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April 24, 2025 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:09:12
Episode 2819 CWSA 04/24/25

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See, my comments will be coming online.
Come on.
Technology is a little slow today.
You can do it.
Alright, we'll get to that later, I guess.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
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All right, everybody.
Let's check in with the world of science and see if there's any scientific studies that they could have skipped just by asking Scott.
Oh, here's one.
According to UCL Political Science, female lobbyists are more likely to gain access to meetings with policymakers.
Did they really have to study that to find out that female lobbyists can get meetings with policymakers more easily?
Apparently even with female policymakers, but I would have known that too.
Let me tell you about my career day when I was a senior in college.
So in my little college in upstate New York when I was a senior.
The bunch of local companies would come in, and they would interview the seniors to maybe make job offers.
And one of the big employers was a pharmaceutical company looking for sales reps.
And I knew a lot of people in the college.
It was a very small college.
And I saw that the people I was competing against, because we were sort of lining up to do our little interviews, We're nearly as accomplished as me academically.
So I'm thinking to myself, this is going to be easy.
I am so going to get this job offer to be a pharmaceutical representative.
And the other people who were in line were really hot girls who were not that good at academics.
And every single one of the hot girls got an offer to be a pharmaceutical sales rep.
And none of the guys, not a single male was offered anything.
And that's where I learned that you don't need to do a study to find out that women can get more access to meetings.
Yes, women can definitely get more access to meetings.
You could have just asked me.
All right, let's see if science has any more surprises.
Oh, yeah, here we go.
Eric Dolan, who's writing in SciPost.
This one's just funny.
There's new evidence, new research.
There's new research in the Journal of Effective Disorders that suggests that people who engage in sexual activity at least once a week are less likely to experience symptoms of depression.
Somebody actually took time and money to study that.
Yes. Yes.
People who are getting laid are happier than people who are not getting laid.
Period. Now, sometimes it's cause.
You know, the cause and effect can go either way in that particular case.
But yes, people who are having more sex...
I can almost guarantee you, on average, are happier than people who are not having sex.
So, next time, just ask me.
You don't need to do that study.
Just ask me.
In other news of hilarious science, do you remember the claims that were all over social media that some group had used some wild technology that was looking under the pyramids?
And they found these vast columns suggesting an entire different civilization was at work for years before the pyramids.
And as soon as I saw that, I said, no, that's not real.
Well, apparently today, according to the AFP, The scientists are saying it's a rubbish claim and there's no giant structures beneath the Egyptian pyramids.
But apparently all the experts who are aware of the technology that they use to image under the ground, pretty much all of them say, that technology can't do that.
Even if there were giant columns under the pyramids, you couldn't see them with that technology.
That definitely wouldn't work.
So I could be wrong.
Maybe there are giant pillars under the pyramids, but I'm going to claim, at least temporarily, I'm going to claim success in debunking that without doing any research at all.
As soon as I saw that one, I thought, probably not.
Probably not.
Here's another one.
The science is also stupid today.
According to the Daily Mail, The Vatican has, in its documents, you know, in secret archives, it has secret links to UFOs.
And some researchers now believe that the Holy See could be sitting on the biggest secret of all, proof of extraterrestrial life.
Do you think the Vatican has proof of extraterrestrial life and they've been keeping it from us?
I'm going to say, nope.
Nope. Not unless that alien life is under those pyramids.
I'm going to say no on that.
Alright, here's one that is real.
According to Elon Musk, your Tesla will soon be a robo-taxi if you want.
Now, what I think that means is you can just...
Park your Tesla outside your garage, and then if somebody has an app...
Now, this isn't functional yet, but it's all developed and looks like it'll roll out pretty soon.
You could just call up a self-driving Tesla, and it will just pull out of your driveway and go pick somebody up and make some money while you're sleeping.
How many of you would let strangers use your car?
I feel like...
I feel like it would be creepy to know that other people were in your car doing God knows what because there's no driver there.
But it would be like Uber but without the driver.
What's the worst thing about an Uber?
It's the driver.
The worst thing about an Uber is the driver.
Because if you're, let's say, young or you're female, you have to worry about the driver being dangerous.
If you're male, You have to worry about the driver playing the radio or making a phone call or being really annoying and trying to talk to you the whole time.
So there's nothing worse about Uber than the driver.
There's also the thing where the driver will start to come to you, and then for reasons you don't understand, they cancel or they change their mind.
That's not the technology doing that.
That's the driver.
So if you can get rid of the driver...
And Tesla could be like Uber in all the other ways?
Yeah, that'd be pretty good.
Speaking of Tesla, I saw this in an awful summary.
I guess the source is Teslarati, but did you know that every Model 3 and Model Y that's delivered in the United States uses batteries that are 100% made in America?
Did you think we could even do that?
I didn't even know that America could make that many batteries.
But apparently, Tesla has been able to make all of its batteries completely in America for some time now.
So that's interesting to know.
And, according to a post I saw on X by Nick Cruz Patane, He says that Tesla vehicles share the same batteries, cameras, and computers as the Optimus robots will.
