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I just realized it's Saturday, so it's yesterday's stocks are up.
All right.
I forgot what day it is.
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Oh.
Oh.
I can't believe you let me get that far into looking at the stocks before telling me it's Saturday.
You probably told me a hundred times I didn't see it.
All right.
Well, today, given that it is, in fact, Saturday, Owen Gregorian will be hosting, right after the show, a Spaces.
So you've got to be on X. I think you have to be on X to use Spaces.
audio only.
And you can find it by looking at my Just look for him and you'll find it.
So that's right after the show.
So I saw a quote, the Wall Street Journal had some video, of the United Airlines CEO, somebody named Scott Kirby, an excellent first name.
Somebody asked him for the best career advice.
And his career advice was don't have a plan, meaning don't have a goal.
And he said that in his career, everything good was unexpected, and he was ready for it.
But if you have goals, it puts blinders on you.
So when he says he was ready for it, I looked at his resume, and it looks like he had made sure he knew a lot about airplanes.
So I think he'd been a mechanic, and then he'd taken some other more advanced college courses.
So, yeah, he was ready for it, but he wasn't ready for everything.
He was probably ready for anything within that domain.
I'm seeing a meme that Putin has offered to negotiate a peace deal between Trump and Musk.
Well, we don't need that.
Anyway, so the only thing I would add to United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby's advice is that you make sure your talent stack is nice and solid.
So, otherwise, you will not be ready.
All right.
Let's see.
Is ready science?
That they could have saved some money on just by asking Scott.
Oh, here's some.
According to ZME Science, there's a study that showed that vegetarians are more rebellious and power hungry than you think.
Now, how many of you would have known that?
That vegetarians are more rebellious and power hungry than you think?
I would have known that.
And the reason is that you're starting with a group of people who are willing to buck one of society's strongest cultural norms, which is eating meat.
It is hard to be a vegetarian.
I'm a pescatarian at the moment, but when I was a vegetarian, it meant that if you got invited to somebody's house,
So, if you just, if you simply started with the people who were willing to buck, you know, one of the most inconvenient things you could ever buck, because your friends wanted to go to this restaurant, but there's nothing you can eat there.
You have to be a certain kind of person.
To be willing to take on the vegetarian lifestyle.
So if you would ask me, are vegetarians more rebellious?
I would have said, yeah, obviously.
I mean, you're starting with a rebellious group.
You'd be surprised.
You know, it's not like it's limited to that one thing.
I'm not sure I would have known the power hungry part, but it applies to me.
I'm definitely power hungry.
But I see power as a tool, like money.
If you have power and you have money, then you can do good things.
And you can do good things for other people.
So yeah, I'm very power hungry.
According to Newsmax, McDonald's has decided it's going to stick with DEI, but it's going to change the words.
So now it's only called inclusion.
Actually, Bloomberg is reporting that.
And they say they're not going to change anything in the way they operate.
It's also keeping its internal affinity groups where employees with similar backgrounds, I guess demographics, can share ideas.
And I wonder, how is that legal?
Because they're saying it right out loud.
I mean, they're not hiding it.
They're saying we're just changing the words, but we're going to operate exactly the same.
Well, I will add one thing that I know from personal experience.
Well, semi-personal.
One level away from personal.
Is that if you were to apply for a job at McDonald's, you probably will get it.
So I don't know how much work they have to put into being diverse.
Because where I work or where I live, if you were 16 or 20 and you wanted a job at McDonald's, if you applied, it might take a few weeks.
But there's such a high turnover in fast food that you'd probably get the job.
And it wouldn't matter what color you were.
So this might be the one area where DEI is not such a big deal.
It's not helping anybody a lot because everybody can get a job.
And I think they're very merit-based.
So McDonald's is, you know, It is one of the best places you could ever have your first experience as a job.
Well, the Wall Street Journal has a big article about the redesign of self-driving cars.
And the idea is that a self-driving vehicle in the very near future Doesn't need a steering wheel or a dashboard.
So what if you just started from scratch and tried to make a self-driving environment that wasn't limited to what a car can do?
And the first thing you'll notice is that all of the interesting ideas would not be practical because they wouldn't be safe.
