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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
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Well, that won't happen to you because you can only buy this calendar at Amazon.
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You knew it.
You knew it.
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Well, let's jump into the news.
It'll be so good.
Did you know?
So this is so Trump.
Trump's going to his helicopter, I think he was.
And one of the reporters asked him if he would reconcile with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, the same way he did with Elon Musk.
What do you think he said?
Well, he said, sure, why not?
I get along with everybody.
Is that the perfect answer?
I get along with everybody.
Because you want to argue with them, right?
You're like, you don't get along with everybody.
What about, what about, oh, okay, well, I guess you do kind of get along with them.
But what about, what about?
So first of all, it makes your hair catch on fire if you don't think it's factually true.
But it's close enough to be factually true that, you know, I will allow it.
But I love the fact that he has created this persona for himself where he can absolutely maul somebody in public, verbally, and then five minutes later he can say, yeah, why don't you come on over?
We'll have dinner.
We'll be best friends.
And that everybody goes, oh, okay, I get it.
It's part of the show.
It's just part of the show.
Once you realize it's part of the show, you can just lean back and enjoy it the way it was meant to be.
So yes, do we want Trump to dislike Marjorie Taylor Greene?
No, we want her to be a productive part of society, a patriot.
Would you not want her on your team?
Think about it.
Now, I get that she disagrees with you on some policy stuff, right?
Or maybe she doesn't.
But you wouldn't want her on your team.
Think about it.
If you were picking teams for anything, you wouldn't want her on your team?
Yeah, of course you would.
So would he.
So he plays it just right in the way that Trump can.
So hurricane season is winding down and Axios is reminding us that there have been how many named hurricanes have made landfall in the US and the mainland anyway.
How many hurricanes this year do you know the number?
The answer is zero.
Now there usually aren't that many.
You know, like a normal year it might be two, but we're talking about two major storms that would cost billions of dollars.
This year, none.
Do you think that all the news is talking about is how climate crisis has been avoided and maybe it was never real in the first place?
No, that's not going to happen right away.
But we're heading in that direction.
I will tell you again how to run the entire country.
You ready?
If you wanted to take charge of the whole country and you didn't have an elected position, you're not a billionaire, you just want to figure out some clever way where you, and I mean you, like specifically you, could take over the whole country.
There is a way to do that.
And this hurricane situation reminded me of it.
I've talked about this before.
In the corporate world, the way we think of things is that there's a line of executives and somebody reports to somebody reports to somebody.
So if you see one of those executives giving a PowerPoint slideshow to maybe that executive's boss, you think to yourself, well, that executive giving the presentation is in charge of that domain and is giving a presentation to someone who's in charge of him, you know, because he's got to get approval or something.
So it looks to you like the normal corporate structure is working the way you think.
However, having worked in the corporate world and having put together quite a number of slides for other executives or just executives, here's something I learned that everyone who's been in that same position probably learned the same way.
Whoever comes up with the best slide, or you could replace slide with idea or framework or reframe or way to look at something or relevant data, this will all be the same for my purpose.
That person's actually in charge.
Let me plump this out a little bit and you'll see what I'm talking about.
If I wanted to run the world and wasn't already, I'll just let that sit there for a while.
If I weren't already, the way I'd do it is I would try to figure out what the top 10 climate variables are that people would agree, all right, if that's changing, there must be a problem with climate and humans behind it.
And I would get the top 10, and then I would create an ongoing, what do you call it, a dashboard, a dashboard.
So that's sort of a corporate talk.
A dashboard would be usually one page on a screen that very quickly tells you some set of information that makes sense together.
So I would say, all right, let's figure out the 10 things you should look at for climate change.
And hurricanes would be one of them.
But you'd also have the temperatures.
You'd have the water level at certain places.
So I don't even know if they're 10.
Maybe they're five, but I think they're at least 10.
So you'd have, so you would be the one who pulls together this dashboard, and then you just put it on X. What would happen?
If you did a good job, what would happen?
People would pass it around and they would say, whoa, I'm smarter now, because I know that these 10 things are important.
I know the order in which they're important because you would also rank them from which one's the most predictive, right?
Maybe which one is the most dangerous, but most predictive as well.
And then if you did a good job, people would want to bookmark it and they would ask you to update it when there's new information and it would take on a life of its own almost immediately.
Do you know why you could totally disrupt this mature science area without actually having any science background?
Do you know why that would be so easy?
Because no one else is trying.
There's no one even trying.
Do you know of anybody who put together the a really easy to read?
Everybody agrees, yeah, these 10 things are the things we should be watching.
No.
And part of the reason that nobody's doing it is that the people who have access to it, the information that would make that dashboard, are probably not getting the results that they wanted to get.
So if they were a little bit more, let's say, capable at describing what's actually happening in the world, their capability would destroy their own industry because they would end up proving that maybe you didn't have to worry so much about this stuff.
