Epstein files, fentanyl update, government opens, and more fun news~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Politics, Reframe Negative Thoughts, Government ReOpens, Gracious Winning, democrats Seek Fighters, Kash Patel, Fentanyl Precursors, Carl the Fly, China US Students, Katie Couric, John Fetterman, US Border Tunnels, Epstein Files, Ukraine War, 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.
Oh, I've got some kind of insect that's going to be plaguing me today.
Stop plaguing me, insect.
There's only room for one of us today.
Come on in.
We'll have a show.
Let me make sure I can see all your comments.
Whatever that little gnat thing is, is going to be very, very annoying.
Stop it being annoying, Nat.
I'm going to have to get my salt gun and zap it.
All right.
You guys all good?
I got comments, and you don't.
Perfect.
That didn't work.
Sort of worked.
Close enough.
Close enough.
All right, everybody.
Get ready.
I'm ready if you're ready.
Well, good morning and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time.
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I'm sipping like a trump.
Well, let's see what else is happening today.
After we do a reframe from my book, Reframe Your Brain, which is changing lives all over the place.
You can get it on Amazon.
And only Amazon, as it turns out.
Probably.
All right.
Here's one of my favorites.
You could call it the shelf space reframe, or you could give it another name.
But the usual frame is that if you have some negative thoughts, you want to stop thinking about them, right?
Some of you, I've completely changed your life with this reframe.
Some of you have heard it before.
It just makes sense, right?
If you have negative thoughts, the obvious solution for negative thoughts is think fewer negative thoughts.
But it turns out that your brain doesn't work that way.
If you try to think fewer negative thoughts, you're probably going to think more of them, not less of them, because then you're obsessing on it.
So here's the other way to approach it.
This is the reframe.
Instead of trying to stop thinking about negative thoughts, you can't subtract negative thoughts, but you can crowd them out.
That's what the shelf space is all about.
If I told you, hey, I'm going to make you think about your favorite thing all day.
You're going to think about petting cats and eating delicious food and having great intimate relationships with people you love.
And let's just say I got right into your business and just made you think about all those things.
There are only so many hours in the day.
If I make you use some of the hours to think about things you love, there'll be fewer hours left for negative stuff.
So don't try to unthink.
You can't do it.
Don't try to think less of a thing.
You can't do it.
Try to think more of things.
You can do that.
Think more of things that are positive.
More of things that you want, more of things you've enjoyed, more of things that inspire you, more of things that you just love.
And you will crowd out that time you wasted with negative thoughts.
That's your reframe for the day.
All right, let's talk about the news.
You might have heard that the government has reopened.
So, what the hell was that?
Hold on.
The fly has landed.
We're going to try.
No, that didn't work.
We're going to be trying some anti-fly.
Oh, hold on, hold on.
Hold on, hold on.
Damn it, I'm not as fast as a fly.
What was I thinking?
So the government really is going to be in my face the entire show.
Wow.
Wow.
Government reopened.
Nobody cared.
We all sort of expected it would go the way it went, and here it is.
Now it's open.
And what did we learn?
And nothing.
But the best lesson that came out of this, I think, came from Greg Gofffeld, who was saying it on the five.
That if you happen to be on what you consider the winning side of the government reopening, and the Republicans probably think they're on the winning side there, it's a mistake to say the other side caved.
Do you all understand why?
It's really important.
If you expect to work with these people ever again and you get a good outcome from one negotiation, in other words, you get what you want, don't say they caved.
Even if you're just an observer and you want more of whatever they caved to, you don't have to be part of the process.
Go use that word.
Don't say that they lost like dogs.
What good is that to you?
It feels good for like a second, and then you can never work with them again, but also you can never work with anybody else again.
Because anybody who sees you act like that is going to be like, oh, so let me get this straight.
If I negotiate in good, you know, good faith and I give up a little behind my back or even publicly, they're going to call me some kind of caving loser.
Why would I do anything for you?
So Trump is the champion, as I've often said, of making the largest gap between keeping making him happy and what would happen if he didn't make him happy.
So by reopening the government, in a sense, they made him happy.
And correct me if I'm wrong, will you?
Did Trump ever say they caved?
Because I'll be real disappointed if he did, but I'll bet he didn't.
Can you give me a fact check on that?
It's only the pundits who said he caved, right?
Because I feel like Trump would be way too smart to say that.
All it would do is give up some power.
Why would he just give away some power?
Far better would be to reward the people instead of mocking them.
You should reward the people who ended up on his side of this.
So that's why you should learn out of this.
The shutdown itself was just another symbol of the total incompetence of our system.
No more rumble streams.
I've heard some people say there's something different on Rumble, and I don't know the answer to it, but I believe there might be two Rumble streams that started at the same time.
And that's sort of a new thing.
One of them maybe isn't real.
So it's possible that you clicked the wrong Rumble stream, but I'm not positive about that.
There's just something going on that I don't know.
X changed this user interface today, so it was quite an interesting morning.
