Episode 2750 CWSA 02⧸14⧸25
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 24 minutes
Words per Minute
150.53516
Summary
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! This is a special episode of the podcast celebrating the love and romance of the season. Today's episode features: a new sex pillow, a new study on the afterglow of sex after a night out, and a new report on gun control.
Transcript
00:00:08.000
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Highlight of Human Civilization, Valentine's
00:00:24.160
Day edition. I don't think you could get any better than this, but if you want to try,
00:00:30.000
you can take this experience up to, possibly, levels that nobody can even understand with
00:00:34.920
their tiny, shiny human brains. And for that, all you need is a gupper, my girl, a glass
00:00:39.940
of tanker, chelsea, stein, a kentine, a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with
00:00:43.900
your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the
00:00:48.960
dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called Simultaneous
00:00:53.720
Sip. That's right. Go. Oh, that's so good. So good. All right, people. Let's see what's
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in the news today besides Valentine's Day. Everybody got big plans for Valentine's Day? Yeah, me
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neither. You know, it's not optimal to not be in a relationship. But at the same time, it does
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save a lot of effort on Valentine's Day. It's hard to get Valentine's Day wrong. But given
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this Valentine's Day, you might be interested that Gwyneth Paltrow's company, it's called
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Goop. That's the name of her company, Goop. They're selling a sex pillow, $200. $200 for
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a sex pillow. Now, I think the pillow is meant to give you extra control during sex with another
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person. However, there's no prohibition against having sex with the pillow itself if you don't
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have a partner. So partner, no partner, the pillow can fill in. The only question I have
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is, how do you get the goop off the pillow? Sorry, that whole thing was just a setup for
00:02:14.660
that bad joke. That's all it was. Put it on your mind. You can't sell a sex pillow and call
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your company Goop and then let me just ignore that? I'm not going to ignore that. No. No,
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that's a responsibility as a professional humorist. I have to comment on that.
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Well, there's a fascinating new study in SciPost. Eric Nolan is writing. You'll never guess this,
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but thanks to science, we know this now. There's a study that suggests that the afterglow of sex
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can boost your relationship satisfaction for at least 24 hours while, and here's the surprising part,
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while sexual rejection creates negative effects for several days. Huh. Huh. I wonder how many people
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they had to survey to get that answer, because if it was more than one guy, they worked a little too
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hard. Just go to any guy. Do you feel better about your partner after you've just had sex? Yes.
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How do you feel when your partner rejects you for sex? Terrible. And we're done here. If you can find
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even one man who says, you know, I kind of like it when she rejects me for sex, and it's kind of creepy
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when we have good sex. No, never happened. Next time, just ask me. I can save you a lot of time.
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Well, according to the Federalist and John Lott Jr. is writing, he says that the FBI doesn't just have
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a transparency problem. They're actually distorting data. Now, what kind of data would the FBI want to
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distort? It's weird, isn't it? Why would they distort data? Well, here's an example.
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The data about how many situations are solved by citizens who have guns, very political. If it turns
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out that it's rare that a citizen could stop a crime or save any lives with their own personal
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handgun, if it's rare, well, that'd be maybe a strong argument for not having guns, some would say.
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I wouldn't say that. But if the number of people or the percentage of time that people with a handgun
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kept a crime or a murder from happening, if that was a big percentage, well, that would really change
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everything, wouldn't it? Well, it turns out that the FBI was reporting that only about four percent of
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the time, the person with the handgun makes a difference. The real number, according to whoever
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the CPRC is, is closer to 35 to 40 percent. 35 to 40 percent of the time, if somebody has a personal
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handgun, it stops a crime or prevents somebody from getting killed, except maybe the perp.
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So remember what I told you? I told you something that is really hard for anybody to accept the first
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time they hear it. And it goes like this. All data that matters, and the matters part is important,
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all data that matters is fake. And it has to be. It's not an accident. It's because the people who
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control the data always have an interest. Always. And so they just shave the data and change the
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assumptions and decide what source to use and which one not to use until they get the right answer.
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It's always the foxes counting the chickens. If you're going to have the foxes count the chickens,
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don't tell me that it's accurate. Who trusts the foxes to count the chickens? No. It's never
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accurate. The only stuff that's accurate is when nobody really cares one way or the other.
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Then it might be accurate. Even that's probably sketchy. So a perfect example of that. Even the FBI
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faking data or at least using the data they like. Well, according to a Irish study, the Irish
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examiner, Sean Murray is reporting that the methods that they tested to reduce people's belief in
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conspiracy theories have no effect. Now, if I hear that a bunch of researchers tried to deprogram
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people from their conspiracy theories and it didn't work, you know, the first thing I think is,
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well, whose method did they use? Was it a professional persuader who tried to talk people
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out of their conspiracy theories? Or was it somebody who doesn't know how to do it?
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If you put me in the study and said, all right, we're going to see if Scott specifically can talk
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people into their conspiracy theories. I think you'd find that I would do better than average
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because it's something I've studied, right? Specifically, I'm a trained hypnotist and I write
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about and talk about and use persuasion all the time. So in theory, if it could be done at all,
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I'd be a little better at it than a person who doesn't practice. But there's a bigger problem.
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Did you see it? What's the bigger problem when you're running a study to see if you can talk
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people out of believing conspiracy theories? It's sort of a built-in problem. It kind of assumes
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that the researchers know what is true and what isn't. And you know what? How do they know? How do
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they know what's true? Because if they had the wrong opinion, their own research showed that they
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wouldn't know it because you couldn't talk them out of it. So if the researchers thought something
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was true that wasn't or something was untrue that was true, how would they know? Since their own
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research showed you can't change anybody's mind if they're wrong about a conspiracy theory. So it looks
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like nonsense to me. Total nonsense. Here's a few stories in a row that kind of make a picture. So
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Fox News is reporting. David Spector is writing. There's a former Marvel executive, you know, the
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Marvel superhero universe. So the Marvel executive is suing Disney because he was allegedly denied a
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promotion for being an old white guy. Now, here's the fun part. The reason he knows he was denied a
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promotion for being an old white guy is they said, we can't promote you because you're an old white guy.
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They told them directly. So lawsuit. Now, here's what black Americans have never understood about
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what you call, I don't know, reverse racism or just racism, I guess. They don't believe
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that when white men are told they can't be promoted. And this has been true for decades. Because remember,
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it was, you know, decades ago that I was told in direct language, you're a white male, you cannot be
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promoted here. And then I changed companies. And that company told me the same thing, direct words,
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not no beating around the bush. Said it just that directly. This has been happening all over the
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country for decades. And the white men just don't talk about it in public. Because if they do, you
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know what happens? The black men call them mediocre. Said, no, you're lying. You didn't get the promotion
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because you're a mediocre white man. That's what happened to me. Yeah, the black citizens poured into my
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comments and said, well, no, you're lying. They didn't tell you that directly. You just are sore
00:10:08.080
because you didn't get the promotion because you're a mediocre white man. In other words,
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they were really racist. All right. Meanwhile, Attorney General, Missouri Attorney General,
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is Andrew Bailey is suing Starbucks because they have some kind of a race and sex-based hiring
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practice, which would be, of course, illegal. So now you've got Disney, which is actively
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discriminating against white men. You've got Starbucks being sued for actively discriminating against white
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men. And then you've got Goldman Sachs that just decided to scrap its policy that said it wouldn't
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help take a business public if they had an all-white board members. So they said, you've got to have some
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diversity and you've got to have at least one woman on the board or we won't work with you.
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Which is, of course, racial discrimination and gender discrimination.
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And the good news is that they changed. So they're not going to be that way. But here's the bad news.
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I'm not going to forget that. If you think you can just change from discriminating against white men
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to not, no, I'm not going to forget it. You know, I don't have any business to do with Goldman Sachs,
00:11:36.720
but fuck every one of you. You can drop dead. All right. Adam Carolla is talking about the progress
00:11:45.280
in cleaning up the LA fires. Guess what the progress is in cleaning up the LA fires and getting rid of
00:11:52.000
the debris and moving people back in? Doesn't appear to be any, according to Adam Carolla, who's got a
00:12:00.960
house there. He says, remarkably, no progress has been made in the cleanup. No, his actual words are
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a quote, zero attempt at cleaning now over a month, no cleanup attempt, no official government website
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you can go to for any kind of timeline when the power is going to be on. When can you get back to
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your place? The answer is no GD idea. Now let's compare that. This is California's performance.