But since I'm not a climate scientist, I would not be bound by that.
I could just tell you what you need to know as best I could do it.
So I'd just start publishing it.
Then what happened when it started working?
What happens when people start recognizing, all right, we need an update on this climate story?
No matter what the story is, wouldn't it make sense to have the climate dashboard referenced as just part of the story?
Could be a story about the coral reefs, but also, let me show you the dashboard.
Could be a story about the hurricanes.
But, you know, proper context, let me show you the console.
So once you did this for climate, you don't think people would ask for it for crime?
You don't think people would ask for it for other big topics?
They would.
And if you were the one who could do it best and had a reputation for being a straight shooter, pretty soon you would be the one who decides what information is relevant to this domain and what isn't.
You might be right, you might be wrong, but it's not objective.
There would be a lot of subjectivity in deciding what's even on the list.
And then there'd be a lot of subjectivity in deciding how to measure it properly, etc.
And that would be enough subjectivity, I say, that it would put you essentially in control of the entire domain.
Nobody would necessarily know it.
They would just think that you were a useful person who had something to say about the data.
But you would actually be running the whole show because you would determine what data anybody saw.
And if you became credible, they'd kind of have to reference your data every single time they did anything important in that domain.
So that's how you do it, people.
You become the PowerPoint slide expert.
And if you become known as the only person who can describe this complicated thing in a very transportable, viral way, you're going to run the whole show.
There you go.
I wonder if there's any backward science.
Oh, here we go.
Cambridge University Press found that there's a study that watching less TV could cut your depression risk by up to 43%.
Does that make sense to you?
Sort of.
Yeah, you could see how watching less TV would.
Oh, no, you don't.
No, it's backwards.
What do you do when you're depressed?
You watch more TV.
Do you know why?
Well, part of being depressed is you didn't have an awesome thing to be doing instead.
Would you be depressed if, let's say, I don't know, the president invited you to the Oval Office?
No, you'd be all excited.
You'd be excited.
Watching TV is sort of the default.
I got nothing going on in my life.
I might as well turn on the TV, see if there's a game.
No.
So it might also be true that watching TV makes you a little more depressed, but I guarantee you that being depressed is going to make you reach for that clicker faster than not being depressed.
All right.
I can't remember how much or if I talked about this before, but I'm sure I did.
So this is from a story back in April and the New York Post.
I saw the New York Post talking about it today.
And it was Bill Maher who was talking about way back in April when his friend and I guess Hollywood partner, Larry David, not partner, but another person who works in the entertainment industry.
So Larry David was not happy when Bill Maher went to dinner with Trump.
And so Larry David wrote a humorous piece, an op-ed, about my dinner with Adolph.
So he did a funny piece mocking, essentially mocking Bill Maher for imagining that there was a good reason to ever have dinner with Hitler, meaning that he was calling Trump Hitler.
What did Bill Maher say about this now that he's had several months to marinate on this situation?
He said that Larry David was being dumb and unhelpful.
Dumb and unhelpful.
And then Bill Maher went on to do what he's been doing lately, which is explain that you should always talk to people.
And what Trump does, and the example with Marjorie Taylor Greene is a perfect example.
What Trump does is that.
He's willing to talk to everybody.
And Bill Maher is now a complete, complete convert, maybe he always was, to you can talk to anybody you want.
And we're better off if we talk than if we don't talk.
Now, you can imagine I'm 100% in agreement with Bill Maher.
However, there was a specific quote that apparently Bill Maher used when he talked to Piers Morgan at about the same time as the, you know, he was talking about the dinner with Trump.
Listen to this quote.
Quote, but I think the minute you play the Hitler card, you've lost the argument.
Now, he was talking about the op-ed by Larry David.
I think the minute you play the Hitler card, you've lost the argument.
What does that sound like?
How many of you remember my debate, but it wasn't really a debate, with Sam Harris at around 2016 that became super viral.
Now, probably just about every one of you heard it, right?
Did you hear me say that at the beginning of the debate?
Because I think it was like 60 seconds into my talking to Sam Harris, probably a minute.
Of course, I'm remembering it, so I may be remembering it wrong.
He brought up Hitler, compared Trump to Hitler, and I said, We're done here.
I said some version of basically, you know, that's the end of the debate.
Whoever brings up Hitler, you just lost.
And then years go by, because that was probably back in 2016 or so.
Now, remember, I keep telling you that what defines, not defines, but a difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats try to tell you what to think.
You know, this is moral, this is immoral, this is right, this is wrong.
And Republicans try to tell you how to think.
Which one is Bill Maher doing in this example?
Where he says, the minute you play the Hitler card, you've lost the argument.
That's telling you how to think.
That's not telling you what to think.
So you can see the transition, right?
And when he looks at Larry David, Larry David's just Hitler, no Hitler.
Hitler, no Hitler.
