Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 25, 2025


Episode 2761 CWSA 02⧸25⧸25


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 20 minutes

Words per Minute

155.04271

Word Count

12,469

Sentence Count

884

Misogynist Sentences

12

Hate Speech Sentences

9


Summary

MSNBC has fired Joy Reid, and Rachel Maddow is not happy about it. She says she has learned a lot from her former colleague, but what does that teach her about racism? And why is it so bad that she calls her own company racist?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Oh, there. Yeah, there we go. Comments, oh, plenty.
00:00:15.960 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
00:00:22.600 It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and I'm pretty sure you've never had a better time.
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00:00:36.880 Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
00:00:40.020 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day,
00:00:43.660 the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip.
00:00:48.040 Happens now. Go.
00:00:54.060 Everything's working.
00:00:56.400 Well, we got news today.
00:01:00.940 So question number one, now that the funding for USAID is being cut,
00:01:07.580 is that related to the high-level firings we're seeing in the media?
00:01:13.180 Is that why MSNBC's cutting some of their expensive talent?
00:01:18.140 Or is it just a coincidence and they're not doing well, so obviously they have to make some changes?
00:01:23.120 I don't know. But as you know, Joy Reid, her show ended.
00:01:28.140 She had her last show, I guess, yesterday.
00:01:31.960 And Rachel Maddow didn't take it well.
00:01:35.540 So Rachel Maddow goes on her own show to complain about Joy Reid being fired.
00:01:43.680 And she said that she's learned so much from her, as we all have, really.
00:01:49.600 We have so much.
00:01:51.100 And she has so much more to teach her, Rachel says.
00:01:53.880 And I'm wondering, what else does Joy Reid have to teach her?
00:01:58.820 I feel like we saw a lot of her lessons, but I think the lesson is you should blame everybody for being a racist.
00:02:05.460 So that would be the big takeaway.
00:02:09.760 And Rachel Maddow said, I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC.
00:02:14.860 Personally, I think it's a bad mistake to let her walk out the door.
00:02:18.180 It is not my call, and I understand that.
00:02:20.680 But that's what I think.
00:02:22.500 Now it gets better.
00:02:24.600 Here's the payoff.
00:02:25.540 Rachel Maddow said, I will tell you, it's also unnerving to see that on a network where we have two, count them, two, non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their show.
00:02:40.580 Uh-oh, shows.
00:02:41.720 As is Katie Fang on the weekend.
00:02:44.240 And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them.
00:02:48.420 It feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.
00:02:51.240 Now, if there's anything that could make me happier than watching Joy Reid being taken off the air, it's watching Rachel Maddow call her own company racist for taking Joy Reid off the air.
00:03:07.740 Now, I think that that's what she learned from Joy Reid, to just call everybody racist all the time.
00:03:13.760 You don't have to do anything else.
00:03:15.720 That's the entire game.
00:03:16.960 And when you only have that one speed, the only thing that you do is call everything racist, you know that's going to get turned against your own company, right?
00:03:30.460 There wasn't any way that that wouldn't work out poorly, even on paper.
00:03:37.040 If I said to you, all right, here's the deal.
00:03:39.640 There's going to be this network, and the people in the network are going to call everybody and everything racist.
00:03:45.520 Right?
00:03:46.960 Here's what I would have warned the network.
00:03:50.640 You know that's eventually going to be turned on you, right?
00:03:54.200 You can't hire a whole bunch of people who only have one speed.
00:03:58.200 That's racist.
00:03:58.980 That's racist.
00:03:59.860 That's racist.
00:04:00.700 That's racist.
00:04:01.520 That's racist.
00:04:02.340 That's racist.
00:04:02.760 That's racist.
00:04:03.280 And then expect that when you make a change that they don't like, that they're not going to call you a racist?
00:04:10.180 Of course they are.
00:04:11.980 Of course they are.
00:04:13.000 It doesn't matter what reasons you have.
00:04:14.960 It doesn't matter at all.
00:04:16.960 Anyway, one of the things that Rachel Maddow probably is suffering from now is that as long as Joy Reid still had a job, Rachel Maddow felt safe because Joy Reid was even crazier.
00:04:30.760 So it made Rachel Maddow look sort of moderate.
00:04:35.560 But once Joy Reid is gone, now Rachel Maddow will look like the craziest one on the network.
00:04:42.340 And it's going to make her feel like she might be next.
00:04:45.820 And I'm surprised she wasn't just because of her pay.
00:04:48.740 How did other people take it?
00:04:53.080 Well, Angela Rye, who's a black woman who, which is important to the story, she was a former CNN commentator.
00:05:01.760 And she calls for a boycott, a boycott of MSNBC because they fired Joy Reid.
00:05:10.200 And I guess that makes him racist.
00:05:11.860 I don't know.
00:05:12.720 And then Keith Olbermann, you know, my mascot, Keith Olbermann, he said in a post, breaking MSNBC racist purge escalates.
00:05:24.140 They named the people who were out.
00:05:28.360 So the left is getting attacked by Keith Olbermann for being racist.
00:05:36.960 Are we supposed to enjoy this as much as we are?
00:05:41.020 Now, I never like to say only negative things.
00:05:44.960 So I want to say one positive thing.
00:05:46.660 One of the things that Rachel Maddow said in her little speech about what happened is that Rachel Maddow is 51 years old.
00:05:54.140 And I thought to myself, damn, whatever you're doing for skin care is working.
00:06:02.180 Does she look 51?
00:06:04.140 I think I would have guessed 40.
00:06:08.060 That's pretty impressive.
00:06:09.780 Whatever she does for health, it sure works on camera anyway.
00:06:15.980 So good for her.
00:06:17.440 All right.
00:06:17.920 Do you want me to make everybody mad?
00:06:21.660 All right.
00:06:21.940 Now I'm going to make everybody mad.
00:06:23.180 You all saw the story and you want me to talk about it, where Dan Crenshaw was caught on an open mic saying about Tucker Carlson, quote, if I ever meet Tucker Carlson, I'll effing kill him.
00:06:37.800 I'm not joking.
00:06:39.940 Now, this, of course, caused everybody to say, you crazy, you crazy and a control person.
00:06:47.300 And how crazy can you be?
00:06:50.820 And Tucker cleverly invited him to come on the show to see how it turns out.
00:06:57.080 I don't think Tucker was too worried.
00:06:59.860 Now, you should probably know that Tucker has been quite a critic of Crenshaw.
00:07:04.700 He's called him unstable in the past and says he needs help.
00:07:08.400 I don't know about any of that.
00:07:10.400 But I had to ask ChatGPT to remind me why it is that so many MAGA people don't like Crenshaw.
00:07:18.180 And he said generic stuff.
00:07:22.380 Tell me if this sounds right.
00:07:24.340 That Crenshaw was more what they called.
00:07:26.520 Now, remember, this is just AI.
00:07:28.560 This is just ChatGPT.
00:07:30.180 Said that Crenshaw is more traditional conservative as opposed to a MAGA populist.
00:07:36.400 And he has sometimes wanted to do bipartisan things that the MAGA people didn't like.
00:07:45.220 And he has sometimes criticized Trump, which the MAGA people don't like.
00:07:50.260 Now, I don't know.
00:07:51.080 Is there more to it?
00:07:52.360 Probably.
00:07:53.020 That sounds kind of generic.
00:07:54.800 But here's my take.
00:07:57.520 And I'm going to be consistent with past takes about leaked audio and video.
00:08:04.280 Here's my take.
00:08:07.400 The person who's to blame is the person who leaked it.
00:08:10.960 Now, this is what I always say with a leaked video.
00:08:13.600 Because you have to recognize that people say things in private that are perfectly fine in private.
00:08:20.320 As soon as somebody changes the context from private to public, which is what the leaked video did,
00:08:26.180 they turn it into a completely different message.
00:08:29.180 Because when it's private, it's just the way people talk.
00:08:33.380 Right?
00:08:34.280 Have you ever said you want to kill somebody privately?
00:08:37.720 And whoever you're talking to knows you don't want to kill them.
00:08:41.500 It's just something you say when you're talking privately.
00:08:44.260 It's like, ah, I would kill that person.
00:08:45.880 I mean it.
00:08:46.620 Now, he also added, I'm not joking.
00:08:49.480 But that doesn't change it.
00:08:51.380 Of course, he's not joking.
00:08:53.160 He's just saying that he, you know, doesn't like him.
00:08:55.920 So, my rule is this.
00:08:59.200 If something would be perfectly ordinary in private, and then somebody, some weasel, some
00:09:07.100 fucking asshole weasel decides to drop that video to destroy your life, it's the weasel's
00:09:13.260 fault.
00:09:13.480 So, I'd like to know the name of the weasel.
00:09:16.240 Because the weasel is who I have all of my hatred for right now.
00:09:19.500 I mean, I fucking hate that guy, or woman, whoever it is.
00:09:22.720 Whoever leaked this is just scum.
00:09:26.200 It's despicable.
00:09:27.220 Because they knew it would have this effect, and I'm sure they knew that he didn't mean
00:09:31.500 it seriously.
00:09:32.740 If you'd like to test whether he meant it seriously, I would apply what I call the really filter,
00:09:40.220 where you say, really?