All right, here's another one.
Another persuasion lesson.
You ready for this?
There's a clip of me talking about this.
Jason Cohen did a clip on this.
And it's a clip in where I'm talking about how it's a mistake for the Democrats to say that they need a fighter.
Do you know why?
Compare these three things.
Make America great again.
Make America healthy again.
Or we need a fighter.
Got to fight.
Fight, fight, fight.
Which one of those are useful?
All right, here's the reframe.
This one's actually really important.
If you get this and incorporate it into your future life, you're going to be way better.
These slogans like make America great again and make America healthy again and fight, fight, fight.
If it's the Democrats doing the fight thing, what are they going to get?
Their affirmation is fighting.
So if you focus on something and repeat it over and over, what's that called?
It's an affirmation.
An affirmation is concentrating on something and really focusing on it because there is something that's semi-magic about that.
Now, I don't know that's real magic.
I just think that you get better results when you're super focused on what you want.
But just think what the two sides have focused on.
So Trump focuses on make America great again.
And then you watch and you say, oh, our borders are better.
And there are a number of things you could put into that category.
Make America healthy again?
That's a good affirmation, isn't it?
That's just like one of the best affirmations you could ever have.
But what about fight?
Okay, this fly is just eating me alive right now.
You just will not stay off me.
It's going to be me versus the fly in a minute.
So here's your lesson.
Don't accidentally do an affirmation.
Affirmations are pretty powerful, even if their only effect is not magic, but rather the psychology effect that it has on the person who's doing it.
So if you're doing the right affirmation, make America healthy, make America great, there's a better chance you'll get that thing, or at least move toward it.
If you pick the wrong affirmation, you're going to still get the thing you affirmed, a fight.
The Democrats are actually asking for fighting.
Do you think they'll get it?
Yes, yes, they actually get fights.
And when we look at the protests, somebody said there's another Tesla protest coming.
I don't know about that, but if there is, I'm sure there'll be a fight, right?
So there's your lesson.
Don't do accidental affirmations.
And that's what the Democrats' messaging is so broken that they're accidentally asking for the worst thing that anybody could ask for, a fight.
If they had been asking for a victory, I might be all in.
Oh, a victory.
But a fight?
Who asked for the fight?
Democrats.
Don't do that.
Well, Kash Patel has excitedly announced, and he's way too excited about this for what I think is reality, that China has agreed to turn off the pipeline of fentanyl precursors because Mexico and their cartels, they can't make fentanyl unless they have the raw ingredients.
I guess there are about 13 potential raw ingredients.
And they've been coming from...
Hold on, hold on.
Hold on.
It may have been success.
I may have gotten that fly.
All right.
I don't see him yet.
We'll let you know.
Very exciting.
So, and then also part of that deal, allegedly, according to Kash Patel, is that China would, I guess, watch closer or crack down on several industries that would be relevant to making the precursors.
Now, why would this be different than the other times that China said they would do exactly this?
Why do we think this would work?
I have no idea.
I don't even understand the story.
It's not like it's the first time that China said, oh, yeah, we're totally going to stop these precursors.
Now, do you think we can get through the show without me mentioning Charlie Brown in the football?
I won't do it.
I will not mention Charlie Brown in the football, but this looks exactly like Charlie Brown in the football.
Damn it, I couldn't do it.
I couldn't do it.
I just, I couldn't not mention Charlie Brown in the football.
You tell me, am I missing something?
Is there some reason I should believe it this time?
Why would they tell the truth this time?
Oh, he's back.
I didn't get the fly.
Damn it.
Or he's brought a friend.
He's in full attack mode now.
Damn it.
I'm going to have to give the fly a name.
We're going to call him Carl.
It'll be Carl the fly.
So that when you hear me kill him, it will be more satisfying because I'll be killing somebody with a name.
Carl, you're dead.
Well, anyway, I saw a post on X also wondering if we offered something to China that's not public.
For example, is it a coincidence?
This is not my original idea, not my original thought, but is it a coincidence that we agreed that China can have 600,000 students in the U.S. and then China gets flexible about fentanyl?
Do you think that's what we traded?
Oh, God.
It just won my ear.
Oh, man.
I want that fly so dead.
Carl, it's you and me now.
Carl the fly, you will not live till lunchtime.
I swear I'll take you down.
You will not ruin my live stream.
You're just a fly.
You're doing a really good job of ruining it so far, but I'll get you.
I'll get you.
Anyway, what do you think?
Do you think that there's a secret ingredient, a secret arrangement, and that that's why the fentanyl thing looks real this time?
Because obviously Kash Patel is aware that they've promised before and not delivered.
Right?
It's not like I know and Cash doesn't know that they've made this promise before.
So something's different or he wouldn't act this confident, I feel.
So one of the good things about having a good reputation for being smart, like Cash, is that I don't automatically start with, well, you must be an idiot and then reason from there.
I start with the assumption that he's well-informed and brilliant, and then I reason from there.