So I think I could have guessed that.
That it would be the same AI and, you know, computers.
And why wouldn't they use the same batteries?
You know, the smaller versions.
So, yeah, you're going to have robots and self-driving cars, and it's all coming quickly.
In other news, Washington Post is reporting that Trump has ordered that schools develop some kind of AI training for American kids.
I guess China's already doing this.
China is forcing, forcing.
Kids in China at the youngest age have to learn AI.
And now Trump's trying to catch up.
And he's going to put crypto billionaire David Sachs.
That's one way to describe him.
I wouldn't describe him as a crypto billionaire.
That feels dismissive.
But David Sachs will be involved in that.
And the executive order will force schools to train students and teachers in artificial intelligence.
That seems like a really wise thing to do.
And I think Trump also signed an executive order to get more trade training.
To young people as well.
That could be good.
In other news, Paramount, I guess they own CBS, they settled a discrimination suit over DEI policies.
There was a specific white man who couldn't get a job within that entity, within CBS.
Because he was told directly that he didn't check any boxes for DEI.
So even though he was highly qualified and experienced, he just couldn't get a job at CBS as a writer.
They just needed more DEI.
So America First Legal took that case and pressed it and apparently succeeded.
So I don't know if there's a financial settlement.
But the company, Paramount and CBS, they decided to publicly back away from all the DEI stuff.
So, that's good.
So, only one million companies to go.
I remember when I got cancelled, and I told my story about how, you know, back in the 80s and 90s.
It was almost impossible to get promoted if you're a white man in San Francisco.
And I remember, I think it was an editor, a black editor in Chicago, who challenged me on X and said, there's no evidence of that.
You're making that up.
And I thought, making it up?
If you want to find out if it's true...
That in the 80s and 90s, a white man couldn't get promoted as long as there was anybody who wasn't a white man who also wanted the job.
You could just walk outside and just go up to any white man, if they're 50 years old or older, and just tap them on the shoulder and say, hey, were you ever discriminated against for being a white man?
They would have all said yes.
You've got something like...
Probably 30 to 50 million witnesses.
And yet there was an educated, successful, professional black man in Chicago who had no idea, no idea that that existed.
Do you know why?
Because if you even mentioned it, you would get canceled.
You couldn't even mention it.
So now that I don't have to worry about having a boss.
I can mention it.
But imagine what a surprise that would be to have lived your whole life without knowing that white men were being the ones most discriminated against, at least in corporate America.
I think small businesses probably were the opposite.
I don't know for sure.
But in the big businesses, yes, it was anti-white men since at least the mid-'80s, and quite severely so.
You know, not slightly, but it was the main...
The main texture of the employment market.
So, one million companies to go.
Trump also signed an executive order requiring universities to disclose their foreign funding.
Now, that seems like a good idea, doesn't it?
You know, I never realized how vulnerable the United States was.
To all the clever ways that we could be influenced and infiltrated.
Until I saw what George Soros could do with prosecutors.
Like, holy cow, he doesn't have to spend much money and then he gets all these local prosecutors and then they can do all kinds of evil.
But apparently the same problem existed with colleges and universities because they took money from China and other places.
There would be influence.
So, yes, we should know who's influencing our colleges and universities.
That seems like a good idea.
According to Jerry Dunleavy, who's writing for Just the News, there's new unredacted documents about Hunter Biden search warrants that details payments he received from Ukraine and China and,
I guess, some other places like Romania.
And elsewhere around the globe.
So we have actual documents showing Hunter Biden getting money from these other countries.
I'm pretty sure that some of this was while his father was vice president.
And I guess the IRS and the FBI was fully aware that he was receiving this money from foreign sources, but there were no investigations.
There were no arrests, no nothing.
So apparently, our major government entities, they're supposed to keep people on the right side of the law.
They just saw this Biden crime family situation and said, we're not going to touch this.
So apparently, the Biden crime family was exactly what you thought it was.
They were taking money from other countries.
Well, I'm loving how the Marilyn dad who may or may not be MS-13 story is developing because it couldn't be more fun,
even though it's terrible.
It couldn't be more fun because every day it seems like there's a new revelation about the Kilmer Obrigo Garcia.
That makes it even more embarrassing for the Democrats to be fully on board supporting this guy.
So the latest is, you already knew that he had been once stopped while he was driving a vehicle with eight people in it who only had Garcia's home address as their address.
Now that's a strong indication that he was involved in human trafficking.
Human trafficking meaning picking up people at the border who were not citizens and delivering them to the interior of the country and having them stay here illegally.
But what we've learned is that the vehicle did not belong to Kilmer.
It belonged to somebody who was a target suspected of human trafficking.
Apparently the...
Our authorities knew that that particular vehicle made trips to the southern border to pick up non-citizens.
So, pretty much for sure, he was doing human trafficking.
So now the Democrats have to support somebody who is credibly accused of being an MS-13 guy, and now credibly accused of being a human trafficker, and credibly accused of being a wife-beater.