00:09:42.840 Do you really think that if Crenshaw and Tucker Carlson were in the same room, that Crenshaw
00:09:49.720 would really slay him?
00:09:53.300 Really?
00:09:54.540 Do any of you believe that?
00:09:56.580 No.
00:09:57.220 None of you believe that he would really slay him.
00:10:01.200 So, it's just talk.
00:10:02.840 And the things that you say privately, now, I think it was a mistake to assume it was private.
00:10:09.180 So, there's definitely an error here.
00:10:12.280 And I think, you know, Crenshaw probably learned from that.
00:10:14.980 If you've got microphones and people standing around, you don't say that kind of thing if
00:10:21.120 there's a microphone within 100 feet.
00:10:23.860 That's the lesson.
00:10:24.760 So, Crenshaw is not, you know, guilt-free.
00:10:28.560 I would say that would be a public person error.
00:10:32.020 Now, I've made the same errors myself.
00:10:34.720 I've definitely said things in places where probably there was a microphone and maybe I
00:10:40.780 should have been smarter.
00:10:41.600 But, you know, none of it really hurt me.
00:10:44.720 So, I have severe hatred for who leaked it.
00:10:48.760 And don't take this as me supporting everything that Crenshaw wants to do policy-wise or everything
00:10:55.980 he said or everything about his whole life.
00:10:57.860 I don't know too much.
00:11:00.360 But this really pisses me off.
00:11:03.920 The fact that we would treat Crenshaw as the bad guy when the bad guy is the leaker.
00:11:09.660 Oh, the bad guy is the leaker.
00:11:11.820 Does this sound familiar?
00:11:12.980 Sometimes you can just grab him by the pussy.
00:11:16.520 Obviously, if that had been private and stayed private, it was just two guys talking and one
00:11:24.880 of them didn't take it seriously and the other one probably didn't mean it seriously.
00:11:28.680 It really had no impact if it stayed private.
00:11:32.340 As soon as somebody leaked it, it changed the context because our brains are such that we
00:11:38.760 just imagine it as a public statement because it is public.
00:11:42.080 But it wasn't originally public.
00:11:44.500 Whoever changes the context is responsible for the message.
00:11:48.380 Period.
00:11:50.080 Because that's not the original message.
00:11:51.760 The original message is two guys talking.
00:11:54.340 Completely different.
00:11:55.840 Completely different.
00:11:57.780 If you've never heard two guys talking privately, maybe you wouldn't understand that.
00:12:03.100 Anyway, so yeah, I have a strong feeling about this, but none of it's about Crenshaw.
00:12:08.820 And Marjorie Taylor Greene asked him, did you just say you want to kill my friend, Tucker
00:12:15.140 Carlson?
00:12:16.020 And he replied on X, you know, LOL, no.
00:12:20.180 Correct.
00:12:21.360 No, he does not actually literally want to kill Tucker Carlson.
00:12:25.140 That would be crazy.
00:12:26.880 Anyway, the U.S. post office workers, they decided to protest any coming changes from Trump.
00:12:36.320 So there's some talk about rolling the post office into the federal government, because
00:12:41.380 right now it operates somewhat independently.
00:12:44.460 But if they roll it into the regular government, it might be in, let's say, the Commerce Department.
00:12:48.620 Oh, I told my pre-show listeners this, but it's worth repeating.
00:12:55.940 I've incorporated AI into my morning process when I get ready for the show, and I'm putting
00:13:02.380 my notes together.
00:13:03.520 There's always something that I need a little more context, and I don't want to bother,
00:13:08.260 you know, Googling it or something.
00:13:09.860 So I keep my AI on, and it's in voice mode.
00:13:15.840 Usually I just push it into voice mode when I've got a question.
00:13:20.740 And then I said, if the post office got absorbed by the federal government, you know, what department
00:13:26.820 would it be in?
00:13:28.180 And it said, well, one of them might be the Commerce Department.
00:13:31.700 So it's just a great tool.
00:13:34.800 Every day I use it that way, and it's really, really helpful.
00:13:38.040 Yesterday, it told me that Apple was going to invest $500 million in the United States.
00:13:46.400 And I said to myself, that doesn't really sound like enough.
00:13:52.940 And then I checked, and it was $500 billion.
00:13:56.400 And then I went back to chat GPT, and I said, is it $500 million, which you just said, or is
00:14:02.660 it $500 billion?
00:14:04.140 And it says, oh, it's billion.
00:14:05.360 So you have to watch it.
00:14:08.720 It's definitely not 100%.
00:14:10.700 Sometimes it's still hallucinating.
00:14:13.960 That's a pretty big hallucination.
00:14:15.820 You know, the difference between millions and billions, pretty big.
00:14:20.080 Pretty big.
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00:15:21.620 Anyway, so here's my question.
00:15:23.740 I saw, I think it was Insurrection Barbie asked this question on X, or a version of it.
00:15:30.520 So I'll just put this in my own words, so don't blame Insurrection Barbie for my wording
00:15:35.320 of this.
00:15:35.760 But hypothetically, if the federal government absorbed the post office so that they were
00:15:45.040 just federal workers like everybody else in the federal government, would it be possible
00:15:50.800 for Trump to order them to not deliver mail-in ballots and make it impossible to vote with
00:15:57.800 mail-in ballots, even if the states find it legal and have approved it?
00:16:04.080 Could he find that as like a shortcut to say, yeah, you states can say you want mail-in ballots,
00:16:12.540 but I control the post office and I just told them that they're not in the business of mail-in
00:16:17.360 ballots.
00:16:18.920 Now, I'm guessing there's probably some kind of rule or legislation that says the post office
00:16:26.560 has to deliver kind of anything that isn't dangerous.
00:16:31.180 So I'm just guessing.
00:16:33.160 You know, I would imagine there'd be some kind of rule that says you have to deliver
00:16:36.520 whatever somebody wants you to deliver.
00:16:39.000 But I feel like you could game that.
00:16:42.160 It feels gameable.
00:16:43.660 You could do something like, well, yes, you can do it, but people would have to pay $100
00:16:48.380 per ballot.
00:16:49.920 And that would be the postage would be $100.
00:16:53.040 Or yes, you can do it, but you have to show your ID when you're mailing it or something like
00:16:59.980 that.
00:17:00.980 These are the bad ideas.
00:17:01.980 Those are not meant to be serious ideas.
00:17:04.460 But it just makes me wonder, is the change, the potential change in the post office leadership,
00:17:12.560 meaning putting it in the federal government as opposed to operating independently, could
00:17:17.700 it take care of mail-in voting?
00:17:20.220 So I'll just leave that for somebody who wants to research that and get back to me.
00:17:27.680 You know, I know we talk too much about the Democrats.
00:17:31.060 They're almost reasonable.
00:17:33.660 You know, like the Carville when he's not crazy.
00:17:36.040 And Jon Stewart, when sometimes he says something that's, you know, not 100% pro-Democrat and
00:17:43.080 not 100% anti-MAGA.
00:17:45.860 But a funny thing has happened with this Doge stuff.
00:17:49.480 If you haven't noticed, the Democrats have given up on saying Doge is a bad idea because
00:17:56.380 the country loves it.
00:17:57.820 You know, by a pretty good majority, the country likes cutting that waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:18:02.380 So you can't really be a political party and say, yeah, we want to preserve the waste,
00:18:08.580 fraud, and abuse.
00:18:09.880 And they finally figured that out, that they couldn't possibly be against that.
00:18:13.980 So they've changed their approach to talk about the method.
00:18:19.700 Well, OK, but the method, you know, the way they're doing it, we'll talk about that.
00:18:25.360 But Jon Stewart takes it even further.
00:18:27.200 So he does a pretty funny bit where he's saying that, what about, you know, it's great to stop
00:18:37.120 the, you know, condoms for terrorists, which was never really a real story, but it makes
00:18:42.100 a good anecdote.
00:18:43.900 But what about the subsidies to big oil, he says?
00:18:47.860 And what about the, I guess, subsidies or something like that for big pharma?
00:18:51.560 And I don't know if he thought that this was a Republican thing versus a Democrat thing,
00:19:00.800 and that maybe the MAGA people would be in favor of subsidies for big oil.
00:19:08.660 I don't think we are, right?
00:19:11.360 Is there any pro-Trump person who says, you know, we should give more of our tax dollars
00:19:16.120 to big profitable companies?
00:19:17.600 I don't think anybody says that.
00:19:22.000 So not only is Stewart acknowledging that, you know, waste, fraud, and abuse have to be
00:19:28.600 addressed, he's very clear on that, but he's competing.
00:19:33.140 He's competing.
00:19:34.520 He's saying this is where the big money is.
00:19:36.520 I don't know how big it is or how easy it is to find or if it's even real, but I love
00:19:40.820 the fact that the Democrats now have to compete for fighting the most waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:19:47.600 All right.
00:19:48.660 All right.
00:19:49.180 Let's enter that frame.
00:19:51.060 Let's enter the frame of we're competing to see who can do the best job of cutting things
00:19:56.440 that we shouldn't be paying for.
00:19:58.100 Love it.
00:19:59.420 Now, that is a valuable contribution, in my opinion.
00:20:02.460 So, let's talk about, I'll get to more on that later.