00:12:29.520
Now let's compare that to Doge. Doge is already spinning up a website in which they will be
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reporting everything they're doing. It's all going to be there. It's already up. So Doge consistently
00:12:44.880
does the thing you expect and want them to do. And California seems to only be able to fail.
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It's like we don't have, as a state, we have no capability of doing anything. And I think it's
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always the same problem. I think it's the state just necessarily needs to inject corruption into
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every big move. And cleaning up LA is a big move. They probably are just holding out for diversity and
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getting their cronies the jobs and figuring out some way to monetize this for the government itself.
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So I don't trust anything about the California government. They have not earned any trust. I assume
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that the reason it's not happening rapidly is just pure corruption. It could be incompetence,
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but I bet it's corruption. And the corruption is they're trying to figure out, okay,
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how are we going to make it look like it's not corruption in all it is? I think that's
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probably what's slowing them down. I have no trust whatsoever in my state government.
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Well, here's a story that I seem to wake up to every single day. It's like Groundhog Day. Here's
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the story. There's a federal judge who blocked something that Doge wants to do. How many times has
00:14:01.280
that story been in the headline? How many times has some judge done that? So here's what it should
00:14:10.880
say. Presumed crooked judge blocks Doge progress. Now, we don't know that they're all crooked,
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but it seems like it takes about a minute to figure out that somebody bought their appointment
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or their daughter or their wife is working on something with USAID or there's just some nefarious
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connection or they've got a history of being, you know, a rogue judge. These are not normal judges.
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And one of the things that Elon Musk says is that if any judge anywhere can stop anything that Doge
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does, it doesn't matter where the judge is, anywhere in the country, he says, you don't really have a
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government. If any judge anywhere can stop, really it'd be stopping Trump, the president. And that's a good
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point. How can we have a government when people who are not elected, you know, these appointed judges,
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I think mostly they're appointed, can stop anything from happening and they can just keep doing it all
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day long. So somehow we have to figure out how to get freedom from the crooked judges. Destroying the
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reputation seems like a good start, but only, but only if it is honestly destroyed as if, if they have
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a conflict of interest, they're not admitting to and not recusing themselves. Yeah. You have to,
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you have to go after that pretty hard. So I don't know what can be done, but we can't run a country
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if corrupt judges can stop everything. You just can't. So I would, I would love to hear an alternative,
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like what can you can't really, you can't even impeach them because you need two thirds and
00:16:00.320
there's no way you're going to get that. So I don't know.
00:16:07.120
Governor Newsom made a, what's being called an about face, according to the New York Post.
00:16:12.880
So California governor, he's ready to veto a bill that's coming from his own party that would force
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the prison system in California to keep them from cooperating with ICE, the immigration people.
00:16:29.520
So there is a bill in California that says the prison system can't coordinate with the people who
00:16:34.960
want to deport the non-documented immigrants. But the good news is, Newsom's going to say no.
00:16:45.520
Now, is that because he's preparing to run for president and he's just trying to look like he's
00:16:52.480
a little bit interested in the border? That's what it looks like. Because otherwise I thought he was
00:16:58.160
all in on spending $50 million to, you know, Trump proof the state. But if instead of Trump
00:17:05.440
proofing it is making it easier for the immigration people, I don't know. Now I will, I have the,
00:17:15.120
I have the voice of Mike Cernovich in my head reminding us not to say good things about Democrats
00:17:23.440
who can't be trusted whatsoever, even if they get one right. So don't be too excited. If a Democrat
00:17:30.080
gets one right, it doesn't mean anything. You know, you still can't have them in charge.
00:17:36.160
Well, of course, RFK Jr. got signed, got fully nominated. He got approved. He got all the votes
00:17:43.200
he needed. It was tight. But JD Vance made up the difference and he's in. What did Schumer say about
00:17:54.240
that? So Chuck Schumer goes in public, Kelly Means pointed this out, that he goes in public and he says,
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just minutes before the vote for RFK Jr., Schumer said that RFK wasn't qualified because he was never
00:18:12.880
a pharmaceutical or insurance company executive as the other former health and human services secretaries
00:18:20.800
were. Did he really say that in public? He said in public that the head of the chicken coop should
00:18:30.800
be a fox? Really? We'd like to put a fox in charge of the chicken coop? No, no, maybe not. Don't put the
00:18:41.040
fox in charge. Maybe somebody who's exactly the opposite of a pharmaceutical or insurance company
00:18:47.760
executive like RFK Jr. Yeah. How about the opposite of that? Is there anything that Democrats can get
00:18:54.560
right? They actually are on record wanting somebody who would be the worst choice. You know, even
00:19:01.440
generically, somebody who was a pharma executive. That's the problem, not the solution. You can't tell
00:19:07.920
the difference between the problem and the solution. No, that's the problem that they're too connected to
00:19:14.560
pharma. Weird. All right. Here's a thing I didn't know about. Did you know that President Trump
00:19:24.960
appointed RFK Jr.'s daughter-in-law to be part of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board? Now,
00:19:34.320
that's interesting because Amaryllis Fox Kennedy is her name, middle name Fox. She's a former CIA officer.
00:19:43.680
And she left in 2010 because she was disillusioned by the corruption within the CIA. Now, how much do
00:19:52.640
you love the fact that somebody who is disillusioned by the corruption of the CIA is now on Trump's
00:19:59.200
Presidential Intelligence Advisory Board? I like it. She must know where the bodies are buried. I like it.
00:20:07.680
All right. So that's good news. And she wants massive intelligence reform.
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Well, Trump's going to put on the reciprocal tariffs today. I assume he's also doing some targeted ones,
00:21:20.880
but it's a little unclear. So the reciprocal tariffs are that if any company or any country
00:21:29.440
is tariffing us, he will tariff them back in the same exact amount. Now, I don't know if that really
00:21:36.880
works because usually they pick our, you know, tariffs are usually strategic to an industry where
00:21:44.560
there's some imbalance in the industry. So I don't know if that works, but on paper it makes sense.
00:21:49.520
And I think Dana Perino said this on the five, that the whole tariff thing, we don't, as individuals,
00:22:00.640
we probably don't know where it's going, but it's going to be real fun to watch.
00:22:06.800
So that's kind of where I'm at. I'm like, hmm, reciprocal tariffs. And then I, I searched my brain
00:22:13.120
bank for whether that's a good idea or a bad idea. And I end up with, I don't know,
00:22:19.520
I don't know. You know, I, I know a little bit about economics and business. I mean, that's my
00:22:25.360
educational background, but I don't know. I have no idea where that ends up, but I do like he's
00:22:32.720
pushing the button. I do like he's messing with it. So something probably could come out of it.
00:22:38.400
One of the things that Trump does right, and just consistently right, is he'll shake the box
00:22:45.440
when there's something that's not quite working. Doesn't mean he knows how to solve it.
00:22:50.880
But shaking the box is usually the best first thing. So this reciprocal tariffs, everybody gets
00:22:56.880
a tariff, you're not exempt. That's a pretty big box shake. So it might turn into a bunch of little
00:23:03.840
negotiations with countries that maybe give us some advantage. Maybe not. Maybe it's all we need.
00:23:10.240
Maybe just keep it simple. You tariff us, we tariff you, end the story. I don't know. So I'm going to
00:23:17.520
wait and see on this one. Could be good. Meanwhile, the House budget, now this is the budget that's been
00:23:26.160
pushed forward by the House. The Senate still has to weigh in, but it's a $4.5 trillion budget.
00:23:33.760
And it extends the 2017 tax cuts for 10 years. I like that part.
00:23:40.320
And it's going to be, let's say, but it also increases the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
00:23:52.400
So does that mean that the debt is going to go up $4 trillion? Or are they just thinking ahead?
00:23:59.760
And it might be $1 trillion per year, which would still be bad. But it might get to $4 trillion.