So it shows a picture of this amazing little Van-sized environment that you say to yourself, oh man, I wouldn't mind taking a trip if I could just hang around in that cool little well-lit room with good windows and seats.
Those seats look comfortable.
And then you realize they're walking around.
And you say to yourself, oh, well, they're still going to have to wear seatbelts.
It's not like you're going to be walking around in your car while it's driving.
So I suspect everything except having a big screen where you can all watch the same show.
But by the way, none of you want to watch the same show.
So unless you're in it alone, the big screen isn't going to help you a bit.
But I do think that the idea of just walking into your vehicle with a suitcase and saying, all right, vehicle.
I'd like to go visit the Grand Canyon.
So make sure you stop for meals and book me some hotels.
And the AI just does all that for you.
That would be amazing.
So that could be your future.
Happen any day now.
Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has added...
They beat expectations, according to Steve Moran.
And that sounds good.
I guess I don't have any comment about that, except it looks like good news.
But do any of you have the reflex that I've developed, which is it doesn't matter how good the economic news is?
It only matters how big our deficit is.
So when I hear jobs are good, blah, blah, blah, jobs are good, all I really hear is you're driving toward the abyss.
You do not have a solution for debt.
It doesn't matter how many jobs there are.
They'll all be out of work soon.
So, yeah, I'm not really moved by good economic news, but I suppose it's better than bad.
Barely.
It's barely better than bad.
So Adam Schiff decided to weigh in on this Elon Musk-Trump issue, and especially about the big, beautiful bill, the spending bill that's not a spending bill, according to Steve Miller.
And Adam Schiff said on Acts, I can't believe I'm saying this.
But Elon Musk is right.
The Big Beautiful Bill is filled with all sorts of hidden and dangerous far-right pork.
Is it?
Is the Big Beautiful Bill full of far-right pork?
Or is it just far-right things that the far-right likes, like protecting the border and building up the defense industry?
I don't know.
So he's the biggest liar in the world, so he can just put it out there and his Democrat followers will say, huh, that thing must be full of hidden and dangerous far-right pork.
But we don't have any examples.
And Elon Musk saw that post from Adam Schiff and he said, he responded to it saying, hmm.
A few things could convince me to reconsider my position more than Adam Schiff agreeing with me.
And yeah, that was my first impression too.
It's like, you don't want him on your side.
So Elon Musk unfollowed Cat Turd?
Well, it's about time.
I unfollowed Cat Turd a long time ago.
Blocked him.
All right.
So here's a news item that you didn't need to do any research on.
It looks like AI came up with it.
So the Financial Times is reporting that allies of Trump and Musk are urging them to repair their relationship, seeking to limit the political and commercial damage.
Now, what else are they going to do?
Their allies?
It's literally their friends.
Did they have any allies who were recommending the opposite?
That maybe they fight a little harder?
What kind of a headline is that?
So that was on X. And I'm thinking, was there any ally of either Musk or Trump who pulled them aside and said something like, you know, I think this situation really calls for more accusations.
I think things are going well, but you should really ramp up the accusations, the personal ones, the professional ones, the ones that could get somebody in jail.
I don't think so.
I've got a feeling that the allies are all, yeah, maybe you should take a day off and cool it a little bit on this.
Well, Trump, And so yesterday Trump wished Elon well, and he noted that Trump has been so busy dealing with Russia, Iran, and China that he hadn't had any time to think about their spat.
Now, I don't know how true that is, but it's a perfect...
Oh, I'm working on all these important things.
Can't possibly get involved in that.
Meanwhile, do you remember the Maryland dad, so-called Maryland dad, who was accused of being a MS-13 guy and he got deported wrongly?
Wrongly meaning that the court order did not support him being deported, or the court did not.
Now, do you remember what I've been saying since very near the beginning of that saga about the Kilmar Abrego Garcia guy?
I kept telling you that what's funny about it is that it started out being he's a Maryland dad.
Oh, sure, he's not here legally.
But, you know, that's millions of people are not here legally.
That's not the biggest problem.
I mean, if he's built a life and, you know, a lot of people would be in favor of someday giving him citizenship.
You know, not Republicans, of course.
But it started out with, well, he's, you know, a little bit bad.
