NBA scandal, Ballroom drama, Mexico war coming, fentanyl, more~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Politics, Universal Corruption, Changpeng Zhao Pardon, NBA Gambling Scandal, Stephen A. Smith, FBI Arctic Frost, Trump's Ballroom Trolling, Anti-Renovation Democrats, WH Major Events Timeline, Political Narratives Game, Political Enemies Propaganda, Democrat Designated Liars, Governor Pritzker, Trump's 3rd Term, Trump Popularity Polling, West Bank Annexation, Anti-Cartel Actions, China Trade Deal, Russia Oil Sanctions, Robot Soldiers, San Francisco Cleanup, Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
Better than anything you've ever seen in your life, probably.
Stocks are up.
Good for you.
Good for you, if you own it.
I know what you're going to say.
Put that microphone in front of you, Scott.
I can't hear a thing you're saying.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilizations.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time.
But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that would be a copper mugger, a glass of tanker chalicers, dying, a canteen, jugger flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day.
The thing makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens right now.
Go.
It is the best day ever.
You're right.
Well, as tradition requires, we're going to do a reframe first from my book, Reframe Your Brain, the best book that's ever been written.
Everybody says so.
So if we do one a day, you will have a superpower by the time we're done here.
How about this?
Here's a usual frame that a lot of people have.
Never give somebody something for nothing.
Do you know anybody like that who says, why would I do that for somebody?
I'm not getting anything in return.
That would be a normal frame, right?
Don't give up something for nothing.
Here's the reframe.
Giving triggers reciprocity.
If you want somebody to give something to you, the best way to do that is to give something to them.
And it turns out that if you approach life from a selfish perspective, as in, what have you done for me?
Why would I do something for you?
That might work in some contexts.
But if you approach it from a generous perspective, you might find that in the long term, people like you better and want to work with you and want to marry you and want to have sex with you.
And it's all because you're a generous person.
Don't be a sucker.
You don't want to be too generous.
But just remember that if you want something from somebody else, it is a transactional world.
So do something for them first, if it doesn't cost you too much.
And you might be surprised how much you get back.
Well, there's some so far still anonymous donor who apparently has, I don't know if he's loaned or given $130 million to pay the military salaries.
Is that even enough?
$130 million?
I don't know.
But that's a weird thing that's actually happening.
Apparently, the military is now being paid by some billionaire, at least temporarily.
The Disney theme parks are not doing so well.
I guess they're down, according to Bray Bar News.
Warner Todd Houston is selling us.
That's down at 26% in popularity over the last five years.
Do you know what's the most surprising thing about the news that the Disney theme parks are down 26%?
The most surprising part is they're still in business.
What young person would be impressed by Disney in 2025?
They have video games.
Way better.
The Disney park experience is just one of the worst things that I've ever had.
Have any of you had the horror of going to any of the Disney parks?
There was a time in my, you know, many years ago where that was like a real destination trip.
But it just looks old and lame and you have to wait too long and it's way too expensive and too many people and it's hot.
It really is not.
I don't know why anybody goes.
It's sort of a miracle that their reputation has carried them as long as it has.
Anyway, so I guess Warner Brothers is for sale and rumored that Netflix, Amazon, and Apple might be looking at parts of it.
And I guess, who was it?
That other big studio bid on it, but was rejected.
Here's my question.
What value does Warner Brothers have?
Why would you buy it?
Is it for its film catalog that nobody seems to watch anymore?
Is it because you can use it to train your AI?
Is that why they want it?
Because I can't imagine anybody would buy a traditional old studio when AI is going to make all of that obsolete in a few years.
How long would you own a regular studio?
I mean, I don't even know why you need it.
Why would you even need space?
You would just need computers, right?
So it seems like a tough sale because I just don't know how you'd put a value on an old-style studio when that's going to just not even be a thing in a few years.
Apparently, two of the big meat, what are they?
They're beef companies.
Tyson and Cargill, they both agreed to pay collectively $87.5 million settlement for conspiring to keep beef prices high.
Terrific.
So it's a class action suit.
I guess they've acknowledged some culpability.
And they've agreed to pay money because they did, in fact, conspire to keep prices up and not compete.
Unbelievable.
Have I ever told you how to identify what industries are corrupt?
It's not hard.
Just tell me the industry and I'll tell you if it's corrupt.
You want to try it?
This will be like a magic to you.
Watch.
So in the comments, just name an industry, any industry.
In this case, it would be the meat, the beef industry.
But name an industry and I'll tell you accurately if it's corrupt.
Go.
Yep, that's corrupt.
Yep.
That one too.
Yep.
Yep.
Yes, that's corrupt.
That's corrupt.
That's corrupt.
Anyway, I think you get the picture.
Everything that can be corrupted is.
There's no exception to that.
If there's something that was designed in a way that it couldn't be corrupted, and maybe somebody's done that somewhere, then maybe not.
But almost all industries are designed from the bottom up in a way that they will eventually become corrupted.
And the beef industry is no exception.
Apparently, Trump pardoned one of the or the founder of Binance, which is a crypto exchange.
And his name is CZ.
I didn't know he was in jail.