00:24:06.400
So all this work with Doge, but at the same time, we're looking at raising the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
00:24:18.320
Can anybody explain what's going on here? Because I don't understand. And again,
00:24:25.840
I'm somebody who watches news every single day. You know, I like dive into things pretty deeply.
00:24:31.680
I have no idea. No idea what's going on here. But it doesn't look good. It says they would try to get
00:24:40.560
their congressional committees to find at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. Really? Are those
00:24:46.960
committees going to do something that Doge isn't doing? How does any of this fit in with Doge?
00:24:52.320
Are the Doge numbers already baked into these estimates? Or do they fix them later when the Doge
00:24:58.320
Doge cuts become more transparent and we know what's going on? This doesn't make sense. It looks
00:25:07.520
to me, and I'd love to be wrong, but it looks to me like Republicans are going to drive up the deficit
00:25:16.160
and that they know it and that they've just all agreed to do it. What world am I living in?
00:25:21.920
Now, you know, the first time I brought this up, I got a little heated about it. But I decided,
00:25:31.120
let me back off a little bit. I want to see what Elon says, because he's better at math than I am.
00:25:38.640
If Musk says, yeah, you know, the budget that they passed out of the house makes sense,
00:25:43.440
because if you consider the Doge cuts, everything's going to work out. Maybe. I would love to hear him
00:25:51.840
say that. But so far, correct me if I'm wrong, Elon Musk has been silent on this, has he not?
00:25:59.120
I haven't seen a comment. If Musk is silent about the budget that the Republicans have passed,
00:26:07.680
that could only mean one thing. Because Musk is not silent on anything that is big and matters.
00:26:15.840
And what would matter more than this? I mean, if you're working on cost cutting and then the
00:26:20.240
Republicans are working on making it all a waste of time because they spent the money you saved,
00:26:26.320
this is what I think is going on. I fear that Congress is so broken that when they hear that
00:26:33.760
that Musk can find a way to cut a trillion dollars out of the budget instead of saying,
00:26:39.120
yes, let's bank that reduction and that'll reduce our deficit. Here's what I think.
00:26:45.840
I think our politicians, both Republican and Democrat say, oh, we just got another trillion dollars.
00:26:53.360
And then they go to spend it, which is the opposite, the opposite of what you should be doing.
00:26:58.640
But that's what it looks like. It looks like they're taking the doge cuts as a way to spend money
00:27:04.800
on other things in the same amount as the cuts. Now, I'm just saying it looks like it. I'm not saying
00:27:11.040
that it is. So can somebody in the government who's good at explaining stuff, could be J.D. Vance,
00:27:18.800
could be Elon Musk, could be Vivek if he's dug into it enough. I want somebody smart to give me a
00:27:27.440
whiteboard and say, this is what we're going to spend, this is what we're going to cut,
00:27:31.840
here's how doge works into it, here's your deficit for one year, and then this is the deficit as it
00:27:38.160
will go forward. You need to tell us that because, correct me if I'm wrong, if I don't understand it
00:27:46.480
as much time as I put into understanding things like this, and I have a background in this domain,
00:27:53.360
if I can't understand it, there's no way that the average, you know, barely interested person
00:28:00.560
understands it. So yeah, we need some help on this one, please. So I'm going to give a little grace
00:28:07.840
period and I'm going to back off of my heated cursing anger over this because I might be wrong.
00:28:16.480
I might be wrong. It's happened before. So I'd love to find out I am.
00:28:22.720
Well, John Bolton is in the news. I love the fact that once you know the players,
00:28:30.240
then when they talk, everything makes sense, but not until you know the players. So John Bolton says
00:28:38.160
that Trump is a Russian agent working for the Kremlin, or at least he acts like it. He acts like a Russian
00:28:44.480
agent working for the Kremlin, and maybe he is. Would it surprise you to know that John Bolton used to
00:28:52.320
be involved in USAID? There are no coincidences. Yeah, Bolton was part of USAID, or he got funded by it,
00:29:03.280
or somehow he was involved with it. So how many of you think that Trump is an agent of the Kremlin?
00:29:14.000
I don't think so. Well, one of the things that Trump's getting done is that the military,
00:29:19.120
in anticipation of Doge coming for them, are putting together their own list of things to cut.
00:29:27.600
Now, I don't trust it. I don't trust it. But it's interesting that they're trying to get ahead of it.
00:29:34.240
So apparently there's some weapon systems that even the military thinks they don't need,
00:29:38.320
you know, that might be outdated or whatever. And so they're putting together a list of outdated
00:29:44.720
drones and vehicles and things that you could cut billions of dollars to. Now, I think it's a trick.
00:29:51.200
Because they might want to be trying to head off Doge. It's like, oh, Doge. Yeah, you don't really need
00:29:56.640
to dig into this. We've already done the work for you. Thanks for setting us on the right track.
00:30:02.240
We've already found $20 billion to cut out of the budget. We're good. But Doge might find a lot more
00:30:10.400
than $20 billion. So I don't trust the military finding their own cuts because it's never worked
00:30:17.120
before. It's probably more of a trick than an actual, you know, good thing. But we'll see.
00:30:27.440
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00:30:37.760
you're richer than you think. So the Trump administration's buyout offer to get rid of
00:30:45.200
government workers, I think they're hoping to get 100,000 people to sign up for the early package to
00:30:52.240
leave their work. But they got 75,000 so far. I don't know if the window closed yet, but 75,000.
00:31:00.880
That's pretty good. If you're shooting for 100 and you get 75, that's really good. Because how in the
00:31:08.960
world could you estimate how many people will take an offer? If you estimated it this well,
00:31:15.840
you said 100 and you got 75, that's pretty impressive. I don't know if you've never done
00:31:22.480
this kind of work where you're estimating things that are impossible to estimate.
00:31:27.760
This is kind of impressive if you got within 25,000. So that's good. That's reported by Dylan
00:31:36.080
Burroughs at RSBN. But the other thing the Trump administration is doing is getting rid of what
00:31:43.680
they call the probationary employees. So I guess if you get a job with the government,
00:31:49.520
I don't know if this applies to the whole government, but you're on a first year probationary
00:31:55.200
period. So if you don't work out in the first year, then I guess it's easier to fire you.
00:32:00.880
So after the first year, there might be some protections that kick in, make it harder.
00:32:04.960
So they make sure that the first year, you got plenty of time to find out if you're bad at your job,
00:32:10.080
and they can get rid of you. But the Trump administration will use that same
00:32:15.760
the same fact to find the people who just joined. And they're typically the easiest to fire
00:32:23.840
for a variety of reasons. Now, you might say to me, Scott, the reason they hired these people is
00:32:29.520
because they needed them. Yes, that's true. And let me say again, the doge process does assume that they
00:32:38.400
will cut too much. It's just built into the process. It's not a mistake if they cut too much.
00:32:44.880
It's the process. So the only way you can tell what really matters is to get rid of it and see
00:32:51.120
how loud the yelling is. There is no other way. If you think you can study it and then scientifically
00:32:57.600
and surgically get rid of only the important stuff, you know, you're only removing the tumor,
00:33:02.800
but the, the, the healthy skin around it is left intact. That's not a thing. That's not a thing.
00:33:09.200
Nobody can do that. It's just not doable. And no company would do that. They would do exactly what
00:33:15.200
Elon's doing. They would cut too far, too far and too fast. And then when the yelling started,
00:33:21.760
they say, well, what'd you say? And they'd listen to it. And if they had a good argument,
00:33:26.400
they'd put it back. Let me tell you what happened when I was working for Crocker National Bank in San
00:33:32.880
Francisco. And it was about the time that the Wells Fargo was doing a takeover. So Wells Fargo was
00:33:41.280
going to take over that bank. Now it happened to be just by luck that that's when that was one of the
00:33:46.240
times I got told that I could never be promoted because I'm a white male. So I had just quit
00:33:52.480
just at the same time that Wells Fargo bought my former employer. And what they told all the
00:33:58.800
employees, because I stayed in touch, of course, what they told all the employees is don't worry
00:34:03.120
about losing your job because we're going to look at each individual employee and each individual
00:34:09.840
duplication of effort. Because two banks, if you put two banks together, you have all kinds of
00:34:14.400
duplication. So they said, don't worry. If you're one of the good ones, you'll be still with the
00:34:21.280
combined entity. But you'd only have to worry if you're bad at your job. So that made it easy,
00:34:28.880
because everybody thinks they're good at their job. So nobody complained in advance too much,
00:34:34.320
because they're like, oh, well, I'll be fine, because I'm good at my job. So then the transaction
00:34:40.480
goes through. Do you know what the first thing Wells Fargo did after the transaction was complete?
