Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 09, 2025


Episode 2773 CWSA 03⧸09⧸25


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 11 minutes

Words per Minute

138.54288

Word Count

9,958

Sentence Count

727

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

29


Summary

Bill Nye gives a Nazi salute. Women orgasm more readily with a handsome partner, according to a new study. A Korean filmmaker says his new film is not a parody of Trump. The Obamas may be getting a divorce.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 You worked a little bit harder than you needed to yesterday, didn't get enough sleep, but
00:00:05.120 still you're here.
00:00:06.340 You're winners.
00:00:07.540 But if you'd like to take this up to levels, then even winners can barely understand with
00:00:12.040 their tiny, shiny human brains.
00:00:13.580 All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice, a stein, a canteen jug
00:00:16.980 or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:00:19.500 Fill it with your favorite liquid.
00:00:21.000 I like coffee.
00:00:22.240 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine that is the day.
00:00:26.000 It's the thing that makes everything better.
00:00:28.400 It's called the simultaneous sip.
00:00:30.680 And it happens now.
00:00:38.440 Technology is working.
00:00:39.740 Thanks, Paul.
00:00:43.780 All right.
00:00:44.500 We're going to do a speed round of, you should have just asked Scott.
00:00:49.980 You ready for this?
00:00:50.900 Speed round.
00:00:52.600 Women orgasm more readily during sex with a handsome partner, according to the
00:00:57.660 conversation.
00:00:59.280 Well, you didn't really need to do that study.
00:01:02.700 You could have just asked me.
00:01:04.620 Yes.
00:01:05.180 Women orgasm more readily with a better looking guy.
00:01:09.620 Number two.
00:01:10.920 According to Andrew Huberman, he is reinforcing the idea.
00:01:15.120 He says, remember when they used to say that drinking some wine was good for your health
00:01:19.720 and actually better than not drinking alcohol?
00:01:22.020 Well, now everyone pretty much agrees that no alcohol is best.
00:01:26.840 What a ridiculous amount of back and forth that took.
00:01:30.880 Do as you wish, but know what you're doing.
00:01:34.640 Or you could have just asked Scott about 25 years ago when I first said, hey, what are the
00:01:42.420 odds that alcohol is actually good for you?
00:01:44.840 I'm not buying this at all.
00:01:46.500 It's poison.
00:01:47.800 Should have asked Scott.
00:01:48.900 But there's another study that found that while gender stereotypes are often viewed as
00:01:54.400 misleading, they are surprisingly accurate.
00:01:59.980 So they did a study where people guessed whether men or women would be higher on certain traits.
00:02:08.820 And it turns out that a random person can guess right about 85% of the time, guessing if
00:02:15.660 men or women are better at a random trait.
00:02:19.280 This is according to Psy Post.
00:02:21.460 You know what you could have done instead?
00:02:22.960 You could have asked Scott.
00:02:24.340 Yes.
00:02:24.900 I think I would have told you that male-female stereotypes are not random.
00:02:29.920 They're not random at all.
00:02:33.020 Here's another one.
00:02:34.580 An ugly truth.
00:02:36.160 According to study finds, attractive workers earn more money than unattractive people.
00:02:42.500 Well, you just could have asked me.
00:02:49.100 I mean, really.
00:02:50.520 Just ask me.
00:02:51.800 You didn't need to spend a penny on this one.
00:02:55.300 Anyway, that's the speed round.
00:02:57.760 So there's your science for you.
00:03:01.540 Every bit of it is shit.
00:03:03.020 You could have just asked Scott.
00:03:04.480 Uh-huh.
00:03:05.040 Yeah.
00:03:05.380 Yep.
00:03:05.700 Alcohol is bad for you.
00:03:06.940 Pretty people get more money.
00:03:09.000 Yep.
00:03:09.880 Men and women are different.
00:03:11.040 I could have got all of that.
00:03:13.540 There's a Korean filmmaker named Bong Joon-ho.
00:03:23.020 He says his new film is called Mickey 17.
00:03:27.600 It has Mark Ruffalo in it, who's a big critic of Trump.
00:03:31.640 But he says it's not parodying Trump, the villain played by Mark Ruffalo.