So CZ is somebody who was on X and Twitter a lot.
So I think I followed him.
But he got locked up allegedly for what?
Oh, I guess his crime was he did not implement government-required controls on his financial work.
Because if you're doing big financial stuff, like a crypto exchange, you're apparently obligated to do a bunch of things that would make it harder for people to use it for crime.
But he did the opposite.
Instead of making it harder for crime, he made it really easy for people to do crime.
And I guess that was enough to get him locked up.
But when Trump was asked, why would you pardon him?
Is it because he has some connection to your crypto world that you're making money from?
I guess Trump has made billions of dollars recently.
His family has made billions, a few billion from crypto.
Is that real?
It's not real money, right?
It's just some crypto they value artificially at billions of dollars.
But if you tried to sell it, wouldn't be necessarily anybody buying it.
So is it really worth anything?
Or they just say it's worth a billion on paper, but it's not really worth anything.
I don't know.
But the accusations are that he did it just for his own family business reasons.
There's no direct evidence of that that I'm aware of.
But his explanation of why he did it is that the smart people in Silicon Valley suggested that he had done nothing wrong.
Now, suppose that the nothing he did wrong was he had not been aggressive enough in putting these controls in place so that he could stop money laundering and cartel stuff and like that.
Is that a crime?
Well, it might technically be a crime, but I could see that the crypto people would say, leave our crypto alone.
Don't put any unnecessary burdens or regulations on crypto.
It'll cripple it.
So I could imagine somebody arguing that even though it does allow money laundering and even though it does allow crime, that they'd rather have that world because it's a free world.
So that might have been the argument.
I don't know.
I'm just speculating.
Don't know.
Well, there's a giant gambling scandal that involves the NBA and the mafia.
Here's one I did not see coming at all.
Cash Pattel announced that I guess there are 30 NBA hot shots, they're calling them, and Mafia members have been arrested.
It involved all four of the main mafia families that are still operating, the big ones, big four, and four or five, I can't remember.
But it's so the mafia was involved and the NBA ex-players mostly.
And what they were doing is it was more than one thing.
So, but part of it was they would organize these really expensive poker games and they would invite people who did not know that every other person there was in on the con so they'd get some rich ex-NBA player or something.
And that would be the only person who knew that it wasn't a real card game.
And apparently they've been doing it for years.
And the way that they would guarantee that their side won and the mark would lose, I guess they had all this technology that I didn't know about.
So they have a card counter that has a camera in it so that somebody would always know who has what cards.
Did you know that existed?
A card counter with a camera in it.
So you would know for sure everybody's cards, just the way they were dealt.
So that's a thing.
Apparently, there are also special glasses that can identify marks on the back of cards that would not be seen with the naked eyes.
And also, apparently, you could put that same tech on contact lenses.
So you could have contact lenses that allowed you to know what other people's cards are.
Have you ever heard of that?
Apparently, that's a real thing.
And then they had other, like an x-ray table that could x-ray the cards when they're face down or something like that.
So apparently they had several ways that they could determine who had what cards.
And they're running this elaborate, multi-year, many people involved, gambling ring that was just a scam against rich people.
So apparently it is involved.
And then somehow this is involved.
This Damon Jones guy, former teammate and assistant coach, and I guess he's a friend of LeBron James for a long time.
There was also a problem where some of the insiders knew about injuries.
So I guess one of the LeBron people knew about a LeBron injury and therefore could somewhat accurately predict that his team would lose the next game, which they did.
So they placed bets on it.
So some of it was bets on insider trading.
You could call it insider stuff, I guess.
I don't even know if that's illegal.
Some of it was these fake poker games, which I think they had at people's houses sometimes, maybe at casinos sometimes.
I'm not sure.
Anyway, so that's supposedly a real big deal.
But the craziest thing that came out of it is commentator Stephen A. Smith believes that Trump and his team going after this gambling thing is a way that Trump is coming for you in sports.
So Stephen A. Smith says, Trump is coming.
He's coming for you.
Meaning that Trump has some kind of some kind of a score to settle with professional athletes, sort of in general?
Does that make sense to you?
Do you think Trump would have a score to settle with any professional athletes?
Not that I know of.
So, no, I don't think he's using this as a law affair to go after his enemies.
I don't think he necessarily even knows many of these people.
Do you think this is how he's going after what, LeBron or something?
Well, here's my comment on Stephen A. Smith.
You ready for this?
Fortunately, my footprint is too small for him to come after me because he likes to respond when people talk about him.
And he's talking about Jasmine Crockett, and he's talking about Trump and talking about people.
So I feel like it's fair to talk about him.
I'll start by saying he's very good at his job.
That's sort of my best compliment.
He's really good at his job.
He's so good on video.
And he obviously knows his domain.
He knows his sports, et cetera.
But when he crossed over into politics, what happened was he managed to say something that was compatible with how people were thinking.
And because he's very good on TV, he said it in a way that got people's attention.
And he's just great on TV.
So he gets a lot of attention.
But here's the problem.
Once he got a lot of attention for talking about politics, but I think he'd said some sort of obvious things, like, why doesn't Trump get credit for closing the border?
