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I would ask you on Locals to ask yourself if I really want to see that picture again.
I do not.
I do not ever want to see that picture again.
Or any version of it.
Alright.
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It's called the...
And it happens now.
So good.
Oh, my God.
So good.
Well, I warned you this was going to happen.
And now it's reality, according to CBS morning show, Saturday morning show.
There's a man who proposed to his AI chatbot girlfriend and was so happy when she said yes that he cried.
Aww.
His name is Chris Smith, and believe it or not, he was willing to go public with this, amazingly.
And he named his AI girlfriend Saul.
And he gave up on all of their search engines to stay committed to her.
Now, here's the fun part.
So, he's going to marry an AI, but it turns out he has a two-year-old child and lives with his partner, who says she feels like she is not doing something right if he feels like he needs an AI girlfriend.
To which I say, yeah.
Have you tried being nice to him?
Because I'm pretty sure the AI girlfriend is starting from a behind situation.
And if you're so mean to your boyfriend that he decides he'd rather marry an AI, yeah, you might be doing something wrong.
Just maybe.
Well, according to Elon Musk, we might be only a year away from AI superintelligence.
Now, that would be defined as a digital superintelligence would be something that's smarter than any human at anything.
Do you think that's a year away?
Well, I throw down my challenge.
I do not believe that the superintelligence will be able to do humor.
I believe that humor might be the last thing that an AI could master, if it does at all.
Now, I don't know if superintelligence is synonymous with the general intelligence that everybody's aiming for.
So maybe it's an LLM version.
Where I can just do ordinary things better, but I can't reason.
I don't know.
We'll see in one year.
Well, according to CNN, RFK Jr. wants to get rid of drug ads on TV, which would basically put news models out of business, people like CNN, and maybe Fox News and some others.
And I'm going to say again, we don't know what happens if the mainstream news goes out of business.
What would happen to all the senior citizens?
What would they watch?
Or would some billionaire buy each of the networks and just run it at a loss, sort of like the Jeff Bezos, Washington Post model?
That might be what happens.
So if I had to guess, I think the brand, CNN and MSNBC, will probably live on.
But who knows who owns it or how they make money.
So that could get interesting.
Well, according to Fox News, there was a fellow under the Joe Biden administration who was associated with USAID.
And there was an $800 million contract awarded to a known con man who was asked to do Kamala Harris's job of fighting the root causes of irregular migration.
So apparently four men, including a government contracting officer for the USAID, and three owners and presidents of companies have pled guilty For their role in a decades-long bribery scheme.
So I think the bribery scheme is that if you bribe somebody enough, they will give you millions of dollars in contracts for doing very little work.
Now, here's what I've been telling you for years.
For years, I've been saying that in any situation, Where it's possible to have corruption, it always happens.
So all you need for corruption is a lot of money involved, a lot of complexity.
So complexity, a lot of money, a lot of people involved, and then time.
If you have all of those things, you know, on day one it might not be corrupt.
But if you keep adding people to it and you add complexity and nobody knows exactly where the money's going or why, your odds of some corruption are 100%.
It'll happen every single time.
You don't even have to ask.
Every single time.
Now, again, if you don't find the corruption, It's either because it did a good job of hiding or because the situation is too new.
But eventually, it's going to be corrupt.
So all the USAID stuff, all the NGOs, yeah, pretty corrupt.
Well, some people are making the connection between the USAID being unfunded and the fact that the news is telling us That the Democratic National Committee is out of cash.
Do you think those stories are related?
Do you think that the Democrats were siphoning off money from USAID into the Democrat Party?
Well, I don't know about that.
So I don't have any evidence that that is the case.
But the DNC says there's a big drop in big donations.
Now, that doesn't surprise me.
Is anybody surprised that the Democrats are not attracting as many donations as they used to?
Maybe it has to do with losing everything all the time.
Maybe it has something to do with being on the 20 side of every 80-20 issue.
Maybe it has something to do with David Hogg and Ken Martin and not exactly exciting anybody.
Or maybe it has to do with having no national leader who seems worthy of funding.
I feel like that's the big one.
So I wouldn't worry too much for the Democrats until they get a nominee.
If they find a nominee for president for 2028, And then they don't get any donations.
Well, then they're in trouble.
But my guess is as soon as they're happy with their nominee that the money will pour in.