00:34:45.280
They simply eliminated, completely, everybody working in the duplicate areas of the company
00:34:53.280
they bought. All of them. They got rid of all of them. And they just said, we already have
00:34:59.280
people who do that. And we're the winning company. We're the company that bought you.
00:35:03.600
You're the company that got bought. The company that got bought, you just lost all of your
00:35:08.480
duplicated stuff. You're all unemployed. And we'll just keep all of our people. So it was a complete
00:35:15.120
lie. It was a big lie, super lie. But some of us were smart enough to know they're not going to be
00:35:24.560
able to talk to every employee and sort out which ones to keep and then combine these two weird
00:35:30.320
departments that aren't exactly the same. Of course, they're just going to fire the people
00:35:35.280
in the acquired bank. Of course they are. And sure enough. Now, it didn't bother me,
00:35:39.680
because like I said, I just left to another company. But yeah, there's only one way to do this.
00:35:45.600
You cut too far, you make drastic cuts, and then you adjust if you need to. No other way to do it.
00:35:53.760
And it's also common to get rid of first-year employees. That's not unusual.
00:36:03.120
Well, Trump has again got outside of the box when he's talking about the military budget. And he
00:36:12.560
suggested that the US, Russia, and China could possibly all agree to cut our mutual budgets by half.
00:36:21.360
Now, the first time you hear that, you just laugh at it, you go, okay. Nobody can convince their
00:36:29.040
adversary to cut their budget by half. And you're certainly not going to convince China, who would
00:36:36.640
like to become the dominant world power militarily, economically, and every other way. You're not
00:36:41.760
going to get them to cut their budget, right? That's the same thing I thought when Trump said,
00:36:48.560
let's make Canada a state. And I said to myself, okay, that's not real. You're just playing with
00:36:54.560
them. Maybe it's a negotiation. Maybe you would like to do it. But clearly, that's never going to happen.
00:37:02.560
But already, it looks like it's possible. The candidate becoming a 51st state, I still wouldn't
00:37:09.040
bet on it. If I had to bet, I'd bet against it. But watching it go from a ridiculous idea to,
00:37:16.400
how would that work? I'm a little bit interested. And then it turns out, I don't know how official
00:37:25.760
this is, but I have it on good authority that if you're not looking at the politicians,
00:37:32.000
and you're talking to the public, there's a lot of openness in the Canadian public.
00:37:38.000
Because Trump says, there would be benefits for you. I could lower your taxes, tariffs would go away,
00:37:46.640
you'd be well protected. And the Canadians are looking at their own government and saying,
00:37:52.000
okay, under normal circumstances, this would just be insulting. Under normal circumstances. But they can
00:38:00.240
see that their own government is so toxic that whatever it took to get rid of their own government
00:38:08.400
looks like a good deal. Become a state? Yeah. If we can get rid of this government,
00:38:13.200
because the government is destroying us. So Trump took the Canada 51st state from
00:38:20.560
the most ridiculous idea that maybe you've heard in 10 years to already, it's,
00:38:29.600
I don't know, maybe we should flesh this out a little bit. What exactly would it look like?
00:38:35.760
Maybe we should suggest some kind of a poll in Canada to get some real numbers, see how close we
00:38:42.080
are. Now, to me, that's just mind-blowing. It's just mind-blowing that that could go from crazy,
00:38:48.960
ridiculous too. Maybe. I don't know. Wouldn't rule it down. And so that's the context in which I give you
00:38:57.920
Trump saying that you can reduce the military budget of the three big powers.
00:39:03.760
First impression? Come on. They're not going to do that. That'd be ridiculous.
00:39:10.320
Here's my second impression, because I'm already up to my second impression.
00:39:20.160
there's never been a better opportunity. So I'm going to throw out just some ideas. These
00:39:25.440
are the bad ideas. So nothing I say should be taken too seriously. It's just to get your mental
00:39:31.440
process maybe working at a different level. When I found out my friend got a great deal on
00:39:37.360
a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like
00:39:43.840
that woman over there with the designer jeans. Are those from Winners? Ooh, or those beautiful gold
00:39:49.440
earrings? Did she pay full price? Or that leather tote? Or that cashmere sweater? Or those knee-high
00:39:54.560
boots? That dress? That jacket? Those shoes? Is anyone paying full price for anything?
00:40:00.320
Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners. Find fabulous for less.
00:40:06.080
The weird thing about Russia, China, and the United States that I think makes us all unique
00:40:13.200
is not one of those countries would ever want to attack the mainland of one of the other countries.
00:40:21.040
China would never want to attack Russia or the United States. The United States would never
00:40:26.720
want to attack mainland Russia like with an invasion or something, or mainland China. It would be crazy.
00:40:34.560
Now, has that ever been true in history? I don't know that it has, where we have a situation where,
00:40:42.160
you know, the only border is China and Russia, and I don't see any chance that either one of them wants
00:40:47.760
to change that border. That's not even a conversation. So what happens if you've got three powers
00:40:53.600
that coincidentally all have the same problems? This is where it gets fun. All three countries have
00:41:01.760
the same problems. One is demographic. China's got a big demographic. Lots of old people,
00:41:08.880
not enough young people. It's almost unsolvable. It's like, you know, doom heading their way.
00:41:14.480
United States? Much the same. We've got that demographic problem. Russia? Demographic problem.
00:41:24.160
So we've got a bunch of countries that are going to have severe economic problems,
00:41:29.440
and you could argue that we all three already do. It's harder for us to know exactly what's
00:41:34.960
happening in Russia or China because the information is not reliable. But there's good reason to think
00:41:41.200
that they might have as much debt problems as we do, growth problems as we do. We might be in a very
00:41:47.440
similar situation. The only thing you need is a common enemy. What if you had a common enemy?
00:41:57.360
That's really the only way you can get adversaries on the same page, common enemy. And you know how
00:42:02.960
Trump started out with, when he talked to Putin, he said, yeah, we talked about the history of World
00:42:08.480
War II, which was the cleanest example of Russia and the United States being on the same team for a
00:42:15.520
while. And it worked out, saved the world in a sense. So if we could find a way to be in the same
00:42:22.160
team, there might be something here. It might not be crazy. So imagine if we can say this. And again,
00:42:32.000
these are not good ideas. So when you jump on me and say, but you forgot this, you forgot that. I know,
00:42:37.600
I know. These are not good ideas. It's just to sort of deepen the thought. Suppose Trump said
00:42:46.000
to the other big countries, how about this? Forget about the United Nations.
00:42:52.240
Why don't the three of us agree that we'll never under any circumstance
00:42:57.600
invade or attack the homeland of the other? Now, I think they would all say, yes, yes.
00:43:03.520
If there's any way we could make that happen, yes, we will never attack the homeland. All of our
00:43:09.760
problems are about smaller countries. There's Taiwan, there's Ukraine, you know, there are other
00:43:16.240
countries on the border of Russia, probably some other areas in the border of China. And then the
00:43:21.680
US has its own interests, you know, Greenland and Panama and maybe Canada. And could it be
00:43:29.440
that they could reach an agreement? Now, this will scare you. But could it be that we'd reach an
00:43:36.000
agreement where we'd say, all right, all of the remaining property disputes, let's just settle them
00:43:42.800
right now. Let's just say if Taiwan's your next door neighbor and there's no doubt where it's going in
00:43:48.320
the long run, why don't we just say, all right, Taiwan is yours. No, not today. Not today. The very
00:43:55.520
minimum we need to do is get the chip making facilities out in Taiwan. But suppose, suppose we
00:44:03.200
said, why don't we make a 100 year plan? And that at the end of 100 years, Taiwan and China will be
00:44:09.920
the same country. Because in 100 years, there's going to be, you know, AI and changes and robots,
00:44:15.920
and who knows if the chips will even be made there anymore, and everything will be different.