Or why doesn't Trump give some credit for Gaza, even if you don't like other things he's doing?
Now, those are the safest, the safest things you could have ever said.
They required no real penetrating analysis or background or historical understanding or context or almost anything.
Those are really easy opinions.
Now, what's easier about it is that since he was not known as a political commentator, he had a little more freedom that nobody would think it was too weird if he said, well, you know, you have to give Trump some credit for the things he did right, but you don't have to like all the things he does.
Now, he just happened to be in the perfect place.
He was the perfect messenger for a thing that people wanted to hear, especially people on the right.
They wanted to hear somebody say, all right, I admit it.
I admit it.
Trump did a good thing there.
It just felt so good to hear it.
So he starts out with maybe two or three home runs in a row.
I mean, just frozen ropes.
But they were easy.
The topics were just easy for somebody who was in exactly his situation, which is great communicator, has a big platform.
People weren't expecting him to talk on this topic.
So it hit all the notes, hit every note.
Now, what happens when you get a little bit addicted to that level of credibility?
People even asked him to run for president.
They asked him to run for president.
How would you feel if you sort of, you know, you thought, I'm going to speak out on this topic, and you didn't realize that it would be such a big hit, that it would be so viral, so viral that people asked you to be present.
What are you going to do now?
Well, don't you feel like you sort of have to try to make big, important political pronouncements every day?
Because it works so well when he did it before.
But the problem is, they're not all easy.
They're not all just waiting for you.
They're not all just the perfect thing for the perfect person at the perfect time.
If he goes any deeper than he's going, he's going to reveal how much or how little he knows about politics.
And it's not going to be popular because there's this very thin, you know, thin layer of things that you know would be popular no matter who said it.
So he's got to say stuff because he's now in that domain.
He can't suddenly say, I decided not to talk about politics.
It's probably a little bit addictive, a little bit addictive, and he's getting attention.
And he's in the attention business.
There's nothing wrong with that.
The more attention he gets, the better he's doing.
So I'm fully complimentary on his skill.
His skill is tremendous.
So what you should see is that the things he's concerned about start out being pretty smart, and you agree with them, and you're like, yes, yes, Stephen A. Smith.
But through no fault of his own, just because every topic is not perfectly suited for his messaging, he should get to less and less interesting and even smart.
So you should see the quality of his commentary like going way down.
And it has nothing to do with him.
It has nothing to do with how smart or well-informed he is.
It's just that not every topic is a home run topic.
So now he's coming up with some kind of weird opinion about Trump is coming for sports people and he might be coming for the WNBA next.
Like these are just sort of very close to crazy town.
So he went from opinions that were so strong that people were literally asking him to run for president to an opinion that's so weak that I look at it and go, were you drunk?
Who would even say any of that stuff?
It looks like you're drunk.
He's not drunk.
It just looks like he is.
Anyway, here's another story that I hate it when the stories that really matter start to age.
And then even though you find out more about these stories that really do matter, you sort of lose the path.
So here's one.
Do you remember Arctic Frost?
So that was the probe that was it, Jack whatever was going to do.
And now we know that A.G. Garland and his deputy, Lisa Monaco, according to Catherine Harridge, and even Director Christopher Ray, they signed off on Arctic Frost.
Now, apparently, that's new information.
Is it new to you that it was signed off by the people whose job it is to sign off on it?
I don't know.
It doesn't feel like even new information, but I think it is.
There's a document now that shows that they all signed off on it.
Why do we need a document to know that they signed off on it?
Haven't they all testified?
So there's something about this story that's just sort of detailed and boring, but it's probably important.
If I understood what was going on and remembered the context, it's probably important.
I don't know if it's going to mean anybody goes to jail or anything, but kind of looks sort of important.
I just don't really know how to tie all the parts together.
It's too long.
All right, let's talk about Trump's ballroom.
Now, I don't think there's anything funnier than the way Trump is playing this ballroom thing.
He's got his critics exactly where he wants them, and he's just making them dance like marionettes.
The fact that he's making them care about this construction project, that's pretty normal.
The White House has had a number of construction projects over the years.
Not much different than this in type.
Upgrades are pretty normal, and they're useful.
It's not like there's nobody who argues that they don't need a ballroom, right?
I think everybody agrees that a country like ours needs a proper ballroom.
And nobody's saying that we don't need it, but they've got to make a thing out of it.
So they're trying desperately to make something out of a nothing, the ballroom.
And they've actually demonstrated to us that they can make their base get mad about literally anything.
All they have to do is say it over and over.
So you've got people like, oh, what's his name?
What's that advisor on the Democrat side with the big glasses?
I'll think of his name.
But anyway, he was on, he was saying that Trump's destroying the White House.
Okay, one small part of the White House is being torn down because they're building a new one right away.
Is that destroying the White House?
And it's a metaphor for the way he governs.
It's a metaphor.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
I didn't realize it was a metaphor for the way he governs.
I was thinking it was just a construction project and I had nothing to worry about.
But now that I know it's a metaphor, oh, run, run, everybody.
Save yourself from the metaphor.
He's also disregarding norms.
Yeah.
Yeah, you thought you were safe?
No.