And he may well be an MS-13.
And then you say to yourself, yeah, but...
You know, I don't know if anything specific.
And then you find out, well, he may have beat his wife with his fists twice.
But then she said something, you know, to mitigate that a little bit.
And then you say to yourself, well, I wonder if it's going to get any worse.
And then we find out that he was pulled over for human trafficking.
meaning that he was transporting a car full of people, probably from the border, presumably illegals, and presumably getting paid for it.
So now you've got illegal trafficking.
You've got beating your wife.
You've got maybe you're a member of MS-13.
And now he's been, for reasons I don't, He's been brought back to the United States, which is what all of his supporters wanted.
But he's being brought back because there are horrible charges that he was part of a larger operating ring where he may have transported who knows how many people.
So it wasn't just that one car load of people.
It looks like, But now there are additional accusations that are not charges yet.
They're just claims.
So a co-conspirator has allegedly accused him of involvement in the murder of a rival gang member's mother.
Now, there's nothing funny about murdering a rival gang member's mother.
But it is worse.
It does show that trend of every time we hear from them, things are worse.
So that's pretty bad.
But no charges have been filed on those claims, which makes them, I would say, less credible.
But the fact that the claim even exists, if the police picked you up, what are the odds that one of your co-conspirators Would say that you were involved in the murder of a rival gang member's mother?
And the answer is low.
Low.
Probably nobody would mention that at all.
But apparently this gentleman, this Maryland dad, has a co-conspirator who is willing to accuse him of that.
So that's not ideal.
So I think the Trump administration And it looks like he got deported incorrectly.
There was the claim by the Trump administration that once he got to El Salvador, hey, what can we do?
You know, it's out of our hands.
But apparently it didn't take much to get him back.
All it took was all these indictments.
So you might have the worst lawyer in the world.
i heard uh alan dershowitz saying that if he had been the lawyer he would have said let me loose in some country where there's no risk but coming back to the united states And now, if you ask yourself, what parts will people remember?
Now, the Democrats will try to remember that the Republicans did not use the right process and it resulted in somebody temporarily, temporarily, being deported incorrectly.
And unlawfully and being in the wrong prison.
So that's what they'll remember.
Republicans will remember that they got a alleged gang member, possible assistant in a murder, wife meter off the streets and will put him in jail for many years.
So who won?
I mean, obviously the Maryland dad lost, but who won?
The Trumpers won so hard.
Because while I fully understand the argument on the other side, it just shrinks to nothing, doesn't it?
Like, are you going to remember in 10 years that this guy had some...
He's going to be in prison, no matter how you slice it, it looks like.
I mean, he's innocent until proven guilty, but I've got a feeling they've got some goods.
So, to me, it's kind of hilarious that the people trying to help him may have ended up putting him in prison forever.
And they're still going to say, yeah, but we were right.
About that process part.
This is the part that the Democrats get wrong every time.
They don't quite understand that being technically right about something doesn't help them at all.
It doesn't help at all.
What matters to politics and to the country is what Trump understands perfectly.
Which is, how does it make you feel?
If you feel better because this individual is captive, then Republicans win.
If you feel better because some process got followed with this one guy, and by the way, the mistake was only temporary because it's already been corrected.
Well, Not much of a feeling associated with that, so they always get the feeling part wrong.
Meanwhile, in the UK, where freedom of speech is an illusion, it is now, I think it means it's illegal.
They have something called the Prevent Program in the UK, government, that if you speak positively about something called cultural nationalism, I think you can be put in jail.
And that would be believing that mass migration threatens Western culture.
And it's being called a subcategory of terrorism.
Now, can you believe that the UK is not allowed to say that if we increase our immigration, Right to jail.
How many of you would ever travel to the UK?
I think it's too dangerous.
I don't think I've ever said anything that would get me put in jail, but I also don't know.
Wouldn't that be weird?
Imagine you just take a vacation and you're over there in London and you're just, I think I'll send out a little post.
And you send out a little post and you don't realize that you just broke their speech laws.
The next thing you know, you're in jail in the UK just because you posted something that you could have posted anytime you wanted in the United States.
Well, good luck with them.