And you wonder how much deeper this can go.
Like, how many new things can we find out about this guy?
I feel like it's going to go.
And, well, yes, it did turn out he murdered some nuns.
And then a week later, we'll find out, well, yes, he kept their bodies in the freezer in the basement.
And then a week later, it'll be like, he's a cannibal.
He is a cannibal.
And the Democrats will still be racing down to El Salvador to say, free the cannibal.
The human trafficker wife beating MS-13 cannibal.
Free him now, because process makes all the difference.
You know what I worry about?
This is something I learned from the Democrats.
You've probably heard that there's something called the Department of Justice.
And they will often arrest people.
for things like murder.
And then those people will be sent to jail if they're convicted.
And I'm thinking, isn't that kind of a slippery slope?
If they can arrest people who are proven to have murdered people and they can put those people in jail, can't they pick up people who have never murdered anybody and never committed any crimes at all and put them in jail too?
According to Democrats, That would be a risk.
I learned that from the story about Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Well, Governor Abbott in Texas just signed some legislation to give Texas their own state doge.
So I guess they're going to build the ability to make their government more efficient.
But there was one thing that I loved about this statement.
So this is from Abbott.
He said that the new Doge in Texas, it will ensure that Texas is operating at the speed of business and will make it easier for Texans to do business, blah, blah.
I love that framing, that the government in Texas will operate at the speed of business.
I don't think you could phrase that better.
Now, somebody said that that was at UPS.
Slogan from long ago.
But no matter where they got it, that is just such a well-chosen phrase that the state could operate at the speed of business.
Because that's exactly what you want.
You want the government not to slow you down.
Speaking of that, according to the Washington Times, the amount that businesses spend To satisfy federal regulations, of which there are thousands of new ones every year, is $2.1 trillion per year.
Actually more than that.
So the amount that we waste by just satisfying various infinite government, this is just federal.
This is not even state.
$2.1 trillion per year.
That's the same as the entire amount of the budget deficit.
$2.1 trillion?
I think we can do better.
Maybe we will.
So according to The Hill, the Washington Post has struck a deal with OpenAI.
So now if you're using OpenAI and you're searching for something that has been in the news, It will give you summaries and quotes and links from the Washington Post.
So, how do you feel about that?
The Washington Post will be a primary, maybe the primary, news source for the biggest AI, open AI.
Does that give you anything to worry about?
Well, I'll tell you, my trust in open AI as a source of independent and accurate information just went down 40%.
Approximately 40%.
Because, as you know, and of course I can't prove this, but the Washington Post has always been alleged to be kind of tight with the intelligence community of the United States.
You know, sort of...
Working hand in glove, if the CIA needed to get a message out, they could do it through the Washington Post.
Now, that's the allegation.
And then, when Bezos bought the Washington Post, which was bleeding money, you probably said to yourself, why would he do that?
Like, why would you buy something that really couldn't possibly make money?
Was it because Jeff Bezos wanted to control the news?
There's not really any indication of that.
But would it be because Jeff Bezos has a gigantic contract with the CIA for cloud services?
And could it be that Jeff Bezos was asked by the CIA to buy the Washington Post so they still had an entity that they could control?
Could it be?
Now, I don't know.
I don't have proof of any of that.
But that's what it looks like.
And what this looks like is if you assume that the CIA would really have to give some kind of backdoor control of the big AI companies, especially open AI.
So my speculation is that the intelligence people in this country pretty much had to have a...
A little bit of control over AI, because that's where everybody's going to get their information.
Probably had some control over the Washington Post.
Not for every story, but for things they cared about.
Probably had some influence over Bezos buying the Washington Post.
I don't have any proof of that whatsoever.
It just sort of looks like it.
And to me, it looks like they're making sure that their source...
You know, the one that they would use if they needed to use it, the Washington Post, is the one that the AI refers to.
So my trust in what I hear about the news from OpenAI, down 40%.
According to Scott Pressler, there are 13 Democrat Senate seats up for re-election in 2020, well, up for election in 2026.
So, more than a third of the Democrat senators are retiring.
More than a third.
So, isn't that, like, incredible?
So, does it seem to you, like, if you're trying to figure out what is our system of government, you know, some would say it's the deep state.
Some would say it's the uniparty.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
Some would say...
You know, it's a competitive thing between two parties and sometimes one wins and sometimes the other.
But I think we forget how much is luck.
Because this looks like the luckiest thing that could possibly happen for Republicans.
That just by complete coincidence, you know, there's no driving force for any of it.
That a third of the Democrats are up for retiring.
I mean, that kind of It strongly suggests that the Republicans are going to have a vice grip on the Senate for a while.
So it's luck.
I mean, that's just pure luck.
So luck is apparently what runs our country more than anything else.
Just pure luck.
Well, Mike Davis was appearing on Steve Bannon's The War Room, and he said he met with Trump officials inside the DOJ, and arrests will come soon.
And I said to myself, arrests of who?
For what?
Is it Epstein related?
Is it deep state related?