No, Trump is disregarding some norms that involve construction on the White House.
A week ago, you would have said to yourself, you know, if somebody violated the norms regarding construction processes for the White House, God, I'd be in trouble.
And here it is.
Here it is.
It's your worst case scenario that the president's ignoring some norms about construction for the White House.
See if you can find a way to live.
All right.
Well, one of the things that Trump knows is that if you get approval, or nobody's stopping you, from doing your project, you should start right away.
Why do you have to start right away if you get a construction thing green lit?
You got to do it right away because something's going to try to stop it.
There's going to be some environmentalist.
You're going to, I don't know, banker, some partner.
There's going to be a lawsuit.
So if you're a construction person and you get approval to do a thing, you do that thing right away.
Because the sooner you do that thing, the better your chances of getting through it before the inevitable challenges to it.
So Trump's doing that.
Anyway, I don't know how we're all going to survive this ballroom scandal.
But I have one word to describe the good people, the Democrats, who are going to try to get through this as best they can.
Now, nobody asked them to take on this challenge.
Nobody asked the Democrats to take on this challenge.
So I think you should respect that the Democrats are willingly taking on the challenge of living in a country where there's a building being renovated.
I know, I know.
It's brave.
So the word for them is heroes.
They're heroes.
Because they live in a country in which there's one building and one place that's being renovated to be a little bit better building for the benefit of the country.
And they're going to survive that.
They're going to survive it.
Not everybody, of course.
Obviously, there will be victims.
There will probably be people who are, you know, those big machines clawing down that building.
You don't think those big machines have grabbed a Democrat off the sidewalk and crushed him up and put him into the debris?
Well, I haven't heard about it, but I assume that that's happened.
Because this ballroom is not just disregarding norms.
And it's not just a metaphor for the way he governs.
It's bloody dangerous.
Have you even seen what it looks like now that they took the side out of the East?
It looks like a big mouth.
It looks like a giant mouth.
And it's going to come after the Democrats.
Now, if I were you, at least until the danger passes, I would wear a MAGA hat so that when the East Wing comes chomping at you, that big mouth, that once it sees you, it's going to be like, oh, oh, MAGA, okay, you may pass.
But if it sees a Democrat, whoa, it's going to get bloody.
It's just going to be like, would you like me to act that out for you with a doll?
You would, right?
You'd like me to act it out.
Hold on.
I'll be right back.
And this would be just a Democrat walking down the street in Washington, D.C. Not a trouble in the world.
Dope, bo-bo.
Hey, nice day.
How you doing?
How you doing, stranger?
Good to see you.
You in town just to look at the sites?
Yeah, good to see you.
And then suddenly the east wing.
Sorry, Gary.
Thank you.
And that's what it's going to look like.
Now, could you spare a moment for some sympathy for the poor Democrats who are in mortal danger from the East Wing, which is disregarding norms.
And worse, it's a metaphor for the way he governs.
My God, my God, how are we going to get through this?
Hang on.
What we need more than anything is t-shirts.
We need t-shirts.
And the t-shirt should be, I survived the White House Ballroom Construction Project.
Because we need to know how many of you are survivors.
Probably have some kind of an event for the survivors.
You know, we do a 9-11 event, and nobody has a problem with that.
So I feel like we should probably have some event to commemorate the victims of the construction project.
There will be some.
There would be deaths.
So just to make it even funnier, apparently there's on the website for the White House, there's a major events timeline page that shows major events that happened with the physical White House.
And I can't even believe this is real.
If you don't know about this story, I promise you it's real.
Everything I say is real.
I think.
Maybe I'm being fooled, but I think this is real.
So there's a major events timeline on the website for the White House.
And it used to have just ordinary things, like, you know, White House is built, White House is renovated, a pool is added to the White House.
Obama adds a basketball court.
So it's just real things that happened to the White House.
But the Trump administration has added in some new key events.
And one of them is Bill Clinton Stanley with Monica Lewinsky.
It just says the Bill Clinton scandal.
And they just include that.
They include that in a story about the building.
It's a story about the building.
And they want you to know what happened in that building, Bill Clinton scandal.
And then they have the Muslim blood, the Muslim Brotherhood visit, but they use a photo of Obama from, I think, maybe his teen years or something, where he's wearing a traditional Muslim garb and a turban.
And again, it has nothing to do with the White House except that they visited it, but it's embarrassing to the Democrats, so they put it up.
And then it has a picture of Hunter Biden in just his face, and it says cocaine discovered in the White House.
So the story is about cocaine being discovered in the White House with a picture of Hunter Biden.
You know, the good news is that the demolition of the East Wing, they've already discovered so much of Hunter's cocaine that it pays for the construction.
All right, that was my joke from Robots Read News.
And then one of them is the other one is Trans Day of Visibility at the White House, which was a real thing.
It was the Trans Day of Visibility.
Now, I have no problem with the Trans Day of Visibility.
But what's funny is the photo that they included.
So the photo is a split screen of Biden looking cluelessly like Biden does.
But next to him, it was a trans person who must have been born male and transitioned and was holding on to his or her jugs, was topless in the White House lawn, holding onto her front part.
So that was the photo that they included in the trans day of visibility.