If you start with him being well-informed and brilliant, and I think that's fair, there must be something that China offered that they've never offered before.
So we'll see.
Have you seen any of the new clips with Katie Couric?
Remember her when she was on NBC and she was sort of a credible, you know, one of the top hosts?
Well, she's sort of transformed into some kind of a gollom and she's just sort of an anti-Trump troll now.
And she even looks like she's turning into a troll.
So I'm going to do my Katie Couric impression.
So my precious.
So wouldn't you agree that Donald Trump has stolen our democracy?
No.
But wouldn't you agree?
He's an authoritarian.
No, not really.
But wouldn't you agree?
He's probably murdered children.
Probably.
Right.
So it all just looks sort of weird and troll-like.
So she made the mistake of inviting John Fedeman on, whatever that podcast is that she's doing.
Whatever it's called, whatever the fuck.
And she asked Fedeman.
Repeatedly, she tried to get him to say that Trump was a fascist.
Like, I need that clip for my show.
Call him a fascist.
Fedeman would not take the bait.
And he said a quote, I think at this point, right now, we're not in an autocracy.
We're in a democracy.
Oh, well, I'm so sad now.
I'm a sad troll.
I like to hear that it's an autocracy.
Don't say it's a democracy.
That makes me sad.
Make me happy.
But then Couric said, But would you concede that some of the things that he is doing, talking about Trump, are clearly anti-democratic and also are potentially even unconstitutional.
And Fedeman said, We happen to have a different view of these things.
I don't call people fascists or Nazis or compare people to Hitler.
Boom.
Boom.
Do you know what that's called?
That's what we call the high ground maneuver.
Oh, there's a name for it.
There's a name for it.
And if you can pull off a high ground maneuver in any context, you know, work or politics or your private life, if you can do this what he just did, you're going to win almost everything.
Because the high ground approach is unassailable by definition.
It's the one that you can't get higher than.
It's the high ground.
So what would be a higher high ground than refusing to debate whether someone is Hitler?
That's pretty good.
And he's inclusive.
He goes, I don't call people fascists, Nazis, or compare people to Hitler.
Now, in a sense, what he did was he compared himself to Katie Kirk.
He didn't compare Trump to Hitler, but he did compare Katie Curric to some kind of weird troll who would compare other people to Hitler.
So that happened.
So Fedeman for the win.
It's weird that Fedeman walks into that conversation as the one that we should be mocking as looking like Shrek or something.
But he's done such a good job of redeeming himself that to me he doesn't look like Shrek anymore.
Like that just went away.
Now I just see a guy who looks like it looks like he's trying to help.
Looks like he's just trying to make the country better.
So again, I'm no idiot.
I know that he's not who I want for my next president.
I know that his policies would not match up with what my first choices would be, but that doesn't take away from him the skill that he brings to the game.
So there are some people I talk about because of their skill level, and other people I talk about because I like their policies.
So he's a skill level guy.
I'm not going to say he doesn't have skill.
I refuse to act as if one of the most skilled people in the game is not there.
So I'm going to talk about him.
All right.
Apparently, I didn't know about this, but the Trump administration is cracking down on, oh, by the way, we'll get to the Epicene stuff.
Don't worry.
We'll get to it.
Trump administration is cracking down on tunnels.
I guess there are quite a few tunnels under the border.
No surprise.
But what I didn't know, this is new, is that there's some technology referred to as the persistent surveillance and detection system, the PDS, persistent surveillance, persistent, meaning it's just always on.
And apparently there's a way to upgrade it.
So we have some cool technology for identifying tunnels.
That's kind of cool.
I didn't know how much we already had, but apparently we're in good shape on tunnels, technology-wise, but we're going to do even more.
Joe Rogan just had a show.
His guest was Jeff Dye, comedian Jeff Dye.
And I thought Rogan had one of the best observations or insights that I've seen in a long time.
So just sort of just sort of revel in how smart this is.
And part of the reason I present it this way is that part of the magic and skill of Joe Rogan is not making you know how much smarter he is than you.
Because it would be off-putting if you just knew how much smarter he was.
He's really smart, but he lives what I call the everyman life plus.
He's like the everyman with lots better toys and better cars and stuff.
But that's part of his magic, that he never leaves that frame.
He's just the guy you want to hang out with.
He also is super smart, and it comes out in little ways that you're not expecting.
Here's the example.
So he talked about, I think I'm going to paraphrase this, but I hope I'm doing it right.
And his idea was that in order for Obama and his crowd to sort of divert from the Russia gate hoax, which they were behind, that the fine people hoax was actually the hoax to divert you from the other hoax.
And I never really thought about it that way.
But that does kind of fit, doesn't it?
That the fine people hoax was the hoax to get you off the other hoax, and that their entire structure is hoax to hoax to hoax.
And that, and more importantly, Joe believes that there's no way that Obama was unaware that it was a hoax.
Would you agree with that?
There's no way that Obama thought that was true.
He absolutely knew he was spreading a hoax.