Well, there's a rare, I think it's rare, nine to nothing Supreme Court decision that sided with an Ohio woman.
I guess she claimed that she was denied a job or a promotion, actually, and it went to an LGBTQ colleague instead.
And the court was trying to decide.
If somebody who's in a majority category, because it was a straight white woman, whether or not she could sue for discrimination using the same burden of proof as for those of a minority group.
Well, it turns out that by a vote of 9 to nothing, the Supreme Court decided that straight white women are people too.
Yeah, they're also people.
So they get to play by the same rules as people.
Yeah.
They're not special.
They're people.
And so they get to be treated the same.
Good.
Then Kathy Griffin was on a Don Lemon podcast.
And she said, quote, I do not think Trump won in a free and fair election.
I believe there was tampering.
I don't know if it was the Elon connection.
My gut is telling me that something was up with that.
So, perfect.
So now Rosie O'Donnell and Kathy Griffin have both come out saying the exact same thing that a lot of Republicans were saying about the 2020 election.
And they get to say it without any consequence.
Well, I recommend that they storm the Capitol immediately and try to push the way in.
So I love the fact that it seems like everything is going the Republicans' way, you know, except the big, beautiful bill.
That may be a little hiccup.
But every time I see a Democrat, Doubting an election result?
I think to myself, well, if you believe that it's possible for Trump or his allies to have rigged an election without getting caught by any court, because no court has ruled anything of the type, then what would make you think that it was impossible for that to have happened the other way in 2020?
What would be the argument that only Trump supporters could rig an election?
It's either riggable or it's not.
Now, I don't have any evidence that either of those elections were rigged, but if you think that one of them can rig and the other cannot, and the reason that you know that one cannot because the court cases didn't support it, that's not much of an argument.
You've kind of lost that argument.
So thank you, Kathy Griffin.
Well, if you didn't notice or watch, Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, was on Joe Rogan just recently, and broke some news.
I guess you'd call it that.
One of the pieces of news he broke is that he'd been swatted.
So the head of the FBI, Got swatted.
Now, I assume that means that they actually showed up at the door.
It seems to me, you know, far more likely they would have just said, oh, that's the FBI's director's house, so it's obviously not real.
But maybe they have rules that say they can't pretend anything's not real unless they know.
Not pretend, but they can't.
They can't act as though something's not real until they get there and they find out for sure.
So that's why the swatting works.
But if you can't get rid of the swatting when you're the director of the FBI, I don't think you and I are going to be able to stop it.
So that's pretty awful.
Well, as you know, both Dan Boncino and Kash Patel have maintained that they've seen the Epstein files.
And it was definitely a suicide.
Now, my question would be this.
If the only thing you've seen are the files, what would make you think the files are complete and real?
How would you know that?
Well, they would know better than I would, whether a document's real.
and I'm sure it's all been looked at.
But don't you think,
It feels like a little bit incomplete, meaning, yeah, I hear you, and I believe Bongino and Patel are telling the truth, meaning, in their opinion, Based on everything they've seen, it's a slam dunk, you know, definitely a suicide.
But would they know?
Do you think that just their experience plus looking at the files, would that be enough that you know they have the right answer?
I don't know.
It's a little bit short for me.
But anyway, so he made some more news.
He said that anybody expecting video evidence from Epstein's private island might be disappointed, as no such footage exists to his knowledge.
Really?
What exactly does he mean by that?
There's no video footage of a celebrity?
Or he's saying there's no video footage of anything?
Now, suppose he said Epstein definitely killed himself, and also there are no videos, and then nobody has any.
Now, I don't know if he's saying that.
It's a little unclear.
But if he did say that, wouldn't you disbelieve the entire package?
Because if he tells me there's no videos and there never have been and nobody's had any, I'm not going to believe anything he ever says again.
Now, my current opinion is that there are straight shooters and they're looking out for the American public.
But I also believe that we live in a world where sometimes the security apparatus You know, the fate of the country can depend on not telling the public everything.
So if they had to choose, and I'm not saying they are, but if they had to choose between keeping a secret that was so dark it would destroy the country versus telling you the truth because they're truth-tellers, which would they do?
Which would a patriot do?
Because I'll give them the benefit of a doubt I think they've earned, that they're both patriots.