00:20:12.340 Thomas Massey points out that the budget still has some kind of subsidies for using corn to
00:20:19.340 make fuel, which everybody knows, as he points out, Massey points out, that it increases the
00:20:25.840 price of food.
00:20:26.700 Now, did you know that?
00:20:29.760 Were you aware that even still, there are Republicans, there are Republicans who are
00:20:35.020 in favor of using corn to make fuel, this ethanol?
00:20:39.520 Now, I've never even heard of anybody using ethanol for anything.
00:20:44.040 Have you?
00:20:45.320 Do any of you have an ethanol-driven car or an ethanol tractor?
00:20:49.900 I don't use ethanol for anything.
00:20:55.860 So, isn't ethanol well-known to be just basically a scam?
00:21:02.160 That might be going too far.
00:21:04.120 But I don't know any voter who's in favor of this.
00:21:08.320 So, it's got to be one of those Republicans want to protect their farmers and, you know,
00:21:13.080 they get free money if they grow corn for fuel, I guess.
00:21:16.020 So, I like the fact that Massey's on that.
00:21:19.700 Now, I would add that.
00:21:21.680 I would add that to the Doge process.
00:21:24.460 Say, hmm, I don't know.
00:21:26.300 I don't see why we're doing that.
00:21:28.020 It doesn't seem to be necessary for climate change or anything else.
00:21:31.320 It's not like ethanol is, you know, making a big run to take over for other fossil fuels
00:21:36.500 or fossil fuels.
00:21:37.640 There's so much news going on that there are stories that in a normal time would be the
00:21:45.620 number one headline.
00:21:47.640 But in today's news environment, it's like the, you know, 10th most important thing that
00:21:54.040 would otherwise just be huge.
00:21:55.320 Here's one of those.
00:21:56.480 According to Michael Schellenberger, there's a FBI whistleblower who has a source within the
00:22:02.980 FBI who said that the FBI employees were destroying evidence on servers and that he informed Cash
00:22:10.100 Patel of that.
00:22:11.640 Now, if that's true, and keep in mind, it's a whistleblower who talked to another person
00:22:17.960 who said it's true.
00:22:18.960 So, it's not the, the whistleblower apparently is known.
00:22:22.560 So, so one person is known, but the person he talked to is anonymous.
00:22:29.480 Do we accept that?
00:22:31.240 Do we accept that's true with an anonymous, with one anonymous source?
00:22:35.640 I'm going to say Schellenberger is really good on checking sources.
00:22:39.860 So, I'm leaning toward this is probably true.
00:22:43.040 It also just makes sense, but isn't it also, just so you're warned about it, isn't it also
00:22:50.480 a little bit too on the nose?
00:22:54.280 What's the one thing that every one of us would have predicted when Cash Patel got nominated
00:23:00.200 for the FBI?
00:23:01.560 Every single one of us would say, oh, they backed up the shredders.
00:23:06.220 They're going to be burning their files and deleting things.
00:23:08.760 Every one of us said that.
00:23:10.000 And then there's a story with one anonymous source that's exactly the thing that every
00:23:15.720 one of us was expecting.
00:23:18.280 How do you judge that one?
00:23:20.500 Now, the only thing it's got going for it is Schellenberger because he's highly credible.
00:23:25.640 But if this one turns out to be not true, and I'm not sure we would ever know that, if it
00:23:31.900 turned out to be not true, don't be surprised because that two on the nose thing is just, it's
00:23:37.700 just deadly accurate, deadly accurate.
00:23:42.740 All right.
00:23:44.340 Even Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, I would call him the country's top banker.
00:23:51.780 And when he says stuff about economics, people listen.
00:23:56.420 I listen.
00:23:57.240 I think he's very credible.
00:23:59.140 And he says that Doge needs to be done.
00:24:01.840 Now, he's said something like that before.
00:24:05.020 But everybody has to say that, right?
00:24:09.820 As I said, even the Democrats, pretty much every Democrat has agreed, okay, if you can
00:24:16.220 get rid of the waste, run, and abuse, yeah, that would be kind of good.
00:24:20.200 So it's not a surprise that the smartest guy in banking says it, too.
00:24:25.120 But here's where I'm going to get into the, they've shifted from what to do, which is hard
00:24:33.320 to be against, getting rid of fraud and waste and abuse, to how it's being done.
00:24:39.160 And I wanted to add what I call the Dilbert filter.
00:24:42.620 You ready for this?
00:24:43.920 So as the creator of Dilbert, I write about things that seem like good ideas, but in the
00:24:51.440 real world, they just always go wrong.
00:24:53.160 So that's sort of what I do for 37 years or something.
00:24:58.080 And this is one of those.
00:25:00.180 I'm going to give you a couple of stories from my own experience about cutting expenses
00:25:04.880 in a big company.
00:25:06.180 So if you don't know, I worked for two big companies before I became a cartoonist.
00:25:11.320 One of them was Crocker National Bank, and then later Pacific Bell, the local phone company.
00:25:18.140 And my jobs were usually the budget guy, finance guy for most of that time.
00:25:23.620 So I would be the one who was in charge of making sure the budgets were cut when they
00:25:29.000 needed to get cut.
00:25:30.000 But I didn't have any power.
00:25:31.620 I just had to be the organizer, basically.
00:25:34.360 So here are two stories, and this will get us into the chainsaw versus the scalpel as
00:25:41.640 well.
00:25:42.600 So story number one.
00:25:47.200 Bank more encores when you switch to a Scotiabank banking package.
00:25:52.100 Learn more at scotiabank.com slash banking packages.
00:25:55.400 Conditions apply.
00:25:57.220 Scotiabank.
00:25:57.920 You're richer than you think.
00:25:58.980 I was asked to put together a budget for the technology group within Pacific Bell, and
00:26:07.200 we were going to do what's called a bottom-up budget.
00:26:11.900 You've heard Vivek say we should only do bottom-up budgets.
00:26:15.200 Now, a bottom-up budget is when you go to each department head and you say, all right,
00:26:20.220 I want you to add up all the things you absolutely need to do, and then that'll be your budget.
00:26:26.480 What we're not going to do, because that would be crazy, is to give you the same budget as
00:26:31.500 last year plus 5% or something, because we really need to know what you're doing.
00:26:37.020 Maybe this year you don't need as much.
00:26:39.200 Maybe next year you need more.
00:26:41.280 So a bottom-up budget is the most responsible, thoughtful, rational way to do it.
00:26:47.920 You all agree so far?
00:26:49.480 Everybody on the same page?
00:26:51.080 That if you want to be a good manager, you want to be smart, you want to do the right
00:26:55.180 thing, you're definitely going to do a bottom-up budget, because that's the only time you can
00:27:00.460 put the scalpel on things.
00:27:02.920 There's sort of a scalpel approach, right?
00:27:05.100 You're really looking at each little project.
00:27:07.900 Now, I did that, so I collected everybody's bottom-up budgets.
00:27:13.720 It took a lot of work.
00:27:15.180 You'd have a list of projects, and it'd be a mile long, and that would be for each department
00:27:20.200 head.
00:27:20.500 And every department had their list of projects that were a mile long.
00:27:25.100 And then I would take it to the, was he a VP?
00:27:29.120 Might have been an assistant VP.
00:27:31.240 The top guy in the technology department, or at least in my end of it.
00:27:37.320 And I would show him this, like, infinite list of projects.
00:27:41.580 Now, what do you think he did?
00:27:42.800 Do you think that he looked at the infinite list of projects, which he only had a passing
00:27:49.100 knowledge of, and then made scalpel-like decisions on each of these projects that he basically
00:27:57.200 didn't even, he barely even knew that they were happening?
00:28:00.200 Do you think that's what happened?
00:28:01.860 Because I'm told that that's how the smart people do it.
00:28:04.760 The smart people take the scalpel, they look at every expense, and they cut just what needs
00:28:09.540 to be cut.
00:28:10.580 Do you think he did that?
00:28:11.500 No, it was way too impossible.
00:28:14.940 There's no way that he could have spent his entire life studying each of these projects
00:28:19.300 to figure out on his own where to cut.
00:28:22.600 Now, if you think that the department managers did that for him, as in cut their own budget
00:28:28.640 without being asked, do you think that happened?
00:28:31.560 No.
00:28:32.460 The individual departments wanted the most money they could get.
00:28:35.760 So to them, their boss was their opponent.
00:28:39.760 The boss was their opponent.
00:28:42.200 And the other people who were other department heads were their opponent.
00:28:45.940 They were trying to get the biggest part of the pie, and that was the game.
00:28:49.900 So they couldn't do the scalpel.
00:28:52.940 The people who actually understood the projects, they wouldn't do any scalpel because they would
00:28:56.680 lie.
00:28:57.660 Oh, yeah.
00:28:58.680 If I asked the question, they'd say, oh, yeah, essential.
00:29:02.840 Well, if we don't do this, the entire company will fold in a minute.
00:29:07.660 And then it gets to the boss who would be able to cut it if he understood them.
00:29:12.860 But he doesn't understand them.
00:29:14.460 And there's no way he really could because there are just so many of them.
00:29:17.540 So do you know what the big boss told me?
00:29:20.360 He looks at me and looks at my giant list that's incomprehensible.
00:29:24.120 He says, tell everybody to cut 10% across the board compared to the budget from last year.
00:29:30.880 And I looked at him after doing all this work.