00:03:40.260 No, no.
00:03:40.720 It's not supposed to remind you of Trump.
00:03:43.720 Although critics say that the comparisons to Trump are so obvious and numerous that, of course, it's being inspired by that.
00:03:53.600 But here's the thing I wanted to point out.
00:03:56.700 The Korean filmmaker, his name is Bong Joon-ho, which coincidentally was my nickname in college.
00:04:05.620 See, because I was born in June.
00:04:08.900 So I'm sort of a Bong Joon-ho.
00:04:11.700 So, okay.
00:04:14.140 That's all I had on that one.
00:04:16.340 Did you see that Bill Nye, the science guy, did a Nazi salute?
00:04:22.400 He was at some rally for standing up for science.
00:04:26.860 And he did.
00:04:27.820 I'm not even going to do it because I would be blamed of giving a Nazi salute.
00:04:32.560 But as you know, the entire world media stopped to condemn him for giving his Nazi salute.
00:04:41.840 Wait, that didn't happen?
00:04:44.960 I'm confused.
00:04:47.120 So when a Republican or a Trump supporter lifts his arm above his waist, we get four fucking weeks of nonstop,
00:04:59.000 he's a Nazi, he's a Nazi, he's a Nazi.
00:05:01.200 And then the theater kids go wild.
00:05:04.020 Theater kids, do it.
00:05:05.960 He's a Nazi.
00:05:06.720 He's a Nazi.
00:05:07.800 Well, look at his arm.
00:05:09.740 Oh, anybody who raises their arm in here must be a Nazi.
00:05:13.620 And then Bill Nye does it.
00:05:16.540 Well, he's just waving hello.
00:05:18.580 What are you talking about?
00:05:20.620 He's not a Nazi.
00:05:22.600 No, he's just pretending he's a science guy.
00:05:24.940 Well, you've heard the rumors that the Obamas may be separated and possibly readying for divorce.
00:05:34.780 We don't have any confirmation of that.
00:05:37.360 But I'm going to give you the hypnotist confirmation.
00:05:42.000 I saw the messages today.
00:05:44.420 I hadn't seen these before.
00:05:45.560 Apparently on Valentine's Day, which wasn't that long ago, they gave each other these messages on social media that would suggest they were together.
00:05:57.180 But let's do a little bit closer look at these messages from a persuasion perspective and see what we can learn.
00:06:08.160 So Barack Obama said of Michelle, this was just this most recent Valentine's Day,
00:06:15.560 32 years together and you still take my breath away.
00:06:19.520 Happy Valentine's Day.
00:06:22.600 Michelle Obama.
00:06:23.720 And then Michelle separately said, if there's one person I can always count on, it's you, Barack Obama.
00:06:31.440 You're my rock.
00:06:32.880 Always have been.
00:06:34.080 Always will be.
00:06:35.380 Happy Valentine's Day, honey.
00:06:39.600 So do you see anything missing in those messages?
00:06:44.100 You know, the Valentine's message?
00:06:47.700 Let me give you a little bit of Valentine's advice.
00:06:52.000 If you're married and you give a Valentine's message to your spouse and it doesn't include I love you, you don't love that person.
00:07:04.920 Because it's the most basic thing that you would say.
00:07:08.780 It's not the thing that you leave out.
00:07:11.260 It's the main thing.
00:07:12.900 It's the main thing.
00:07:14.200 But it gets funnier.
00:07:15.700 I'm going to read Barack's message again.
00:07:17.660 Well, 32 years together and you still take my breath away.
00:07:23.060 You take my breath away?
00:07:25.540 Do you think she tried to smother him with a pillow?
00:07:30.560 Do you think she was behind drowning the chef?
00:07:35.840 And maybe she threatened him next?
00:07:38.120 You know, I took his breath away.
00:07:41.020 Allegedly.
00:07:41.660 I'm just making that up.
00:07:43.820 But, you know, if you don't shape up, I might be able to take your breath away, too.
00:07:48.840 So don't fall asleep.
00:07:51.560 Pillow overhead.
00:07:53.160 And then she says, if there's one person I can count on, it's you.
00:07:57.040 Well, you know what?