Just a guess.
Well, the Supreme Court, you probably heard, has upheld a Tennessee ban on trans...
And it upheld it by six to three.
Now, Clay Travis has a rather severe opinion about this.
And I'm not going to say that I totally agree with it because it's a little anecdotal.
But it's worthy of being surfaced.
So here's what Clay Travis says about the Supreme Court upholding the tendency ban on minors getting trans processes.
He says there are seven parents on the Supreme Court, out of nine, and the parents voted 6-1 against minor children being permitted to have surgery.
And then he says, two childless women, Sotomayor and Kagan, voted two to nothing to permit it.
And then he says, the Democrat Party, to a large degree, now enacts the political desires of childless women.
Well, I'm not sure you could make that general assessment from this one situation, but if you see that pattern, Repeating itself?
Then we might take a second look at it.
It's a little bit early.
I definitely think the Democrat Party is a single-woman-dominated party, but I don't know if this is, you know, this might be a special case.
I'm not sure that this is telling you that.
All right.
So according to Grok, the majority of the court It was focused on states' rights, saying that the states had a right to regulate whether the children get those treatments.
And the two dissenters argue that the law discriminates based on sex and transgender status.
So that does sound like a single woman kind of an opinion, doesn't it?
Anyway.
There is news that the economy, Is doing well.
Apparently, the blue-collar wage growth was up 1.7% since Trump got into office, which is considered higher than other presidents in the same period.
But I don't know if that one data point is really telling us much.
But inflation appears to be under control and jobs look good.
If we were to compare that, To Biden's performance.
Did you see a news item, I think it was yesterday, that said that the entire 400,000 jobs that Biden claimed to have created were all fake?
Like, all of them?
Apparently, if you look at non-government jobs, it was minus 1,000.
So, how many of you remember when I had a debate?
With Michael Ian Black, and I had him as a guest.
And before I realized he was not debating me in good faith, he was just sort of trying to be difficult, he questioned me when I said that the Biden employment numbers tended to be revised downward.
And he won the debate, at least that part of it.
Because I looked into it, and sure enough, it was not true.
It was not true that every single time it got lowered when it was revised.
A number of times it was, but not every time.
So I kind of conceded that point.
Boy, I should not have conceded that point.
Because if you look at the entire picture, it looks like it was all fake.
Now, what does that tell you about the data under the Trump administration?
Does that mean that the Trump economic numbers are all accurate?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know how these numbers are cooked up or who does it.
But I guess the caution is don't trust the government when it gives you any statistics.
Anyway, James Carville was making some news.
He was talking about his friend, Tucker Carlson.
So the first surprise, for some of you, is that Tucker Carlson and James Carville have been friends for years.
Now, Tucker often says that he interacts and is friends with lots of people who are on the polar opposite side of politics.
And I guess this would be one example.
But they were talking about the recent podcast where Tucker Carlson was talking to Ted Cruz and talking about the Israel-Iran situation.
And I've got to say, I've had a mostly positive opinion of Ted Cruz.
You know, just as a senator, and I thought, you know, if he became president, that wouldn't be terrible, I thought to myself.
But he may have taken himself out of competition for ever being president by his answers to Tucker.
Now, I don't know what he's thinking or what his internal mental processes are, but what he said out loud is...
He said that, what did he say?
He said that when he came into office, he wanted to be the most pro-Israel senator ever.
I'm paraphrasing, but that was it.
And I thought to myself, that's really not something you want to say at the moment.
It would be perfectly okay to say that you're on Israel's side and you support Israel, but the way he said it sounded almost like Israel was his first priority.
Now again, I don't know what he's thinking, and I'm not saying that's his mental process, but that's the way it came out.
And then he denied that AIPAC was influencing Congress very much.
He acted like they didn't have much influence, which flies in the face of everything that you and I probably think is true, because they certainly put a lot of effort into doing what Ted Cruz says is nothing.
So I'm not sure I believe that they have no real influence over Congress.
And then he said that he takes money from APAC, but really, You have to understand that it's Americans making small donations, so it's not so much that Israel or some Israel group is giving them money, but rather it's Americans making small donations.
Now again, that might be technically true, and we don't know what he's thinking, but it just sounds like an excuse for doing what AIPAC wants.
and for being pro-Israel in all situations.