00:29:34.220 And I looked at him and said, that's really, is that how this works?
00:29:42.180 And he goes, yeah, just cut 10%.
00:29:44.580 And I'd say, I've talked to all these managers.
00:29:47.160 And they say, if you cut their budgets, even a penny, the entire world will end.
00:29:53.520 And they swear that's true.
00:29:55.800 And he looked at me and said, they'll work it out.
00:29:58.200 Just cut everybody 10%.
00:29:59.580 So I go back to everybody after I'd done this bottom-up budget, made them do all this work.
00:30:06.600 And I said, he just says, cut everything 10%.
00:30:09.820 Do you know how it turned out?
00:30:13.480 Fine.
00:30:14.620 Fine.
00:30:15.280 Do you know how easy it was to cut 10%?
00:30:18.360 Well, about a few months into every year, there would be people who imagined that they were going to start some new project on day one.
00:30:26.660 But there was some vendor who couldn't deliver.
00:30:29.100 There were some approvals they didn't get.
00:30:30.820 So things were like six months delayed.
00:30:32.380 So when somebody needed a little extra, because it really was an important project or something new, they'd go to the boss.
00:30:40.760 And he'd say, oh, okay.
00:30:41.960 Is there any projects that are delayed and not spending the budget for this year?
00:30:45.620 Okay.
00:30:46.040 Just take it from that budget.
00:30:47.320 Put it over there.
00:30:48.340 Problem solved.
00:30:48.880 Now, in that specific case, there was a little scalpling going on, but it was after the fact.
00:30:55.960 It was sort of doing it wrong and then correcting.
00:30:58.960 Does that sound familiar?
00:31:00.880 The big boss was doing it wrong, moving fast, being efficient, and then making fast corrections.
00:31:08.380 Okay.
00:31:08.740 That one does need a little more money.
00:31:10.340 This one underspent.
00:31:11.600 Move that money over there.
00:31:13.360 Worked fine.
00:31:14.760 Everything worked out just right.
00:31:16.980 Now, here's another one.
00:31:18.120 Here's my second budget story.
00:31:19.920 Because if you don't understand how the real world budgets, none of this doge criticism is going to make any sense to you.
00:31:27.400 That same boss once asked me to sit in for him in a meeting where the department heads were arguing to keep their budgets because there was a higher level above us that was trying to cut our budgets as well.
00:31:40.420 So, so far, I've only been talking about my department and had lots of sub-departments.
00:31:45.920 But above it, they were trying to do the same thing.
00:31:49.320 So, so they brought us all in and they would ask each of the managers, you know, is this budget necessary?
00:31:58.100 You know, is there anything you can cut from your budget?
00:32:00.280 If we cut this, would that be okay?
00:32:02.260 Now, here's something that's embarrassing.
00:32:06.380 I was very young, but I was fairly capable.
00:32:10.720 So, my boss didn't feel bad sending me to do this very important task.
00:32:14.740 And when it came to me, the person leading the meeting said, all right, so, you know, looked at a list of projects I guess I'd submitted and said, well, what about this one?
00:32:25.260 Do you really need to do this?
00:32:26.920 Is this essential to the company?
00:32:28.320 And I said, well, if you had to cut something and I were being a team player, that's probably what I would cut.
00:32:42.020 How do you think that went over when I took that back to my boss?
00:32:45.160 Every one of you who have corporate experience, you're laughing right now.
00:32:52.180 It's like, how dumb were you?
00:32:54.460 No, I thought I was there to do a good faith effort to reduce the budget for the company because I thought I was working for the shareholders.
00:33:04.820 Right?
00:33:05.960 I mean, it's a fiduciary responsibility to not waste money because you have shareholders.
00:33:10.700 So, I thought, yeah, you know, if you're asking me what I would cut if I had to, it would be that one.
00:33:16.960 And so, they cut it.
00:33:18.960 And I took it back to my boss.
00:33:21.300 Oh, my God.
00:33:23.360 The look of death that I got.
00:33:26.360 He just cut through me with his eyes.
00:33:29.920 He said, so, I hear you gave away my budget.
00:33:34.640 And I said, oh, but, you know, they asked me what would be the least priority.
00:33:39.800 And I was trying to do the right thing.
00:33:42.860 And that's what I learned, that nobody's trying to do the right thing.
00:33:47.680 Everybody in a big organization is lying because that's how you get ahead.
00:33:53.500 So, everybody wanted their own budget not to be cut.
00:33:56.660 But they were certainly happy if other people's budget got cut because they were competing against other managers.
00:34:02.440 They weren't trying to satisfy stakeholders.
00:34:06.360 That was just dumb on my part.
00:34:07.800 So, on my part.
00:34:09.380 All right.
00:34:10.240 So, the first thing you need to know is if you try to do a scalpel approach, everyone is lying and you won't know it.
00:34:20.600 Well, you'll know they're lying, but you don't know what the lie is or what the truth is.
00:34:23.600 So, if you were to say to me on paper and conceptually, is it better to use a scalpel than a chainsaw, I would say the same thing you would say.
00:34:35.060 Well, yeah, scalpel makes sense.
00:34:38.120 That's a reason looking at all the details, deciding what to keep and whatnot.
00:34:42.900 But in the real world, nobody's going to play along with that.
00:34:46.440 They're all going to just look for maintaining their own little domain.
00:34:51.120 So, in my experience, the scalpel approach can only work in the specific situations.
00:35:00.680 And I'll give you a few.
00:35:01.840 One would be if you're a small business and you're the owner of the business and it really matters to you if you cut costs because that money goes right in your pocket.
00:35:10.880 And it's a small enough company that you understand all of its parts.
00:35:16.420 So, you could actually cut with a scalpel in that case because you're the boss.
00:35:20.680 It's all good for you if you cut and you know exactly where to cut and where not to cut.
00:35:26.240 Yes, scalpel, scalpel, scalpel.
00:35:28.920 If you took a chainsaw to your own smallish business, well, that would obviously be a mistake.
00:35:35.140 Obviously.
00:35:35.600 Now, what is the situation?
00:35:39.100 In another situation, well, let's put it this way.
00:35:43.760 So, that's a situation where you've got time to operate and you're going to be profitable no matter what.
00:35:50.980 But you could be a little more profitable.
00:35:53.380 So, if you've got plenty of time, the scalpel makes sense.
00:35:57.500 You know, even if you have to work a little extra hard to find some stuff.
00:36:01.180 Yes, as long as you're in a business that's stable and you're just trying to tweak it every now and then, scalpel.
00:36:09.700 So, when you hear people say, but I've been involved in a number of businesses and we cut with a scalpel.
00:36:16.160 They did.
00:36:17.180 They did.
00:36:18.600 Here's where the scalpel doesn't work.
00:36:21.540 When there's an existential threat and the timer is ticking.
00:36:25.660 If the timer is ticking, you're not going to have the option of using the scalpel.
00:36:32.200 Because even if you did everything right, you would run out of time.
00:36:36.960 Here are two examples.
00:36:38.260 Number one, Twitter.
00:36:40.580 When Musk bought Twitter, the cash flow situation was dire.
00:36:46.260 As in, uh-oh, there's almost no way this company can survive.
00:36:50.060 He was going to have wasted $44 billion of his and other people's money if he couldn't rapidly, massively cut expenses.
00:37:01.200 What would have happened if Musk had said,
00:37:04.200 All right, all you employees of Twitter who hate my guts, tell me where I can scalpel away some unnecessary fat.
00:37:12.500 What do you think would have happened?
00:37:13.620 Every one of those people would have said their jobs are essential.
00:37:17.600 And if they left, morale would drop and it could never work.
00:37:22.540 So Musk instead took a chainsaw and just went,
00:37:27.060 Rar, rar, rar, rar, rar, got rid of too much.
00:37:30.780 And then when the too much became obvious or people argued successfully,
00:37:37.200 he added it back exactly like he said he would.
00:37:40.200 Now, what about the federal government?
00:37:45.200 The federal government is also on a timer and also has an existential threat.
00:37:50.660 It's called the debt.
00:37:52.080 We don't have 10 years left.
00:37:55.420 We really don't.
00:37:57.060 I don't know if we have three years left.
00:37:59.760 The national debt will crush us and will destroy the entire country.
00:38:03.640 If you think that taking a scalpel to the federal government is going to get it done in any kind of reasonable timeline before the entire nation is destroyed,
00:38:16.640 that seems very unlikely to me.
00:38:19.260 Because remember, everybody involved will be lying.
00:38:23.380 Everybody involved will be trying to slow the process.
00:38:26.680 They'll try to sue you so you can't even use the scalpel.
00:38:29.240 It's going to be just infinite pushback, infinite people pretending to be helping but not, all lying.
00:38:38.880 People will be ganging up.
00:38:40.320 They'll try to take you out as the boss if they have any way to do it.
00:38:46.060 They will attack you 100 different ways.
00:38:48.820 The one and only way you have any chance is with a chainsaw.
00:38:54.240 So let me put this in terms of risk.
00:38:56.000 If Musk had used a scalpel on Twitter, that would be 100% chance of failure.
00:39:04.280 If he used a chainsaw on Twitter, there was some chance of success and some chance of failure.
00:39:11.380 Which one do you pick?