Doesn't that just seem stupid?
I mean, that's basically what Bill Maher was saying.
It just looks stupid.
Yeah.
So this is also what Bill Maher said on the same topic.
And he said, and also, I must say, you know, come on, man, Hitler, Nazis, nobody has been harder about and on and more prescient, I must say, about Donald Trump than me, Bill Maher says.
I don't need to be lectured on who Donald Trump is.
Just the fact that I met him in person didn't change that.
And the fact that I reported honestly is not a sin either.
So what is it when he says met him in person and reported honestly on it?
That's process.
Again, he's totally right on process.
So watching Bill Maher try to navigate this situation and try to get a foot in both worlds is really fascinating.
And I give him a lot of credit because it's a pretty rocky road.
You know, having been down that road in a more extreme version myself and finding out what happens when you say anything positive about the way Trump does business, I know how tough that is.
And he's going through, he's taking on some water.
I guarantee it.
This is not easy.
So I'm going to, in the past, you've seen me sometimes say some good things about Bill and sometimes be critical.
Today I'm going to be completely supportive, not of his opinions.
He's allowed to have different opinions, but of his apparent focus and how he's essentially training his audience, the way I'm trying to train mine, into how to approach a problem and not so much what the answer is.
The answer is up to you.
But how to approach it?
Well, you want to do that right, right?
All right.
Well, along those lines, and I've often said, this is sort of a related topic, that having Elon Musk on what I would call the common sense side of things, I wouldn't call him Republican or anything like that, but he's squarely on the common sense side of things.
And I was thinking today how many things Elon Musk has changed and how in the process of that, he's also teaching us how to think and how to act.
He's kind of teaching us how to be engineers, not the actual skill of engineering, but how an engineer would approach a problem.
Have any of you noticed that?
That if you simply watch how Elon Musk approaches any problem, and I would argue that maybe the all-in-pod guys, they do the same thing.
If you simply observe them over time, you learn how to approach problems.
And you would say to yourself, oh, that's like that time, I don't know Shamath did this or that, or it's like the time that Elon did this or that.
And then you can take that model and build it, put it into your own world.
Tremendously valuable.
But on top of that, I saw that RFK Jr. was saying at some event that he believes that Elon Musk rescued free speech by buying what was Twitter.
Would you agree with that statement that he rescued free speech by buying Twitter?
I think so.
I think that's completely fair.
That would put him, if you buy that as a true statement, and I do, that would put Elon in the founding fathers category.
Like without, you know, the time, of course, is different, but that would put him squarely right in the middle of saving the republic.
And I think he gets complete credit for that.
But back to my overarching theme, he didn't just say free speech is good.
Hey, everybody, why don't you practice some free speech?
Nope.
He showed you how to get it.
He showed you how to get there.
Sometimes you got to buy the company.
Now he could do it.
You couldn't.
But he showed you how to rescue free speech.
And in this case, he did it through a, I guess I'd call it a free market approach.
And so you can learn that if you use the free market appropriately, you can get to where you want to get, which is free speech, in a way that teaches people how to think.
Hey, the only way you're going to have real free speech is if there's a free market platform that lets you say what you need to say without getting canceled.
And then he proved it by building that platform, you know, modifying a platform.
Then that's just the beginning.
He was talking today about his chip design, that Tesla would be the biggest chip designer in the world in a fairly short period of time.
He's also taught you how to start companies at some kind of record speed that we've never seen before.
And now he's decided that Tesla has to be the big, let's get rid of a counterbalance.
Counterbalance, you're going to disappear from, I think you're on the YouTube platform.
But that's the second time I've seen that comment.
So you're going to disappear now.
Maybe today, but we're going to get you.
So this is just, you know, a little one small part of what Musk and Tesla are doing.
But he'll probably teach you that America can build chips.
So you're going to learn a whole bunch about manufacturing and chip design and all that just because he's doing it and he's transparent about how he's doing it.
Then there's the, I saw a clip, I think he was on Joe Rogan talking about the economics of homelessness.
And a lot of people don't understand that homelessness isn't so much just about giving people homes.
They wouldn't want to live in those homes if you gave them to them because they're mentally insane or they're on drugs or whatever else.
And he also pointed out, and I didn't know this, that the economics of homelessness in California is that there's this whole industry of people get paid to take care of the homeless as long as they don't solve their problem.
If they solved their problem and these people were no longer homeless, which is sort of undoable, then they wouldn't get there collectively a million dollars a year to keep the people alive but homeless.
So if you followed the money, you would completely understand why there's so much homelessness, and that would be a way to think about it, wouldn't it?
It's not the answer.
It's a way to think about it.
So if you change from, hey, if only we give these people homes, you know, then they would be on their way.
They could do the rest.
That way of thinking is a complete failure because it doesn't recognize that the whole industry is propped up by people trying to steal your taxpayer money and give you nothing in return.