So, you know, I'm...
But according to James Garville, Tucker Carlson has been consistent with his anti-war opinions for a long time.
He says it's a...
So that's interesting that Carville has given Tucker sort of cover for being consistent.
But, as I've said, Tucker has what I call a half opinion, which is not a full opinion.
It's just half an opinion.
He is half an opinion.
Is that if we get involved in these foreign wars, it almost always goes bad.
So it's a bad idea to do it.
So apparently he called Trump, and at one point he must have apologized to Trump for going a little hard at him.
And Trump was talking about that conversation, and Trump said, I did ask Tucker about, And he didn't like that.
I said, if it's okay with you, then you and I have a difference.
Now, that's where Trump just called out Tucker for the half-pinion.
The half-pinion is what we all know, which is if you get involved in a foreign war, it might not go well.
And if you look at the history, The history suggests it usually doesn't go well, if not every single time it doesn't go well.
That part we all understand.
But Trump asked the totally reasonable question, are you okay with the alternative?
That's the other half of the decision.
Are you okay with the alternative, that Iran has a nuclear weapon?
And it doesn't sound like Trump got an answer from Tucker.
And that's why I call it a half-pinion, because it seems to just leave out half of the risk-reward analysis.
And then Trump says, whether you have to fight or not, you can't allow Iran, a weapon, or the entire world will blow up.
All right, what is the...
If you had to guess, what is the most likely thing that will be reported in the news, what would it be?
Well, my vote for the most likely thing that would be in the news is that one of the sides would hit a hospital with a missile.
Sure enough, you can always depend on that story.
Now, I don't know why I'm a little bit puzzled, because it's hard for me to imagine any side in a conflict who thinks it's a good idea to bomb the hospital on the other side.
Because obviously, that's not going to help your own team love you more.
It's not like Hamas or Iran.
It's not like the citizens were saying, yes, we bombed that hospital.
So why would anybody do it?
But there's always a hospital that gets bombed.
Now, in the case of Hamas and Gaza, the explanation was that the hospital was a cover for some But there's always a reason.
There's always a reason.
So the one thing you can always count on is that there will be a headline story, as there is today, that Iran presumably intentionally shot a missile into a hospital.
Now, the good news is the hospital was largely empty.
And they had already gone to a lower floor or something to be safer.
So it didn't have a big death toll.
But right on schedule, there's the weird hospital missile attack.
Now, I think Iran said they weren't aiming at the hospital.
But I saw Trey Yankst say that if it was a missile, And they think it was a missile?
That missiles are not dumb instruments, that you aim them at a specific place.
But does that mean that every missile hits where you aim?
I don't know.
So I'm sure the story is real, but I'm just puzzled why it's so predictable that early in any conflict, and it happened in Ukraine too, right?
Didn't Ukraine?
Have stories of, you know, Russia bombed our hospital.
And again, why would they do it intentionally?
It doesn't really make the other side want to give up.
It would be a weird thing to do intentionally, but the news always says it's intentional.
So maybe there's something I don't know about military strategy in hospitals.
According to the X account breaking 9-1-1, there's a bit of a run on the banks in Iran.
Maybe not all of them, but at least one bank, Meli Bank.
Allegedly, there's a run and people are requesting their money and they can't get it out.
It might have something to do with Israeli cyber attacks because Israel's going after the money centers and who knows what else.
So watch out for the banking situation in Iran.
And we also have to assume that Iran is looking to pay back both Israel and America for any cyber attacks.
So we're going to find out, I think, very soon, how much capability RAN has for cyber attacks.
Because if they don't,
Could there be any situation where Iran said, oh, we have this cyber attack capability and we're being cyber attacked, but we're not going to do it back?
That doesn't seem likely, right?
So if a few weeks go by and there's no obvious Iranian cyber attack, I would conclude that maybe they didn't have that much capability in the first place.
But we'll find out.
If the lights go out during the show, well, then I guess they had that capability.
Trump was talking about the situation over there, and he said, and I quote, they're totally defenseless.
They have no air defense whatsoever.
Totally captured.
We've totally captured the air.
We?
Why is he saying we?
Did American aircraft do something in the air?
What exactly did America do that he's saying we?
And isn't that opposite of his strategy?
His strategy is to try to stay somewhat uninvolved while obviously being supportive in some support kind of ways.