00:39:12.940 The one with a 100% chance of failure, scalpel, or the one that might work but it's pretty drastic?
00:39:20.460 Well, there's only one that might work.
00:39:24.160 You obviously do the one that might work.
00:39:26.580 What about the national debt?
00:39:29.000 Do you think we have time to scalpel that thing?
00:39:32.820 I don't.
00:39:33.860 I don't think there's any time to scalpel it.
00:39:36.280 I think that the one and only hope of actual survival, survival.
00:39:41.600 We're not optimizing.
00:39:42.920 We're trying to survive.
00:39:44.520 And I think that's what people are missing.
00:39:46.680 He's got to take a chainsaw to it.
00:39:48.600 And, you know, I would say he's just getting started because, you know, there are bigger parts he has to go after.
00:39:57.920 But there's not really a second choice.
00:40:01.400 The chainsaw might work and it might not work.
00:40:05.660 But the scalpel definitely will fail.
00:40:08.720 And it's the Dilbert filter that guarantees it because people are lying weasels.
00:40:13.480 Now, let me make another exception.
00:40:15.620 Let's say you had a business that wasn't very complicated.
00:40:21.160 Let's say you are the owner of a sports franchise.
00:40:25.900 You probably do understand almost all the parts, even as the big owner, right?
00:40:31.860 Right.
00:40:32.220 You would probably know what your players are being paid.
00:40:36.280 That's the biggest thing.
00:40:37.520 You would know what the travel costs are.
00:40:39.260 It wouldn't be mysterious at all.
00:40:42.540 So if you wanted to take a scalpel to that, again, because you have the luxury of being profitable and you're not in a hurry, probably you could scalpel quite a bit.
00:40:51.980 And I would say that would be exactly the right answer.
00:40:54.680 So when people tell you, Scott, I have personally scalpeled budgets with success, that's probably true.
00:41:01.960 But it's always the specific case.
00:41:05.920 It's not the you're going to die tomorrow if you don't cut this by 70%.
00:41:10.160 All right.
00:41:12.300 So there we go.
00:41:13.480 There's the ultimate reframe on that.
00:41:15.540 You know, I'm so sick of talking about this Doge email to all the federal employees telling them to say what they did, five things they did.
00:41:27.620 And I was trying to imagine, it's been a long time since I've been a cubicle, but I'm trying to imagine how I would have handled that if I'd been a federal worker.
00:41:36.280 And I'm positive I would have handled it the following way.
00:41:39.860 I'd open my email.
00:41:41.560 I'd see what they're asking.
00:41:42.760 I'd probably check with my boss to see if it's okay to answer it.
00:41:47.360 But then I would sit down and it's the first thing I would do.
00:41:51.060 I would put off whatever else I had on my schedule.
00:41:54.100 And I would answer that right away.
00:41:55.840 And I would come up with five awesome things that I did this week.
00:41:59.180 And then I'd hit send.
00:42:01.120 And then I would never think about it again.
00:42:04.580 How would you handle it?
00:42:06.400 Would you fight it?
00:42:08.760 You didn't have anything better to do that day than fight an email?
00:42:12.760 Ah, ah, I'm going to go on CNN and fight this email.
00:42:17.820 What the most basic thing that anybody does is say what five things they accomplished that also used to be my job.
00:42:25.340 It also used to be my job to collect everybody's top five accomplishments.
00:42:30.560 That was literally my job.
00:42:32.640 Do you know what happened when I would collect all their accomplishments and put it into one cool document that I made myself?
00:42:38.100 And then I gave it to my boss.
00:42:40.560 Nobody ever looked at it.
00:42:42.900 Nobody ever looked at it.
00:42:44.300 The only point was to make sure that you thought people were watching you.
00:42:50.260 It was basically just a head game so that people had to, you know, really show that they were doing real work.
00:42:58.000 Nobody really looked at it.
00:42:59.500 I don't even think they, like, maybe just glanced at it.
00:43:02.600 But they didn't ask any penetrating questions.
00:43:05.920 So when Musk says this is really just to find out if there's a real person and a pulse, that sounds right.
00:43:12.560 That sounds right.
00:43:13.420 That's the only thing he's going to find out.
00:43:14.820 It's not like he's going to look at the five things and say, huh, one of these five things looks like maybe you could cut that with a scalpel.
00:43:22.900 That's not going to happen.
00:43:23.880 But it's just to see if they have a pulse, if they're really there, if they really respond.
00:43:29.120 Now, I realize there's a whole bunch of complications to it.
00:43:31.880 And a number of entities from the FBI to the State Department to Pentagon have already said, no, you guys don't need to do this.
00:43:43.000 That's fine.
00:43:44.520 I don't mind that at all.
00:43:46.360 I don't mind when the Trump administration disagrees with itself.
00:43:50.840 I don't mind at all, because I think the disagreement is reasonable, but I also think the request was reasonable.
00:43:58.400 So, and I don't think any of it's terribly important.
00:44:02.340 I think Trump and Elon might be pushing us still just so they don't lose, you know, because it'd be good to show a pattern of winning, you know, win, win, win, win, win, win.
00:44:15.480 And if you have even one pushback that's successful, it could take a little dent out of your shine.
00:44:23.740 A dent out of your shine?
00:44:25.760 Never quote me on that.
00:44:27.580 No, never quote me on that, please.
00:44:30.360 Anyway, so I'm just bored with that whole email thing.
00:44:32.880 But the Wall Street Journal had an interesting context.
00:44:37.980 Apparently, some companies, instead of doing that, what are your five accomplishment things every week, which is a big pain in the ass, everybody hates it, and everybody's lying, too.
00:44:46.080 There's some software now, one company called Workboard, or at least that's the product, Workboard, invades your computer, your work computer, and it looks at all the things you've done, and then reports them to your boss.
00:45:04.700 So everything from your calendar to your emails, and then the boss can tell who's working and what they're working on and how hard they're working.
00:45:12.560 Now, that's the scariest, creepiest thing I've ever heard in my life.
00:45:16.380 I mean, I don't know how it could possibly give you anything interesting.
00:45:20.160 And then I saw a picture of what the dashboard would look like, you know, if you were the top boss, and you wanted to see the sum of all the things your employees were doing.
00:45:29.640 And it's like this really sort of detailed, complicated, you know, some boxes are bigger than others, showing that there's more activity there and stuff.
00:45:37.840 And I thought to myself, okay, in the real world, your top boss would use that three times.
00:45:46.000 And by the third time, they would realize that there was nothing it was telling them that they could act on.
00:45:52.780 It was like, ah, okay, looks like the box for talking about the budget is a little bit bigger.
00:46:00.360 Okay, but that's because the budget process is happening right now.
00:46:04.160 Okay, okay, well, it looks like the box for a vendor, talking to vendors is a little bit bigger.
00:46:11.700 So they're doing a lot of talking to vendors.
00:46:13.560 Oh, well, obviously, because we're doing a, you know, request for a proposal.
00:46:21.020 Probably it wouldn't be anything you could act on.
00:46:23.880 Now, I don't want to throw that company under the bus, because they might have a good argument that it's making everything better.
00:46:28.760 But in the real world, if you show somebody a complicated screen of anything, they end up ignoring it after the first few tries in the real world.
00:46:43.500 So I'm going to introduce a new insulting phrase.
00:46:47.740 I'm going to call it lady fiction.
00:46:50.300 Lady fiction.
00:46:51.540 And I've told you before how Democrats, they seem to just imagine problems, like they imagine what somebody's thinking.
00:46:58.760 And then they imagine their bad personality.
00:47:01.540 They imagine their bad intentions.
00:47:04.300 And then they project that forward to how it's going to destroy the world.
00:47:08.720 But it's all imaginary.
00:47:10.400 It's imaginary future.
00:47:12.180 And it's imagination that they can read the minds of strangers.
00:47:15.760 So CNN just had one of the federal employees on.
00:47:19.000 And she was one of the ones resisting the email requests.
00:47:24.060 And she said that, let's see, what did she say?
00:47:28.380 She said that Elon's email request was an act of harassment and bullying.
00:47:34.460 Now, do you think that's the way Elon was thinking of it?
00:47:37.700 It's like, huh, you know what I haven't done enough of?
00:47:41.140 I need to do a little more harassment and bullying.
00:47:43.660 Even though he tells you exactly why he's doing it.
00:47:47.660 You can't take the exact reason that he describes, which makes perfect sense.
00:47:52.500 You have to imagine that the real reason this is dark personality flaws and it's harassment and bullying.
00:48:00.200 That's pure mind reading.
00:48:02.920 And again, men prefer reading nonfiction.
00:48:07.600 Women prefer fiction.
00:48:08.860 And the more you see it, so I'm going to call that lady friction, lady fiction.
00:48:14.860 Lady friction is a completely different story.
00:48:17.780 It has more to do with scissoring.
00:48:19.720 But lady fiction is where you imagine that you can imagine you can read somebody's mind
00:48:26.740 and you see some dark, dark secrets in there and you project it forward.
00:48:29.940 Anyway, one of our favorite personalities on X, Data Republican.
00:48:41.080 If you haven't been exposed to Data Republican yet, you're missing out.
00:48:46.200 So Data Republican is sort of a superstar of data analysis and is using a lot of the new information
00:48:53.620 that we're learning to come up with some fascinating stuff about the NGOs, et cetera.