Why else would you do it?
I mean, you do it to win, but it also is the perfect distraction.
So When you think about the fact that Obama personally was probably behind the Russia gate thing and then personally pushed the find people hoax to help cover up the other hoax, that is some of the worst shit I've ever seen in my life.
Because that wasn't just about him and Trump, which would be bad enough.
That was about us.
When I say us, I mean my audience right now and all the people who were potentially Trump supporters.
That was about us.
He threw us under the bus, right?
You can't just say that the guy you support is a Nazi without that automatically painting every single person who supports him.
So we had to live with that.
We had to live painted as a bunch of neo-Nazi supporters.
And we had to wake up in the morning and know that he had just told half the country that we were neo-Nazi supporters.
And the more prominent you were as a pro-Trumper, people like me, the more sure the people were that you were a neo-Nazi because of the hoax.
It really is one of the worst things I've ever seen that didn't directly involve violence.
I mean, I think it inspired violence.
You know, you never know that for sure, but it looks like it did.
But am I wrong that if you add the two hoaxes together, they're unambiguously worse than anything I've ever seen in politics.
Just anything.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not talking about World War II atrocities and stuff.
We're not comparing that stuff.
But just in the political realm, you know, minus gross overt violence.
That's the worst thing I've heard.
I suppose, all right, let's be fair.
Let's be fair about this.
It's not worse than slavery.
It's not worse than Jim Crow.
So let me be a little more commonsensical about it.
It's not worse than those things.
But for the ordinary politics, it's worse.
It's just worse than anything I've seen.
Just unbelievably despicable.
All right, here's another fun story.
Eric Swalwell, who happens to be my representative, I believe, does not have a California address.
Now, I don't know that that's true.
So I would wait for a confirmation that the fact checkers are agreeing with us.
But according to the Gateway pundit, Joel Gilbert, nobody has yet found an address for him in California, but they do have an address, I guess he claims.
But at that address, some other family has lived there for years.
So it looks like he only has a home in Washington, D.C., or somewhere around there, and that he would not actually even be qualified, allegedly, even to be in office.
How many of you think that's true?
This one's a, I think I'd wait on this one because the story is based on we can't find something.
What they can't find is a valid address for him in California.
But is that a solid argument?
We can't find it.
I wouldn't automatically believe a story that's based on I can't find it because somebody might find it.
But we can wait and see if he claims he has an address.
If he claims he has a valid address, we can just check the address.
If you want, I can go over and look because apparently he claims he lives in Livermore, which is walking distance in that direction.
I can literally walk to Livermore.
I wouldn't right now, but I could.
So I could go knock on his door.
I'm not going to do that, of course.
But anyway, let's talk about the new dust up with the Epstein files.
This feels like Groundhog Day, doesn't it?
Every time Epstein files comes up.
All right.
So the basic idea is everybody knows who Epstein is.
You all know that Trump doesn't want the files released, which makes him look guilty of something.
Republicans apparently are trying to back the president on that and not release him.
But Democrats want it all released.
And they got enough votes in the House with a few crossovers that would not surprise you.
So we got Marjorie Taylor Greene voting for disclosure.
I believe Boebert voting for disclosure.
And does anybody feel like arguing with either one of those?
If Bober and Marjorie Taylor Greene say, you know, I've lived a certain life.
I don't have to get into the details, right?
I've experienced a certain life.
You need to make this transparent.
You know what I'm talking about, right?
I feel like those two have every right to ask for maximum transparency no matter who the victim is or no matter who gets hurt.
I think they deserve maximum transparency.
Now, Thomas Massey also wants the maximum transparency, so he's part of that.
And he's got his own drama with Trump.
Trump wants to primary him, not just for this, but for not voting for the same side as much as he should, according to Trump.
So that's the setup.
The setup is it's getting some Republicans to be mad at other Republicans.
If you find a way to be mad at Boeber or MTG over this, you should check your work.
You have to let them just experience this and act on it the way they feel best.
Just stay out of it.
They have the right to go hard on this, and they are.
But there are all kinds of twists and turns.
So what's new is, I guess I found some new emails that include a journalist who's an anti-Trump, well-known anti-Trump journalist, Wolf is his name.
W-O-L-F-F.
Is it Michael Wolf?
And he's written anti-Trump books, and he's been on TV doing anti-Trump interviews for years and years and years.
And then there's allegedly something from one of the victims, which we believe is Virginia Guilfray, who allegedly, according to one of the emails, spent hours with Trump.
Now let's look at some of these accusations individually.
How credible are they?
How credible are the accusations if they involve Epstein, this journalist Wolf, and then one of the victims, Virginia Gilfray, who is not only deceased, tragically, but also was famous for having accused, what's the name?
She's made an accusation of Dershowitz that she later completely reversed and said, oh, I just had you confused with somebody.
Now, I, of course, will never know what is true or what is false of any of the Epstein stuff.