So the thing I worry about is not that they're honest, because I think they are.
It's just that if you live in a world where keeping secrets is part of the operational expectation of what you do, I don't know if you can ever trust anybody whose job it is to make sure we don't find out things we're not supposed to find out.
Right?
If somebody is a journalist and they have access to all the files and maybe let a few journalists run free, if they all came back and said, all right, we've looked at everything, somehow they would know that.
That would be a problem.
Would they know?
And they come back and they say, all right, we've looked at everything.
And it looks like it was a suicide and there's no videotapes.
Well, I might believe them because they're journalists and they don't have an interest in keeping the secret.
and they probably would want to get there first and have a scoop and all that.
But if it's your job to determine what the public hears, Does that give them the, let's say, the right or privilege to lie to the American people as long as it's in the interest of the American people?
And it would be really easy to imagine a set of circumstances where lying would be the right, I hate to say it, but the right answer.
So, unfortunately, they just have jobs where you have to say to yourself, maybe.
Maybe what they're saying is true, but you can never know for sure.
And even with the journalists, you wouldn't know for sure, but you'd feel a lot more comfortable that they had no reason to keep it secret from you.
Yeah.
All right.
And then also, Cash said that The U.S. is working with India to try to stop some China-backed trafficking network.
So I guess India has some connection to it.
If they work through India, they have a little better chance of stopping it.
And he suggested, Patel did, that the Chinese Communist Party is strategically targeting the U.S. with fentanyl to weaken its population.
And he notes that there's an absence of fentanyl deaths in other countries.
Now, are you convinced?
You know, I don't want to believe that's true, but the opioid wars, if you've looked into the opioid wars, you know that the West has targeted them.
But it wasn't the United States that did that.
Wasn't it the UK?
So why would the United States be targeted if it's revenge for the opioid wars?
Because we weren't involved with that, right?
And the answer would be, it just works.
You can take out an entire generation of men.
You can give them cell phones and video games and fentanyl and next thing you know, an entire generation is taken out.
I don't know.
I'm going to say...
It does seem probable.
And one of the ways you can know it's probable is, do you remember the ex-CIA agent, John Kirikau?
Last time I mispronounced his name, he contacted me to correct me.
He'll probably do it again.
But he pointed out that when he was in Afghanistan with the CIA, he was asking, you know, why are these giant poppy farms allowed to operate?
And the answer was because the heroin is all being sold to Iran, and it's a way to weaken Iran.
And I thought to myself, oh, my God, we're terrible people.
But it looks like that's just the kind of world we live in and the risk we'll have to take.
So given that there's at least one source that says we would do it to another country, Iran, is it much of a stretch to say that China would do it to us?
Nope.
That is not a stretch.
I don't know that it's true, but it's not a stretch.
Meanwhile, whiskey sales are down, according to one of the executives of Jack Daniels.
And reasons given are the alternatives of marijuana, weight loss drugs, and a lackluster demand from Generation Z. So the young people are drinking less.
But I think there's one other variable that's not mentioned.
Which is age.
I don't know that this is true, but wouldn't you expect that alcohol use decreases with age?
So if the new generation is smaller because we've got this demographic problem, wouldn't alcohol use just drop off just because of age?
I think there would be some effect there.
I don't know how big it would be.
But we'll talk later about how it affects crime.
Anyway, remittances to Mexico have collapsed.
John Nolte in Breitbart is writing about that.
So if he didn't know what a remittance is to Mexico, as the Mexican undocumented people come into the United States and make money, They send some of their money back to Mexico.
That's called a remittance.
I don't know why.
It's just sending money.
But Trump plans to tax those remittances.
But at the moment, they're way down.
It's not entirely clear to me why they're down.
Would it be because there are fewer people here?
I thought they, you know, I don't think we...
But anyway, remittances are down.
And Trump's planning to put a 3.5% tax on those remittances.
So it might make $22 billion over the next several years if he does that.
Newsmax is reporting that Trump's not happy with surprise.
The Federal Reserve and their interest rate policies.
So Trump says that Powell, head of the Fed, is too late.
He should go for a full point reduction in interest.
He goes, too late.
That's a Fed.
It's a disaster.