00:48:57.760 But she was on Glenn Beck's show and she described our current situation in a way that you'll never be able to forget.
00:49:09.380 So you've got the basic idea that USAID was giving money to all these NGOs and other entities were giving the money
00:49:17.560 and that they became sort of operating independently and nobody knew what they were doing.
00:49:22.660 And, you know, then they were maybe laundering money and stuff.
00:49:27.420 So what Data Republican said, after looking at all this more deeply than we have,
00:49:32.580 said that the Democrats are offended by Doge because their money depends on people not knowing what they're doing with our money.
00:49:40.880 And I thought, yeah, that does sort of sum it up, doesn't it?
00:49:44.260 Because their money depends on us not knowing what they're doing with our money.
00:49:50.420 Because our money is just going into their pockets through the NGOs.
00:49:55.700 And so she says, so that is truly censorship.
00:49:58.960 Because I think if actual Americans understood what they were doing with our money
00:50:03.940 and that they were actually setting up their own government, this is the key,
00:50:09.320 they were setting up their own government and actually ignoring what real people wanted to do,
00:50:15.360 oh, we would be so upset.
00:50:17.740 There's the reframe.
00:50:19.800 That's it.
00:50:21.260 The NGOs were a shadow government that could get all kinds of things done.
00:50:26.640 They could stall things.
00:50:27.640 They could make things happen.
00:50:28.660 They could overthrow countries.
00:50:30.300 Now, working in conjunction with other parts of the government.
00:50:35.260 But once you hear that frame that the NGOs were a shadow government, wow, you can't lose that one.
00:50:43.820 Like, that's sticky.
00:50:45.320 That's a really good reframe.
00:50:48.120 Anyway, just think about that.
00:50:52.780 And then she went on and said, because the reality is that these people have a government unto themselves
00:50:57.440 that they've created with these NGOs that they run separately from us.
00:51:02.640 Now, the one thing that would be required for a shadow government would be there's one leader.
00:51:11.880 Do you think that this shadow government NGO thing has one leader?
00:51:16.320 Or is it just an understanding that a bunch of people have that they can all be better off with this scheme?
00:51:24.160 I feel like there's not one leader, but there might be maybe several people who are more influential than others.
00:51:31.700 And maybe they're fighting it out.
00:51:35.380 I always imagined that the Hillary Clinton people and the Obama people were not the same.
00:51:42.660 And that they're all sort of jockeying for control.
00:51:46.460 And maybe some of that's happening through the NGOs.
00:51:48.780 I don't know.
00:51:50.360 Anyway, Trump says he wants to bring back the Keystone XL pipeline that Biden shot down.
00:51:55.720 But apparently it's not that easy because you'd have to find somebody who wants to do it.
00:52:00.580 And I guess the company that was doing it doesn't seem too eager to do it again.
00:52:07.180 And I can understand that because how can they guarantee it won't get canceled again?
00:52:12.280 Why would you put money into something if the next Democrat president is going to cancel it?
00:52:17.320 So, but Trump says, you know, even if another company wants to do it, he says the approvals will be easy.
00:52:26.080 Basically, the government will get out of the way.
00:52:28.600 And I like that.
00:52:30.280 So I like that Trump's pushing that.
00:52:33.300 But there really is a structural problem there.
00:52:36.380 If you ask somebody to invest, I don't know, hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions, can you really expect them to do that if they don't know if their project will survive the next president's term?
00:52:50.600 That's a lot to ask.
00:52:52.180 So I wonder if there's any fix for that.
00:52:54.940 In other words, could Congress say you won't be touched for 20 years?
00:53:00.940 Like, could they pass any legislation that says, I don't think so, because I think it would be illegal to say you can't ever cut an expense or cancel something.
00:53:12.220 But I wonder if there's any clever way to get past the fact that this is really, it's a giant risk now that Biden canceled it once.
00:53:22.120 I don't know how you fix that.
00:53:23.800 But somebody clever might have an idea for doing that.
00:53:26.260 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?
00:53:35.480 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
00:53:38.280 Are those from Winners?
00:53:39.840 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings.
00:53:42.300 Did she pay full price?
00:53:43.640 Or that leather tote?
00:53:44.660 Or that cashmere sweater?
00:53:45.900 Or those knee-high boots?
00:53:47.340 That dress?
00:53:48.120 That jacket?
00:53:48.800 Those shoes?
00:53:49.820 Is anyone paying full price for anything?
00:53:52.740 Stop wondering.
00:53:53.660 Start winning.
00:53:54.980 Winners.
00:53:55.380 Find fabulous for less.
00:53:59.080 Meanwhile, the DNC's Vice Chairman, David Hogg, he's warning that Democrats, they need to stop acting like a cult.
00:54:08.180 Now, how much do you love the fact that the people who were the problem are trying to become the people who are calling out the problem?
00:54:17.140 It's almost like they have to pretend that they weren't deep into all the bad behavior that they say they want to stop doing.
00:54:26.500 But Hogg says this.
00:54:27.600 He says, frankly, anybody who did speak out about Biden's mental decline was immediately ostracized in our party.
00:54:35.460 He says, I know that we like to claim that we are not a cult, but anybody who did say that, that Biden was too old, basically had their career destroyed.
00:54:45.940 That's a problem.
00:54:47.160 We're the Democrat Party.
00:54:48.500 We're supposed to have open conversations and dialogue, he tells this audience.
00:54:52.360 And he said, there are many lessons we need to learn from this election, but that is one of the main ones.
00:54:57.760 We cannot be a cult.
00:55:01.720 Okay.
00:55:02.920 Here's the problem.
00:55:03.800 As long as power has more value than open conversations and dialogue, you're only going to get power.
00:55:15.880 So, if somehow open conversations and dialogue, you could monetize or it would give you more power or it would make everybody more successful, everybody would get a pat on the back.
00:55:27.720 But it doesn't work that way.
00:55:29.320 If you do open conversations and dialogue within your own party, that will immediately look like weakness and you'll be destroyed.
00:55:40.160 So, they've sort of painted themselves into this corner where you can't really disagree with the party.
00:55:47.480 And there's nothing that David Hogg is going to say that's going to change it because the incentive structure is, as soon as you disagree, you're done.
00:55:56.360 And that's not going to change.
00:55:57.840 How can it?
00:56:00.000 It's not like they can give an order and say, all right, don't do this.
00:56:03.720 It just takes anybody who wants to do it to do it, to destroy other people.
00:56:09.500 But it does make me wonder why this is, do you think that this is as much of a problem on the right?
00:56:16.460 Do you feel that in the mega-Republican-Conservative world that we have open dialogue and that you can disagree without getting canceled?
00:56:26.500 Yes or no?
00:56:27.840 I feel like a number of us have disagreed with important things and not gotten canceled, at least by Republicans.
00:56:36.680 Have you not seen me disagree with common mega-thinking?
00:56:41.080 I think I have, I think I have, a number of times.
00:56:44.400 And do I ever get slapped down for that?
00:56:48.860 Not that I remember.
00:56:50.800 Not that I remember.
00:56:51.740 The only time that I get real hate is when people have an incorrect understanding of what I've ever said or thought.
00:56:59.540 If they don't understand what I've said, then it turns into some crazy thing where they're criticizing me for something they only imagine.
00:57:06.640 But when I say real things, let's take the Dan Crenshaw thing.
00:57:12.340 You don't think I'm completely aware that by the time I'm done with this, there'll be something on social media trying to tear me down for what somebody's going to say is supporting Dan Crenshaw against MAGA, which didn't happen.
00:57:26.820 And you all witnessed it, so you know that didn't happen, but somebody will turn it into that.
00:57:31.980 However, it will probably just be a passing nothing.
00:57:35.020 Like, the worst case will be some troll on X, and it'll just go away.
00:57:41.520 Because I think the, at least my audience, is completely accepting that I'm not just going to tell you the normal frame.
00:57:52.420 That's mostly why you watch, because you expect me to be a little different from the mainstream opinion.
00:57:59.180 If I didn't, what would be the point, really?
00:58:02.660 What would be the point?
00:58:03.800 So, yeah, I don't think it's as big a problem on the right.
00:58:11.740 According to Simon Kent writing in Breitbart News, Republican, I'm sorry, Democrat donors are not feeling too good about the Democrats.
00:58:21.540 But there was this one donor who had a quote that I thought was great.
00:58:26.860 Quote, they want us to spend money, and for what?
00:58:29.760 For no message, no organization, no forward thinking?
00:58:33.100 The donor said.
00:58:34.400 The thing that's clear to a lot of us is that the party never really learned its lesson in 2016.
00:58:39.560 They worked off the same playbook and the same ineffective strategies.
00:58:43.100 And to what end?
00:58:45.220 Well, here's what I say about identity politics, which largely drove the Democrat message, identity politics.
00:58:52.140 It's a one-way trip, and they should have known that, because on paper, you can see it.
00:59:01.000 It's the MSNBC problem.
00:59:02.600 As soon as MSNBC became the identity politics all the time network, you could guarantee, guarantee that at some point in the future, their own employees would turn against them and call them racists.
00:59:17.160 And that just happened.
00:59:19.020 Guarantee it.
00:59:19.580 You don't know when it's going to happen, but you can pretty much bet on it with a lot of safety.