Is that a mistake?
When he said we've totally captured the air, he's talking like the American military and the Israeli military.
Are basically the same thing.
Is that just a mistake?
Because it sounds like one.
Sounds like maybe he misspoke.
But that's not ideal.
All right.
According to Axios, Trump is said to have doubts about whether those bunker busters that U.S. has would actually be able to do the job.
Who does that sound like?
Who is the one other person who told you, I'm not so sure these bunker busters can get it done?
Me.
I told you that yesterday, right?
I said, if they're talking about maybe using as many as six bunker busters per site, which they were, That's a pretty strong signal that they don't know if they'll work.
So Trump is asking exactly the right questions, according to Axios.
He was asking the experts, are you sure?
Are you sure this would work?
So allegedly, he has already greenlit a battle plan, but he is not greenlit doing it.
So he's approved.
He's approved that if there's a battle plan that the U.S. is involved in, what it would look like, but he is not given the go-ahead to do it, as far as we know.
And then furthermore, the Israeli officials believe that the U.S. will eventually join the war.
I guess that's Axios as well.
But Israel also claims that if the U.S. doesn't use the bunker bombs or they don't work, that Israel could get the job done on the ground, which I assume means special forces put on the ground and then they try to take out the entryway and try to get in.
I don't know.
But if we don't know for sure, Or let's say Trump cannot be convinced that the bunker busters would work for sure.
What it would do is make us part of the war for sure.
So do you think Trump would trade being definitely part of the offensive war without knowing it would work?
When he's got the option, at least according to the Israelis, of letting them take a little bit more risk.
Because there would be people on the ground, probably lives lost.
And they say they could get it done on the ground.
Why would Trump ever say yes to the bunker busters while there's somebody smart in Israel saying, oh, we could get this done without them?
Doesn't that kind of tell you where it's heading?
To me, it looks like...
At the same time, he really doesn't want to be in this war.
So as long as our participation is not 100% likely to work, I don't know what the percentage would be, but nobody could say it's 100%.
And Israel is saying we can do it on the ground.
Why in the world would he ever authorize the bunker busters?
Wouldn't you let Israel try to do it on the ground?
And if it doesn't work, well, you still have, you know, you can make the decision later.
So from a decision-making risk-reward perspective, It seems to me that Trump has a plan.
Now, he might not think of it that way, but would it ever make sense for him to greenlight a maybe and bring us into the war?
But it would make sense if Israel couldn't get it done on the ground.
Well, then it would start making sense.
Like, you've got to do something, because you can't let it remain.
So we'll see.
Matt Gaetz had a former CIA hacker guy say that America will, he had him as a guest, and he says that America will face a cyber attack in the next 30 days.
Why would it take 30 days?
It seems to me that the minute those bunker busters go off, That they would cyber-attack us right away.
Why would they wait?
I don't know.
Israel is saying that the trick they used to get all those generals in one place to blow them up, I guess that was mostly the Air Force generals in Iran, they said they used a, quote, fake phone call and got 20 members of the...
Now, yesterday I asked the question, did they use a deepfake AI voice?
Because the way I would have done it is I would have taken out whatever their secure lines of communication are so that they had to use unsecure lines.
And then I would have used an AI fake voice for somebody that they would all recognize.
And I would leave them all voicemails to say, you know, come to this bunker at a certain time.
And they would be too afraid not to come.
Because they'd think, if I don't show up, you know, my own boss is going to be pretty mad.
So Israel is not giving us details.
They only call it a fake phone call.
But I sure wonder if that fake phone call used AI.
I don't think they would necessarily mention that if it did.
So that's an open question.
There's a CNN poll on U.S. opinion about whether Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
And according to the CNN poll, 83% of Republicans and 79% of Democrats oppose Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.
And nearly 7 in 10 Americans support U.S. airstrikes to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.
So there it is again in 80-20.
So apparently, if Trump decided to do airstrikes, And have the Americans involved with their bunker busters?
It would be popular with 8 out of 10 Americans.
Once again, the Republicans would be on the 80 side of the 80-20.
But that doesn't mean it will go right.
I mean, it doesn't mean it's a good idea.
But at least America would be somewhat unified.
Victor Davis Hanson.