Once Elon explains that we're trapped in this little system where the people who are running it are making a lot of money, as long as they don't solve the problem, then everything makes sense, doesn't it?
Now, that doesn't mean that we immediately have a solution, but at least you'd be solving the right problem, right?
That's a big difference when you see the problem clearly, as Elon explains it to us.
Then I saw Elon talking about how only the interesting simulations, because he believes that we're part of a simulation, as do I, that reality is a simulation.
He points out that only the interesting simulations would survive.
And then he gives the reason, because if we had a boring simulation, we'd stop doing it because it wouldn't be doing anything for us.
It'd just boring us.
So the interesting ones are the only ones that can survive.
And therefore, it's logical to assume that they're the only ones that do.
And I've got a version of this.
So this is part of his explanation of why the world seems so interesting, I think, or why you could predict something based on how interesting it is.
I have a version of that, but it's different, which is I believe that reality follows the three-act movie form.
Now, that's something I've been saying since 2015, I think.
And here's why I think it follows a three-act movie form.
It's because we've all been trained in the three-act form.
If we had not been trained in it, I don't know that it would happen.
But you take a bunch of human beings and you put them in a situation, let's say Trump is nearly jailed and impeached.
That would be a classic movie third act where, okay, there's no way he can get away from that.
And then if I said, but what would it look like if it were a movie?
And we would all have the same answer, which is, well, he would somehow not go to jail.
Somehow the impeachment wouldn't take hold.
And somehow he would win re-election because that would be the most satisfying movie.
Sure enough.
Sure enough, that's what happened.
Now, I think that we live in a simulation and our expectations collapse reality.
And so if enough of us are simply expecting things to go a certain way, that it actually collapses reality in that direction.
Now, I wouldn't bet my life on it that my interpretation is correct, but just so you know.
So also, I've noted that, you know how we all understand NGOs now?
We didn't know what an NGO was a couple years ago, and that's because of Elon Musk, and it's because of Doge.
And Doge even exists only because of Musk, the concept of Doge, which has taken root in the government.
So if you look at all the things that just Elon has done, there's the one I've mentioned, and of course, Mike Benz is a champion of the NGO explainer class, but I don't know if you'd even know about it without Elon Musk.
But let's see, I think that Elon Musk is the most important person in the climate crisis conversation because he can basically describe a world where you use solar power to get everything you want.
They might be solar panels in space, but he already told you how to do it.
We have all the technology we need to put solar panels in space and have all the energy we want, and he can show you how.
He's got the Neuralink, the interplanetary travel.
He's figured out how to get around our energy shortage.
He talks about how the robots will be free doctors, so he's solving healthcare.
He's giving America dominance in the most important industries, right?
You want to live in the country that is dominant in the most important industries.
Well, he gives us that.
We're dominant in the most important industries.
half of that is him uh you get the star link and then that but i think that all of these have one thing in common that can't be underestimated if you If you look at the collective work that Musk does and how he's good at explaining to us why he's doing it, why it's good for the world, how he does it, he's teaching us how to think.
Now, how many of you have felt that?
Like you actually feel that?
Oh, he's not just teaching us about his company, although he's doing that too.
He's teaching us how to think about these situations and then apply some kind of an engineering framework to it, which usually ends up to be the right one.
All right.
Jumping to a new topic, we might pop back to that.
I think it was Hakeem Jeffries who said that Obamacare will be unaffordable to a great number of people by the end of the year.
How did it ever, where does all the money go?
Have you ever wondered that?
Like, it seems to me that the healthcare situation must necessarily be a gigantic fraud environment.
Because if you told me that healthcare costs would go up 10% because of this or that, I would say some version of, well, I guess the price of everything goes up.
Inflation's bad.
You know, I wish I didn't go up 10%.
But when you start talking about doubling, all right?
We're talking about like doubling and stuff for some people.
Isn't that always fraud?
That's just too much.
Like your instinct says, I'm pretty sure that the entire problem is fraud.
Now, I'm going to give you a little update.
Yesterday I had to get a catheter removed because it was infected and blah, blah, blah, blah.
So I ended up in the emergency room most of yesterday.
I probably Came in contact with 20 people, and maybe one of them did something that I needed.
An unbelievable amount of, I don't know, if all you did was look at the number of people who asked me my name and my birthday once you get into the emergency room, unbelievably inefficient.
And I'm not mocking my specific healthcare provider.
This just looks like what we've sort of evolved into an insanely, insanely over something.
Like, I can't believe that if you started from scratch, you would build anything like that.
Now, fortunately, I spend a great amount of money every month so that when it's Friday night, I can talk to a doctor.
How do you think that went?
Do you think I can find a doctor to talk to on a Friday night?
No.
And if you find that doctor to talk to within my healthcare system, what will that doctor tell me to do?
And it almost doesn't matter what the problem is.
