Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 2750 CWSA 02⧸14⧸25

00:00:00.000 the show. There they are.

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,

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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

00:01:09.000 in the news today besides Valentine's Day. Everybody got big plans for Valentine's Day? Yeah, me

00:01:15.380 neither. You know, it's not optimal to not be in a relationship. But at the same time, it does

00:01:27.520 save a lot of effort on Valentine's Day. It's hard to get Valentine's Day wrong. But given

00:01:33.600 this Valentine's Day, you might be interested that Gwyneth Paltrow's company, it's called

00:01:38.060 Goop. That's the name of her company, Goop. They're selling a sex pillow, $200. $200 for 0.99

00:01:47.060 a sex pillow. Now, I think the pillow is meant to give you extra control during sex with another 0.91

00:01:56.240 person. However, there's no prohibition against having sex with the pillow itself if you don't

00:02:02.040 have a partner. So partner, no partner, the pillow can fill in. The only question I have

00:02:08.820 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

00:02:22.620 your company Goop and then let me just ignore that? I'm not going to ignore that. No. No, 0.95

00:02:28.380 that's a responsibility as a professional humorist. I have to comment on that.

00:02:35.380 Well, there's a fascinating new study in SciPost. Eric Nolan is writing. You'll never guess this,

00:02:43.860 but thanks to science, we know this now. There's a study that suggests that the afterglow of sex

00:02:50.400 can boost your relationship satisfaction for at least 24 hours while, and here's the surprising part,

00:02:56.800 while sexual rejection creates negative effects for several days. Huh. Huh. I wonder how many people

00:03:05.900 they had to survey to get that answer, because if it was more than one guy, they worked a little too

00:03:13.200 hard. Just go to any guy. Do you feel better about your partner after you've just had sex? Yes.

00:03:20.260 How do you feel when your partner rejects you for sex? Terrible. And we're done here. If you can find 0.98

00:03:28.720 even one man who says, you know, I kind of like it when she rejects me for sex, and it's kind of creepy

00:03:35.120 when we have good sex. No, never happened. Next time, just ask me. I can save you a lot of time.

00:03:44.000 Well, according to the Federalist and John Lott Jr. is writing, he says that the FBI doesn't just have

00:03:55.060 a transparency problem. They're actually distorting data. Now, what kind of data would the FBI want to

00:04:01.160 distort? It's weird, isn't it? Why would they distort data? Well, here's an example.

00:04:06.680 The data about how many situations are solved by citizens who have guns, very political. If it turns

00:04:19.500 out that it's rare that a citizen could stop a crime or save any lives with their own personal

00:04:25.300 handgun, if it's rare, well, that'd be maybe a strong argument for not having guns, some would say.

00:04:32.000 I wouldn't say that. But if the number of people or the percentage of time that people with a handgun

00:04:39.360 kept a crime or a murder from happening, if that was a big percentage, well, that would really change

00:04:46.120 everything, wouldn't it? Well, it turns out that the FBI was reporting that only about four percent of

00:04:53.720 the time, the person with the handgun makes a difference. The real number, according to whoever

00:04:59.760 the CPRC is, is closer to 35 to 40 percent. 35 to 40 percent of the time, if somebody has a personal

00:05:09.840 handgun, it stops a crime or prevents somebody from getting killed, except maybe the perp.

00:05:17.120 So remember what I told you? I told you something that is really hard for anybody to accept the first 1.00

00:05:25.200 time they hear it. And it goes like this. All data that matters, and the matters part is important,

00:05:32.080 all data that matters is fake. And it has to be. It's not an accident. It's because the people who

00:05:40.080 control the data always have an interest. Always. And so they just shave the data and change the

00:05:46.800 assumptions and decide what source to use and which one not to use until they get the right answer.

00:05:52.160 It's always the foxes counting the chickens. If you're going to have the foxes count the chickens,

00:05:59.280 don't tell me that it's accurate. Who trusts the foxes to count the chickens? No. It's never

00:06:06.640 accurate. The only stuff that's accurate is when nobody really cares one way or the other.