00:07:59.200 I would bet, since Obama doesn't seem like a cruel person or anything,
00:08:05.000 I would bet that even in divorce, if that's what's happening,
00:08:09.920 he would be very supportive.
00:08:12.100 Support the kids, support her lifestyle.
00:08:14.700 So, yeah, he's a rock.
00:08:18.360 But, yeah, I'm going to say that based on my reading of their Valentine's message,
00:08:23.680 there's not really much chance they're still together as a romantic couple.
00:08:28.200 And if they were, these Valentine messages would have ended immediately.
00:08:32.180 Have you ever met a woman?
00:08:35.840 Let's see.
00:08:36.480 Going back to stereotypes, whether or not people can identify male-female stereotypes.
00:08:44.320 Yes.
00:08:45.280 If you forget to tell your spouse that you love them, it's going to be a problem.
00:08:50.580 It's going to be a problem.
00:08:53.880 All right.
00:08:57.740 Apparently, here's a hoax that I missed.
00:09:02.180 So, I guess MSNBC's host, Eamon, I forget, I don't know what his first name is, Eamon, Eamon.
00:09:09.180 So, he was pushing, according to Media Lies, who catches all these little things,
00:09:14.220 Media Lies said he was pushing the debunked lie that Pete Hegseth had ordered the removal
00:09:19.700 of the Enola gay photos because of DEI.
00:09:23.800 Now, I heard Bill Maher say that on his show, and he said it like he really believed it.
00:09:31.740 It wasn't just a joke.
00:09:33.640 So, Bill Maher also believed that the Pentagon removed pictures of the aircraft that carried
00:09:41.980 the first nuclear bomb over Japan, and that they took the photos away because it said gay
00:09:47.500 on it, Enola gay.
00:09:50.680 Now, who believed that?
00:09:54.820 Isn't that a little bit too on the nose?
00:09:57.960 Who in the world would be dumb enough to believe that happened in the real world?
00:10:02.660 Well, Bill Maher and MSNBC host, I guess.
00:10:06.780 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering,
00:10:13.300 is every fabulous item I see from Winners?
00:10:16.420 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
00:10:19.120 Are those from Winners?
00:10:20.660 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings.
00:10:23.100 Did she pay full price?
00:10:24.460 Or that leather tote?
00:10:25.480 Or that cashmere sweater?
00:10:26.680 Or those knee-high boots?
00:10:28.160 That dress?
00:10:28.940 That jacket?
00:10:29.620 Those shoes?
00:10:30.640 Is anyone paying full price for anything?
00:10:33.600 Stop wondering.
00:10:34.860 Start winning.
00:10:35.400 Winners find fabulous for less.
00:10:39.080 Here's one of those small world stories.
00:10:41.160 I've told you this before, but it just blows my mind.
00:10:45.000 So when I was a kid, my parents had this couple that were sort of their main friends in town.
00:10:51.760 And the husband actually was part of the crew that loaded the nuclear weapon on the Enola gay.
00:10:59.740 He was on the island of Tinian, where they loaded it.
00:11:03.020 And sure enough, we always knew that when we were kids.
00:11:08.160 He told us that.
00:11:09.680 And I think he didn't know exactly what it was, because they were just the crew that was supposed to load it.
00:11:15.260 They didn't have top-secret clearance about anything.
00:11:17.600 But I think they were guessing.
00:11:21.040 You know, they saw how big it was, and they saw that they'd never seen anything like it.
00:11:26.180 So I think they knew that something big was coming.
00:11:29.220 They didn't know how big.
00:11:31.560 But how weird is it that I know somebody personally who loaded that on the Enola gay?
00:11:36.900 Isn't that the weirdest thing, that I would, like, have a personal connection to that?
00:11:41.580 So weird.
00:11:44.400 Anyway, that's some of the things, the dumb things that Democrats pretend to believe, even if they don't.
00:11:51.800 So did you know that Stacey Abrams had this, some kind of a nonprofit that had raised as much as $100 prior to Joe Biden gifting them with $2 billion that they were going to use in Georgia, I guess mostly,
00:12:09.880 to buy appliances for people that would be better for energy, $2 billion.
00:12:21.480 Now, let me take a guess.
