smart talking about it.
Anyway. And then Klein says that Trump only wins with voters who don't like to think about politics and are not watching the news.
Do you want to know another way to say that?
That Trump is popular with people who have not been brainwashed by one area of the news.
They're really brainwashers more than anything else.
Now, as I've often said, I'm pretty sure that Trump voters have at least a passing understanding of what the people on the left believe, but also what they believe.
The people on the left seem to only understand what they believe.
So the people who are opposed to Trump are only taking a steady diet of pure propaganda from the pure propaganda news sites.
But their take on that is that they're the ones who are right, the ones who are exposed to pure propaganda, because they don't know their news is not real.
One of the things that I've said that gives me great peace is you can't really have a political conversation with someone who thinks their news sources are real.
You can't.
How many of you have ever tried it?
The moment you get into it, you hit a fake news.
It happens in 10 seconds.
Well, you know, this or that might be your opinion.
And then the very next thing you hear, well, You know, he tried to overthrow the country on January 6th.
Okay, where did that come from?
Not from real news.
It came from propaganda.
Anyway, Trump's revoking the security clearances for Biden, Harris, and Clinton.
Now, the Biden and Harris part makes sense, but did you know that Hillary Clinton still had security clearance?
That surprised me.
I guess you just have it until they take it away, right?
If you ever have a security clearance, then you always have it.
That feels like a terrible thing.
Because would that mean that Clinton had ongoing access to confidential government stuff even while she was out of office?
Is that true?
I don't know.
In other news, Conor McGregor.
Seems to be running for president of Ireland.
Now, I saw a report on that.
I don't know if that's totally confirmed, but I don't know how that will go.
So he's got a lot of baggage.
You know, there are accusations against him, and there are going to be plenty of people who are anti-Conor McGregor.
But I did a little research on him, and here's what I can tell you.
He definitely has all the persuasion skills it would take.
So if you're going to judge on persuasion, I would hate to be on the other side.
So here are some of the things that other writers have attributed to him.
He likes talent stacks, with those words, talent stacks.
He likes systems over goals, again, using those very words.
And he likes affirmations and visualizations.
And these have been key to his success in his primary field.
Any of that sound familiar?
Talent stacks, systems over goals, affirmations and visualizations?
Yeah. I wouldn't underestimate him.
Because he's working with the best tools that anybody ever had, if I do say so myself.
So yeah, Conor McGregor.
He's got the full set.
So he could make it potentially.
I'm not going to call him as the winner because I don't know who he'd run against.
I don't know what negatives he has.
But skill-wise, full talent stack.
Or what he doesn't have, he'll have soon.
So you know by now that the New York Times has been accused by the Trump administration of lying in an article about Elon Musk having an alleged meeting planned with the Pentagon in which they were going to share secret plans,
war plans, about what we would do if there were war with China.
According to Sean Parnell, he's a Pentagon spokesperson, and according to Trump and according to Musk, that was never true.
It was just completely made up.
Now, I remind you that when I first talked about this story, I said there's a tell in the story, a signal, that it's not true.
Do you remember what the signal was?
So before it was confirmed that it wasn't true, It was obvious it wasn't true.
And that's because the source or sources were anonymous sources.
They weren't whistleblowers.
They were anonymous sources.
And it's the New York Times.
If you put those two things together, it's about Trump or about Musk.
So it's the same thing.
It's about Musk slash Trump.
It's in the New York Times.
And it's about this time during the...
During the term.
And it's anonymous sources.
And it's something that sounds crazy when you hear it.
Every part of that screamed fake news.
And it looks like it was.
So here's another funny one.
There was a poll on who's leading for...
You know, to be the candidate for 2028 on the Democrat side.
And apparently Kamala Harris comes out way on top.
And she has a double-digit lead over the closest potential competitor, which is Buttigieg, who only had 10% support.
So she got 36% of the support from Democrat and Democrat-leading people.