00:06:11.360 Then it might be accurate. Even that's probably sketchy. So a perfect example of that. Even the FBI

00:06:17.920 faking data or at least using the data they like. Well, according to a Irish study, the Irish 0.94

00:06:25.520 examiner, Sean Murray is reporting that the methods that they tested to reduce people's belief in

00:06:31.520 conspiracy theories have no effect. Now, if I hear that a bunch of researchers tried to deprogram

00:06:41.360 people from their conspiracy theories and it didn't work, you know, the first thing I think is,

00:06:47.200 well, whose method did they use? Was it a professional persuader who tried to talk people

00:06:53.680 out of their conspiracy theories? Or was it somebody who doesn't know how to do it?

00:06:59.360 If you put me in the study and said, all right, we're going to see if Scott specifically can talk

00:07:04.960 people into their conspiracy theories. I think you'd find that I would do better than average

00:07:11.760 because it's something I've studied, right? Specifically, I'm a trained hypnotist and I write

00:07:19.200 about and talk about and use persuasion all the time. So in theory, if it could be done at all,

00:07:26.880 I'd be a little better at it than a person who doesn't practice. But there's a bigger problem.

00:07:32.240 Did you see it? What's the bigger problem when you're running a study to see if you can talk

00:07:39.520 people out of believing conspiracy theories? It's sort of a built-in problem. It kind of assumes

00:07:46.560 that the researchers know what is true and what isn't. And you know what? How do they know? How do

00:07:55.280 they know what's true? Because if they had the wrong opinion, their own research showed that they

00:08:00.800 wouldn't know it because you couldn't talk them out of it. So if the researchers thought something

00:08:06.560 was true that wasn't or something was untrue that was true, how would they know? Since their own

00:08:13.760 research showed you can't change anybody's mind if they're wrong about a conspiracy theory. So it looks

00:08:19.360 like nonsense to me. Total nonsense. Here's a few stories in a row that kind of make a picture. So

00:08:31.360 Fox News is reporting. David Spector is writing. There's a former Marvel executive, you know, the

00:08:37.840 Marvel superhero universe. So the Marvel executive is suing Disney because he was allegedly denied a

00:08:46.160 promotion for being an old white guy. Now, here's the fun part. The reason he knows he was denied a

00:08:54.320 promotion for being an old white guy is they said, we can't promote you because you're an old white guy.

00:09:01.840 They told them directly. So lawsuit. Now, here's what black Americans have never understood about 1.00

00:09:12.080 what you call, I don't know, reverse racism or just racism, I guess. They don't believe

00:09:18.320 that when white men are told they can't be promoted. And this has been true for decades. Because remember, 0.93

00:09:24.560 it was, you know, decades ago that I was told in direct language, you're a white male, you cannot be

00:09:31.520 promoted here. And then I changed companies. And that company told me the same thing, direct words,

00:09:37.680 not no beating around the bush. Said it just that directly. This has been happening all over the

00:09:43.280 country for decades. And the white men just don't talk about it in public. Because if they do, you

00:09:49.440 know what happens? The black men call them mediocre. Said, no, you're lying. You didn't get the promotion 1.00

00:09:55.040 because you're a mediocre white man. That's what happened to me. Yeah, the black citizens poured into my 1.00

00:10:03.040 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, 1.00

00:10:13.520 they were really racist. All right. Meanwhile, Attorney General, Missouri Attorney General,

00:10:21.440 is Andrew Bailey is suing Starbucks because they have some kind of a race and sex-based hiring

00:10:33.840 practice, which would be, of course, illegal. So now you've got Disney, which is actively

00:10:42.960 discriminating against white men. You've got Starbucks being sued for actively discriminating against white

00:10:49.920 men. And then you've got Goldman Sachs that just decided to scrap its policy that said it wouldn't

00:10:57.760 help take a business public if they had an all-white board members. So they said, you've got to have some 1.00

00:11:05.040 diversity and you've got to have at least one woman on the board or we won't work with you. 1.00

00:11:10.720 Which is, of course, racial discrimination and gender discrimination.

00:11:16.160 And the good news is that they changed. So they're not going to be that way. But here's the bad news.

00:11:23.840 I'm not going to forget that. If you think you can just change from discriminating against white men 0.71

00:11:30.720 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 1.00

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

00:12:07.120 a quote, zero attempt at cleaning now over a month, no cleanup attempt, no official government website

00:12:13.840 you can go to for any kind of timeline when the power is going to be on. When can you get back to

00:12:19.280 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

00:12:36.240 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.