Is it something about Soros prosecutors?
Who exactly do you think is going to get arrested?
And I'm going to join the skeptics.
Because it seems to me that Kash Patel and Dan Bongino have been a little bit too quiet.
Now, it could be they're just playing it cool, and there's something really big coming, like really big arrests.
Maybe. But I'm going to go contrarian on this and say, I don't think that we're ever going to see any big arrests.
Not for Epstein, not for...
Not for the Russia collusion hoax.
Not for any of the bad behavior that we've all witnessed.
Not for the Biden crime family.
Not for anything.
So, I'm going to say I predict no major arrests.
I just don't think it's happening.
For whatever has allowed people to run wild and commit just obvious crimes right in front of the public.
There's something that's protecting them.
It might be different things for different people, but I don't think the thing that's protecting them ever stopped.
So whatever it is that protects them, it's probably still there.
So I don't expect any big arrests, but I'd love to be wrong about that.
Well, James O'Keefe's undercover operation, OMG, they got a new video of A Department of Defense branch chief who says President Trump is, quote, illegitimate,
and the branch chief has vowed to, quote, resist him and everything he does.
Can you believe that there's somebody who works for Trump in the Department of Defense, looks like a high-level job, a branch chief, and would say out loud to a date, That he plans to resist him and everything he does.
Now, I assume he's already fired by now, but it's just unbelievable that our government just doesn't even recognize the elected leader.
They're just going to act like they're doing the right thing.
The weirdest thing is that the guy that's on the undercover video, he looks like a character from Roblox, which is hilarious.
If you know what Roblox is and you've seen the video of him.
If you haven't, it's not funny at all.
But he looks like Roblox.
Anyway. So New York Magazine has a big piece about Alex Soros.
And Alex Soros apparently is very committed to the far left of the Democrat Party.
Which is interesting to me, because that's what's going to keep the Democrats from winning.
So I think Soros Sr., who was really good at keeping Democrats in power by funding just the right stuff, he is replaced by his son, who is not nearly as clever, according to people who know them both.
And the son is very committed to the far-left stuff, the progressive stuff.
Which would suggest that at the moment, Alex Soros would be the main reason that Democrats could never win again.
Because as long as they cling to, you know, funding and promoting the far-left stuff, they're going to be so far from what the mainstream, you know, American actually wants, they're going to be in that 20-80 problem again.
So even though Soros says his main priority is winning.
So, he wants to keep Trump and the Republicans out of office.
But he seems to have picked the one and only way that it can't happen, by promoting the least popular things in America.
So, good luck.
Good luck with that.
Well, I've talked before about a researcher called Data Republican.
And if you're on X, you should follow Data Republican.
And Data Republican has uncovered what he describes as the Uniparty, like the nest.
You know, it's almost like, I think there's a nest of people who are like the deep state Uniparty.
And apparently the nest has been discovered.
Mike Benz has sort of commented on this, like this is a big discovery.
But apparently there's something called the U.S. Global Leadership Corporation.
Have you ever heard of it?
The U.S. Global Leadership Corporation.
No, of course you haven't.
You've never heard of it.
And it represents 400 NGOs, non-government organizations, and businesses.
His mission is to, quote, support the smart power approach of elevating diplomacy and development alongside defense in order to build a better, safer world.
Now, as Data Republican explains, if you've been with me long enough, meaning if you follow Data Republican, you know that is code for increasing NGO influence in military affairs.
So this is a group of people.
Who are representing over 400 NGOs and all the money that would be involved in that, whose main thing is to essentially be a military assistant force.
So if we're going to take over a country or get military with it, these NGOs would be the supporting entities.
Now, apparently this organization, the biggest financial backers, Our Bill Gates and George Soros Open Society Foundation.
So there's a big organization, 400 NGOs, supported financially by Gates and Soros.
But what's interesting is the people who are on the board.
So the advisory board includes everything from Hillary Clinton to a bunch of ex-secretaries of defense to a bunch of senators to governors.
And here's the payoff.
It's both parties.
This is the uniparty nest.
So what Dana Republican says is the importance of this cannot be understated.
This is the first solid confirmation I've seen that Soros and Bill Gates are backers of the so-called uniparty network.
So you know how people use the phrase uniparty whenever war is involved?
So there's big differences between Democrats and Republicans on a lot of social domestic stuff, you know, like trans and sports and, you know, DEI and stuff like that.
But there's another level, you know, a higher level where we're making decisions about where the military is going to be deployed and how many trillions of dollars we're going to spend.
Bombing other countries.
That is often referred to as the uniparty, because no matter how much we disagree on domestic stuff, somebody, somebody powerful, is apparently all on the same page, Republican and Democrat,
when it comes to war.
Possibly because they benefit from it.
That would be my follow-the-money speculation.
Maybe they're just true believers and they think that the U.S. needs to project this kind of power in order to be successful.
But I feel like it's far more likely that they're just part of an entity that supports each other and have ties to the military-industrial complex and are wagging the dog in the United States and at least causing from the background.