00:12:25.120 Do you think all that $2 billion was just perfectly allocated, and they kept the administrative fees low, and there wasn't any money laundering, and there wasn't any grift,
00:12:38.960 and there weren't any consultants that got seven-figure deals to figure out where the money went?
00:12:46.460 Don't you assume at this point that every organization that's well-funded, especially from the government, but it could also be from big donors,
00:12:55.760 don't you assume that they're all corrupt?
00:12:59.000 And I really wonder, is it the same on the Republican side?
00:13:04.720 Because I don't really hear about big Republican organizations that are completely corrupt.
00:13:11.000 Do they exist?
00:13:12.740 I mean, I'm primed to think that it would be universal.
00:13:17.840 It has nothing to do with being a Democrat or a Republican.
00:13:20.540 It's just, you know, if you can get your beak wet, you do.
00:13:23.260 So, but it does really seem, if you just look at the news, it just seems like every single Democrat organization is designed to be a money laundering, corrupt thing.
00:13:38.020 It looks like it's designed like that.
00:13:40.560 Speaking of that, you know, ActBlue, the big Democrat organization that allegedly is collecting small donations and wrapping them up for Democrats?
00:13:51.260 Well, they've done more than that, according to Elon Musk.
00:13:55.880 An investigation found that five ActBlue-funded groups were responsible for Tesla protests.
00:14:05.280 Oh, are you telling me that the Tesla protests are not completely organic and rather they were just funded by the usual suspects?
00:14:15.260 Well, apparently, or at least allegedly.
00:14:18.580 So, and ActBlue funders, let's see, who are the people funding ActBlue besides the small donations?
00:14:28.960 George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and then three people I've never heard of before.
00:14:35.240 But if you see George Soros and Reid Hoffman funding the same entity, they might not be up to good.
00:14:43.580 They may be up to something that you don't want them to be doing.
00:14:49.600 Anyway, apparently, ActBlue is currently under investigation for allowing foreign and illegal donations for some kind of criminal violations.
00:15:02.340 Okay.
00:15:03.180 So, again, I say, are all Democrat organizations corrupt?
00:15:09.340 It does seem like it, from the local city governments to the unions that they usually control, to ActBlue, to Stacey Abrams, to the NGOs and the 55,000 entities that USAID gave money to.
00:15:27.260 It feels like they're all corrupt and designed to be that way, as in the entire thing is a grift to design little entities that you can steal money from.
00:15:37.340 Well, apparently, Washington, D.C. finally cleared a homeless encampment that was around the State Department.
00:15:47.120 Post-Millennial is reporting on this.
00:15:49.940 And it's something that they didn't do until Trump basically threatened the city and said,
00:15:55.480 if you don't do something about this, we're going to do something about this.
00:15:58.920 And that would be pretty embarrassing for the city.
00:16:00.920 So, magically, they cleaned up the encampments.
00:16:05.560 Oh, I guess they could have done it any time.
00:16:08.740 They just had to be threatened.
00:16:10.940 So, there's your local government, Democrats.
00:16:13.840 Great.
00:16:15.460 Meanwhile, according to TechCrunch, Google is getting rid of all their diversity language.
00:16:22.660 They're not announcing that they're getting rid of diversity or DEI.
00:16:26.060 They're simply soft-pedaling it.
00:16:29.500 The words are kind of changing and, you know, they're scrubbing some of their websites and stuff.
00:16:34.720 So, no announcement or explanation.
00:16:37.960 But it does come as a lot of companies are scrapping diversity.
00:16:42.440 So, I think they just wanted to be a little quieter about it.
00:16:45.320 Now, to me, the most shocking thing about all the companies that are backing off on DEI,
00:16:53.380 almost entirely because of the Trump administration pushing on it,
00:16:59.980 does it seem to you that the dog not barking is the people who are trying real hard to resist it?
00:17:08.140 Because these same companies were just gung-ho for DEI.
00:17:11.900 I mean, they were all in for, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars per year in.
00:17:17.580 You couldn't be more in.
00:17:19.120 And then as soon as the government says, no, it's illegal, get rid of it, there's no pushback.
00:17:26.180 Where are all the protests of the Google employees who are like, yeah, we need this DEI again.
00:17:33.400 Don't tell us what we can do.
00:17:35.280 We want to make the world a better place.