They'll tell you to go to the emergency room because there's nothing the doctor can do for you.
So I have this weird healthcare situation where for reasons I don't understand, I only get really bad problems on weekends.
Do you have that too?
You only get really sick or hurt on weekends.
And then there's nobody whose job it is to take care of you.
You have to go to the emergency room.
So it's an hour to the emergency room.
It's three hours waiting to see somebody.
Then maybe I think they lost us twice, lost us twice.
So I probably spent an extra, I don't know, half an hour at the start and an extra hour at the end because they literally didn't know what room we were in.
So I did get everything taken care of.
So instead of being in screaming pain every day, which I had been for a month, I've got a new catheter in and it doesn't hurt.
It's much better.
So anyway, if you spend any time in our healthcare system, you would say to yourself, this is not a problem of reducing costs by 10%.
This entire thing has to be rethought.
And I would like an AI doctor who just followed me around and did the stuff that my healthcare provider wouldn't do.
And then, by the way, there's always a variety of things which you know need to be done, but whoever you're talking to isn't allowed to do it.
It's like, yeah, I know you need that, but I can't do that.
You're going to have to talk to a doctor.
And you talk to a doctor and the doctor says, yeah, you probably do need that, but I can't do that.
You have to talk to a specialist.
Right?
That's healthcare in America 2025.
Anyway, I will tell you that Kaiser's doing, they're trying very hard to make sure I don't die because that would be bad for business.
That would be very bad for business.
What is that about?
I don't know.
Apparently, according to Newsmax, Meta, the company Meta, several years ago, they did a study in 2020 to find out if using their product, using Facebook and Instagram, if that caused any harm to people.
And guess what they found?
Yes, yes, it does.
Apparently, using their products causes a lot of harm.
And that if you deactivated Facebook and Instagram, you would be mentally healthier.
What do you think they did when they found out that their product was injuring the country?
Did they say, oh no, we're going to have to discontinue this product?
No, they discontinued the study.
You already knew where that was going.
They discontinued the study.
So Meta called off further work on that.
So apparently they've been busted for that.
Newsmax has that story.
Are you watching?
Are you following the story about Attorney General Letitia James?
And so now she's the one who law-fared Trump, but now she's being law-fared in essentially exactly the same way.
People would argue whether it's the same way, but it's the same way.
How much are you enjoying that?
I'm having a little problem that I'm enjoying it too much because I've never seen anybody deserve what they're getting as much as she deserves what she's getting because it's so precise.
The fact that it's, if it were some just random bad thing happening to her, I don't think I'd be feeling the same.
It's the fact that she's being charged with the same crime that typically nobody would be charged with, but she went after Trump with it.
Man, if you go after my guy, if you go after my guy and it doesn't work out for you, he's going to come for you.
That's one of the reasons he's my guy.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, he's going to come for you.
And he's coming.
And if you also feel like this is too heavy-handed, you know, for the president to be coming after Letitia James, a mere attorney general, just think about this.
I'm going to give you something to think about that will make you happy that her life is not going well at the moment.
It goes like this.
For how many months did Melania and Barron have to wonder if they'd be visiting their husband/slash father in prison for the rest of his life?
Imagine waking up with that in your head.
Like, if you're just watching it on the news, you don't quite appreciate how awful this must have been.
Now, the Trumps are unusually good at being stoic and kind of acting like, you know, I'll get through this.
You know, this is my problem.
Don't worry about it.
I got this.
So they're really good at that.
And they're really good at it in this case.
The fact that we didn't hear any of them complaining about the fact they had to live in a world they had to live in a reality where the key person in their family might be in jail anytime now.
That must have been awful.
Like just imagining it, every time you woke up, it's like, oh, a year from now, am I going to have to get up and put on my makeup and drive to a prison?
Is that actually going to happen to me?
And it almost did.
It almost did.
And now that feta has been returned to Letitia James, who probably has to wake up every day and wonder what things look like a year from now if she gets convicted.
Now, probably there's no jail, but the conviction is going to be plenty bad if she gets it.
Well, according to the Center Square, Andrew Rice is writing, that California loses one taxpayer per minute and Florida gains a taxpayer every two minutes.
Does that sound true?
Do you believe that California is losing a taxpayer every minute while Florida is gaining two?
Well, let me tell you something also from my perspective as the guy who used to make the PowerPoint slides, as I said earlier.
This is not the sort of thing anybody can really measure.
I would not believe the accuracy of these numbers at all.
Now, could it be true?
Yeah, it could be.
It could totally be true.
Do you think that any of us could really measure that in a way that you'd feel comfortable you'd measured it correctly?
Nah.
No.
This is a classic.
I'm going to make a story.
Nobody's going to ask too many questions.
Sounds right.
And since it sounds right, people will assume it is right.
But I'm here to tell you that's not the sort of thing that anybody can actually accurately measure.