More wars than we might have wanted.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
But maybe the nest of the unit party has been discovered.
That would be kind of interesting.
The CBO has estimated that by 2035, the U.S. debt could be $54 trillion.
I think there's no chance of that.
We would be dead long before that.
If we get to a debt of $54 trillion in 2035, I don't think we can.
I guess I don't think we'd be able to finance that debt.
I think everything would come crashing down.
But apparently, that's the rest of it, $54 trillion by 2035.
There's no way we could survive that.
So, if it happens, good luck.
There are reports that Elon Musk had shouting matches with Scott Besant, and that it happened in the White House, and it was within hearing distance of the president and other people, and it went on for a while, and I guess the F word was used,
and some of it had to do with staffing decisions.
But here's my take.
You know, the way he thinks.
And I like Scott Bessent, and I like the way he thinks.
And then I doubly like the fact that they're so passionate that they would yell it out behind closed doors.
And I don't mind at all that the word got out.
Because if they had just simply agreed on everything, I'd wonder what's up.
But this is sort of my perfect world, when you've got two people that capable.
That well-informed and that connected to the world.
And they have a shouting match.
To me, that's not bad news at all.
That's sort of like, you know, just what you'd want.
You'd want people really, really caring, really, really smart.
And if they disagree, they're not going to give up.
They just go at each other.
So I wouldn't be surprised.
You're going to see...
Elon Musk's phasing out of his government doge work.
I think some of that is because it was going to happen anyway.
In May, I think his time was up.
But I think that also it wasn't working.
Because I think the government sort of, you know, maybe is open to anything new, like a doge person coming in and shaking things up.
But in fairly quick order, They're going to want to have their own control.
So I think Elon Musk was probably a little too dangerous to have running around for too long in the government.
So I think he did an amazing job and may have created a structure that can continue making things more efficient and saving money.
But it should be said that it never got close.
To the trillion dollars.
And I think that's one of the things that Scott Besant was criticizing him for.
And then Musk was allegedly criticizing Besant for being some kind of a Soros-related person, because I guess he worked with Soros at one point.
So that's pretty exciting.
But yeah, I would expect that Elon Musk will phase his time back to Tesla.
And Tesla's had a really exciting time.
It's weird that their sales are down because of the political connection, but at the same time, their products have never been this exciting.
I mean, they're right in the edge of full auto taxi robots, you know, use your car for an Uber.
This is just the best stuff we've ever seen in technology.
This is like...
You know, the birth of the smartphone, the birth of the computer.
So Tesla is really, really well set for, I don't know, just maybe decades of dominance in a few different areas.
So it does make sense that Musk would turn his attentions back to work, as we all knew he would eventually.
And I hope that the political stuff doesn't create too much of a drag on a great company.
Well, according to China, the China Commerce Ministry says there have been no economic and trade negotiations between China and the U.S. So if you thought to yourself, well, maybe Trump hasn't talked to Chairman Xi, but surely there are discussions going on at lower levels?
Nope. Apparently there are not discussions going on at lower levels, according to China.
Well, let's take a look at...
The implications of that.
According to an article in Wired by Zey Yang, even though China is limiting US access to critical minerals, it might not be as bad as you assume.
Because we've all been told they need these critical rare earth materials to build all kinds of technology, from your phones to your robots to your...
Electric cars and everything else.
And that's true.
But we're being reminded by this article that you could live without them.
So, for example, your electric car could certainly operate without some of the rare earth materials.
It might not last as long and there might be a feature or two that it can't do, but it'd still be an electric car.
And apparently there are a number of examples of that where if you had to, you could just sort of make your product without some of those rare earth minerals.
It's just that it wouldn't be as good.
But you could still make it and it would still be commercial and people would still buy it.
And then also, this is what I was wondering about, but apparently Belgium has emerged as a possible re-export hub, meaning that If people bought the rare earth minerals from China, China doesn't know where it goes after that.
And that maybe some part of the European Union could be buying these rare earth materials.
They'd have a closer connection to the United States than to China.
And then the next thing you know, the United States has some rare earth minerals from China.
But China doesn't know that we have it.
Now, if all the countries that we sanction can pull this off, such as Iran, they still manage to get stuff, and I'm sure Russia still manages to get stuff.
We don't spend a lot.
It's not like trillions of dollars or anything.
A fairly small amount of material, very important, but small in terms of quantity, but also small in terms of dollar amount.
So one of the reasons that we don't have new mines and refineries popping up for these rare earth minerals is that all it would take, according to this article in Wired, all it would take is one new factory or refinery for one of those minerals,
and it would create too much of the mineral.
So apparently the demand is critical because they're important, but it's a small demand.
Like it's not that many dollars and it's not that many pounds of material.
So if you built a new refinery, it would maybe crush the price for the one mineral and your business model wouldn't work.
So that's interesting.
I didn't know any of that.
But anyway, there might be workarounds for the rare earth minerals.
We'll see.
According to Ryan Peterson, who follows shipping, I think he's CEO of Flexport, or founder of, or both.