00:17:37.280 It seems to me that DEI was never popular, right?
00:17:46.560 Because if it were ever popular with just ordinary people, they'd be on the streets saying,
00:17:54.180 you stopped our DEI?
00:17:55.820 How dare you stop our DEI?
00:17:58.820 But nothing like that's happening.
00:18:01.420 There are no mass protests to maintain DEI.
00:18:04.900 It was never real.
00:18:08.500 It was never popular.
00:18:11.080 It was just people literally pretending.
00:18:14.260 Oh, like the theater kids.
00:18:17.760 Do you see the pattern?
00:18:22.040 Republicans are mostly things that Republicans have always wanted, and it hasn't changed much.
00:18:28.560 And then Republicans try to get those things in, you know, obvious government ways.
00:18:36.360 But the Democrats are almost an entire artificial construct.
00:18:41.440 It's literally just theater kids pretending that they like stuff.
00:18:45.220 And then the minute it's not practical to like that stuff, they just change to another play.
00:18:50.460 All right, well, we're not saying that anymore.
00:18:53.620 So, yeah, we're not going to talk about the open borders anymore.
00:18:57.660 Open borders were like their most important thing.
00:19:01.140 And then as soon as Trump closes it, they're like, do-do-do-do-do.
00:19:05.740 So what's going on?
00:19:07.260 No protests?
00:19:08.900 Nobody's saying you got to open those borders up again?
00:19:11.760 Give us back our DEI?
00:19:14.140 Put those homeless people back around the State Department?
00:19:16.980 It feels like every time Trump does something, it's really quiet, because they never believed
00:19:25.120 these things in the first place.
00:19:27.080 DEI, I think, was, again, just a whole bunch of Democrat scams.
00:19:32.740 It was a way to grift and get paid for doing not a lot of anything that was useful.
00:19:38.820 So I think as soon as the grift was identified and popped, people didn't really want to be
00:19:45.440 public about it, because it would be embarrassing at this point.
00:19:51.580 Anyway, according to Jonathan Turley, he's writing about how the UK is continuing this
00:19:57.120 month with his effort to regulate and criminalize speech.
00:20:01.000 Specifically, he says there's going to be an effort in the UK to crack down on Islamophobia,
00:20:07.100 which is really close, as Turley points out, to having a type of blasphemy standard that
00:20:17.220 would only apply to probably just one religion.
00:20:21.760 If the UK designs a blasphemy standard that says you can't criticize the one religion,
00:20:29.160 they're just surrendering.
00:20:30.800 And that one religion will eventually dominate, no doubt about it.
00:20:36.860 I think the UK is lost.
00:20:39.700 I'm not even sure why we have them as allies, because it's just a matter of time.
00:20:45.400 It's a matter of time.
00:20:48.200 And the time, it's not a very long time.
00:20:51.080 I think that they'll just be essentially an Islamic country pretty soon.
00:20:54.760 Apparently, there are a bunch of big law firms, according to the Wall Street Journal, that
00:21:00.460 have decided it would be too dangerous to work on any kind of Trump opposition, because
00:21:07.620 the Trump administration has acted pretty decisively against some lawyers who have been anti-Trump
00:21:17.280 and done bad things.
00:21:18.860 So Trump took the Perkins Coy law firm, I guess, their security clearances away, and a whole
00:21:29.720 bunch of people got fired if they worked on this or that lawfare against Trump.
00:21:35.200 So he's making a point that you could be a lawyer doing your basically fake lawfare stuff
00:21:44.760 or whatever it is against Trump, but there's going to be a response to it.
00:21:49.720 And I like that.
00:21:51.520 I like the fact that there's now something more like a mutually assured destruction.
00:21:57.100 Yeah, you could be a lawyer and try to take out our government, but they are in charge.
00:22:03.160 And if you get caught and you break a rule, you're going to pay for it.
00:22:09.560 So good.
00:22:10.800 There should be definitely some pushback on that.
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00:23:00.440 In California, according to The Guardian, some of the prisons are using virtual reality devices
00:23:21.080 to give the people who are in solitary confinement something like virtual freedom.
00:23:28.140 So they can sit in their little box, but it'll feel like they're visiting their relatives
00:23:33.140 or traveling to Thailand or paragliding.