Apparently, the Texas Governor Abbott, according to Center Square also, he wants to issue some directives to make, I think he's trying to make what do you call that?
Sharia law illegal in Texas.
What do you think?
Do you think Sharia law, the Islamic version of a justice system, do you think that that should be made illegal?
Or is it good enough that we live in a system where that's not your system?
Well, I liked the instinct to make it illegal because you don't want to play with, you know, you've got two systems.
You know, they're about equally good.
Why don't we use this one sometimes and this one another time?
No, no.
You've got to nip that in the bud.
You've got to get that early.
You cannot allow that to progress to, oh, we got two systems.
Why do we always have to use the one?
How many people do we have in the state that would like that other system?
Well, look at that.
Look at all those people who would be happy to use that other system.
We'll just use it a little bit.
We won't use the whole thing.
We'll just take a bite out of it.
No.
How about no?
Hard no.
No, no, no.
None.
You can't start mixing those systems.
It doesn't mix.
You got to commit.
So I think Texas has the right instinct there.
I saw an article that didn't seem like it would be relevant to the United States, but now I'm thinking maybe it is.
So apparently Poland, which is doing well sort of in general, it's one of those countries that has not been, let's say, too impacted by immigration because they've been tough on migrants.
But even they are running out of money.
So apparently they're trying to give $100 million to Ukraine, to Zelensky, but at the same time, they don't have enough money for some, I don't know, $100 billion Polish hospital somebody's complaining.
And their budget is under, it's under duress as well.
And I'm thinking to myself, is every large everything fraud?
Because I'm starting to think it is.
You know, when you look at the $37 trillion deficit, I think it's $38 now.
How in the world do you get to $38 trillion unless you're stealing as fast as you can?
Does that look like somebody just ran the numbers wrong?
It's like, oh, here's the budget.
All right, great.
How close are we to balancing?
Wait, what?
We're off by 3 trillion in one year?
We're off by 3 trillion.
Can you even tell me how you could spend $3 trillion above the baseline?
Now, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not a lot.
We are talking about trillions, trillions of dollars that somehow we accidentally overspent.
I don't believe it.
I just believe that everything big that's got that $100 million or more, maybe $10 million more, I think it's all fraud.
And I think it's all fraud for the same reason across all the domains.
Do you know what the reason is?
You can get away with it.
We somehow have a political and financial system where whoever gets to allocate the funds and whoever gets to be the mayor and whoever gets to be in charge of whatever, they can apparently really easily hide a trillion dollars and just keep it or launder it or something.
But it's very much looking to me like 100% of our system is corrupt and all for the same reason because we don't have any transparency.
And the people in charge over time, you get people in charge who are willing to steal it because it's stealable.
And they just notice.
And so they do.
On the same point, Remix is writing that almost every German city is now on the verge of bankruptcy.
Almost every German city.
Do you think that Germans don't know how to do a spreadsheet?
Do you?
How in the world could all the Germans miss the budget?
All the Germans.
Have you heard of Germany?
Have you heard of Germans?
You know, by pure chance, a few Germans would hit the budget.
Do you think that Germans want to have a balanced budget?
Yeah, they do.
I'll bet the Germans want to have a balanced budget more than just about anybody, except maybe Japan.
And I'm talking culturally.
Do you think Germans want to be overspending their budget?
I don't think so.
And yet every single, every single one, almost, everyone, did in fact do it.
How do you explain that except corruption and fraud?
I don't have a way to do it.
I think it's literally just corruption and fraud.
That's what I think.
Anyway, there's some whispers, the Daily Express, U.S. is writing about this, that the U.S. is preparing or getting closer to every moment some kind of a military operation in Venezuela.
I don't know if it'll be a, quote, all-out invasion or maybe a head fake.
We don't know.
But we're definitely moving, continuing to move resources there.
What do you think we should do?
Do you think that we're simply putting pressure on the powers that be?
And it's just one of a variety of ways we're negotiating by essentially suggesting that if they don't give us what we want, there'll be a military invasion.
We don't really have to say it.
We just have to prepare for it, and then you don't have to say it.
But do you notice that there's something missing in this whole Venezuela story?
What is the dog not barking?
What's the thing that's missing?
The thing you would always have, but at the moment it's missing.
I would say the thing that's missing is who are we negotiating with and what are we asking for?
Do any of you know?
Because I'm a little worried.
It appears my country is getting ready to attack a sovereign country, and I don't even know who they're talking to.
I don't know what they've asked for.
What would it take for them not to do it?
Is there a specific ask?
Because it doesn't look like it to me.
How do you get this far?
And if I were to stop you on the street and say, are you American?
Yes.
Are you familiar with the Venezuela situation?
Yes.
Who are we talking to?
Because I don't think it's Maduro.
I don't think we're talking to the head guy.
Who are we talking to?
And what are we asking for?