But Flexport's in the shipping industry.
And he says that in the three weeks since the tariffs took effect, the ocean container bookings from China to the U.S. We're down 60% industry-wide.
And he predicts we'll have mass shortages this summer as goods don't show up.
And even if things got fixed...
Now, it's going to take until summer to get the mass shortages.
I don't know shortages for what specifically, but it's going to be a lot of stuff.
A lot of companies sort of ordered extra in anticipation of shortages later.
So once we work through the extra that people ordered, we're going to just run dry for some things.
And again, I don't know which ones.
And then if we decided to suddenly ramp up, let's say the tariff stuff was all solved, if you solved it immediately, you would still have a problem that the ships had been used for other things and there wouldn't be enough ships.
To make up for the shortfall because everybody will be scrambling for the same materials.
So we're going to have some pretty serious shortages, and maybe some of our factories will go idle and go out of business.
So there's going to be some disruption.
And the faster the China tariff situation gets solved, the better we'll be.
Now, we don't know yet.
And I don't know, I guess.
If this will hurt the United States more than it will hurt China.
So, of course, the game here is that both will pretend, well, you can't hurt me.
We can work with this.
And each side will say, no, it's worse for you than it is for me.
You'll crack.
I don't know.
Do you think China's going to crack?
I think Trump is wise to be moderating his tone.
So that he's treating China as a respectful, you know, peer that we negotiate with and not somebody we're trying to walk all over.
So we'll see.
Apparently Trump has vetoed the idea of increasing taxes on rich people.
There was an idea that the federal tax on people making over a million a year would go to something like 40%.
But Trump says no, because if you raise taxes on the rich, they leave the country, and you need the rich to pay taxes.
Now, I'm not sure if that's the only reason, or if he's just being a Republican and he doesn't want to raise taxes on anybody, but he called it very disruptive.
So I guess we're probably not going to see taxes on the rich go up.
According to the Wall Street Journal, and this, I don't know why this took so long, there's a new French study that showed that, sure enough, not only is it true that some of the additives in our food are bad for us and cause diabetes and whatnot,
but if you combine them, it's extra bad.
So what the new study is, Is not looking at one additive, which is normally the way the studies work.
They would look at what happens if you have several of these additives in the same food.
And apparently it's as bad as you think.
So if you add together multiple additives in the same food, you've got a much higher risk of type 2 diabetes and God knows what.
So the food industry, of course, defended it.
And they say it's important for food safety and quality.
But then you have to ask the question, if it's important for food safety and quality, why isn't it important in Europe, where a lot of this stuff's illegal?
I guess they need to answer that question.
Well, in other news related, RFK Jr. is apparently noodling on removing the CDC's COVID-19 vaccine recommendation for children.
Were you even aware that the CDC was still recommending COVID-19 vaccines for children?
How many of you even knew that that was a thing?
Well, here's the good news, and this is reported in Politico.
Here's the good news.
Apparently only 13% of children have gotten that COVID shot.
So most parents are pretty keyed in that young people don't really have a bad time with COVID.
And there's no reason to add another risk on top of the COVID itself.
So we don't know yet if Kennedy will actually pull that or get that reversed.
But I feel like it's going to happen.
If only 13% of people are getting it anyway, it wouldn't be that big of a shock to the system to say, okay, this is not recommended.
You can get it if you want, but it's not recommended.
Well, here's a surprise.
So, Senator Fetterman was asked in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, and he said that we should bomb Iran's nuclear sites.
And he says, quote, waste that shit.
He said, quote, you're never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime.
That has been destabilized in the region for decades already.
And now we have an incredible window, I believe, to do that and to strike and destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.
How do you feel about Fetterman now?
Not so good, right?
We were enjoying watching Fetterman agree with Republicans on a lot of stuff, at least the common sense stuff.
But he seems pretty pro-Israel and pretty pro-war, at least in this particular context.
And I have to say that his credibility just went to zero for me.
Do you feel comfortable with that?
The Federman says, yeah, let's go.
You know, stop negotiating.
There's nothing.
Now, I don't know that he's wrong.
In the sense that the negotiating might never work.
You know, we're dealing with somebody we can't negotiate with.
Maybe. But I also think there's a non-zero possibility that Iran might think that for its own benefit, it doesn't need to be developing nuclear weapons because they would get bombed.
So they might think we've got so many...
Good missiles and so many good drones now, because apparently they're pretty good at making them, that militarily they would be better off using missiles and drones anyway, because they're not going to get nuked if they use non-nuclear weapons.
So, I don't know.
I think only because missiles and drones are the new way of war, I think there might be an opening.
In which they would think it was to their own best interest to stop, you know, refining things to weapons grade in the nuclear domain.
That's what I feel like.
I don't think it's likely we'll find an agreement.
I think he's right that, you know, the Iran regime has shown that they can't be trusted, etc.
But it's a little worrying that he's so pro-war.
Bomb them, bomb them.
Yeah, I'm not comfortable with that at all.