There were a few more.
But the fact that somebody spent a lot of time turning that website into a parody, I couldn't love that more.
I could not love that more.
Because Trump is turning this whole ballroom construction thing into just basically a way to mock the Democrats and also get a ballroom with his name on it.
I love everything about the ballroom story.
And it's all the Democrats have.
They literally have nothing else.
Do you wonder what their meetings are like?
When they get together and they talk about what's their best play.
All right, Nancy, we're going to have to come up, Chuck, we're going to have to come up with a new play.
What's our best play?
Well, we could talk about the border.
No, no, no, no, not the border.
Well, we could talk about how we solved Gaza before Trump.
No, no, no.
Forget Gaza.
Don't talk about it.
That was a success.
Well, we could.
And then finally, they get around to, what about that ballroom construction thing?
Oh, Nancy, I think you got something there.
That ballroom construction has legs.
People are really going to care about that.
But amazingly, they actually made the Democrats afraid.
They made them afraid of a ballroom.
If you wondered how easily can you make Democrats afraid, they're afraid of a ballroom.
They're actually afraid of a ballroom.
You can make them afraid of climate change.
You can make them afraid of secret white supremacists who are allegedly in the hills waiting to attack.
You can make them afraid of Trump's authoritarian ways.
But apparently you can make them afraid of a ballroom.
That's like the ultimate test.
I want to see what else they can make them afraid of.
You see this chair?
This chair could attack you at any minute.
Run!
Anyway, let's look at the narrative contest.
The Democrats want us to know that Trump is using his power of the government to go after his, quote, political enemies.
Now, here's another one of those situations that I talk about in my book, Loser Think.
Loser Think, one way to argue like a loser, one of many ways, is to try to get your opponent to agree with your definition of things.
Because if you can get them to agree with your definitions, then you don't have to use an argument.
And usually at least one side doesn't have an argument.
So political enemies is that.
The real question is, is it appropriate in any given case for the government to be pursuing any particular perp?
That's a good question.
What is not a good question is not good thinking is can we label all of it political enemies so that we don't have to think about them individually.
So the whole political enemies approach, when you see it, is people who are propagandizing.
It's a narrative.
But suppose I said, let's say I played the same game, which I do sometimes.
If I were to argue against the word thinkers who say it's political enemies and that it's revenge, it's a revenge tour, I would just use different words.
I'd say, no, he's only going after the people who lawfared him for the purpose of running a coup and controlling or overthrowing the United States government.
Now, is that an argument?
If you don't think about it too hard, it's an argument.
But really, I'm just trying to win the same way they're trying to win.
I'm trying to get you to accept my definition that I don't need an argument.
If I can get you to agree that they're coup plotters and that they were involved in very bad behavior, then you wouldn't have any problem with the thought that they could go to jail for their very bad behavior.
So don't think that there's any argument going on here.
That whole, is it a political enemy revenge tour, or is it just nobody's above the law?
None of those are arguments.
They're just trying to get you to agree with a framing, basically.
So that narrative contest is kind of a tie.
The other narrative guy is Pritzker.
So Governor Pritzker, as you know, I call him the poor man's Adam Schiff.
That doesn't work, right?
Because he's a billionaire.
He's not really the poor man's Adam Schiff.
But apparently he wants to be their newest designated liar.
I've told you before many times that the Democrats have this weird structure where they've got most of the Democrats are just normies.
You know, they're just taking their little bit of corruption, probably, and just trying to get by and trying to get reelected.
They're not trying to be in the limelight, not trying to get any attention.
Most of them are just trying to get by.
But there's this handful, you know, the Raskins and the Schiff and the Swalwells, who I call the designated liars.
They're the ones they send out to sell something like the fine people hoax or the Russian collusion hoax or the drinking bleach hoax, because they'll say anything.
They will lie in the most obviously debunkable stuff.
But not all of the Democrats will do that.
I'm not even sure.
I don't know, maybe AOC does it sometimes, but there are a whole bunch of ones that are prominent that don't do that because it just looks silly.
But apparently, Pritzer is all in on being a new designated liar.
So here's the stuff that he's coming up with.
He's coming up with that the real reason that Trump wants federal agents, well, the National Guard, to be in cities is not to fight crime.
So here's his narrative.
No, it's not to fight crime.
That's Trump's narrative.
Trump's narrative is that Democrats are bad at fighting crime, so they need Republicans to hold their hands, and that's what he's doing or trying to do.
But Pritzer is saying, no, it's a trick so that he can bring in the military in the cities so that when he loses an election, he can just use the military to stay in power.
Do you think there's any truth to that?
Do you think that Trump has spent even one minute thinking, huh, if I bring the military into the cities, then I can just activate them to keep me in command.
Well, first of all, that wouldn't work.
There's no way that would work.
At the very least, it would just trigger a civil war.
And it wouldn't end well.
So, no, I don't think he spent even one minute thinking about that plan.
I think he wants to.
I think Trump wants to reduce crime and then take credit for it.
What else does he need?
If Trump succeeded in reducing crime in the cities and then also immediately pulled his resources out once he was done, that would be a gigantic win.