Now, I assume that the field of potential people was limited in this.
This poll, so maybe there were some people who would look better than her, but were not on the list.
I don't know.
But it does suggest that Democrats can't learn anything.
Because if you hadn't learned by now that Kamala Harris is not exactly the warrior you need, how are you ever going to learn it?
I feel like this is just another batshit crazy woman stuff.
Where women just say, which one's the woman?
Okay. Which one's the most famous woman who's also a woman of color?
Okay, got it.
Kamala Harris.
I don't think there's a lot of thinking that went into this.
Certainly not a lot of competitive thinking, as in who could win.
So the Democrats continue to be completely leaderless and rudderless.
I was watching some of the video of...
Bernie Sanders and AOC doing their anti-oligarch tour.
What would be more beatable than the group that's doing the anti-oligarch tour where they have more billionaires who give money to their side than the other side?
It's the most debunkable thing you could do.
It's the George Soros party.
And the only thing Republicans did...
Is they got a few billionaires on their side because the few billionaires said, uh-oh, it looks like you're destroying the country entirely, and if we don't save it, we're all dead.
So I don't think this anti-oligarch thing is even a little bit smart.
As Fetterman said, and I said before he said it, I don't think anybody knows what an oligarch is or why it matters.
You know, they might be able to define it, but who are the oligarchs?
Why does it matter?
Like, why is that not good for you if they do well?
You know, a lot of questions.
Well, the governor of Maine, you might remember, spoke up at a White House meeting one time about the banning of biological men and women's sports, and the mayor, I'm sorry, the governor of Maine, said they're not going to buckle,
To the Trump administration's requirements to give federal funding that they stop doing that.
But the state universities, who were the target of that messaging, said they would comply, meaning that they would ban biological men and women's sports.
But now Trump wants the governor to do a full-throated apology.
Now... Is he saying full-throated apology because it's kind of funny to say it that way?
Am I the only one who thinks something's sexual when I hear that?
I want an apology, but a full-throated one, to which I say, what exactly is in the full throat?
That's a weird choice of words.
So, I don't know, I like it because it's provocative.
But yeah, Trump wants a full-throated apology from the governor of Maine.
Well, let's talk about Stephen A. Smith.
You know, Stephen A. Smith's been making a lot of noise because although his main job is an ESPN commentator, he's been talking about politics a lot, and he's also tried to find that common sense, common ground,
sort of the Bill Maher common ground.
But James O'Keefe and his OMG, O'Keefe Media Group, they got an undercover recording of an ESPN producer who calls Stephen A. Smith, quote,
an angry black man and thinks he's crazy and has no idea about politics.
So that's from a producer at ESPN.
And said about discussions about the Middle East, the ESPN producer questioned his, you know, what does he know about Gaza?
You know, if he's talking about the Lakers in one minute, you know, what are the odds he has something to add about Gaza?
Now, I'm going to defend Stephen A. Smith because I kind of like him.
So it's hard to criticize somebody that you kind of like.
I like the fact that he's so good at what he does.
So if his job is to make you interested and to make you not turn the channel and to make you say, I can listen to a little more of what he has to say, he's really good at that.
Like really, really good.
His communication skills are just off the chart.
And his performance skills, and I'm going to call it performance, really good.
So when I hear him talk about any of these political topics, I'm actually interested because he's someone who seems to be trying to find some common sense area.
He seems to be smarter than the average person by a lot, and he communicates so well.
So you put all that together, and I do want to hear what he says about Gaza.
Do I think that he's an expert on Gaza?
No. I don't think anybody is.
I just don't think anybody is.
So if you've got somebody who might disagree with me, but he's really good at communicating, and maybe he has a point of view that other people share as well, I'm all over that.
Why don't I want to hear that?
So I disagree with ESPN.
I think that he's a smart, well-informed voter.