Europe has had 10 rate cuts.
We have had none.
Despite him, our country is doing great.
Go for the full point.
Rocket fuel.
Trump posted that on True Social.
All right.
Now, I don't have an opinion on what is the right amount of interest rates to be set.
But it does feel to me that Trump is a little bit more right than Powell.
Does anybody have that same sort of just instinct?
I feel like Powell might be holding back for political reasons that maybe he doesn't process as political reasons.
You might think he has other reasons.
But I do worry that our interest rates are not being set by economics.
Does anybody else worry about that?
Now, you could blame Trump and say, well, if Trump had not been so hard on Jerome Powell, Powell would admit it maybe just on his own lowered interest rates more.
But there's no evidence of that.
Because in both cases, he would be helping Trump.
And if he didn't think that helping Trump was a good idea, well, we'd be in the same place.
In surprising news, Justin News is talking about this.
Alan Dershowitz is urging a pardon or commuted census.
For Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's accomplice.
Now, I've been saying for years, so most of you have heard me say this, that when there's a big legal question, I like to wait for Dershowitz because I like to wait for Dershowitz because he always has the cleanest What I consider the most reliable answer.
And, you know, if you check back later, you'll see he's usually right.
But this one's a weird one.
So I don't think I can automatically agree with this.
And the argument is that Maxwell got a stiffer sentence than people who did similar crimes.
So I said to myself, really?
Is that true?
First of all, what kind of crime would be similar to this?
And the second thing is, what is her sentence?
So she got 20 years in prison, and she's been there, how long has she been there?
Four years?
How long has Ghislaine Maxwell been in prison?
Four years?
Five years?
Something like that.
It's already been a while.
But she's got a 20-year sentence, and Dershowitz thinks that it would make sense to commute her sentence.
Now, it's been three years, so I'm hearing it's three years.
Okay.
Now, how many of you think that what she did Because it literally involved trafficking minors.
That's a tough argument.
So I went to Grok, and I asked if her sentence was in a line with comparable, And Grok basically threw up its hands, as hands.
It doesn't show them very often.
Because there's nobody who did a crime that's quite like that.
You know, it was over a length of time and it involved lots of different variables and she may or may not have been coerced by Epstein.
And part of Dershowitz's argument is that Maxwell was a victim too.
So that she was a victim of Epstein as well as an accomplice.
Now, if that were true, and you could prove it, it would look like she had no choice with what she did or she got brainwashed or something.
But I don't think we've seen any evidence that points in that direction, have we?
To me, she looked like she was a pretty happy participant.
We only see pictures, but who knows?
So the question you must ask yourself is, is Dershowitz being influenced by any outside forces?
And of course, the most obvious thing that you would say is, since you already suspect that, And you also believe that Dershowitz quite openly is very pro-Israel.
Is it too much to imagine that Mossad said, hey, it's time to see if you can get her out?
Because the longer she stays in, the more risk we have that she talks.
And the sooner she gets out, the better.
Now, I have zero evidence, zero evidence, that any kind of influence is happening.
But I would look and see if any other lawyers have a similar opinion.
You know, if today you see, oh, five more lawyers who are in this field of law had the same opinion that that sentence was too long, Then I would say, oh, well, I guess I'm no lawyer.
So if normal lawyers who are just observing say it's too long, well, okay, maybe there's something there.
But if Alan Dershowitz is the only one who is willing to say anything like this, and he's very public, you know, there's no hidden agenda whatsoever, but he's very pro-Israel.
Then you have to ask yourself, how much of this is about Ghislaine Maxwell?
How much of this is about the law?
And how much of this is about whatever influence Alan Dershowitz might have or interests?
I'll say influence and or interests.
Because he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who could be pushed around.
So maybe it just makes sense to them on some level that we don't quite understand for whatever reason.
I see in the comments somebody saying the CIA.
Yeah, you can make the same argument about the CIA being an influence on him.
If you believe the CIA was somehow involved in the Epstein thing.
I don't see the evidence for that, but it's not a crazy thing.
Anyway.
So, President Trump was asked about Iran.
He says if they enrich, then we're going to have to do it the other way, meaning something military.
And I don't really want to do it the other way, but we're going to have no choice.