But what we can say, if somebody is known and admits that they once made an accusation that they later completely reversed, wouldn't it be fair to say that person has no credibility, even if it's true?
They don't have credibility because they've told a story and they've reversed it once.
So you can't trust that person.
So you've got one person who, sadly, is a victim, of course.
So she's a victim first.
But there's no reason to believe anything that she said about anything.
And I guess the accusation is that one of the victims, which we believe is this Virginia, but we don't know for sure, may have spent a few hours with Trump.
What does that mean?
What does it mean that they spent a few hours together?
There's no accusation that they were doing anything naughty.
And indeed, she has said in public, before she passed, she said that he never did anything, that Trump was never even accused by her of doing anything inappropriate.
So what would it mean that they spend several hours together?
Well, I don't know the answer to the question, but one of the ways that these hoaxes get created is if the audience can't understand what other explanation there would be.
So when you hear, well, Trump might have spent hours with this underage female in some context, where does your brain automatically go?
It automatically goes to the worst case scenario.
Fly his back.
But, and that's how the hoaxes work.
If you can't even imagine, what would be another reason that those two would spend time together?
So I'm just going to give you an easy, obvious, alternative explanation.
Doesn't mean it's true.
I'm just demonstrating that it would be easy to imagine something that would be hard to imagine.
Once you hear it once, I'm going to tell you what it is, you'll just always be able to imagine it.
All right?
Epstein had a private plane.
We know that people like Trump and other people sometimes took his private plane to go where they were going to go anyway.
So it was just sort of a convenience, something rich people do.
Hey, take my plane.
It is not uncommon, and I know this from actual experience, that if you're going to take somebody's private plane somewhere, often there's someone else who needs to go there at the same time.
And somebody will say, do you mind if somebody else is on the plane?
This is literally something that happened to me.
Do you mind if somebody else is on the plane?
Of course not.
It's not even my plane.
Of course.
What would happen if Trump said, can I take your plane?
You know, mine's being serviced.
Do you mind if I take your plane to New Jersey?
Imagine Epstein says yes.
And then an hour later, Virginia Gilfrey comes and says, I need to visit my sister in New York or something.
Can I take the plane?
And then Epstein would say, oh, yeah, Trump's going to be taking the plane to New Jersey.
We'll just pick an airport that's right for both of you, and you can take the plane.
Now, imagine that both of them are on the private plane, and Trump's just minding his own business or he's with whoever he's with, and she's just another passenger on the plane.
And it's a several hour plane trip.
Would they talk?
Probably.
Would it be a scandal if he chatted with somebody else who happened to be on the plane for completely innocent reasons or just going to the same-ish destination?
There would be no problem with that at all.
He would just be friendly like he always is and just talking to who's on the plane.
Now, I'm not claiming that that's what happened.
But can't you so easily imagine that they would spend time together that neither of them planned to do because they were just sort of in that little universe and maybe the plane was a convenience, et cetera?
So the first thing you need to know is that if you're missing all the details of who the person is and why they spend time and what they were doing together, it's not really a story.
The most basic things you would need to know to know if there's a problem are missing from the story.
Is he accused of doing anything?
No.
Was there a perfectly good alternative reason for why they were talking?
Probably.
All right, the other thing, let's see, what else is the new accusation?
I guess somewhere Michael Wolf suggested to Epstein that they blackmail Trump.
So if you wondered, is Wolf a dependable, nice guy?
He's literally, in writing, suggested that Epstein use leverage against Trump based on, I don't know, something that Trump knew or did.
And then there's an accusation that Trump knew about some bad behavior.
But the bad behavior that he allegedly knew about is not specified.
So what are we talking about?
So there was something about women.
So we know the domain has something about women, which might mean underage.
And apparently Trump was complaining about something that Epstein was doing with females.
And they were going to try to use that against them somehow.
Now, what exactly is the crime there?
It depends how much he knew, right?
It also makes me wonder, where does your responsibility begin if you heard a rumor, but you don't know for sure?
Have you ever thought about that?
I remember once, many years ago, there was somebody I worked with who started suspecting their own husband of being a serial killer.
Like actually a literal one and a specific one who had killed some children.
And she actually had some suspicion based on some items that she found in the house or something that he was the one who had killed the children.
Now, what was her responsibility?
It's her husband, and she has no proof, but she has sort of these suggestive little things that make her think, huh, I can't really rule out that my husband might be the serial killer.
Now, is it her responsibility to turn in her husband?
Because he might be.
He might be a serial killer.
I don't know.
Now, let's take that same thinking to Trump.
Suppose people had said to Trump, and I'm sure there were whispers, you know, you better watch out for this guy.
He likes him too young.
Well, what's that mean?
Does that mean he's having sex with them too young?
Or that he's just spending too much time with people who are too young?
Or that he's trafficking in them?
Suppose you didn't know what that meant.
But somebody had told you, somebody credible, had told you, you know, watch out for that guy.
There's something in that domain.
We don't know the specifics, but he's doing something in that domain that you want to stay away from.