I mean, it would be one more reason to say greatest president ever.
So why wouldn't that be enough?
Seems like it would.
You're probably hearing Steve Bannon going on podcasts and talking about Trump running for a third term.
And he acts completely serious about it.
Bannon is.
But I don't know anybody else who's serious about that.
A lot of people talk about it and we joke about it, but I'm definitely not serious about it.
If he tried to run for a third term, I would try to stop it with whatever resources I had.
And I'm pretty sure Republicans would try to stop it too.
So I don't think there's really any chance he could run for a third term and get away with it.
But if it makes it gives them something to worry about, I don't know Steve Bannon's game because he's a 4D chess player.
So you never know exactly what he's thinking or hoping.
But it might be that he just wants them to think about that.
Because the more they're thinking about that, the less they're thinking about other stuff that might be more of a problem.
So it could be that he's just trying to divert them into a non-issue.
So they spend all their energy arguing the thing that's not even real.
Maybe.
I mean, I'm speculating.
I can't read his mind.
So I don't know what Steve's up to.
Maybe.
There is another speculation.
One of the things that makes a second term president weak is that you can wait them out, right?
You just wait.
It's only a couple years.
We just wait him out.
But if you raise the possibility that he might be there for a third term, maybe you don't wait him out because you know he'll kick your ass when he gets that third term power.
So it could be that Steve Bannon is so much smarter than us, and he is, he's very smart, that he knows that the only way to have a really, really good second term is to tease a third term.
He might be right about that, if that's what he's thinking.
Again, I'm just speculating.
I couldn't possibly read his mind, so I'm just guessing.
But that would be pretty smart.
It would be pretty smart if all he's doing is essentially putting down suppressive fire so that Trump doesn't have a, let's say, risk from behind, you know, where they're just waiting for him to get out of office.
Might be that.
Anyway, Pritzker thinks that it's all about stealing the country.
And then Pritzker also said that Trump isn't about fighting crime.
That's not about crime.
He says he's going after the, he said he was going after the worst of the worst.
That's not what they're doing, Pritzker says.
They are literally going after black and brown people because of the color of their skin.
Really?
Really?
Does anybody think that there's even one Republican who said, we got to send those federal forces in there because there are people with brown and black skin and they must be stopped?
Anybody?
Does anybody think that that's anything like reality?
No.
No.
There's nothing like that in real reality.
But the real question, and maybe the most important one, is: does anybody besides Pritzker look more like Fred Flintstone?
I've never seen a live person who looked more like Fred Flintstone.
So I just see him running along with his feet in the little car there, the Flintstone car.
Anyway, he'd look good for that'd be that'd be just like a perfect Halloween costume, wouldn't it?
If Pritzker went as Fred Flintstone, perfect.
Well, according to the post-millennial, Thomas Stevenson's writing that 70% of Democrats support amnesty for illegal immigrants, Raspus and Pohl says.
47% of voters said that Trump's immigration policies have been too harsh.
What do you think of a second-term president where a healthy percentage of the public thinks he's being a little too strong, a little too harsh?
Well, in my opinion, that means he's exactly where he needs to be.
If you were a transformational president, which Trump is, very transformational, what would you expect would be his popularity?
And you could say popularity for his policies as well.
What would you expect would be the normal arc?
Well, what I would expect is that when he got elected, you know, he got a sort of a mini mandate.
You could argue how big the mandate is, but it was a mandate.
And so his popularity should have been the most popular at the beginning.
And then you get into the hard work where everybody's arguing with you about everything and they're trying to block you.
And the things that you thought might have been easy turn hard because the other side found a way to stop you.
And then the courts get involved.
And then all the people who supported you say, I thought this would be easier.
Right?
I thought this would be easier.
And then it looks like maybe you got a lot of problems.
So the normal arc for the best president you could imagine would be it starts out with a lot of optimism.
And then as the real world gets involved and everything's harder than it looks, the popularity would go down because it doesn't look like it's working as well as you wanted.
When you're free to just imagine how it will go, you can imagine it going great.
So you say, a guy got a great president.
I imagine he's going to do great things.
High rating.
Then when you hit the real world and there are all these just normal real world problems, nothing works as well as it should.
So normally, you would expect that somewhere in the middle of the term, a president's popularity would plummet because they're doing the hard stuff and they're doing the stuff that half of the country is really going to hate because they always do.
Now, what would happen if he's the real deal?
We'll say if, just so you don't have to argue about it.
If Trump is the real deal, meaning that the big changes he's making will anger people and they won't understand them, like tariffs.
We didn't really understand them.
It looks like they might be working.
He's got a pretty good argument for it.
That's a little bit early.
But At this point, it looks like he's hitting some of the hard, you know, the hardest topics where people have the most resistance.
If he gets a good result, so let's take the attack on Mexico.
That's certainly going to happen.
So, he's getting ready to do a land attack on Mexico, it looks like.
When the attack is being planned and we're thinking about how badly it could go, his popularity might go down.
When the ballroom is under demolition and all we see is the destruction of a thing that used to be beautiful, his popularity might go down.
When he leans on China on fentanyl, and fentanyl, and then China pushes back with their own tariffs that hurt us economically, that looks like we took a hit.