There's going to be enrichment.
Now, that's just a setup for the next thing I want to talk about.
So Trump has very clearly said, we're going to bomb your country unless you give us what we want on giving up your enrichment.
Related to that, I was watching a podcast with Matt Gaetz.
He was talking to the author of a book called Future Jihad, Terrorist Strategies Against the West.
And this was on Newsmax.
And this was Dr. Fares, I think.
P-H-A-R-E-S?
Fares?
Would that be the way you say it?
Anyway, so Dr. Fares recommended that Trump give a televised speech directly to the Iranian people.
And he compared it to Reagan with the Soviet Union.
Now, you know what I say whenever I see an analogy.
As soon as you see the analogy, it feels like there's a lack of argument because it's not really like Reagan and the Soviet Union.
The big difference is that Trump is threatening to bomb Iran any minute now.
I don't believe that when Reagan gave his speech, you know, tear down that wall.
I don't believe we were threatening to bomb the Soviet Union any minute now.
So you can't really compare those two situations.
But I thought about it.
My first thought was, ah, that's not going to make any difference.
You know, the Iranian people are not going to buy that, especially if you have a sword over their head.
Because what would he say?
I mean, he probably would throw in the threat.
And if he throws them the threat, it's going to make things worse.
Because if the Iranian public hears, you need to do this or else you'll get bombed, that's not going to make friends.
If the idea is to get the public on your side, that's not going to do it.
So I don't know how he could do this in the context of threatening to bomb them at any minute.
But I do think there might be something to it if he cannot mention the bombing.
Because Trump does have a way of communicating that's unlike anybody else.
And if he did say the right things at the right time, he might find a way to connect.
So I think as long as you don't mention we're going to bomb you if you don't give us what we want, just don't mention that at all.
Then you use the documentary effect.
The documentary effect is where there's one side of an argument presented over a long period of time, and there's nobody on the other side.
That can be very persuasive.
So if he gave a speech directly to the Iranian people, and he made it persuasive, and there wouldn't be any counterargument, it would just be his speech.
The odds of him having an upside surprisingly good result are pretty good.
The downside risk, probably nearly nothing as long as you don't put a thread in there.
If you put a thread in there, there's no way that's going to turn out well.
So I guess I would be cautiously in favor of this if it were implemented correctly.
My next story gets to the concept of what I call, how lost are the Democrats?
I love hearing their best and brightest people, you know, the ones who should be helping them correct the ship.
I love hearing them give advice that really sounds bad.
So CNN's Van Jones said on air, That Trump should investigate and prosecute the Doge staff.
Quote, I don't think what they're doing is legal.
Now, he didn't give examples of what he thinks are illegal.
But that might be some of the worst advice I've ever heard.
Because obviously, Trump's not going to do that.
And all of this is attacking the people who are trying to get something done on behalf of the American people, such as get rid of the fat and bloat and corruption.
So once again, we have the pattern developing where Republicans are trying to get something done.
That would be doge.
And Democrats are trying to use some kind of legal process to prevent them from getting anything done.
How do you miss the pattern at this point?
Even if you're a Democrat, do you not realize that Republicans are trying to get things done?
Sometimes you won't like them, but they're trying to do things that are good for the country.
And Democrats are almost entirely involved with stopping any progress in any way.
It's kind of hard to miss the pattern after a while, isn't it?
And, you know, Van Jones, one of the or at least investigated.
Well, here's my persuasion lesson on Trump.
And I've told you before that he's...
But my goodness, is he a good writer.
And he did a truth social little write-up about his ballroom.
You know, the ballroom is being built at the White House.
And I just want to read to you Trump's words when he talks about it.
Now, keep in mind, Could we not really cut that budget and you can stand on the muddy lawn when we need to do something outdoors?
He's got this delicate thing that he's trying to manage where it looks like it might be a vanity project, and also we're in the context of a fiscal constraint, but he's building a ballroom.
So he's got to navigate all of that.
And let me just read what he wrote, all right?
He says, quote, just inspected the site of the new ballroom that would be built compliments of a man known as Donald J. Trump at the White House.
For 150 years, presidents and many others have wanted a beautiful ballroom, but it never got built because nobody previously had any knowledge or experience in doing such things.