Let's say that's all Trump knew.
Would he have a responsibility to do what?
Turn him into authorities?
Or should he just ban him from his own operation, which apparently he did, so that it's not his problem.
What do you think?
So that's a real question.
Because I don't think there's any sort of standard for when you have enough suspicion to publicly blame somebody of being a pedophile.
Like, that's got to be right at the top of the list of you better have some real good proof before that comes out of your mouth.
If I seem perched, it's because one of my meds makes me dehydrated.
Anyway, so if you look at the things that Trump is being accused of with these new emails, they're sort of a lot of nothing.
But the Democrats can make it sound like something.
And it does make you wonder, is it a coincidence that this pops up right around the time that Trump seems to have this victory with opening the government and things seem to be going his way?
And then, oh, suddenly, suddenly there's baseless accusations and hoaxes again.
A surprise.
All right.
So I would say if you didn't know that Michael Wolf is an anti-Trumper who is in favor of blackmail, according to the emails, and hung around with Jeffrey Epstein, shouldn't that be enough to not trust him?
And the other person who would know enough has passed away.
So and Byron York had a similar observation.
He said on X, perhaps the most interesting news on the Epstein releases today is that anti-Trump author Michael Wolf was an Epstein advisor and strategist.
So as much as Michael Wolf might want to use this situation to schmear Trump reputationally, how do you get past being Epstein's advisor and strategist?
How do you explain that away?
How do you put that on your Wikipedia page?
I don't know.
I feel like Wolf is not going to come out of this very well.
All right.
So I'm going to frame this.
I'm going to reframe this, okay?
I would say that the new information, the new emails, do not have legal weight.
In other words, there's nothing there that would trigger any kind of a legal process.
They do not have legal weight.
What they do have is gossip weight, meaning that they will trigger gossip and they will trigger hoaxes and they will trigger false beliefs and everything else.
So this is a gossip-level story.
It's not a Department of Justice level story.
This is gossip level.
And once you realize it's gossip level and you realize that the timing is kind of convenient, you know, takes a little of the glow off of Trump's recent successes, now you can sort of see it in its proper context.
I don't know if you noticed that the story seemed to have been ignored by the right-leaning media this morning.
So when I first turned on the news, I saw CNN and they were talking about Epstein.
I thought, oh my goodness, there's another Epstein thing.
So since I prefer my news from other sources, although I like sampling CNN, they're doing a better job lately.
I jump over to Fox News because I'm thinking, well, obviously, you know, they're going to have to cover this as a big story.
And it wasn't.
I'm sure they talked about it before and after.
But did anybody notice that the bubbles formed?
And I would think that a whole lot of pro-Trump people realized that if they had given this actual weight or credibility, that Trump would come after them so hard.
It would be a big mistake.
So it could be that we're seeing a signal that Trump has now so much influence over the right-leaning media that they completely stayed away from the ticking time bomb of another Epstein story.
And by the way, it doesn't seem like it's higher than gossip level.
So, you know, you can understand why they would de-emphasize something that's only gossip level.
But the left will be all over it.
Thomas Massey is all over it.
You can see why Thomas Massey and Trump will probably not become friends anytime soon.
Can you imagine being Trump and then seeing a guy pushing this?
Like I say, it's a completely different story when Boebert and MTG push a story about a male potential abuser, accused abuser, convicted abuser.
They have every right.
Like they have every ethical, moral right.
But I don't know what Massey and Trump are going to do in the future.
All right.
Apparently, Trump would have to sign the bill.
This is the funny part.
Don't we assume that no matter what happens, we're not going to see the files?
Because the Senate would have to agree.
I don't know if that's possible.
And then Trump would have to sign it because they don't have enough votes to overcome a presidential veto.
So as long as you know for sure that Trump's going to veto it and you know for sure they don't have votes to get past the veto, I don't think, right?
Am I wrong about that?
Oh, I could be wrong about that.
There's some possibility that the Republicans will just say, all right, screw it.
We can't deal with this every day for the rest of our lives.
We're just going to overcome the veto.
And let's just see what's there.
Now, the real question is, why would Trump want you not to see these files?
That's the thing we most want to know, right?
And unfortunately, there are too many reasons that it could be.
So what are the reasons?
One is that there's something bad in there about him.
That's the obvious one.
But what if the only bad part is that he knew more than you knew he knew about what Epstein was up to?
How much would that bother you?
Let's say he knew more than you knew he knew, but he still didn't know.
Like he didn't have any, he didn't witness anything.
He didn't have any perfect source that he knew was true.
It's just, he just sort of knew.
Because if you're smart and you're worldly and you're around things, you sort of know, right?
So it might be that.
He just doesn't want people to know that a reasonable person could have deduced that there's a bigger problem than maybe was obvious on the surface.
Could it be that it's some kind of Intel connection thing and there's some Intel agency that doesn't want this to come out?
So Trump might be just supporting his CIA or maybe they blackmailed him too.