00:44:20.800
So nobody really worries about 100 years. But suppose you just say to China, we don't want to
00:44:25.920
fight you. But if you go in and get rid of our chip access, we have to. So let's just take it off
00:44:34.320
the table. Let's just say for 100 years, we absolutely will not fight over Taiwan. And at the
00:44:41.280
end of 100 years, you guys work it out. You know, I'm not saying that it gets absorbed. But you guys work
00:44:47.600
it out in 100 years. Now, again, it's not a great idea. It's not a great idea. I'm just helping you
00:44:55.040
think it through. Then suppose we said, each of us have our own interests. So why don't we just take
00:45:02.880
care of our most local interests? So we'd say, you guys don't fight with us over Greenland or Panama.
00:45:08.720
China. And China, maybe you should, you know, put a smaller footprint on South America. Because
00:45:15.600
Monroe document, you know, the Monroe doctrine, I mean, says, you know, this is sort of our domain
00:45:21.600
over here. But in return, we'll stay in your business, as long as it doesn't go, you know,
00:45:28.480
crazy in Taiwan too soon. And then you say to Russia, all right, what's your biggest problem?
00:45:34.240
Now, here's the trust problem. You know, you think they're going to try to take over all their
00:45:39.680
neighbors, and of course they might. So could you say, how about if we can just at least solve Ukraine
00:45:47.520
and agree not to move NATO any closer? How about if we do that? Could you get a deal on that?
00:45:53.840
Maybe. Maybe. You'd have to do something to make sure they didn't use, you know, their,
00:46:03.680
their, let's say, their clever ways to take over the governments that they want to take over on their
00:46:09.360
borders. But I feel like if you, if you made it zero risk of them being attacked by NATO, which you
00:46:17.120
could do, I think you could get down to it. If you get down to zero risk that NATO wants to attack you,
00:46:23.840
then suddenly their need to control the other countries goes way down, goes way down.
00:46:29.760
So could you do some big deal where you just settle everything at the same time? And some of them just
00:46:35.120
have a long-term plan and others maybe don't need a long-term plan. Now, then you say, look, we also have
00:46:45.520
a common enemy. Now, I hate to put it in those terms, but because I'm not talking about Islam in
00:46:52.880
general, because there are plenty of moderate, excellent Islamic people. But the radical version
00:46:59.520
of Islam, which can spread if you let it, is a mutual risk to all three of the big countries. So China,
00:47:08.320
Russia and the United States all have an interest in keeping the radicalized part of Islam controlled.
00:47:16.400
So you say to them, we work together to take care of that. And we also do something to work together
00:47:22.640
to worry about our demographic problem, perhaps, maybe something about our debt problems that are
00:47:28.240
the same. And the best way to get rid of your debt problems would be to reduce your military expending
00:47:33.840
by half. So as crazy as it is to imagine that we would negotiate with adversaries about cutting their
00:47:42.320
budget for the military, you know, and you'd expect both sides would cheat and they would hide their budget
00:47:49.040
in secret places or it looked like they cut it, but they didn't, you know, that would be a real problem.
00:47:54.000
But could you get to the point where China, Russia and the United States feel like they're on the same team?
00:48:06.560
Meaning that if China destroyed the United States, they would lose their biggest customer,
00:48:11.520
but they would also lose their ability to control external risks, such as radical Islam.
00:48:18.000
Could you find a way that we just feel like we're the three horsemen of the future and that we do have
00:48:28.800
a responsibility to keep the smaller countries operating and make sure that we all have access
00:48:34.400
to resources as needed, you know, in the free market sense? And maybe the the old United States that was
00:48:42.400
very colonizing and we like to control other countries. As Mike Ben says, you know, if you don't
00:48:50.240
control the small countries, you can't make pencils because we don't make pencils in the United States.
00:48:55.200
Just one example. So you have to sort of control other markets. So you have access to the raw materials.
00:49:01.840
What if we didn't? What if the world has changed and you don't need to overthrow a country,
00:49:09.760
just have access to their minerals. You just make an offer. If China has a better offer, they get it.
00:49:15.440
If we have a better offer, we get it. But maybe we say if it's in if it's in our universe over here,
00:49:22.480
maybe you guys can't be part of that. But there should be places where everybody can get everything.
00:49:28.320
You know, you can get your raw materials for anything. So the question is, can Trump do something that big?
00:49:36.240
And I'll just remind you that the things that didn't seem possible before suddenly look a lot
00:49:45.040
possible. Now, I'll tell you what the the bad guys are saying about Trump talking to Russia.
00:49:50.720
They're already saying, oh, he's he's a Russian puppet, you know, sort of the John Bolton thing.
00:49:56.960
He's he's if he they're already saying about the Ukraine that if Trump decides that the current
00:50:08.320
And that NATO doesn't include Ukraine in the future.
00:50:15.680
That would look like giving Russia everything they want.
00:50:19.680
Which would look like Putin winning, which would embolden him.
00:50:25.760
And I say that's the wrong frame. I don't care if the Putin thinks he won.
00:50:33.440
I only care what I want. Why do I care what other people want?
00:50:38.080
I care what I want. What I want is the Ukraine war to be over so that, you know,
00:50:45.440
there's no argument about the border countries. We're not sending you money. Nobody's dying.
00:50:49.280
That's what I want. If we decide that NATO will not include Ukraine, that's what I want.
00:50:57.600
I want that. So why are we talking about what Putin wants?
00:51:03.600
Let's just get what we want. Everybody who's talking about Putin winning and getting everything
00:51:09.280
he wants, why do you even care what he wants other than negotiating? But your happiness can
00:51:17.840
be disconnected from his happiness. I just want what I want. I want to be out of this war and not
00:51:22.880
pay for it. I don't care about the rest. Not really. So, yeah, the first reframe is don't care
00:51:30.480
what Putin feels he won or didn't win. You only just get what you want as a taxpayer.
00:51:38.400
Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament.
00:51:43.120
She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car
00:51:46.960
on her backhand side. Good thing Claudia is with Intact, the insurer with the largest network
00:51:52.720
of auto service centers in the country. Everything was taken care of under one roof
00:51:56.720
and she was on her way in a rental car in no time. I made it to my tournament and lost in the first
00:52:02.080
round. But you got there on time. Intact Insurance, your auto service ace. Certain conditions apply.
00:52:09.760
Anyway, I guess there's some fake news in the Wall Street Journal. Somebody's saying,
00:52:13.680
suggesting that Vance means that under some conditions, the US military would get involved
00:52:19.920
in Ukraine. What Vance did say was that all options are on the table, which we always say.
00:52:27.360
Right. So I think that was taken out of context. All options on the table is just what we always say,
00:52:34.320
because it makes sense to always say it. It doesn't mean we want to put military there.
00:52:38.320
That's not going to happen. Anyway, according to the Daily Mail,
00:52:46.240
Health and Human Resources spent $22.6 billion giving migrants cars, homes, and credit cards
00:52:54.240
from 2020 to 2024. Cars, homes, and credit cards? Now, I think what that means is it helped them get
00:53:01.840
home loans, made it legal for them to own a car. Maybe there's some financial help, stuff like that.
00:53:13.760
But it looks like they were putting America last, if you know what I mean.
00:53:20.160
But here's what I would caution you. I think we've seen already that some of the early claims about who
00:53:27.040
spent money on what have been so easily debunked. For example, the condoms to Gaza were really condoms
00:53:36.240
to Mozambique. Now, I agree that we should cut it no matter where it was going, but the original report
00:53:44.400
had even the wrong country, which is a pretty big deal. And it goes from giving condoms to terrorists
00:53:52.480
to helping reduce the spread of AIDS in a country that doesn't have the resources to help itself.