Who's not an expert on any of those topics, but as a representative of people who maybe have also similar views, he's just such a good communicator that why is that not interesting to me?
It is.
To me, that's exactly what I'd like to see more of it.
It'd be different if I thought he couldn't change his mind if the data changed, but there's no indication of that.
The indication is that if he saw different data or new facts emerged, that he would go back and re-cook up a new opinion based on the new data.
So I just respect it.
Now, it probably doesn't hurt that I like common sense, and he seems to at least have some empathy for finding the common sense part of the world.
So I'm going to just defend him on that.
I wouldn't mind seeing more of his opinions on politics at all.
So apparently the government already has a sixth generation fighter jet called the F-47.
F-47 sounds like somebody insulting president number 47, but that's not...
I think that's a coincidence.
I don't know.
Apparently it...
Outmatches anything that the rivals have.
CBS News is writing about this.
But the thing that scares me a little bit is apparently it's been flying for nearly five years.
What does it mean to you that our most advanced jet has been flying for five years but doesn't seem to be in production?
That's not a good sign, is it?
You know, if it had been flying for one year or two, I'd say, okay, you know, you've got to really test this thing.
But five?
Five suggests that they haven't solved it yet.
In other words, they haven't solved making it as survivable or as deadly as it needs to be.
So I'm going to be a little skeptical about that, and I'm also skeptical about its value in the age of drones.
Is there anything that this thing can do that you couldn't do with a drone?
At the moment, maybe yes.
Like, you know, literally today?
Probably yes.
But aren't we like 10 minutes away from drones doing everything that this thing can do?
You know, I feel like we are.
It feels like, you know, and not having somebody in the drone would be better.
Anyway, so I remember when all the Democrats said, If you cut the Department of Education, it will be bad for disabled students, and it will be bad for the nutrition programs.
So you monster.
You might be getting rid of some things that aren't that important, but you're also getting rid of the special needs programs that I guess were funded through that entity, and the school lunch programs.
They were also funded federally.
And then Trump just signs a deal and he says, no, those will be handled by Bobby Kennedy's Health and Human Services.
And I'm thinking, Health and Human Services.
That kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
For the special needs students, Health, Human Services.
For nutrition programs, Health, Human Services.
So it looks like taking care of the people who needed those specific services, looks like that will be fully funded, as far as I can tell from now.
So, did you know that the complaints about the Department of Education were always bullshit?
The Democrat complaints?
I did.
I did.
Because Doge has always had, and I'm going to call this...
Part of the Doge work, even though I don't know if Doge was specifically the main driver of this.
But Doge has always said, we're going to cut things, but when we find out there are things that shouldn't be cut, we'll make sure they don't get caught or they get moved somewhere else or they get funded some other way.
And there it is.
Speaking of Robert Kennedy Jr., He's trying to ban cell phones in schools, but not exactly for the reason you expected.
Banning cell phones in schools probably would be good, just because the kids would pay attention and it would take away their dopamine source.
But Kennedy is worried about the electromagnetic radiation, which he says...
And I don't know what studies back this, but he says it's been shown to do neurological damage to kids when it's around them all day.
Now, I'd definitely like to know more about that.
But I'm going to tell you a story from my phone company days that you've heard before.
But if you haven't heard it in this context, it might have hit you differently.
All right, so this is a real story.
At the dawn of smartphones, Before they had a smart screen, they were, what do they call them?
Micro cell phones or something like that.
So all the phone companies were rushing to build out very small cell phones instead of these big bricks that were the only way you could make a cell phone in the early days.
And so I was right in the middle of that, literally in a lab which studied that stuff and other phone company stuff.
And so one of my coworkers, somebody in my group, was a top engineer, and he was asked to study the danger from the cell phones to find out if we could really be in this business safely,
because it was an issue back then.
And he studied everything that was written, looked at all the studies about cell phones, and he came back with the recommendation that they were safe.
And that the business could go ahead.
Pretty good, right?