00:23:35.720 Those are the examples.
00:23:36.580 And they can do VR art therapy and stuff.
00:23:42.220 And critics are saying if the fancy technology just papers over the inhumane system, well,
00:23:52.260 yeah, that's what it's supposed to be doing.
00:23:55.580 Yeah, it's an inhumane system, and they're trying to make it a little more, you know, I guess,
00:24:02.700 survivable.
00:24:03.400 So that would be weird, but I can certainly see a bunch of people in their little cells
00:24:12.880 just waiting to put on their hat so they can be somewhere else.
00:24:16.380 I mean, I would want to do it all day long.
00:24:18.380 Now, I don't know if they fixed the part where you get a headache from virtual reality.
00:24:24.000 I tried a system several years ago, so things have probably improved quite a bit.
00:24:28.740 But I loved it, some of the games.
00:24:32.600 So there was one that, you know, you're basically on a glider around an island.
00:24:37.540 It was just awesome.
00:24:39.560 But it would make me sick, you know, just from the dizziness.
00:24:44.760 It would make me sick in about 15 minutes.
00:24:48.480 It didn't take long.
00:24:49.220 So you'd have to like it enough that you were willing to be sick for an hour afterwards.
00:24:58.220 And eventually it talked me out of using it, because I thought, you know what, it's just
00:25:02.700 not worth being sick for an hour.
00:25:05.280 But it was awesome.
00:25:06.220 As Breitbart is reporting, the Department of Homeland Security did locate the people who
00:25:15.900 were leaking the locations of the ICE raids, which is very dangerous for the ICE people,
00:25:23.220 because if they plan to do a raid and the people have been tipped off, there might be some kind
00:25:28.920 of a gunfire exchange or something that didn't need to happen.
00:25:35.220 So those two people that were caught faced up to 10 years in federal prison.
00:25:40.200 Now, I got to say, on one hand, that seems pretty extreme.
00:25:47.240 On the other hand, the danger that they were putting law enforcement type people into is
00:25:54.800 way beyond the pale.
00:25:56.840 But you could sort of imagine how they thought it was doing a good thing, not a bad thing.
00:26:03.240 In other words, they thought they were doing what was the right thing, you know, to protect
00:26:07.300 these people from the evil ICE people.
00:26:11.220 But thinking you're on the right side of it, it should count for something.
00:26:20.220 So I don't know if 10 years is the right answer, but I feel like at least five.
00:26:26.640 So we'll see.
00:26:30.380 Well, according to Emerald Robinson, she says the color revolution against the Trump administration
00:26:37.280 is just getting started.
00:26:38.660 Now, if you don't know what a color revolution is, it's how the United States has organized
00:26:44.000 coups in other countries.
00:26:47.240 But they have some specific, you know, telltale signs if one is happening.
00:26:53.220 So one would be a bunch of fake protests that are just organized by somebody paying.
00:26:58.320 And then here's what Emerald points out.
00:27:03.380 She says, yes, they want to sabotage Elon Musk by burning a few Teslas and writing media stories
00:27:09.780 to hype it.
00:27:11.000 Yeah.
00:27:11.940 It looks like they're organizing protests and they're going to organize a big anti-Elon
00:27:18.040 Musk thing.
00:27:18.720 Because as long as Elon Musk and Trump are getting along and producing good results for
00:27:24.380 the country, then the Trump administration will get stronger.
00:27:28.880 So they've got to somehow destroy Elon Musk before he succeeds too much.
00:27:36.880 Now, just think about that.
00:27:37.980 It's a real thing that there are dark forces in this country who might even like getting
00:27:46.340 rid of all the, you know, the fraud and stuff.
00:27:50.740 Well, unless they're involved in it.
00:27:54.640 And they still want to get rid of them because they need to win.
00:27:59.240 They need to be in charge.
00:28:00.260 And then Emerald says they'll run the bird flu panics.
00:28:06.080 She says, you live through 2020, so you know how it works.
00:28:10.480 I don't want to believe it, that our government would do a bird flu panic.
00:28:17.480 And now the latest news, which is, I think, unconfirmed, that the thought is this bird flu
00:28:23.500 thing was actually developed in a lab.