00:54:00.000
I mean, that's a pretty big difference to know where it was aimed at. But again, I would be against
00:54:06.640
that spending either way. And let's see, we saw the Reuters story. There was a story that Reuters was
00:54:15.840
being paid by our government for massive information deception. They used different words, but it was
00:54:24.000
right on the invoice. And people jumped to the assumption that we were paying to have Reuters brainwash
00:54:32.640
people. I think the real story was that Reuters was being paid or some element with the name Reuters.
00:54:40.240
Somebody said it's a different company than Reuters, the news agency, but it might be the same parent
00:54:45.440
company. I'm not clear on that. But I think the real story was they were being paid to study it.
00:54:54.560
Now, studying it's real different than doing it. You would study it to try to reduce it happening.
00:55:02.480
That's the opposite of paying for somebody to do it. Now, do I think we should have had
00:55:09.280
huge expense to study that? No. The expense is still wrong and not really supportable in my
00:55:17.360
personal opinion. But I think you've seen enough examples now where the original reporting of how
00:55:25.360
crazy it is about some expense, don't assume these are true. I think you can assume the big picture.
00:55:32.640
There are crazy expenses that we can get rid of most of them. That's true. But when you see these
00:55:38.400
really just too on the nose, like condoms to Gaza, to Hamas, that was way too much on the nose.
00:55:48.720
Like you should have spotted that right away. I think I did. I think I called that out as a,
00:55:52.800
you know, don't believe this one. So just don't believe all the stories, but they might be useful
00:55:59.680
for making the case. But don't believe them. Doge apparently has penetrated the IRS.
00:56:06.720
I don't know how much money they're going to, or corruption they're going to find in the IRS.
00:56:14.000
But I'm very interested. So I love the fact that the IRS is being audited.
00:56:18.960
We went from the IRS is going to audit you, we've got 85,000 people to track you down,
00:56:24.880
all the way to, how about we audit the IRS? Yeah, how about that? So that makes me happy.
00:56:31.600
I saw Jon Stewart on his podcast talking to Jen Psaki. And he had a really interesting question,
00:56:39.440
which suggested his own thought process. And he asked her, does management at MSNBC
00:56:48.960
tell you what to say? Because she has a show on MSNBC. And she said, no, no, they don't tell us what
00:56:56.320
to say. No, no, we have independence. So we just look at the news and decide what to say.
00:57:04.080
Now you might say, really? And then every one of you decides on the same, the same take. So you all
00:57:11.440
independently, just all by yourselves came up with exactly the same take on every story. Because they
00:57:18.720
never vary. They all have the same take on every story. And even Jon Stewart wasn't buying it.
00:57:27.120
So I think he was willing to accept that leadership does not give them a memo every day,
00:57:32.480
say, cover this this way. And I think that's true. But he pointed out that Roger Ailes also did not
00:57:40.640
tell people what to write. But they all kind of agree on Fox News, don't they?
00:57:48.080
There's not going to be anybody on Fox News who comes out against Doge or against Trump being
00:57:53.680
president. And as Jon Stewart pointed out, you don't need to tell people what to do.
00:58:00.080
They know what their audience is. They know what the other people are going to say.
00:58:05.520
They know what they can say to fit in where they work. You don't need to tell them specifically.
00:58:12.000
They just sort of work it out with each other. So even Jon Stewart seemed to be suggesting,
00:58:19.120
although he didn't say it directly, but his line of questioning suggested that he thinks that MSNBC
00:58:25.200
is part of the problem, meaning that it's such obviously propaganda that you can't not notice it.
00:58:34.240
Can't not notice it. So he was actually, without using the words, he was basically accusing them of
00:58:39.760
being worthless propaganda, but politely. And I wonder if Jen Psaki believed what she was saying,
00:58:51.520
that they have independence. And just coincidentally, I'll have the same opinion.
00:58:59.520
Let's check and see how did MSNBC cover the USAID story? Well, if they were independent,
00:59:10.480
I would expect they would cover it in all of its elements. They've hit every variable. So you'd have
00:59:18.160
a good understanding of both sides of that story, if they were real news. Let me ask you. If you watch
00:59:26.400
MSNBC, when they covered USAID, did they ever give you the Mike Benz version of the world?
00:59:35.120
You know, the one where USAID has never been a real charity. It's always been only, only,
00:59:41.120
not in addition to, but only a statecraft tool for overthrowing other countries or at least controlling
00:59:48.960
them. Do you think that MSNBC ever fully fleshed that out, even if they said it's not true?
00:59:56.400
Because how in the world do you have a story this big, the main headline story,
01:00:04.320
and not mention what the other argument is? I don't think they've ever mentioned it. They're
01:00:09.520
treating it like it's a bunch of charities and people are going to die if you cut off their funding.
01:00:15.840
And they already have some example of somebody who was cut off of oxygen and died. I don't believe
01:00:20.640
the story, but yeah. So no, if MSNBC doesn't even cover not just the other side of the story, but
01:00:30.880
the really, really important part of the story, they're not news. So don't imagine that they are.
01:00:37.360
Well, Thomas Massey, Representative Massey had Michael Schellenberger in to talk to some part of
01:00:46.960
Congress. And Michael Schellenberger says about that, he said that USAID, this is him not at the
01:00:56.880
event, but talking about it on X later. He said, USAID said it was a charitable group. It wasn't. It was a
01:01:03.200
tool for regime change. After 2016, it turned its guns inward. In 2019, a front group it created
01:01:10.880
fabricated the evidence used by the CIA and moles in the White House and House Democrats to impeach
01:01:17.680
Trump. That's treason. Now, you could say, but that didn't happen. You know, if you had some
01:01:28.480
evidence that didn't, but how does MSNBC not cover it? Isn't it just screamingly obvious?
01:01:38.960
They're not going to have Michael Schellenberger on to, you know, question his thinking. They're not
01:01:43.680
going to have Mike Benz on to say, all right, we've got some different opinions, but we want people to
01:01:49.120
hear yours so we can, you know, have somebody debunk it or something. Nope. They'll just act like
01:01:54.560
there's only one opinion. It's a charity and mean old Trump is cutting the charity and children will
01:01:59.760
die. Thomas Massey said at the event, I think he said, maybe this was on X. No, it was at the event.
01:02:08.640
He said, USAID funded an organization that fabricated evidence, which was used to impeach
01:02:13.920
President Trump, which is what Schellenberger said. And the deep state frequently funds regime
01:02:19.680
change efforts abroad. But when he uses taxpayer money to undermine our own government, isn't that
01:02:25.520
treason? So we have a member of our own government who's looking at a part of our government that we
01:02:34.240
know a lot more about this week than we did last month. And he's saying, if you just look at what they
01:02:41.040
did just on the surface, they use taxpayer money to try to impeach an American president in a totally
01:02:48.880
illegitimate effort, using the same tools that we use to run coups in other countries,
01:02:54.720
isn't that treason? And the answer is, hell yes. Hell yes, it's treason. This is not a debatable
01:03:02.320
point. How could it not be treason? Of course it's treason. It's the most treasonous thing you'll ever
01:03:09.040
see in your life. Meanwhile, Bill Burr, the comedian, he's got a podcast and apparently he said
01:03:18.960
he went off on billionaires and he suggested that they were like rabid dogs who need to put down.
01:03:24.240
So he believes that the billionaires are the reason that there are poor people.
01:03:28.640
Now I'm, you know, I'm summarizing him. These are my words, not his, but he thinks that
01:03:34.640
if the billionaires were not hoovering up all the money, then there would be money for other people.
01:03:41.360
How fucking dumb do you have to be to have that opinion?
01:03:47.280
That's really dumb. Like I'd love to say, oh, he's not looking into this context or something,
01:03:52.720
but that's just dumb. Now he seems smart in general, because when he does his comedy,
01:03:59.200
it's very clever. And so it suggests a high intellect. But do you really think the billionaires
01:04:06.320
stole the money? Does he not know that Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't have any money if he hadn't
01:04:12.800
created Facebook and created tens of thousands of jobs and a tool that's used around the world?