And what are they saying about giving it to us?
You know, part of the reason I wonder is I wonder if they've already offered to give us what we've asked for.
You ever wonder about that?
Because didn't we hear early on, I didn't believe it, so maybe it's the believing it part that's missing.
But doesn't it seem like we made some threats and then Venezuela said some version of, okay, let's talk.
Didn't that happen?
I don't believe there's been a phase where they said, let's talk, and then we talked, and then we asked for some stuff, and then they said, oh, no, we can never give you that.
Did that ever happen?
So I feel like we're on some kind of weird autopilot where we know what it looks like when the fake news starts moving the country toward war.
Doesn't it feel like we're just, we residents of the country, we're just part of the machine and we're just moving along.
Oh, I guess we're moving toward war.
Does anybody know why?
No, you don't know why.
I mean, I could tell a story of why.
I mean, I could say, we don't want these drugs coming in.
But what would happen if Venezuela said, all right, you got it.
We will totally shut down the drug trade, but just don't attack us.
What would we do?
Would we say, all right, you got to prove it, but that's a deal?
Or would we keep pushing?
I don't know.
Do you?
I kind of want to know.
Then apparently, according to Fox News and other news, President Trump says the residents of Chicago are chanting, bring in Trump.
Do you think that's happening?
Do you think that anywhere in Chicago, there's a group of residents who are chanting, we want Trump.
We want Trump.
I think it's hilarious that it doesn't matter if they're doing that.
The fact that Trump says they are makes you want to argue about it.
Show me that video.
You really believe that they're chanting that?
No, they might be chanting something negative against Trump.
Show me that video.
I think you're making this up.
Of course, it's just a throwaway line that they're chanting.
Now, that's just funny, isn't it?
If you're looking at Trump in the proper frame of mind, this is just funny that he would put it in those terms when he knows how that would upset some people.
All right.
Good job there.
Let's see how many people were injured in Chicago.
There was some downtown riot that left eight people shot and one dead.
Jeez.
Now you might say to yourself, Scott, there's nothing funny about that.
There's nothing funny about people getting shot.
Let's agree to that.
At least that's what I thought until I got the end of the story, which says the riot, which followed a Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
Come on.
I'm trying to act like a good citizen and not laugh at violence.
But if Chicago had a riot over a Christmas tree lighting, I have some advice about traveling to Chicago.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
Stay away.
Yep.
Don't get near that Christmas tree lighting.
That sounds dangerous.
Meanwhile, Trump called the mayor of Chicago, Brandon, a low IQ leader.
He says I got a bunch of low IQ leaders.
But he also insults Governor Pritzker for being overweight.
So he's going hard at Chicago.
Anyway, let me ask you this.
Why is it that the Democrats are not making more hay?
Is that a thing?
Or why are they not making a bigger deal at the fact that Trump has now labeled a number of black leaders low IQ?
Has he labeled any white leaders low IQ?
Because if he hasn't, I would recommend you throw a few on the list.
You got to get at least one or two white leaders that are low IQ.
You must have that in Portland, Portland, maybe.
It's got to be something.
But I wonder if he's feeling so free at this point in terms of what he can get away with and what he can say that he doesn't care about making it DEI friendly.
And that if he thinks somebody's stupid, he's just going to say it.
And it has nothing to do with anything except that's what he was thinking.
He was just thinking, ah, you're stupid.
I'll say it.
I don't know.
I think he'd be a little bit safer.
Throw some crackers on that list.
You know what I mean?
All right.
Here's the reframe that you need.
And you'll find that this fits with what I said earlier today.
And you'll be amazed how it all fits together.
So, as you know, there's a 28-point Trump administration peace plan for Ukraine.
But nobody was born yesterday.
And so we don't think that we're just going to spray this plan out there.
And Zelensky is going to say, oh, that's a great idea.
Why didn't we do this before?
And that Putin is going to say, well, thanks for the good work.
This is perfect.
We sign up.
Nobody thinks people are just going to sign up for it.
It's a starting point.
And as I posted earlier today, let me tell you what Marco Rubio said.
And then I'm going to put it in my words because I think he could have gone to one extra step that would have been really useful.
And maybe he will.
So Marco said, Marco Rubio said, ending a complex and deadly war, such as the one in Ukraine, requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas.
28 points, that would be extensive.
And achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions, of course.
That is why we are and will continue to develop a list.
Listen to this.
We are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of the conflict.
Oh, that is perfect.
Once again, Marco Rubio is telling us how to think, not what to think.
Now, there is a list of 28 things that we want or we think would be good.
But when he describes it as a list of literally potential ideas from both sides, that's really moving forward.
Now, I'm going to put this in my own words.
And then, when I put it in my words, see how it hits you.
Okay.
I'm going to say the same thing, just my words.
I'm going to say that packetizing, packetizing, taking things and putting them in little packages, which are the 28 points.