Could be some foreign intel, could be protecting some foreign leaders, could be protecting Great Britain.
If Prince Andrew has been named as one of the perps, maybe there's more to know about that.
Maybe Great Britain said, here's the deal.
We will die on this hill.
There's no reason to believe they said this.
But could you imagine the conversation that, let's say, the royal family or Great Britain would have with Trump privately, privately, if they knew there was more to come out, let's say with Prince Andrew in particular.
Would they possibly say, look, we will give you anything to not let this out?
You tell us what you need.
You want a better tariff?
You got it.
You want us to fund more of Ukraine so you don't have to?
You got it.
Just do not let this come out.
Is that possible?
Maybe.
I mean, Trump's a deal maker.
If you handed him the leverage to win a bunch of negotiations with Great Britain, you're going to ask about Israel, right?
But so in your own mind, you could throw that in there if you want.
So it could be that Trump knows that if he doesn't give away the secrets, then he gets to use them as his own leverage, which might be, and again, this is just speculation.
I'm just showing you that there's a wide range of what could be behind all this.
Some of it's good, some of it's bad.
We may never know.
But Trump would definitely have an advantage if he was the only one who knew or the only politician who knew what the real situation was and who was involved.
All right.
Let's see what else.
Now this is fun.
Let's see how many of you think this is a complete coincidence.
So does this have anything to do with Epstein?
The next thing I'm going to talk about?
Does it have anything to do with Epstein?
Or is this just total coincidence?
Trump has written a letter to the Israeli president asking him to pardon Netanyahu from what he thinks is a lawfare kind of unjustified prosecution, which has been going on for years.
Washington Examiner is writing about this, Emily Hallis.
And it was a long, well-written letter in which Trump made his argument of why they were treating Netanyahu unfairly.
And a big part of the argument is that Trump and Netanyahu are such a good team that they could accomplish unprecedented things, but not if Netanyahu is in jail.
So a pardon would be a good thing for us, allegedly.
But certainly you would see this as Trump doing a favor, wouldn't you?
It looks like Trump doing a favor for Netanyahu.
Now, he doesn't do favors just to do favors.
Well, that's not true.
Sometimes he does.
He did favors to me just to do a favor.
So there's some reason he's doing it now.
And it could be that the reason is it's just the right time to do it because Gaza is moving forward in a productive way.
Things worked out.
Netanyahu's reputation probably isn't going to get better.
This would be a good time to strike.
But then I was curious, what exactly is he being accused of?
And I'm still not entirely sure, but apparently there were $200,000 worth of what they call extravagant gifts that he accepted while in office, Netanyahu did.
Extravagant gifts.
Now, when Trump talked about the extravagant gifts, he was minimizing it.
And he said, you know, we're talking about champagne and cigars.
And Trump was acting like, you know, come on.
It's basically just quality champagne and cigars and stuff like that.
And we're not talking about giving somebody a pile of cash.
Now, that is very different.
You know, what you would do for a pile of cash would be completely different than what you do for a little extra good champagne.
So the first thing I'd like to know to understand this topic is Netanyahu really being accused of real crimes?
Are these real crimes?
And even if it's a real crime, well, let's say he took, I don't know, some champagne.
Let's say he accepted some of the best cigars in the world.
Do you really care?
Do you really care?
I mean, that's what Trump asked.
Do you care?
I mean, I get how it would be technically illegal, but who cares?
Now, if they gave him a luxury car, well, yeah, I get that.
You know, you should care about that and find out if there was anything they gave in return.
I haven't heard the accusation of that.
But we're flying a little bit blind here in the U.S. because we don't know if the accusations are credible or not.
But the real question is, is it a coincidence that the Epstein stuff popped up the same time as the Israel stuff?
Probably is.
Probably is a coincidence.
All right, here's another persuasion lesson.
Mom Donnie, the new mayor of New York City, he says that he does plan, if he can do it, he wants to speak to President Trump.
And he says, calling his relationship with Trump, quote, critical to the success of the city.
OAN is reporting on this.
Blake Wolf, a different wolf.
A lot of wolves in the news today.
Anyway, so he does, so Mom Dhammi plans to speak with Trump.
And the way he worded it was, quote, if President Trump wants to speak about lowering the cost of living or delivering cheaper groceries like he ran on in 2024, I'm there to have that conversation, Mom Dummy stated.
Now, do you ever hear Republicans use that phrase?
I'm here to have that conversation.
Remember what I said about fight, fight, fight?
If what you're affirming is fight, you get a fight.
If what you're affirming is health, you get health.
If what you're affirming is greatness, you get greatness.
But he's affirming a conversation.
Like, why would you affirm a conversation?
It's like the lowest level of accomplishment.
I'll tell you, I worked all year on this and I got myself a conversation.
I know, I know.
A lot of people would never be able to have a conversation, but I got myself a conversation.
Carl, Carl just won't leave me alone this morning.
So never use the word conversation if you're trying to be a person who gets stuff done.