Meanwhile, economist Jeffrey Sachs is saying that Ukraine will have to agree to peace or continue without U.S. backing.
Now, that's the same thing I said.
I think it's kind of obvious at this point.
He says, quote, one thing that I'm pretty much convinced of is that Trump will not go back to Congress for more appropriations to fund Ukraine's war or its military or whatever one wants to call it.
I agree.
So Trump did a big truth post about Zelensky not wanting to give up Crimea in order for peace.
And Trump explained in his post that Crimea is a major Russian submarine base.
So he's explaining why that's not really in play.
Apparently it's mostly ethnic Russians.
I don't know if Trump said that, but that's what I knew.
So Crimea is mostly ethnic Russians.
How much do they want to be in Ukraine?
I don't know.
I'm not sure if we can tell.
But don't you think that the people who are mostly Russian, ethnic Russians, would be probably just as happy being part of Russia?
Because it's not like Ukraine is the country where everything works well.
It's the most corrupt country in the world.
So, I don't know.
The fact that they're mostly ethnic Russians suggests, to me anyway, and I'm no expert, I have not visited there, but it suggests to me that they probably would be happier with Russia control.
And I guess Zelensky may have thought that he was being asked to recognize Crimea as Russian-owned, and Trump is telling him, nobody's asking you to do that.
The United States might.
The United States might agree to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, but he's not asking Ukraine to do it.
So that's worth something.
And he calls Zelensky the man with no cards to play, and he says he should close this deal right away.
Yes, he should.
Now, at the same time, I think last night, Russia bombed Kiev.
And killed several people, and it was a pretty bad attack.
And Trump did a separate truth telling Vladimir, what the hell are you doing?
Stop bombing Kiev.
We're trying to work out a deal here.
It was kind of weirdly personal, even though he did it in public.
What are you doing?
Stop bombing Kiev.
We're so close to a deal.
It's crazy.
So we'll see if that works.
According to Politico, here's a test of your fake news nose sniffer.
Let's see if you can spot the BS here.
According to Politico, the White House is debating lifting sanctions on Russian energy assets and the Nord Stream.
Now, that sounds believable, right?
Because there's negotiations about our interaction with Russia and our interaction with Ukraine.
You could imagine that Russia would ask for that sanctions to be lifted.
So it wouldn't be a big surprise if the White House was debating whether they should do it or not.
So that sounds like it could be true, right?
Well, according to Marco Rubio, who would certainly know what's true or not in that domain, he said in a post on X, this is unequivocally false.
But listen to the specificity.
Of how he debunks it.
It's a little too specific, right?
Now, the report is that the, quote, White House is debating it.
So that's the report.
When he debunks it, he says this, neither Steve Wyckoff nor I have had any conversations about lifting sanctions against Russia as part of a deal with Ukraine.
Huh. Well, that's not exactly what Politico said, is it?
Politico said the White House.
The White House has a lot of different people, including the president.
But in the debunking of it, Rubio says only two people, Steve Wyckoff and Rubio.
Now, that might be 100% true, that neither he nor Wyckoff have had any conversations about it.
But does that mean there's nobody in the White House who's debating that?
It seems like his denial or his debunking is a little too specific.
And he says, this is journalistic malpractice.
If Politico has an ounce of integrity, they'll retract this fiction.
Okay. I'm going to say that that's the sort of thing you would expect people in the White House to be debating.
But if what Rubio is saying is that the people who are, you know, Critical to that question are not talking about it.
It does mean something.
So it's not nothing.
But that's a very specific denial.
That's usually a key that there's a little something left out.
All right.
According to the Daily Mail, I didn't even know this, but apparently China and Russia are getting quite cozy with their space programs.
And now there are plans that China and Russia would build a nuclear power plant on the moon to power their mining and their laboratories and God knows what else they put up there.
Probably military stuff.
But I'll tell you, if you didn't think there was going to be a war in space, I hate to tell you there's going to be war in space.
War in space feels just guaranteed.
You know, it might start small with somebody takes out a satellite or somebody tries to knock out somebody's power plant and their, you know, their moon base or something like that.
But I feel like space war is just guaranteed, you know, just because of human nature.
So, maybe.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I needed to talk about today.
I will tell you that people have been prodding me on Acts to say bad things about Israel.
And people are saying to me, Scott, when have you ever said anything bad about Israel?
And I'm going to remind you that what's the difference what my opinion is of Israel?
Can anybody give me a reason why?
Anybody would care about my opinion of Israel?
It's not my country.
It's not my country at all.
But what I will note, and I've noted this before, is that the people who seem to be debating it are debating it on the ethical and moral level.
Like, who's the most immoral?
Who's doing the most unethical things?
To which I say, None of that is relevant.
Somebody's opinion of what is moral or ethical, I'm not even sure that's a variable that has anything to do with anything.
Because countries do what's good for countries.
And, you know, as soon as you get into people are dying, it all looks immoral.
It all looks unethical.
And if you say to me, but, but, but, Israel had a good reason.
Because of October 7th.
Then I say to you, sure, if I were Israel, I would make the same claim.