00:12:52.400 It's like we don't have, as a state, we have no capability of doing anything. And I think it's

00:12:58.240 always the same problem. I think it's the state just necessarily needs to inject corruption into

00:13:06.720 every big move. And cleaning up LA is a big move. They probably are just holding out for diversity and

00:13:13.680 getting their cronies the jobs and figuring out some way to monetize this for the government itself.

00:13:20.320 So I don't trust anything about the California government. They have not earned any trust. I assume

00:13:26.160 that the reason it's not happening rapidly is just pure corruption. It could be incompetence,

00:13:32.160 but I bet it's corruption. And the corruption is they're trying to figure out, okay,

00:13:36.720 how are we going to make it look like it's not corruption in all it is? I think that's

00:13:41.440 probably what's slowing them down. I have no trust whatsoever in my state government.

00:13:48.640 Well, here's a story that I seem to wake up to every single day. It's like Groundhog Day. Here's

00:13:54.320 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,

00:14:17.600 but it seems like it takes about a minute to figure out that somebody bought their appointment

00:14:25.120 or their daughter or their wife is working on something with USAID or there's just some nefarious

00:14:31.280 connection or they've got a history of being, you know, a rogue judge. These are not normal judges.

00:14:37.520 And one of the things that Elon Musk says is that if any judge anywhere can stop anything that Doge 0.96

00:14:49.200 does, it doesn't matter where the judge is, anywhere in the country, he says, you don't really have a

00:14:54.560 government. If any judge anywhere can stop, really it'd be stopping Trump, the president. And that's a good

00:15:02.080 point. How can we have a government when people who are not elected, you know, these appointed judges,

00:15:10.400 I think mostly they're appointed, can stop anything from happening and they can just keep doing it all

00:15:18.320 day long. So somehow we have to figure out how to get freedom from the crooked judges. Destroying the

00:15:26.160 reputation seems like a good start, but only, but only if it is honestly destroyed as if, if they have

00:15:34.400 a conflict of interest, they're not admitting to and not recusing themselves. Yeah. You have to,

00:15:39.680 you have to go after that pretty hard. So I don't know what can be done, but we can't run a country

00:15:45.920 if corrupt judges can stop everything. You just can't. So I would, I would love to hear an alternative,

00:15:55.600 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

00:16:20.480 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. 0.99

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,

00:18:03.520 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. 0.76

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. 1.00

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00:21:14.160 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 0.71

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.

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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 0.79

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? 0.75

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 0.97

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.

00:39:14.400 If you wanted to do something really big,

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 1.00

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 0.97

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, 1.00

00:41:08.880 not enough young people. It's almost unsolvable. It's like, you know, doom heading their way. 0.63

00:41:14.480 United States? Much the same. We've got that demographic problem. Russia? Demographic problem. 0.80

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 0.75

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. 0.98

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.89

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 0.89

00:46:52.880 general, because there are plenty of moderate, excellent Islamic people. But the radical version 1.00

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, 1.00

00:47:08.320 Russia and the United States all have an interest in keeping the radicalized part of Islam controlled. 0.97

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. 0.64

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

00:50:05.520 borders are what will be the final borders.

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. 0.87

00:50:19.680 Which would look like Putin winning, which would embolden him.

00:50:23.680 You don't want to embolden your adversary.

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.

00:51:40.480 I've been visualizing my match all week.

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 0.94

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 0.80

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 0.81

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.

00:58:57.200 I don't know. Anyway.

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. 1.00

01:03:41.360 How fucking dumb do you have to be to have that opinion? 1.00

01:03:47.280 That's really dumb. Like I'd love to say, oh, he's not looking into this context or something, 1.00

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, 1.00

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 0.96

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 1.00

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 0.99

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. 0.96

01:11:10.800 Clay, there are plenty of masculine gay guys. Tons. He just isn't one of them. 0.97

01:11:17.840 So they couldn't leave their frame. Their little frame is, you're a sexist, you're racist. They just 0.99

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 0.95

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. 0.69

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 0.73

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 0.99

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. 1.00

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 0.54

01:19:49.280 that anybody heard it.

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 1.00

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,

01:24:03.760 the rest of you, thanks for joining.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 14, 2025

Episode 2750 CWSA 02⧸14⧸25

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