He's talking about how it was unthinkable even a few years ago that Israel could have so dominated Iran militarily and that Iran would be on the brink of losing all of their proxies, all of their nuclear program, all of their missiles.
And he's also talking about He says, we're going to see things that we haven't seen in our lifetime in the Middle East, and it could turn out very bad.
Yes, it could.
It could turn out very, very bad.
But it could also be revolutionary, he points out, and remake the map of the entire region.
But I wouldn't bet on it.
Looks like it'd be a bad bet to assume things are going to go great.
According to, I think this was on MSNBC, U.S. intelligence on Monday told the U.S. Senate that it still sees no evidence that Iran is trying to create nuclear weapons.
Now, is that the same intelligence people who told us that Iraq definitely had nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction?
Why would we trust them?
Because they're not saying that Iran's not doing it.
They're saying that they see no evidence.
Well, I see no evidence either.
So, does that mean it's not happening?
I don't know.
Do you trust our intelligence people to be so accurate that if they say there's no evidence that we found, that that means it's not happening?
Trump says that Iran was very close to creating nuclear weapons.
So I asked Grok about it, and Grok says that if you look at Iran's uranium enrichment plans, they seem to be enriching the uranium way beyond the point where they would need it for domestic reasons, you know, like medical reasons or other reasons that you use that material.
And that probably they were pursuing what would be called a threshold capability, meaning that it might be true that Iran had no intention of making a nuclear weapon, but it might also be true that they want you to think that they could at any minute.
So the way to, you know, split that baby is to say, We've enriched our uranium to such a point that if we wanted to, we could make a weapon any minute.
Now, would that give them more leverage in international negotiations and affairs?
It would.
Yeah, it would.
But it has the Iraq problem.
Do you remember why we were so confused?
About whether Iraq had nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction.
Apparently, according to Grok, I had to check it to make sure I was remembering correctly, apparently Saddam Hussein wanted his local rivals and maybe other people to believe he had nuclear weapons because then they would not attack and try to overthrow his regime.
So it could be that in the Iraqi case, Pretending to have nuclear weapons is what destroyed Iraq because we acted like, well, if they're not denying it and they're not letting us look for ourselves and we've got these reports that they're doing it and Saddam is not denying it very hard, well, maybe we have to treat it like it's real.
And it looks to me like Iran might be making the same problem.
It's entirely possible that they had zero intention of ever making a nuclear weapon, but 100% intention of making people think that they could at any minute.
If that's what they were doing, that was a bad miscalculation, because you would have to treat it like it's real.
Even if you thought, I think they're bluffing, I think they just have this threshold strategy.
Where they want us to think they can do it at any minute.
Well, what is Israel going to do with that?
The only reasonable way to treat that is like it's real.
And so they are.
So it's entirely possible that both Iraq and Iran will be totally destroyed because they pretended to either have or be close to nuclear weapons.
That might actually be what's happening here.
Don't know.
We will never know, probably.
I was reading a post from Joel Pollack, who is watching carefully the situation in Israel.
And he points out that Israel's army radio says that the Israeli Air Force is still attacking targets in Iran at dawn.
And doing it freely.
So in other words, they're not even waiting for cover of darkness.
And that's how much control they have over there.
And they're even going after the Iraq, A-R-A-K, nuclear facility, because I think that is part of what makes them, you know, fissile material or something.
There's some connection between that facility and nuclear.
Meanwhile, Iran managed to fire some missiles, but not that many.
Maybe a few dozen.
Now, the news is telling us that Trump has approved a battle plan, but has not greenlit it.
Does that sound real to you?
That sounds real to me.
Because it seems to me that by now, the military would have given Trump their best options and said, if we do it, we would do it this way.
And then Trump would have to approve that if we do it, that is the way we would do it.
But the question of do we do it would still be open.
And like I said, it seems to me that Here are some tips that tell you where Trump's mind is.
I don't think he would use the phrase unconditional surrender if he even wanted to negotiate with Iran.
Would you agree?
You would never say we want unconditional surrender if you also believe that you would someday be at a table negotiating which way it goes.
You just wouldn't use that phrase.
So to me, that's a big red flag that says that Trump has decided that this will end militarily, but may not have decided.
Whether the U.S. is going to be part of that military action or not.
So that's where I think he is.
Just, you know, I can't read his mind.
And of course, we're putting all of our military assets in place.