But I do, like maybe nobody else.
And it will go up quickly and be a wonderful addition, very much in keeping with the magnificent White House itself.
These are the, quote, fun projects I do while thinking about the world economy, the United States, China, Russia, and lots of other countries, places, and events.
It will all be good, maybe even great, depending on who is president of the United States.
Now, he basically disarms you with this sentence, compliments of a man known as Donald J. Trump, because that's what's called voicy within the writer's world.
If somebody is voicy, it means you can feel their personality in the writing, and you might even say to yourself, nobody else would say that.
Nobody else in the world would use those words.
And I don't think anybody would.
No other president would ever write like this.
So this is the most voicey, optimistic, fun way he could ever introduce this thing.
And then he brags about his ability to build things, which most people would agree that he has, right?
I mean, you'd have to be a pretty hardcore Democrat.
To say that Trump doesn't know anything about construction.
I mean, really?
Of course he knows construction.
So yes, he's probably the ideal president for adding a major addition to the White House.
And then when he gets to the end, he talks about this being his fun project that's not interfering with all of his other stuff with Russia and China.
That's what you were thinking.
So one of the things I teach with writing is if you can say something that is exactly what your reader is thinking, and then you take it off the table because they're thinking they've got a question, and then you just sort of automatically answer it, that's a home run in writing.
So by the time you got to the end, you probably would have been thinking.
You know, why are you wasting your time on this when there's so many important things to do?
And then he gives you the answer.
Now, I don't know if the answer is, you know, adequate or true or covers everything it needs to cover, but the fact that he knows when you're going to be wondering and then he supplies the answer to your wonder, that's really good technique.
So it's a voicey as hell.
And well-constructed in a way that I don't think, I just don't think historians are going to fully appreciate that he's the best writer we've ever had in government, probably.
All right.
I've told you before that California government seems to be a criminal racket.
And almost every day, there's another story in the news that Kind of bolsters that opinion.
So according to Interesting Engineering, Sujita Sinha is writing, that there's a new study that reveals the deep corruption in California's clean energy push.
So apparently the process of getting everybody on solar has created, let's see, what kind of corruption?
A sobering array of corruption.
A sobering array of corruption.
So here are some of the alleged corrupt practices.
So shocking abuses of power in the approval and licensing phases.
Now, how many of you are surprised that a very expensive project Has a shocking abuse of power in the approval and licensing phase, meaning the contracts are going to friends of the people who have the power to allocate the contracts.
Let's see.
As well as the displacement of indigenous groups.
I don't know about that.
And also nefarious patterns of tax evasion or the falsification of information about the projects.
Now, I don't know how much of this is true, but every single time California gets a bunch of money to do something that sounds good on paper, somebody just steals the money.
It's like you might as well just dump it on the ground and let everybody come and grab some.
So remember the high-speed rail that we didn't build anything?
Sound familiar?
And then there's all the stuff that's not happening and the rebuild of the fire zones.
I mean, it's just one thing after another.
Just complete criminal enterprise.
How could it be worse?
Is it possible for California to be any worse?
Well, they're taking a run at it.
So the California Senate passed a bill.
That will allow violent convicts with life sentences to get out of jail.
Now, they have to have served 25 years and been convicted before 26. So, you know, it's not everybody.
But what would happen if you release somebody who has spent their entire adult life in prison?
And the reason that they were there is because they'd done something so heinous that you get life in prison.
There aren't too many things you get life in prison for.
What do they do?
Do they get jobs at McDonald's?
There's not really anything they can do, right?
It's not like they're going to get a job at your local construction place.
Will they?
So, I don't know too much about the rehabbing people, but if you spent your entire adult life behind bars, I don't know if you're ready.
So, once again, dangerous for Californians.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is the completion of my planned comments.
And as I warned you, Owen Gregorian will be hosting a Spaces event on X that will happen in a few minutes after we're done here.
And I invite everybody to give a listen.
I usually listen while I'm making myself some breakfast, so I'm usually anonymously listening.
And I hope you enjoy it.
And that's all I got for today.
So everybody have a good time today.
I'm going to say just a few words to the locals people before we go.