But if you look at the middle of everything, it's going to be the worst it could be because everything starts out like a rosy idea, turns into a messy reality.
That's what everything does.
But in the end, if you succeed, get a good deal with China, get less fentanyl in Mexico, and bring down inflation, for example.
If he pulls any of that off, his popularity will go to levels that nobody ever saw.
So to look at the middle of his term and say that his popularity has dropped, that doesn't tell you anything.
That doesn't tell you anything.
It only tells you that it's exactly on track.
It's the arc you'd expect.
Should start high, should go down, and then only if he succeeds will it go up again.
And I believe he will succeed.
Well, Israel, as you might know, the condescent had this unexpected vote about annexing the entire West Bank, which would be the opposite of what Trump administration wants.
It's something that a lot of the Israelis, and I think Netanyahu probably wants, but has been willing to at least say for now that he doesn't.
What do you think that was all about?
Because it sounded like even J.D. Vance was a little bit confused about why they even did that.
Because Trump and JD both said directly, this isn't going to happen.
We would withdraw all American support if you annex the West Bank, because we made promises to the Arab world, and we don't think we can operate over there if we broke that promise.
We just wouldn't even be able to operate.
Too big of a promise.
So I agree with Trump.
If that was the basis upon which they got to this point of dealing with Gaza, if there was a promise that they would not support annexation and therefore a one-state solution, he's got to stick with that.
He's got to stick with that.
It looks like he is.
Now, I would not rule out that either Israel and/or Trump might think that there's a one-state solution somewhere in the future.
Maybe, I don't know.
But I don't think they can do a two-state or a one-state solution anytime soon.
I think they have to do some hybrid where it's neither a one-state or a two-state, and it's just a thing that nobody ever saw before.
And we give it a name, and we say, oh, this is a special temporary situation.
And if you can get people to buy it as a special temporary situation, then both sides will think that in the end it will be their way.
Oh, after the temporary part, will be a two-state solution.
Maybe not.
And then the other side would think, after the temporary part, will be a one-state solution.
So you give people, you give everybody a way to think that in the future it's going to go their way.
Then maybe you have something.
But the annexing, to me, or even the vote about annexing, to me is some parts of the Israeli government signaling that they'll never be happy with a two-state solution.
And that's okay.
If it's just signaling, no big deal.
I don't think they're going to do it.
I don't think they'll annex.
All right.
So Trump says he's going to inform Congress about what he plans to do war-wise against the cartels.
I guess that would include the Mexican as well as Venezuelan and Colombian cartels.
I did hear that Venezuela is becoming more of a fentanyl capital because I guess the pressure on Mexico was sufficient that their fentanyl operation from Mexico is depressed and Venezuela is picking up some of that.
So if you thought that Venezuela is just not involved with fentanyl at all, which we'd heard recently, it may be that it's new, that it wasn't involved in fentanyl.
But maybe now it is because Mexico is more dangerous for fentanyl, potentially.
But anyway, Trump says he doesn't want to declare war.
He didn't really give a detailed reason why not, but I think the why not is it just limits his own flexibility.
So he's not going to limit his own flexibility if he doesn't need to.
So I don't believe he'll do anything except inform Congress what he plans to do.
He won't ask for permission.
I don't mind that.
Don't mind that at all.
Meanwhile, when Trump talks about dealing with China for their trade deal, he puts at the top of his list, and I like that he does this, coming to an agreement about fentanyl.
Because as you know, fentanyl precursors are created in China, sent to Mexico, and now maybe Venezuela as well.
And then it turns into the fentanyl that they ship to us.
So China's the bad guy.
And apparently the top fentanyl is in custody and is going to be sent to the United States soon.
So did you know that?
That we actually have in custody, well, not we, but he is in custody, the number one fentanyl guy from China.
So I don't know if that's telling me anything or not.
But Trump said the fentanyl issue is going to be the first thing on his list.
And he's going to make sure that China knows that they can't do that anymore.
Yeah.
Here's his math of it.
He says China is paying right now a 20% tariff because of fentanyl.
So 20% on some number of goods because they do fentanyl.
And Trump says that's billions and billions of dollars that they're paying.
On November 1st, the tariff on China goes to 157%, which is record-setting territory.
We don't want that because it's not sustainable for them.
He goes, they make $100 million selling fentanyl into a country, only $100 million, but they lose $100 billion because of his 20% tariff because they sell the fentanyl.
He goes, that's $100 billion approximately that they have to pay.
It's a big penalty.
So if they want to do something, they want to put it on the list.
It's on the list.
So Trump has been very transparent about the fact that he uses the tariffs as negotiating leverage, not just for the trade, but also for wars.
And the fentanyl is sort of a war.
So I like this.
I like that he just put a price tag on it.
It's like, all right, it's $200 billion.
If you're going to keep doing it, it's going to get really expensive.
Probably the best they can do.
Meanwhile, as you know, Trump put some sanctions on the two big oil companies in Russia, trying, I think, to get them to not export as much, which would give them less money to press their war against Ukraine.