We've got lots of refueling planes in case we need to get a bomber all the way over there from where it is.
So that's all part of the psychological pressure.
That may also be real.
I mean, we would do those things if we were planning to attack, but we would do those things if we wanted them to think we're planning to attack.
So, Trump has what I call a Kobayashi Maru situation.
Those of you who are Star Trek fans recognize that reference, Kobayashi Maru.
If you're not familiar, it comes from the original Star Trek.
Where Captain Kirk was a cadet and he was doing a simulation where he was pretending to be the captain of a starship and he would run into this impossible situation which had no way to win.
So the cadets didn't know there was no way to win.
They just knew that nobody had won.
Apparently, Captain Kirk...
And he somehow reprogrammed it so that there was a way to win.
So in other words, he cheated.
He found a solution that wasn't even on the list of solutions.
Now, it seems to me that that's where Trump is.
He's got a Kobayashi Maru, which is, if he gets involved...
But here are his options.
If Israel and Trump do not eliminate the Iranian missile and nuclear capacities, then almost everybody will think that's a giant mistake.
Would you agree?
If we got this far, and I'm saying we, if Israel got this far and somehow had to give up, And say, all right, we can't get your nuclear stuff.
It's too hard.
Everybody would say that's a giant mistake because they would just reconstitute their threat and be more angry than they were before.
So you can't really do that.
Can't really walk away.
If Israel were to take out the top leadership in Iran, we think that would lead to chaos, sort of like the Iraq.
Or Libya model and would just be the show of all shows.
So that's not really a good option.
And that's probably the reason that the supreme leader is still alive, as far as we know.
So if they allow the Iranian leadership to survive, then even if we destroy, we destroy, So even if the Iranian nuclear facilities and missile production are completely destroyed, if the original and existing leadership survives, what are they going to do as soon as the shooting stops?
They're just going to reconstitute those things as fast as they can, and they would have the know-how.
Probably get some help from, I don't know, China.
So that wouldn't work.
So you can't take out the leadership, but you also can't let them survive.
Those are both losing plays.
If Israel finishes the job without us, then do you think Iran is going to say, oh, the USA was not really part of this action, so we won't be mad at them?
No.
I think even if Trump plays it perfectly and allows the Israelis to go in on the ground and do everything without any bunker busters, Iran is still going to treat the United States like we were a co-combatant.
So it's not like they're going to be fooled by that.
So that's not ideal.
And if Iran were to make an unexpected offer tomorrow or today, in which they'd say, all right, all right, we give up.
We will get rid of all of our missiles and all of our nuclear stuff.
You know, just let us negotiate this.
Well, neither Israel nor the United States would believe them.
So that would be sort of a non-starter.
The obvious paths.
And they're all bad.
Every path is bad.
That's the Kobayashi Maru.
There's no way to win.
So if Trump finds a way to make this work, it will be a Captain Kirk situation where when it's done, we say to ourselves, oh, I didn't even realize that was an option.
But if he goes down one of the obvious paths, They all look bad.
They all look like losing paths in the long run.
So we'll see what he does.
I do have some hope that if anybody could Captain Kirk the situation, it would be Trump.
Yeah, he's the only, probably, the only politician I could even imagine who could come up with a way to solve this that was not on the list.
And we'd say, oh, Well, I didn't even imagine that solution.
So that would be the best case scenario.
We'll see.
I saw a post from General Flynn in which he said, if Israel achieves total victory and the Iranian regime collapses and a new pro-Western Iranian leader emerges, which he says are all very achievable under the current conditions.
To which I say, is that really an option?
Is it really an option to replace the current regime with a pro-Western leader?
I don't think that's an option.
Because it's not like the population of Iran is on Israel's side.
Or even America's side.
They like America, apparently, or they like the West.
But they're under attack.
Their stuff is blowing up.
They know people are being killed.
So no, I don't think Iran is in the mood to install a pro-Western puppet.
I feel like that's just a little bit too much optimism.
How many of you think that would work?
I think a pro-Western Iranian leader going into that position, I feel like they would be assassinated in 10 minutes because there would just be so many people left in the government who would say, you can't put a puppet in here.
You know, that's the same as total surrender.
So I really don't see the option of a pro-Western leader being installed.
It just feels like that wouldn't last.
It'd be like a 10-minute solution.