01:04:18.560
How much money would he have? Do they think that Elon Musk would have any money at all
01:04:24.560
if he hadn't created multiple startups that added value to the country, electric cars that nobody
01:04:29.600
else could build a spaceship to Mars? He wouldn't have any money if he didn't do those things. What,
01:04:36.560
were the poor people going to do it on their own? Let's see the poor people's rocket. Oh, well,
01:04:41.680
I guess a mean old Elon Musk is hoovering up all the money for the poor people because they were going
01:04:48.720
to build a rocket to Mars. The poor people were. And according to Bill Burr, now they got shut out.
01:04:54.480
So I guess they can't build their rocket to Mars now. All mean old Musk just sucked up all the money,
01:05:02.160
basically stole it from the poor people. And you could just go down the list. Which billionaire
01:05:10.000
did not create the wealth that the billionaire has a small part of? And most of these billionaires
01:05:16.400
don't even own the majority of their own companies, you know, by the time investors get their part and
01:05:21.920
stuff. I don't know what, what percentage does Zuckerberg control of Facebook? I think he has some
01:05:28.320
kind of voting special shares or something, but it's less than half, isn't it? So this is a complete
01:05:35.520
lack of understanding how anything works. And yet he's unembarrassed to have a public opinion about it.
01:05:42.800
I went and checked what AI said was his net worth. So according to a perplexity, and these net worth
01:05:51.040
numbers are always garbage because nobody really knows what anybody did with their money or what
01:05:55.920
investments they made. That's not public information. But they estimated he's a net worth of 12 million
01:06:01.520
dollars. He makes a million dollars per Netflix special. Now, if he believes that wherever there's
01:06:10.560
wealth that's out of line with, you know, the baseline, that that's an indication that somebody's
01:06:16.160
stealing money from the poor, how does he explain himself? How does he explain that? Does he not
01:06:24.560
understand that when he does a special on Netflix, Netflix makes money and a bunch of people get
01:06:31.360
employed to put on the event? And then a bunch of people are happy that they watched it and they pay
01:06:36.560
money and the economy improves because Bill Burr made, you know, cumulatively 12 million dollars.
01:06:44.880
How does he not get that? Does he think he's also stealing? And if he just keeps it up,
01:06:50.720
he'll be a billionaire too, but he'll be a bad person. How in the world do you come to the
01:06:56.800
opinion that billionaires stole the poor people's money? Now, maybe it happens in some country,
01:07:02.240
but the only way it happens in this country is if you make, you make some value. That's way,
01:07:07.920
way more than you're keeping. All right. So here's Chuck Schumer again being pathetic. And again,
01:07:17.440
I think about Jon Stewart, who said in public the other day on one of his shows, please,
01:07:23.520
please stop sending Chuck Schumer out there. Because every time they send Chuck Schumer,
01:07:29.600
who's like their best guy right now, it's so embarrassing to be a Democrat because you're like,
01:07:34.560
God, no, can you send anybody but Chuck Schumer? No, not the super villain lady. No,
01:07:41.840
no, can you, not AOC. No, no. They just don't have anybody who isn't embarrassing at this point.
01:07:50.320
There's no embarrassing people, non embarrassing people. So this is what Chuck Schumer said about
01:07:55.040
Doge. He said, everyone knows there's waste in government. Oh, okay. So he's agreeing there's
01:08:04.640
waste in government. He goes, this should be cut. But Doge is using a meat ax.
01:08:12.880
Doge is using a meat ax. And I'm adding it to my list. So my list is generic, empty, stupid shit
01:08:21.920
that Democrats say about Trump and Musk. All right. Here's the list so far. Trump is going to steal my
01:08:28.880
democracy. Doge is stealing my privacy. Trump is forming a kleptocracy. He's got dark and
01:08:35.920
sinister motives. It's a constitutional crisis. Look at all the chaos. It's chaos. He's a co-president
01:08:42.560
Musk. Musk is not elected. Doge is a hostile takeover. Trump is rewarding Putin. And then
01:08:50.480
doge is used as a meat ax. Do you know why Schumer doesn't want to use a meat ax?
01:08:58.160
Too masculine. Yeah. The Democrats don't like masculine stuff like a meat ax. Oh,
01:09:03.920
that's pretty masculine. Maybe a teaspoon. So I think Chuck would say, maybe, maybe not the meat ax.
01:09:11.360
How about a teaspoon? And make sure your pinky is up. Speaking of masculinity, I forgot to brag.
01:09:19.600
So I don't want to lose that option today. I told you the story about Clay Travis was at
01:09:24.880
some event. He was on stage. And he made the point that the Democrats have a problem with the male vote
01:09:33.040
because they don't have masculine role models. Now, your first thought is, it's not about the
01:09:40.480
masculine role models. It's about policy, right? If men are moving to the Republicans, it's because
01:09:48.880
they like the policies. But it turns out that with young men, they're not much less liberal than they
01:09:56.960
ever were. That hasn't really changed. So policy-wise, young men still like Democrat policies.
01:10:04.000
You know, they're probably more pro-abortion than the average, et cetera. But they're still moving
01:10:09.200
Republican. So the policies actually are not what's driving young men to start to lean right and heavily
01:10:18.800
lean right. It's probably the role model. And I think Clay Travis is completely on point
01:10:24.480
that when he asked, he actually said this, who is the most masculine Democrat right now in America?
01:10:31.280
Mayor Pete? Mayor Pete. Now, immediately, the Democrat, Karen, who was on stage said,
01:10:40.080
oh, is that an anti-gay thing? To which I say, why would you even say that? What kind of anti-gay
01:10:48.320
question is that? Because if Clay Travis doesn't mention the gay part at all, it's not part of it.
01:10:56.320
It's just that Mayor Pete doesn't jump out as a super masculine character. Now, there are plenty
01:11:05.280
of masculine gay guys, right? I don't need to name names. But it has nothing to do with gay.
01:11:10.800
Clay, there are plenty of masculine gay guys. Tons. He just isn't one of them.
01:11:17.840
So they couldn't leave their frame. Their little frame is, you're a sexist, you're racist. They just
01:11:23.040
can't get out of it. They're so locked in, it's all they can see. So Clay did a good job of saying,
01:11:29.920
it has nothing to do with that. I mean, do you look at him and say he's masculine? I mean, he had a better
01:11:34.720
argument than that. But the reason I bring this up is that I wanted to remind you and maybe get a fact
01:11:43.600
check. Around 2016, I started saying, there seems to be two parties forming and it's going to be the
01:11:54.400
woman party and the man party. Now, it doesn't mean there won't be both in each, but the dominant,
01:12:00.160
the dominant, let's say, policies and approach would be very female in the Democrat party and very male
01:12:07.120
in the Republican party. And the Republican party would be masculine men and people who like masculine
01:12:14.960
men. And the Democrats would be mostly women and people who are happy to follow the lead of women.
01:12:23.600
And that's exactly where we are. I couldn't think of a masculine Democrat. The closest I can get is
01:12:33.760
Governor Newsom. Newsom, at the very least, he's tall, slick hair, heterosexual, looks like he goes to
01:12:44.240
the gym. I would call him masculine. Wouldn't you? Is that fair? I would call him masculine.
01:12:52.320
So, but I think he's too degraded as a candidate. I don't think he has a, I don't think he has a chance
01:12:58.560
of rising up. There's, he's going to have some skeletons. I don't think he can make the move.
01:13:05.600
But yes, I would like to claim credit for seeing this trend years in advance. So the reason I
01:13:13.680
point it out is because I make predictions. It's a big part of what I do. If I get them wrong,
01:13:19.600
you should remind me to say it publicly, which I'll be happy to do. If I get it right,
01:13:25.760
I'll probably remember to tell you. And it's all part of trying to figure out who's good at predicting.
01:13:32.480
If, if I got it wrong, I think I'd tell you, but got that one right. All right.
01:13:40.080
People keep asking me, what would be the best way to persuade a liberal to become a conservative
01:13:45.280
or a Democrat to become a Republican or an anti-Trumper to be a pro-Trumper?
01:13:51.280
And people always ask me that question. And I always, I always feel I don't have a good answer.
01:13:57.120
Because on one hand, I think, you know, maybe if I spent a lot of time with somebody,
01:14:02.560
I might be able to move them a little bit, but I've never had that experience.