00:59:24.640 And so the Democrats can't really unwind that thing that they've created, because they can't be ignoring identity politics.
00:59:35.300 That would make them Republicans.
00:59:40.960 So they've created their own monster that they can't kill, and the Republicans are like, yeah, good luck with that, because we're not involved.
00:59:51.480 It's none of our business.
00:59:53.820 If you want to create a monster and then the monster kills you, but you knew that that monster would kill you, because how could it not?
01:00:00.240 But, you know, as soon as you say that identity is everything, everybody looks at their own identity and says, wait, but I'm a short, gay, lesbian, whatever.
01:00:12.940 You know, where's my rights?
01:00:15.080 And then everything falls apart.
01:00:17.020 So the Democrats, I don't think they have a way back.
01:00:21.740 Now, as I've said before, all bets are off if they found the right candidate.
01:00:27.460 Right.
01:00:27.580 So Trump is by no measure an ordinary Republican.
01:00:35.460 So nobody could have really predicted the second term of Trump and the way it's turned out.
01:00:40.300 Nobody could have predicted that.
01:00:42.400 So it's just sometimes you get this special case with a special character, this, you know, once in a thousand years type of personality, which I think Trump is.
01:00:51.520 And if they don't get one of those, I don't know if they have a way back.
01:00:59.020 Because even Obama, as rational sounding as he was, and I think he was very smart and very savvy about how things work.
01:01:08.300 I don't even think he can abandon identity politics at this point.
01:01:12.520 I mean, he can't run for office, but even if a new Obama came today, I don't know.
01:01:20.040 I don't know how they can come back.
01:01:22.740 Here's the least surprising news of the day.
01:01:24.740 The former head of the FDA's drug center joins Pfizer as chief medical officer.
01:01:28.620 Now, as you know, there's a long history of top FDA people going to work for the companies that they had been trying to regulate, which, of course, creates a massive incentive to not say bad things about the industry.
01:01:45.060 When you're in the FDA, because you know that the most likely outcome after you're not in the FDA is a job offer from one of those same companies.
01:01:55.220 And I was trying to think, what could you do about that?
01:01:59.660 I don't love the fact that you could ban it, like don't go to work for these companies for five years.
01:02:06.760 We might do that.
01:02:07.860 I think RFK Jr. didn't even float that idea.
01:02:09.860 But that seems, you know, my sense of freedom and capitalism really rejects you can't go get a job somewhere else.
01:02:20.060 Like I don't like any kind of non-compete agreements.
01:02:24.500 I hate them because I live in America.
01:02:28.160 You can't tell me what my next job is, right?
01:02:31.860 I mean, that's just really offensive to me that you can tell me what my next job is, no matter what it is.
01:02:36.640 You don't need to, you don't get an approval over my next job.
01:02:40.800 So on one hand, I completely understand that this is massively deforming our drug approval and safety, massively deforming it.
01:02:50.800 On the other hand, I like freedom.
01:02:54.200 I like freedom.
01:02:55.280 So I wonder if there's some middle ground.
01:02:57.180 And the only thing I can think of is that the ex-FDA people have an option that's better than working for a big pharma, which would pay an ungodly amount of money.
01:03:10.600 Could you find a way to keep them on the, let's say, the public side?
01:03:16.840 And it may require paying an ungodly amount of money to say, all right, once you leave the FDA, you can go work for Pfizer.
01:03:24.620 And they'll pay you a million dollars a year, whatever it is.
01:03:29.200 But if you continue working for the government, we will also give you a million dollars a year.
01:03:36.040 We'll match it.
01:03:37.340 But you'll be on our side.
01:03:39.000 So you'll do extra work and you'll go extra deep and you'll work with the FDA.
01:03:43.780 You won't be on the FDA.
01:03:44.700 But let's say you work with them or for them or something.
01:03:48.600 Now, that's the bad idea because it's anti-doge.
01:03:52.160 It's spending more money, not less.
01:03:53.840 But I just wonder, is there any system way to fix that?
01:03:58.760 Because you'd have to outbid the pharma.
01:04:03.060 Now, the gross way to do it is just say you can't go get those jobs.
01:04:09.260 I just don't love that.
01:04:11.040 I don't love the lack of freedom that that implies.
01:04:13.340 So maybe some of them have a good idea.
01:04:16.440 Let's talk about Ukraine.
01:04:19.400 So Trump has suggested yesterday that he's willing to revive economic relations with Russia.
01:04:26.320 And then Putin has offered, hey, why don't you work with us, America?
01:04:31.280 Why don't you work with us to do a joint partnership to exploit rare earth minerals in the Donbass region?
01:04:38.940 What?
01:04:40.740 What?
01:04:41.380 Did you see that coming?
01:04:44.600 And then Putin also offers, and I'm going to talk about this in terms of persuasion, not in terms of economics.
01:04:51.940 Then Putin also said that Russia is ready to supply the U.S. with 2 million tons of aluminum, which will help stabilize prices.
01:04:59.760 And apparently we're the biggest importer of aluminum.
01:05:02.660 So it actually would drive down some of our costs if we worked with Russia on that.
01:05:09.740 And so here's the thing.
01:05:12.400 Let me say up front that if you believe that I trust Putin and that he just wants to make money and stop all the fighting, I don't.
01:05:27.620 I don't.
01:05:28.220 It would be foolish to say that he has no ulterior motives or anything else.
01:05:33.880 But think how historic this is that Trump and Putin have changed the frame.
01:05:40.500 They've changed the frame from how to kill each other to how to make money for both of us.
01:05:48.040 Now, maybe this won't come to anything.
01:05:51.260 Maybe there will be no joint partnerships.
01:05:54.520 Maybe it's a bad idea.
01:05:56.180 Maybe trusting Russia is just always a bad idea.
01:05:59.180 And, you know, even if it looks good on paper, maybe it just never works.
01:06:02.820 I'm open to all those arguments.
01:06:04.560 So I don't know that we should do it.
01:06:06.140 But the fact that I've said this before, I generally think that Trump is the best public persuader we've ever seen, just ever.
01:06:19.220 But Putin's in the same weight class.
01:06:21.840 I don't think he's quite a he's not quite Trump like, but he understands the whole persuasion thing.
01:06:28.560 And so what Putin's doing is he's reframing Russia as a potential economic partner, which is following the lead of Trump.
01:06:39.780 Trump is the again, Trump's the better persuader.
01:06:42.820 But Putin can Putin can take punch for punch.
01:06:46.380 He knows persuasion.
01:06:48.000 And this is fucking brilliant.
01:06:51.660 It's brilliant.
01:06:53.340 I hate to say it.
01:06:54.680 And again, I'm not suggesting that we get into partnership economically with Russia.
01:06:59.960 I'm not against it and I'm not for it.
01:07:03.200 I would have to know a lot more before I add an opinion.
01:07:06.920 But from a persuasion perspective.
01:07:10.760 Putin's really nailing it.
01:07:12.460 He's nailing it because he knows that Trump needs economic wins and he could offer him some easy economic wins.
01:07:21.020 So that's really good negotiating.
01:07:26.140 So, again, don't don't take this as me loving Putin and I don't want him to be my girlfriend.
01:07:33.100 And I don't I don't trust Russia, you know, without a lot of guarantees.
01:07:37.820 But you have to appreciate that the way Putin is handling this is kind of impressive just from a persuasion perspective.
01:07:48.100 You can call it evil persuasion if you like.
01:07:50.340 I won't argue.
01:07:51.800 But it's very effective.
01:07:54.040 And changing the frame to how do we make money?
01:07:57.580 I just love that.
01:07:59.460 I just love that.
01:08:00.700 We'll see where it goes.
01:08:03.720 Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament.
01:08:05.840 I've been visualizing my match all week.
01:08:08.420 She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car on her backhand side.
01:08:14.320 Good thing Claudia is with Intact, the insurer with the largest network of auto service centers in the country.
01:08:20.040 Everything was taken care of under one roof and she was on her way in a rental car in no time.
01:08:24.480 I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round.
01:08:27.680 But you got there on time.
01:08:29.820 Intact Insurance, your auto service ace.
01:08:32.440 Certain conditions apply.
01:08:33.740 All right.
01:08:35.220 Again, another story that would have been the biggest story, except that there were so many stories.
01:08:41.840 All right.
01:08:42.320 Apparently, James Comer told Breitbart that the DOJ, the FBI, the IRS and the SEC were all investigating Joe and Hunter Biden, but were told to stand down.
01:08:56.320 And Jim Biden was even being investigated for Medicare and fraud.
01:09:02.360 Insurrection Barbie is talking about this on X.
01:09:04.440 Apparently, six banks reported to the Treasury Department that the Bidens were committing financial crimes, but everyone was told to stand down.
01:09:17.460 Now, wouldn't that be the biggest story in the country, except for all the other biggest stories?
01:09:23.300 How in the world is that just a little article in Breitbart?
01:09:28.220 Do you think it's true?
01:09:29.920 Do you think it's true that all these entities were going to investigate the Bidens?
01:09:33.840 And, you know, keep in mind, this is when they knew there was a risk because they were powerful creatures.
01:09:41.180 So if all these entities were willing to investigate them, even knowing that it would be risky and they had to be told not to, it does suggest there was some pretty strong evidence.