I don't know.
Well, in other news, you remember when Pakistan and India were looking like they were going to war, and then they stood down, and Trump took the credit for helping them, you know, essentially mediating the situation.
Well, India is now saying that Trump did not mediate the situation and that it was India and Pakistan's military who worked down a ceasefire.
And then Pakistan is disagreeing with India and saying that Trump was helpful in mediating and even went so far as to suggest that he should be nominated for a A Nobel Peace Prize.
So you've got India saying that India did it.
You've got Pakistan saying that Trump was helpful in making it happen.
And you've got Trump who I think has, according to the news, he moderated his narrative to credit Modi, so crediting India.
I don't know how much involvement Trump had, but I like the fact that he tried to take credit because he might have gotten away with it.
It was also possible because Pakistan is backing Trump in this.
It's also possible that he was very important to the outcome, but he doesn't want to embarrass India.
So Trump might be putting his ego on the back burner.
Because our relationship with India is too important.
So maybe.
We don't know what's happening now.
I was listening to Jon Stewart in his podcast, and he was complaining about Trump, and this is what he said.
Here are his top complaints off the top of his head about Trump.
There's the grifting, the meme coin, the corruption, the authoritarian tendencies, the military fetishism, the overuse of executive orders, and the general moral decay.
Thank you.
How many of those things are even real?
Doesn't that sound like every Democrat talking about Trump?
Let me read them again.
None of them seem to have any...
It just seems like somebody's fever dream of some monster under the bed.
So is he grifting and there's a meme coin problem and corruption and authoritarian tendencies and military fetishism, overuse of executive orders and general moral decay?
Is any of that real?
I mean, all of that seems like it should be allocated to the Department of Imaginary Affairs.
It all looks imaginary.
But now his point was that we talk too much about all those things, meaning Democrats talk too much about all the things he mentioned, and they don't talk enough about Trump's massive incompetence.
To which I say, what?
Massive incompetence?
According to who?
If you were to ask the Trump supporters, are you getting what you thought you voted for?
What do you think they would say?
Do you think they would say, no, we were totally surprised when he closed the border?
No.
No.
Republicans think the economy is looking pretty good, that the border is closed.
That Trump is resisting about as hard as you could resist getting into foreign wars, although we don't know what's going to happen yet.
But so far, he hasn't put us into the foreign war, or at least too much into it.
So what exactly is all this massive incompetence we're talking about?
Now, when Jon Stewart mentions it, he talks about the uncertainty of tariffs and stuff like that.
But none of that is going to matter in a year.
Will it?
Do you think a year from now we're going to look back and say, oh, that tariff uncertainty, that sure took down the economy.
I don't think so.
I think we're going to look back and say, oh, we got better tariff deals or we got better trade deals with 8 out of 10 of the countries we were dealing with.
I feel like it's going to take care of itself.
So, watching one of the smartest guys on the left, Jon Stewart, be totally lost in Trump derangement syndrome is kind of interesting.
Meanwhile, a Chicago mayor, is his first name Brandon?
Brandon Johnson.
He's got some He was asked on CNN about the massive spending on illegal migrants, and he didn't answer the question, but he said this about Trump.
He accused Trump of wanting to, quote, eliminate black existence from this country.
Now, has anybody noticed that Trump wants to eliminate black existence from the country?
Even the CNN CNN host cracked a smile and said, he's not really trying to eliminate black existence from the country.
So even CNN couldn't let that go.
Like, no, no.
That's not happening.
But it did come after Brandon Mayor Johnson had said that Trump wants to get rid of Black History Month.
Is that real?
Has Trump ever said he wanted to get rid of Black History Month?
Because that doesn't ring a bell.
I don't believe that's real, right?
In the comments, tell me, is that something you've heard before?
I've never heard that.
And it doesn't sound like Trump at all.
So is that just made up?
So did he just make up the part?
About Trump wanting to get rid of Black History Month, and then he extended that to he wants to eliminate black existence from the country.
That's a pretty big stretch.
Pretty big stretch.
Anyway, even CNN wouldn't let him get away with that.
Also in Chicago, apparently the schools in Chicago have a lot of vacancies.
So some of the schools were like half empty.
Now, why?
So I read this story about the Chicago schools having way fewer people signed up to be in those schools.
And I don't remember it saying why.