He studied all the studies, decided, you know, he had some engineering argument why these particular, you know, magnetic radiations wouldn't affect your brain and blah, blah, blah.
So he did all the work, came back, said, perfectly safe.
I was sitting next to him one day while that was happening, and privately I said to him, Would you use one of these phones?
Because believe it or not, those are the days when people didn't have a cell phone in their pocket yet.
I said, would you use one?
And he looked at me and he said, no.
His personal opinion was that it wasn't safe.
His professional opinion was that it was safe.
The company only cared about his professional opinion, and they went ahead and they produced the phones and did very well.
And then eventually smartphones came.
Now, I'm no expert, but if we can't count the number of people in the world to within a billion, and we've been told that the food pyramid was upside down until it wasn't.
And we're still told that scientists can measure the temperature of the entire planet and compare it to the earlier decades.
Completely absurd.
What do you believe about the science about phones and radiation?
The correct answer is you shouldn't believe anything.
So I don't know what studies Kennedy is looking at.
And I don't know if it's the same effect for adults.
I hope not.
But there's nothing you can believe.
The financial incentive to fake a study like this is just so off the chart.
We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars hanging on the industry saying it's safe and keeping us believing it's safe.
So, don't believe anything.
Meanwhile, according to interesting engineering, over in Germany, they found an efficient way.
It's the efficiency that's the story, not that you can do it at all, but an efficient way to turn CO2 they sucked out of the air into jet fuel.
And the important part is not that they can do it, because we've been able to do that for a while, but we couldn't do it efficiently.
So it's not like you could actually start making jet fuel.
It wasn't that good.
But now they can.
And they're looking at making just a crap ton, a ton of jet fuel a day from one facility.
That's working with Sunfire and Climeworks.
Climeworks is a company that sucks CO2 out of the air.
They've been around a while.
Now, may I...
May I complete this story the way you want me to?
There's something missing, right?
And it goes like this.
If you take all the CO2 out of the atmosphere, all our plants are going to die, and then we will all starve to death.
So whatever you do, Scott, don't be in favor of sucking CO2 out of the air, because the more we have, the better.
That's what you're thinking.
That's what you're thinking.
But I don't think we're talking about sucking enough out of the air that it would make any difference.
So I can be wrong.
Meanwhile, according to interesting engineering, Ukraine is testing a zigzag drone that has a four-barrel shotgun.
So now the drones are going to have firearms, a four-barrel shotgun, so it can do dogfights with other drones.
So if you want to take down a drone with your drone, you can send up your shotgun drone and just blast away at the other drones.
So does that scare you at all?
You know, and I'll say again that we're sort of in this weird part of history where drone warfare is under development and it's come a long way, but it hasn't fully replaced.
Human soldiers.
But weirdly, we're at the very time in history where Ukraine is running out of human soldiers.
But they're doing great on unmanned crafts and robots and robot dogs and drones.
So it could be, it makes me wonder if Zelensky is smart enough to know that they're six months away from being able to completely defend their border.
Without new troops.
In other words, you wouldn't need many to just tell the drones to do what they need to do.
So could it be that the real reason that Zelensky is sort of stalling and he doesn't want to make the deal that we all think he should make, could it be that he knows more about what the future of drone warfare looks like?
Because they are right on the cusp of just not needing human soldiers at the front.
Right at the cusp.
And if they can get to that point where they just don't need any human soldiers, you know, except whoever's running the drones in the background, I don't know.
Maybe they think that would change the nature of the war and they could at least negotiate better.
I don't know.
Meanwhile, according to Emily Crane in the New York Post, Israel is threatening Hamas.
That Israel will take permanent control of some parts of Gaza if Hamas doesn't free the remaining hostages.
Now, they're not talking about all of Gaza, but they're saying that some part of it, that they would take permanent control.
So, what does that remind you of?
No, they're not going to take all of Gaza, but if they don't get those hostages, they might take permanent control of some of it.