Each of the 28 points is like a little packet.
That once you've packetized it, what can you do with it?
Well, packetizing all the ideas into units that can be traded, compared, and easily communicated is the most important thing that needs to be done at this phase.
We're not talking about any final agreements.
We're talking about some way to take this complicated situation and turn it into little packets where you can say, all right, there's a Don Bass packet, there's a Crimea packet.
You can still play with the packets, but you have to agree that there are packets.
And you can call it something else just 28 points or whatever.
But until you do that, you cannot really negotiate because there's nothing to give away and there's nothing to get.
You need to put them in discrete, easy-to-communicate packets.
And when I see Marco, using his own words, speaking in those terms, pretty much what I said, but just his own way to say it, that gives me a lot of confidence.
I got to admit, that gives me a lot of confidence.
Because if I just heard we want 28 things or there are five things we have to have, I wouldn't necessarily think we had made any progress.
But as soon as you tell me that the goal is to get 28 packets and we can still argue about what the packets are, excellent.
That to me looks like adults trying to figure out a really complicated problem.
I don't know where this approach came from or if it's really closer to a normal approach than I'm giving it credit for.
Is this closer to normal than I think it is?
It doesn't look normal.
It looks like a whole better way of doing it.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Ladies and gentlemen, what you really want is a reframe to wrap things up.
Would you like a reframe from my book?
My book is called Reframe Your Brain.
I'm sorry.
I accidentally picked up the 2026 Dilbert calendar, which you can only get on Amazon and it's available now.
It's the best thing that ever happened to it in your whole life.
And there are comics on both sides.
I didn't mean to pick that up.
That was an accident.
We'll put that over there.
But my book, Reframe Your Brain, I'm going to give you an absolutely free reframe.
Wow.
I sure hope I put that where I wanted it.
Damn it.
I seem to have put my bookmark in the middle of the book randomly.
That didn't help me.
All right.
Here's where I need to be.
We'll go into the social life reframes.
I know you need that.
All right.
How many of you think that marriage is about finding a soulmate?
I feel like TVs and movies and our sense of romantic entitlement kind of ruins our potential for happiness because we're sort of imagining that we can have that kind of situation that they have in the movies.
But if you think that marriage is about finding your soulmate, you're going to have a little problem because at some point you're going to say, how do I know that's my soulmate?
And why does my coworker act like my soulmate all the time?
What's going on here?
So the old frame or the usual frame is that marriage is about finding your soulmate.
Here's a reframe.
Marriage is about finding love with someone who values promises.
Promises.
that's one you have to think about, but I'll give you another one.
How about if you break up with somebody or maybe there's a tragic death in your life and you think to yourself, I've lost my soulmate.
Oh no, I've lost my soulmate.
Well, maybe you lost your soulmate, but here's another way to look at it.
You have a million soulmates and you haven't met them all.
I mean, do you really think there's seven billion people and you've got exactly one soulmate?
Really?
Really?
Do you really believe that?
Just one?
Just one soulmate?
No.
There are probably a million different people that you could come to see as your soulmate and probably a million different people that you could come to trust with your life.
If you could find somebody you could trust with your life and they do what they promised to do over the entire course of your relationship and you're willing to turn them into your soulmate even if they weren't naturally that way, just by being honest and, let's say, moral and ethical, that would be an excellent situation.
So I would worry a lot less about the magic of finding your soulmate and I would worry a lot more about how to turn any good person into somebody that you see as your soulmate just by the fact that you treat each other really well and that's your agreement.
So I've always thought that relationships that are based on decision are more powerful than relationships that are based on, let's say, some internal feeling.
Right yeah, if your relationship is based on a feeling, it could change.
It could change all right, people.
That's what I got for you today.
I'm gonna talk to the locals people, my beloved locals people.
I hope there's something you got in them today that was useful.
You you could probably notice me trying to change the the direction of the country.
I think I've I think I'm doing a good job so far how many of you see my influence in other public figures I'll ask you a more specific question.
How many of you think you've seen that other public figures are thinking the way I'm thinking or using the tools that I use, and you think to yourself, where'd they get that?
Did that come from Scott or somebody that somebody who got it from him that got it from someone else?
I don't know.
I'm looking at your comments now.
Yeah, so a lot of you can see it.
It's not imaginary.
I remember back in 2016, and I would suggest that maybe people were listening to me, and people would say, Scott, put your ego away.
And I don't think I put my ego away.
But the point is, as I've said often, including today, the person with the best idea is always in charge.
So if I can teach you how to think about a topic better than you were thinking about it, and maybe you share that with somebody else and they share it with somebody else, then the way to think about a topic becomes the dominant force.
It's not even the personality.
It's not the person whose job it is to be in charge.
It's just the fact that there's something about the way somebody framed it that's so compelling that you could predict where it's going from that point on.