But India and China, who buy Russian oil, probably will not be impacted by the sanctions at all, because even though the sanctions could also be applied to India if they buy the Russian oil, I think, there is allegedly so many workarounds that they can sell the oil to somebody else who sells it to somebody else who sells it through a shell company who sells it to India.
So India will not be limited in their oil.
They'll just have to get it through a more weasely way that the United States can't identify.
But they'll probably get the same amount of oil.
The good news is that apparently oil supplies in the world are up, which means that the price of oil is down, down to about $60 a barrel.
At $80 a barrel, Putin can do war all day long.
At $60 a barrel, it gets really expensive because there's just a huge difference in profitability.
So, because the entire world seems to be creating more oil, and also maybe the demand is a little soft, the price is down.
So, put it all together.
So, you got Trump working on the price of oil globally, which would take away some of Putin's economic power for the war.
You've got the Ukrainians with their drones attacking the energy resources of Russia, which is working.
And you've got pressure on our partners, which so far probably hasn't worked, but maybe more pressure will, to stop buying Russian oil.
And there's pressure to stop.
I think we've stopped all the pipelines.
I believe that Europe is already committed to no Russian oil by 2028 or something.
So that's kind of...
So anyway, so there's a whole bunch of paths in which the Trump administration, along with Ukraine, is working on Russia's energy economy in a negative way.
Right.
Collectively, I feel like if you wait long enough, it's going to work.
But it might take a while.
I don't think that Russia can continually sell less oil and less oil and less oil and still do what they want to do in Ukraine.
At some point, they're going to say, all right, we need just money.
We just need money.
So we're going to have to play along and sell our oil and get out of Ukraine.
So it could be that we have a workable possibility for some kind of ending to the war, but it might not be fast.
It might not be fast, but it might be certain.
Speaking of which, interesting engineering, Kaif Shaikh is writing about this.
There's a humanoid robot maker that's making the Phantom MK1 humanoid robot.
It's a San Francisco-based company, and they're making their robot to be only a soldier.
So where the other AI and robot people are saying, no, we don't want to do military stuff.
We'll stay away from the military stuff.
These guys are saying we're only going to do military stuff.
We're only making a soldier.
So they've got this, I think it's 5'9 robot that looks more like a Star Wars kind of a creature.
But we're knocking on the door, total robot soldiers.
I don't know how many of these are going to end up in Ukraine, but it's 175 pounds.
It can carry a load up to 44 pounds.
And it could just march with the other soldiers.
Or better yet, march with them.
Trump was bragging, I saw the other day that he had $18 trillion of investments coming into the U.S. And the mostly anybody had ever done before was $2 trillion.
Are both of those numbers just made up?
Do you think either one of those is based on real data?
That no country in the world has ever gotten more than $2 trillion a year, but he's got $18 trillion coming in.
And then soon after, he rounded it up to $20 trillion.
Do you really think he has $20 trillion coming in?
Maybe, but it's a lot.
So, you know, this is one of those directional things.
Directionally, did he get more investment than you could imagine anybody else could have ever gotten?
Yes.
Yes.
He got more investment, mostly because of his tariffs, but he got more investment than anybody could have done.
Nobody could have come close.
So I don't mind if his number is accurate or inaccurate.
He's a salesperson, so he's going to go with the biggest number he can get away with.
Anyway, apparently Trump has decided not to surge the Fed's federal forces into San Francisco to try to clean up San Francisco.
He was asked by two of his buddies, he said, two of his rich friends.
We think it was Mark Benioff and Jensen Wang, who are locals, local San Francisco types, who apparently asked him not to do it.
And because their credibility with him was high, he said, all right, he'll hold back.
He's not going to do it.
Now, part of that is that the new mayor of San Francisco appears to be making some progress.
And so Trump reasonably, you know, has smart people asking him to hold off.
And you don't ignore smart people if you're Trump.
And he's got some other story that he can say is working, which is the mayor's doing a good job.
So that's happening.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I had for you today.
It's another wonderful day in the neighborhood.
If you want an update on my medical situation, because I know you're taking the journey with me, in one week, I will get some radiation treatment on some spots.
Not my whole body, just some of the painful spots.
If it works, then maybe I can walk again.
At the moment, I can't really walk without assistant.
So that's separate from if I can get approved for the Pluvicto.
That's a completely different path, but I can do them at the same time.
So one is just pain management, and the other would maybe buy me a little more time.
So anyway, if you're wondering how things are going, it's really, really bad in terms of my current level of pain.
And the process I have to go through to get any of it fixed is also really, really bad because I'll have to lay on a surface for half an hour without moving while they radiate me.
And that will be tough.
But it's a path.
So best case scenario would be that within two to three weeks, my pain level is down.
It's not guaranteed to work, by the way.
It might work, it might not.
And then that might give me a little comfort until I can get on the Pluvicto thing, which would be maybe a few weeks away.
And it would take me several sessions before I felt any relief from that.
So I might have a way to get to the other way, which is also not a cure.
So even if I get to the Pluvicto, and even if it works, I still have to find a cure if I want to stay alive more than a year or two, which I'd like to, if I get the option.
So otherwise, who knows?
All right, that's all I got.
I'm going to talk to the locals people privately because they are beloved.