01:09:53.600 Not proof.
01:09:54.720 Everybody's innocent or proven guilty, and they haven't been proven guilty.
01:09:59.140 But it certainly would be the biggest story in the country under normal times.
01:10:04.420 I'm curious how much else we'll find out about what I think is the Biden crime family.
01:10:13.140 So Trump is signing a directive to counter foreign social media censorship.
01:10:19.800 So Dan Freeth of Reclaim the Nets writing about this.
01:10:23.300 So I guess he's trying to challenge our European, mostly European, I think, saying that by taxing our social media,
01:10:34.420 they're basically, you know, doing it to censor them and trying to control them in various ways, censorship as well as taxation.
01:10:42.840 And Trump wants the taxation and the censorship to be curtailed.
01:10:48.180 Now, I don't know what he can do about it.
01:10:49.900 So that's why he signed a directive.
01:10:51.480 The directive is figure out what to do about this.
01:10:53.980 I assume it means we're going to put more pressure on our alleged allies.
01:10:58.540 But let me say this as clearly as possible.
01:11:00.880 I've said this before, but it can't be said enough.
01:11:03.280 If you're trying to curtail free speech in my country, you're not my ally.
01:11:09.920 England, France, whoever you are, we love you.
01:11:14.420 But you're not my ally if you're trying to curtail my free speech.
01:11:18.500 That is a line which you cannot cross.
01:11:21.260 That's a red line that's as bright as it could possibly be.
01:11:25.720 And if it weren't for Trump, I don't know that we'd be doing anything about it.
01:11:28.980 So sometimes you think, you know, Trump is fun and sometimes you like what he's doing and sometimes you don't.
01:11:36.340 But this is one of those cases where this is essential.
01:11:40.880 This is essential Trump.
01:11:43.160 Nobody else would do this.
01:11:44.740 I don't know if he'll succeed.
01:11:45.940 But it's going to require putting pressure on allies like we've never seen.
01:11:53.060 He's the only person I know who would do it.
01:11:55.520 There's no other normal president who would put pressure on our allies over this.
01:12:00.500 But it is really, really important.
01:12:03.200 And yeah, he should bring the entire toolbox.
01:12:07.780 Whatever it takes.
01:12:09.520 Whatever it takes.
01:12:10.280 It might take getting out of NATO.
01:12:15.860 I mean, it's that serious.
01:12:17.880 So whatever he has to threaten, bring it on.
01:12:21.460 Let's bring the threats on because we need to ratchet this up.
01:12:24.120 This can never happen again.
01:12:26.720 So he's got to be tough on that.
01:12:30.880 100%.
01:12:31.400 Meanwhile, down in Mexico, if you didn't know, the big cartel, the Sinaloa cartel,
01:12:38.540 apparently has two factions and the two factions are fighting it out.
01:12:43.620 And there's a great article by Jose de Cordoba in the Wall Street Journal.
01:12:49.080 And so there's a whole bunch of murder going on because they're fighting it down for control of things.
01:12:55.920 But one of the things that I thought was fascinating is the number of fentanyl labs.
01:13:03.580 So there was just one little area that had 100 fentanyl labs.
01:13:07.680 And I guess the labs have to keep moving because the other cartel members keep narking them out.
01:13:13.660 So apparently the way you compete if you're in a cartel and there are other factions in the cartel is that if you find out where the other faction's lab is, you turn them in so that the government tries to close them down.
01:13:29.320 I'm assuming the government does.
01:13:31.060 But even if you just turned them in and let your bad guys go and take out the lab.
01:13:37.600 So there's this gigantic fight over just hundreds of different fentanyl labs.
01:13:42.320 And part of me just wishes they just fight it out.
01:13:50.120 But it was hilarious that one of the lab operators quoted this.
01:13:57.680 They were talking about they have to do so much security now for their labs that it's hitting the bottom line.
01:14:04.820 And they just talk like regular business people.
01:14:06.700 And so one of the lab operators says they have to increase production to cover higher costs for gunmen, intelligence, and weapons.
01:14:15.000 He goes, quote, if before we were making 10 million pills, now we have to make 20 million.
01:14:19.640 They just talk like ordinary business people.
01:14:25.800 They need doge.
01:14:28.920 Anyway, at one point I'd wondered, wouldn't it be better instead of us attacking the cartels to simply provide all the intelligence that the factions need to attack each other?
01:14:41.880 Suppose we send our drones up there.
01:14:43.760 We find all their little lab locations.
01:14:46.820 I don't know if we can.
01:14:47.520 I don't know if there's any way to find them from the air.
01:14:50.180 But suppose we could.
01:14:52.220 And then we just turn it over to the other faction and just let them destroy each other until they're so weakened that then you go in.
01:15:00.560 But you wait until they've just beaten themselves into nothing.
01:15:04.220 There is some worry that if the Sinaloa cartel implodes over their internal conflicts, that one of the other cartels would just take over so nothing will change.
01:15:15.780 So it's complicated.
01:15:17.520 I saw a report that comes from the Telegraph.
01:15:21.700 Now, consider the source.
01:15:25.200 So some people say that's not a very credible source.
01:15:28.460 But the Telegraph says that Iran fears an immediate attack on its nuclear facilities.
01:15:33.300 And so they have increased all their defenses near the nuclear facilities.
01:15:36.640 And the source says that Iran expects an attack every night, even on nuclear facilities that no one knows about.
01:15:45.500 And an Iranian official said that Tehran feels the regime could fall if America joins the attack.
01:15:50.580 You know what I say about that story?
01:15:52.180 I could have written that story without doing any research.
01:15:58.100 Do you think Telegraph did any research?
01:16:01.940 Scott, what do you think Iran is doing about its nuclear facilities?
01:16:06.540 I'd say, well, if I were them, and anybody else would say the same thing, they're probably trying to figure out how to protect them as best they can.
01:16:16.980 Scott, do you think that the Iranian regime is worried that if America and Israel attacked, it could have an impact on their ability to lead in the future?
01:16:26.660 And I would say, duh.
01:16:30.440 Yeah, we're not going to leave their regime alone if we do a major attack of their country.
01:16:34.860 And even if we don't directly attack the regime, losing all their nuclear facilities and all of their anti-aircraft does put some question about their stability.
01:16:46.560 So on one hand, I don't know if the Telegraph story is real.
01:16:49.980 On the other hand, it's exactly what you would have made up if you wanted to act like you did some research, but you didn't.
01:16:57.620 The Indian Army, according to NextGen Defense, they have an AI weapon that can track and shoot in just 10 milliseconds, and it can hit a target a mile away every time.
01:17:09.420 It can hit a target a mile away every time, and it can do it in a millisecond.
01:17:16.080 Now, at the moment, it requires a human to allow the shot.
01:17:22.320 But does anybody think that we'll always have to have a human?
01:17:28.860 Imagine the war starts, and both sides have these incredibly effective machine gun that never misses.
01:17:37.000 And they're both AI, and one of them says, you better ask me before you fire, and the other one says, if it's in that direction, that's where all the bad guys are, so just fire.
01:17:48.480 The one who removes the human is going to win every war, so the human will be removed, and I don't want to say Skynet because it's too obvious, but how does it not happen?
01:18:03.020 There is no future where Skynet doesn't happen, is there?
01:18:07.800 Now, there is a future where maybe it's not in control, but there's no future in which warfare doesn't look exactly like this.
01:18:15.940 And then, did you know that there are 10 new major battery plants that are coming online in the U.S., looking to double our capacity?
01:18:27.340 Now, the reason I tell you these stories, there's always a battery story.
01:18:31.180 You know, there's some new battery technology or new battery factory.
01:18:34.440 Like I tell you about some stories that you can tell what the future is by the insurance industry, like whatever the insurance companies tell you, that's really indicative or indicative of the future.
01:18:48.400 I think this battery stuff, if you didn't follow anything else, would be a real good indicator of the future because if we can make batteries really cheaply and make a lot of them and make them domestically, that's a whole different country.
01:19:04.440 Then if we have to depend on somebody else for the batteries or we can't make enough, you know, Elon Musk famously says that if you had a hundred square mile of solar panels and enough batteries to store it when the sun is not out, that you could power the entire country.
01:19:22.620 Now, I'd love to see somebody who really understands the industry argue with that point.
01:19:27.880 Now, and also it should be said that that's just for calculation purposes, you wouldn't put them all in one place.
01:19:37.460 That would be insane because, you know, one big natural disaster, you'd lose everything.
01:19:42.360 But just in terms of how practical it is, Musk says it's completely practical.
01:19:49.320 Yeah.
01:19:49.460 And it doesn't even sound like you would have to invent very much.
01:19:52.800 It sounds like we already have what we need.
01:19:54.960 So that's pretty interesting.
01:19:56.900 And I think it tells you what the future looks like.
01:19:58.900 All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I wanted to do today.
01:20:01.700 Thanks for joining.
01:20:02.520 I'm going to talk to the locals' subscribers privately now.
01:20:07.540 But come back tomorrow, same time, same place.
01:20:10.240 And we'll see if Representative Crenshaw has killed Tucker yet.
01:20:17.000 I think he'll still be alive.
01:20:19.520 We hope.
01:20:21.100 All right.
01:20:22.520 Locals, coming at you privately in 30 seconds.