Does anybody know why?
Why would the Chicago schools be half empty?
Is that because people are leaving?
Are people just leaving Chicago because the schools are so bad?
Are they relocating?
Or is it because the population of new kids is low?
Is it because of deportations?
Yeah, that's a good point.
Is it because they were full, but the deportations got rid of the people who were not citizens?
I don't think that's really happened at a scale, so probably not.
So it's weird that this is a story in the news, and I feel like they left out, like, why?
Is this happening with other blue cities?
Is it happening with all schools?
I'm genuinely curious what would cause this.
Maybe it has something to do with school choice, but So that doesn't seem real.
Anyway, so that's an open question.
If anybody has the answer to that, let me know.
According to the National Pulse, the one thing that the top-rated U.S. cities have in common is no Democrats in power.
So apparently Provo, Utah, It was declared the most efficient city in the U.S. And I guess they used efficient for a stand-in for a high-quality city.
It was according to a WalletHub study.
They looked at 148 cities.
And what they found is the ones where there were no Democrats in power were the top-rated ones.
And all the ones where Democrats were in power were low-rated.
You might ask yourself, is that the only thing that they had in common?
And I will say no more.
Is that the only thing they had in common?
Was Democrat leadership?
I don't think it's the only thing they had in common.
All right.
I guess the federal authorities, according to the Post Millennial, The IRS and the FBI and I guess some other federal people are looking to trace the money behind the LA anti-ice riots.
And they say, make no mistake, we will identify and disrupt financial networks supporting these criminal activities.
That was from the IRS.
Now, are they criminal?
I'm still waiting to hear what is the crime.
Is it a crime to fund a protest?
Is it a crime to fund a protest and be secret about it?
What part exactly is the crime?
Because I don't want to see people locked up because they disagree on politics.
There better be a real crime here.
I'm guessing there is.
But if anybody knows where it is, let me know.
In good news for AI, the University of South Wales, New South Wales, they've got an emergency room where they're using AI to translate because apparently a very large percentage of the population speaks different languages.
So imagine how many lives you could save if your emergency room had a A translator, an AI translator, that was good for everybody.
You're really going to save some lives.
So this is one of those AI home runs where it's all good and no bad.
It's just translating and people who have specific medical problems can communicate them well.
All good.
According to the University of Missouri, Eric Stann is writing about this, they did a study and they found that hope is a key to a meaningful life.
Hope.
Does that make sense to you?
Does that pass your sniff test?
That people who have the most hope have the most meaningful lives.
It does for me.
Yeah, that totally tracks.
And I would also argue, as Nate Silver points out on X today, he did some analysis, and he found out that the things that make people happy, besides age and religiosity, so apparently the older you are, the happier you are.
Young people are not that happy.
And the more religious you are, the happier you are.
But those things pale in comparison.
says Nate Silver, when compared to the liberal-conservative gap in happiness.
So Nate Silver, who is not a conservative, is saying as strongly as possible that conservatives are happier and that the data is just really clear on that.
So put the two studies together.
One is that conservatives are happier.
And the other is that people who have hope have more meaningful lives, which almost certainly would make you happier.
Do those fit?
I think they fit.
I feel like conservatives are hope-related in their worldview.
So, you know, if I work hard and go to school and show up on time for my job, it's because I hope that, From my youngest days, I hoped that I would be successful enough to do the things that I wanted in life.
So I would say I'm very, very hope-related, and always have been.
Now, I also lean conservative, at least in terms of who I am.
So it does seem to me that conservatives have more hope.
Does that feel right to you?
You know, there's no science that connects those two specifically, but it feels like it makes sense to me.
So that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I needed to say today.
I'm going to say a few words privately to the folks on Locals.
And we'll watch what happens in Israel and Iran today, because I think this is the part of the week when things are going to heat up a little bit.
Now, you might remember one of my predictions was that Israel's estimate that they could be done with the operation in two weeks was too short, and that it won't be two weeks.
Do you believe me yet?
So it's been...
Does it look like we're less than one week away from Israel being done with whatever they needed to do in Iran?
Doesn't look like it to me.
To me, it looks like we're talking at least weeks.
At least.
But we'll see.
We'll keep an eye on it.
All right, everybody, thanks for joining.
I'm going to talk to the locals, people privately, and the rest of you.