That's called the cats on the roof.
So Hamas is getting the cats on the roof story.
If you don't know the cats on the roof story, I won't give you the whole story, but the idea is that it's a way to gently break the bad news to somebody.
There's a joke about the cat on the roof and blah, blah, blah.
But here's what I think is happening.
As I've been saying for quite some time, It's kind of obvious that Israel's never going to give back Gaza.
It's kind of obvious that they're going to take full control of it, and I don't think they're going to say, hey, Trump, you take control of it.
I don't think so.
I don't think they're going to say, you know what, it'd be great if Saudi and some of our friendlier neighbors, like Jordan, maybe control Gaza.
I don't think so.
It doesn't seem likely at all.
It seems completely obvious to me that the long-term ownership of Gaza will be Israel, and they'll just own it completely, and Hamas will be 100% destroyed.
But I think this is just how they start breaking it to them.
If you don't give us back those hostages, and they know they're not going to get the hostages back, at least not all of them, then we're going to keep at least a little bit of Gaza.
And then...
Check back in a few months.
Well, you know, if you still don't give back the hostages, because we're not going to have them back in a few months, we might take a little bit more of Gaza.
And one of their defense minister, I guess, he said, the more Hamas continues its refusal to release the kidnapped, the more territory it will lose to Israel.
And there it is.
At this point, Israel is not really disadvantaged by Hamas not releasing the hostages.
I mean, it's terrible.
If you're the family member or friends, it's the worst thing in the world.
But from a strategic perspective, they're just gaining land.
So the longer Hamas says no on the hostages, the more guaranteed it is that there will be no Hamas and there will be no Gaza.
Under the control of anybody but Israel.
So that's common.
According to an article in Time magazine, Alana Samuels is writing about this.
Apparently there's a sort of a private, weird little health insurance group that's been formed of 10,000 members who just pay for each other's health care.
But it's optional.
So I'm really interested in this.
So the way it works is if you need some health care, I guess you pay for it, but then maybe you can get reimbursed.
So you say, I just broke my arm and it cost me, you know, I don't know, $1,500 to get it all wrapped up.
And then other people voluntarily Voluntarily allow some of their money to go toward paying that, but they don't have to.
So you could be in the group and be a person who asks for money without being a person who ever gives any money.
However, here's the fun part, your reputation will be tracked.
So if you're a person who never, never gives to anybody else's health care, and again, you're not paying all the health care.
Because lots of people would be involved.
So you'd be paying, you know, your part of it, a little part of it.
If you never do, then when you break your arm and you ask the other people in the group to help you pay for it, well, they're going to see that maybe you weren't paying for it so much yourself for other people, and they may be a little more reluctant to pay.
Now, I imagine if you're poor or you're going through bad times, If you can see that it's somebody who paid often, but not every time, you might say to yourself, probably just low income.
And so the fact that they paid anything ever, because it's voluntary, shows good character.
So yeah, I'll pay for your broken arm, no problem.
But I suppose you'd never paid for anybody, and then you asked for payment.
Well, maybe you don't get fully covered.
So it's a really interesting model, and I'm not going to go so far as to say that I predict it will work.
But it's working well enough that 10,000 people are voluntarily part of it, and at least some of them seem to like it a lot.
So I'm going to say this is impressive.
This is just a free market and free people.
Just being impressive.
So, good on them.
So, even if it doesn't work out in the long run, I'm completely happy that somebody tested it.
How are we doing here on time?
Perfect. So, Owen Gregorian's going to do an after-party.
So, in just a few minutes.
And he'll be on...
Well, just look for Spaces on X. Spaces is the audio-only app.
And if you've got X, that's built into the app.
And just look for Owen Gregorian, and you'll see the link to it in his feed.
So look for the next Coffee with Scott Adams afterparty.
And I won't take too much time from the locals' people, because they can go talk to each other at that.