He started really well, which is Mom Dumi's secret sauce, that he's a good communicator.
So he started out by talking about lowering the cost of living, delivering cheaper groceries, and pointing out that Trump had asked about those same things.
But then he falls into Democrat talk, which is we have to have a conversation about this.
That's a nothing.
That's a nothing.
So we'll see.
Good luck, Mom Dummy.
I'm sure that'll be a great conversation with Trump.
I saw this story today from the history of behavioral sciences.
So you all know what cognitive dissonance is, right?
So cognitive dissonance, most totally well-documented psychological phenomenon.
And it happens when somebody is in a situation where they do something that's sort of counter to who they know they are.
And if you do something that's opposite of who you are, let's say you're a nice person, but you do something cruel, you don't say to yourself, oh, I guess I was wrong.
I guess I'm cruel.
Cognitive dissonance would cause you to redefine that situation in some way that's good for you so that you don't, your ego is not damaged.
So you'd imagine, oh, that's not what's happening.
It's really complicated.
So cognitive dissonance is when you concoct or your brain sort of automatically concocts a story that makes you look good, even if the reality is you shouldn't look good in this story.
But here's the background.
Apparently there was a, that the whole concept of cognitive dissonance was brought about because there was this cult.
So years ago, there was this cult, and I guess they said that the world was going to end at a certain time and then it didn't, 1954.
There was no apocalyptic flood.
So there was a book written that suggested that once they saw that all of their predictions were wrong, instead of saying, oh, I guess we don't know what we're talking about, we're all wrong, that they came up with completely weird cognitive dissonance explanations for why there wasn't a big flood that killed everything.
And that that became like the trigger for understanding that cognitive dissonance is a real thing.
And today I found out that the book was apparently a fraud and that the cult existed.
But when they found out that their prediction didn't work, they did what normal people would do and say, oh, okay, let's do something else.
That didn't work.
Apparently we can't predict the future.
So they were actually the opposite of cognitive dissonance.
They took the new information, oh, I guess our prediction was wrong.
And then they just built a worldview that was based on reality, that they can't predict things.
However, for apparently years, people believed that that cult was the best example of this new thing called cognitive dissonance.
And so it became a well-known psychological phenomenon, which is real.
Cognitive dissonance is real.
But what's funny about it is that the way we learned about it and understood it was fraudulent.
Anyway, according to Reuters, the U.S. Army is going to buy a million drones.
I've told you so many times that the future of warfare is who can get the most and best drones.
So if we can't get ourselves a million drones, mostly I think that we'd make ourselves.
We're not going to be dominant in any way militarily.
And a million might not be enough.
Like the number of drones, that's the right number.
I don't know, because we just have to be way more than anybody else.
So if it turns out that China figures out how to make 10 million drones a year, even if they don't use them, we're going to have to figure out how to make 20 million drones a year.
So we're in the drone-making contest situation.
So we'll see.
And then allegedly, and I don't believe this either, that Russia is signaling some interest in restarting peace talks.
Do you believe that?
The Washington Times is reporting this.
Now, I don't know exactly how they know if Russia is serious about any of this.
It doesn't seem like something that we could know for sure.
But it's possible that since both sides are just slamming each other with drones and missiles, that neither of them wants to go through the winter.
So it could be that Putin is aware that even if he's winning, and a lot of smart people say, oh, Russia is definitely winning.
It's a war of attrition.
I feel like the war of attrition is over, and that now we're in the war of robots.
It's almost like a second war.
So you could almost argue that the Ukrainians lost the first war.
So they lost the one that depends on humans dying less than the other side.
They just lost that.
But in the meantime, they had built up a robot army that they have not lost.
So I think two things can be true: that Russia has the big advantage in human capital that they're using up.
At the same time, that it might not be a human war anymore.
It might be just a robot war.
That's what it looks like.
But I would not be surprised if both the Russians and the Ukrainians are a little bit panicked because both of them are going to turn the lights off on the other.
And winter is coming.
And I don't know if you can turn on that many lights.
Somebody said that Ukraine can survive a power antage better because they have so many trees.
And they can just burn firewood and have fireplaces and stuff.
I don't know if that's enough, but it'd be better than if you couldn't.
So it's entirely possible that Putin is a little worried about getting through the winter because Ukraine is going to make it very cold for a lot of Russians.
And he knows that.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is all I had to talk about today.
I nailed it.
It's exactly the top of the hour.
How do I do it?
And Carl the Fly would like to thank you for joining in.
He is my new sidekick.
I believe he'll be dead by tomorrow.
I'm not sure I'll be alive tomorrow, but Carl the Fly and I will be back.
I'm going to say some words privately to my beloved members of locals.
And you can say hi to Carl too.
I'm sure he wants to talk to you.
Free Carl.
Free Carl.
Free Carl the Fly.
Oh, my God, Carl.
Get off my forehead.
Oh, get off my head.
Carl.
All right.
I'm going to have to hire a staff member just to keep that fly off my head.