01:14:06.080
I've never experienced changing anybody's mind. Like while I'm talking to them, I don't think words
01:14:11.440
work where words don't really talk anybody out of anything. Most of the time, especially in politics,
01:14:18.560
when you're locked in. But then I saw a suggestion from a user on X called Bill Hein Daytona. And Bill
01:14:30.080
says, I've recommended to my liberal friends to lift weights. Testosterone goes a long way toward
01:14:36.320
curing liberalism. That's actually scientifically true. If you increase the testosterone, at least in men,
01:14:45.600
if you increase their testosterone, they do become more conservative. They do become more Republican.
01:14:51.440
That's a fact. So my new answer to the question, how do you persuade a liberal to become a conservative?
01:14:58.240
If it's a man, see if you can convince them to lift weights or do what Zuckerberg did, you know,
01:15:06.240
get into MMA fighting or just do something that's going to build your testosterone and the rest will
01:15:13.280
take care of itself. Because I think the Democrats are largely the party of, I can't do it by myself.
01:15:19.360
I need some help. And the Republicans are largely, I can do it by myself. Just get the government out of
01:15:25.680
my way. So how you feel about your own confidence and ability is completely determined if you'd be
01:15:33.120
better off getting helped or better off getting the government out of your way. And the testosterone is
01:15:39.520
completely determinant of whether you feel confident and powerful to make things happen on your own.
01:15:45.040
So yes, the more you can get people to lift weights, the more likely they're going to be pro-Trump.
01:15:50.960
That's absolutely true. Scientifically, that's a very clean approach.
01:15:58.240
Elon Musk said something interesting. Well, he always does. But apparently he's had top secret
01:16:04.240
clearance for years. I guess Biden gave it to him in 2022. We don't know why. I assume it's because
01:16:11.120
of SpaceX. But here's what he said that is really interesting. He said, I've had top secret clearance
01:16:17.520
for many years. And here's the fun part. And have clearances that themselves are classified.
01:16:24.960
What? There's something higher than top secret.
01:16:28.320
He's seen things that even people with the top security clearance in the government haven't seen.
01:16:38.160
And not only did they not see it, they didn't even know there's a higher classification.
01:16:45.840
What? What? Do you know what that makes me think?
01:16:51.680
I don't believe that we've captured any alien technology. I don't believe we have.
01:16:59.680
But when I hear this, I go, huh, suppose you had, just hypothetically, suppose you actually had
01:17:10.480
an alien spacecraft with alien technology. Who would you want to show it to,
01:17:16.400
to see if there's any possibility of reverse engineering it? Right?
01:17:24.480
There's one person in the world you would be most interested in showing it to,
01:17:28.720
to see if he could reverse engineer, and it's Elon Musk. So immediately, when I hear that he has,
01:17:35.360
you know, extra top secret clearances beyond clearances that ordinary people can't even have,
01:17:42.800
it's not about the Kennedy assassination, right? It's not about, I don't know, just some normal
01:17:49.680
secrets. It's not about, oh, the CIA is doing this. That would be normal clearance.
01:17:55.680
To have special extra deluxe clearance, that's gotta be some good stuff. Yeah, we don't know what that
01:18:03.200
domain is. But given that he's the space and technology guy, maybe they have a ship.
01:18:12.560
I don't think they do. I think, I think we have zero spaceships. But wow, this made me,
01:18:19.280
this made me wonder. I had to question myself a little bit. I'm going to stick with, we don't have
01:18:23.760
one. Anyway, according to the UAE, Zero Hedge is reporting this, the UAE ambassador says the Arab
01:18:32.640
world has no alternative to Trump's Gaza plan. That's the plan where the United States takes
01:18:38.320
control of Gaza, but Israel and other countries rebuild it. Which is pretty surprising. Because
01:18:47.680
you'd expect that the Arabs would come up with a plan that was also practical to compete.
01:18:52.720
Apparently not. And the UAE ambassador says directly that removing all the Palestinians
01:19:02.240
and then rebuilding it is probably the only thing that would work. That's what I think.
01:19:08.800
He said it's difficult but inevitable that the Trump plan of removing all the Palestinians and rebuilding
01:19:16.320
is the only way anything could go. Now, that's exactly my opinion. It's been exactly my opinion from
01:19:22.320
the start. There is one and only one way this can go. They're going to clear all the people in of Gaza.
01:19:28.800
Now, can you confirm that I've been saying this the whole time?
01:19:34.480
Am I imagining that? I've been saying the whole time, the one and only way this will end
01:19:40.480
is with all of Gaza being depopulated. I want to see if I really said that loudly and clearly enough
01:19:50.160
All right, just confirmed. Okay. So some of you heard me say that. Well, so again, if you're looking for who
01:19:59.440
predicts well, this was a pretty shocking prediction. Because remember, I predicted that it would be
01:20:05.440
depopulated and rebuilt and that the Palestinians may not even be allowed back in
01:20:11.840
long before anybody even suggested that was a possibility. So that's a win for me on that one.
01:20:24.000
Now, I know for some of you, it drives you crazy when it looks like I'm bragging about what I got
01:20:29.200
right. But remember, I make predictions. So if I don't tell you I got one right, you know, you're losing
01:20:37.120
half of the value. You should know when I get one right and what domain it is, because maybe that's
01:20:42.800
a domain I can guess better than other domains. There are some domains I can't guess. For example,
01:20:49.040
I can never predict who anybody's going to pick for a vice president. I have no visibility,
01:20:55.440
experience, knowledge. I can't do anything on those. But stuff like this, you know, what is a logical
01:21:02.640
plan? You know, how can you get from here to there? I'm pretty good at that. Pretty good at that.
01:21:10.320
Anyway, Meta has some kind of breakthrough according to Tweaktown. Tweaktown, that's really
01:21:19.040
the name of a publication. Apparently, they can strap some sensors on your head and they can
01:21:25.920
successfully read 80% of your thoughts. Now, the 20% they can't read is still big enough that they
01:21:33.280
can't do much with this technology. But what happens if it keeps getting better? What happens
01:21:39.520
when the AI can predict what you're going to do before you know what you're going to do?
01:21:46.000
Because here's the joke. We already know that. So without AI and without these fancy sensors,
01:21:56.240
we already know from brain imaging and other lots of experiments that the part of your brain that
01:22:02.480
handles rational thought doesn't even activate until after the decision. That's one of the most
01:22:09.440
well-understood things for many decades. Every once in a while, they retest it and they're like,
01:22:14.320
you know, sure enough, the irrational part of your brain is a rationalizer.
01:22:20.640
It rationalizes the decision. It doesn't make the decision. What makes a decision is some
01:22:26.880
combination of irrational impulses. But then after it's made, your little rationalizer says,
01:22:33.120
oh, it's because I could see the greater opportunity in that direction.
01:22:37.360
And maybe sometimes it's true too, but it's usually not why you made the decision.
01:22:42.720
So we're going to have a big problem with believing in free will.
01:22:47.760
Once AI can tell you what you're going to do before you do it,
01:22:51.840
that will be the end of the free will argument. And that's coming.
01:22:55.280
You know, I've, I've long predicted, if you like my other predictions, you'll like this one too.
01:22:59.520
I've long predicted that the belief in free will will be destroyed.
01:23:04.080
It's just a matter of time because there's, there's just like an obvious path until it happens.
01:23:10.960
And AI is probably the last, the last leg of the trip. So that's ahead of you. Now,
01:23:19.440
what all of you want to say is, but, but, but how can you say that unless you have free free will?
01:23:25.200
And then I say, no, I had to, but, but how did this other thing? No, you had to, but, but how did I
01:23:31.680
choose this? You had to, but, but, but I thought I had choice. Yeah. You had to think it. It's always
01:23:37.840
the same answer. You had to, you didn't have a choice. All right. That's all I got for now,
01:23:43.360
ladies and gentlemen, this Valentine's day is kicking off just great. My neighbor's getting noisy,
01:23:48.720
doing some construction. So I'm going to say goodbye to the folks on YouTube and X and Rumble,
01:23:55.920
and I'll talk to the locals people privately for a moment, but 30 seconds until private with locals,