It would be a strong claim.
And I would use that opportunity to do the things that I wanted to do but couldn't do before, which is improve security.
And in this case, it looks like trying to destroy Hamas completely.
And then I saw some people say, all right, imagine this thought experiment.
If Israel decided to lay down all of its arms and not fight, what would Hamas do?
And then, of course, the answer is Hamas would kill everybody in Israel.
And then the question would be, but if Hamas laid down their arms, what would be the response?
And, of course, everybody says, oh, Israel would just accept the peace and then everybody would live in peace.
So, therefore, Hamas is the bad one.
But again, that gets into the sort of ethical, moral dimension, which I don't have any interest in whatsoever.
What I see is a power play, and whoever's in power is going to execute based on their national interest and what their power can get them.
So when I watch a country doing something that's clearly in their best interest, which is what Israel's doing, Clearly, they're operating in their own best interest.
It's hard for me to criticize that, because if the situation were, I won't say reversed, but if the United States were in that same situation, we would do whatever's good for the United States.
And it might be absolutely brutal, and whoever's on the receiving end of it wouldn't like it at all.
But I think the most, I hate to say, the most normal thing in the world, Is that the people with the power will pursue their national interest in ways that other people aren't going to like at all.
And, you know, most countries are founded on the backs of somebody who got conquered anyway.
You know, it's the most normal thing.
So I was trying to think of some story or analogy that would explain it the best.
And so I'm going to try one.
Even though analogies are not part of reason, we'll see if this gets anywhere.
If somebody said to me, Scott, the only way you could save your life is to kill a thousand babies, what do you choose?
Well, I'd like to think, you know, it's easy for me to say since it's hypothetical, I'd like to think I would say, oh man, I'd hate to die, but...
I don't want to kill a thousand babies.
That would be immoral and ethical.
No, I can't do that.
I will sacrifice myself for the thousand babies.
Wouldn't you?
I think you'd agree with that, right?
I mean, it would be tough to be in this situation, but at least in an ideal situation, I would choose the thousand babies over me.
Now let's modify that a little bit.
And somebody says, Scott, the only way you can save your entire country, the United States, every single person is going to die unless you kill a thousand babies.
What do I do then?
It's just as immoral, right?
It's just as unethical.
It's just as evil to kill a thousand babies.
But in that case, because self-defense is...
It's invulnerable to morality and ethics, really.
If the self-defense is big enough, you're saving an entire country, which would include saving a lot more babies than you would kill.
I would say, where are those babies and when can I get started?
Because saving the country would be a bigger priority than saving a thousand babies.
The thing I would add to the conversation is, if Israel is doing something to you that looks like killing a thousand babies, but their alternative looks to them, and they're the only ones who get to decide, it looks to them like they could lose their entire country to a rising force that wants to kill every one of them,
then it's sort of none of my business.
They get to make that decision.
Everybody gets to decide what your own self-defense looks like.
And other people don't get to tell them that was unethical or that was immoral or we wish you hadn't done it.
I mean, we could move our lips, but it's not really part of the decision.
So when I look at Israel doing some pretty brutal stuff with Gaza, I don't say to myself, is it ethical or moral?
I say to myself, is it self-defense?
And if it's self-defense, or they reasonably believe it's self-defense, I don't even have to be the judge of whether it is.
If they reasonably believe it's self-defense, it's not really a moral or ethical question.
It's self-defense.
And I do think they have an argument that it's self-defense.
And it wasn't...
I don't think it's Israel's fault that Hamas wraps itself around the civilian population.
It does make it a gigantic tragedy.
So I'm not devaluing the horror of it.
You can still say the horror is a 10. 10 out of 10. Okay.
But... In the real world, when people have a self-defense motivation, and they've got one shot, and October 7th made it possible for Israel to take its one shot, don't be surprised if they take it.
But here's the important thing.
If you thought that I just gave you an opinion on Israel, it was the opposite.
All I did is describe the world.
I didn't give you an opinion on Israel.
Because my opinion on Israel is completely irrelevant.
Israel will do what's good for Israel because they have the power to do so.
If Hamas had the power, they would do what Hamas wants and it would be pretty brutal.
And my opinion wouldn't matter to that either.
So stop trying to drag me into it because it's really just a fucked up way to find a way to criticize public figures.
So I'm not in this fight.
I care what's good for America, and I care about America's self-defense and America's well-being.
Israel's on its own.
If you ask me should we pay for it, I'd say no, because that's not in my best interest.
So just keep me out of the Israel-Hamas thing, because my opinion of what's ethical or moral has nothing to do with anything.
It's a power play.
It's a self-defense play.
It's a national interest play.
And the people who have the power are going to get what they want.
And that's just the way the world works.
And that's an observation, not an opinion.
You don't need my opinion.
It has no value here whatsoever.
All right.
So I just wanted to clarify that because people have been asking me on X. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to say some stuff privately to the Locals subscribers.
And the rest of you, thanks for joining.
Come back tomorrow, same time, same place.
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