00:28:27.360 And it may have some gain of function in it, to which I say, how is that even possible?
00:28:35.160 How is it possible?
00:28:36.820 There's still a lab working on gain of function for the most deadly things.
00:28:41.020 How is it possible that it's getting released?
00:28:43.800 Sure enough, exactly the same timeline as Trump's first term.
00:28:50.880 It's kind of hard.
00:28:55.560 It's kind of hard to imagine that these are coincidences.
00:29:00.900 So look for that.
00:29:02.520 Look for the obvious signs of a color revolution.
00:29:08.220 Because I think it is, and I agree that it looks like it's in motion.
00:29:13.880 It looks like it.
00:29:17.000 Now, I don't know if you've seen this video, but there's a compilation video of prominent
00:29:22.820 Democrat senators in 2019.
00:29:26.180 Now, remember this date, 2019.
00:29:29.700 So this is the middle of the first Trump term.
00:29:33.900 And Sidney Powell was pointing this out on X.
00:29:39.980 So Ron Wyden, so Democrat Ron Wyden, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Kamala Harris as a senator,
00:29:49.180 were all speaking out in public about the unnecessary risks of using electronic voting machines.
00:29:55.700 Because they said they are, by their nature, unsecure.
00:30:02.680 Electronic voting machines.
00:30:05.480 2019.
00:30:07.620 Democrat senators.
00:30:10.700 Now, what a bunch of effing bastards.
00:30:19.340 That's the sort of thing that was just sort of erased from history.
00:30:22.920 Like, if I hadn't seen the video compilation, I wouldn't have known about that.
00:30:28.040 It wasn't on the news.
00:30:29.860 Do you remember at any time that any of the media, the major media, at any time did they
00:30:36.220 show when they were talking about Trump doubting the 2020 election, at any time did they show
00:30:43.140 that the Democrats have doubted even Trump's election and still do?
00:30:47.740 And now Maxine Waters is doubting the 2024 election, because she thinks that Elon Musk uses technology
00:30:58.160 ass to affect it.
00:31:00.660 So that whole thing about, oh, there's no way our election could ever be rigged,
00:31:07.960 is not anything that the major Democrats ever believed.
00:31:11.000 They never believed our elections were secure.
00:31:15.280 In fact, they were speaking out publicly and forcefully to say that our elections are not
00:31:22.280 secure and that we wouldn't necessarily know who won.
00:31:28.280 Isn't that amazing?
00:31:30.200 It's like beyond belief that it could happen.
00:31:34.100 Now, is this true of Republicans?
00:31:40.680 Because again, you know, I might be in a bubble or something, but it looks like the Democrats
00:31:45.740 literally don't have actual views of anything.
00:31:49.140 They only have actors.
00:31:51.660 So at that moment, since Trump was in office, the theater kid said, oh, we better put on a
00:31:58.260 play where we act like he couldn't possibly be legitimate because we don't have secure elections.
00:32:05.540 And then when Biden wins, they go, okay, theater kids, we're going to change everything.
00:32:10.960 Now we're going to put on a play where if you even doubt it, if you had even any questions
00:32:16.760 about the legitimacy of a U.S. election, well, you're some kind of insurrectionist piece of
00:32:22.580 crap, and you probably belong in jail with all the January Sixers.
00:32:26.540 It is so obvious that the Democrats are literally actors and don't believe anything that they
00:32:35.420 say, from DEI, that suddenly is no problem at all if it's disappearing, to voting machines
00:32:43.040 and integrity, to, and they certainly didn't believe, there's no way they believed that the
00:32:49.360 only way to secure the border was with legislation from Congress.
00:32:54.100 They didn't believe any of that.
00:32:57.940 It's pure acting.
00:33:00.560 Now, I saw Bill Maher the other day on a clip.
00:33:06.120 He was saying that he's sort of giving up on the fact-checking against Trump because he
00:33:13.280 says, we all get it, right, we all get it, that if he says, let's say, I brought down the border
00:33:22.540 crossings to zero, well, it might mean, you know, a thousand a day or some number like that.
00:33:29.160 So, he's admitting that Trump plays fast and loose with the specific facts, but it doesn't seem to
00:33:39.780 matter.
00:33:41.460 And I think Bill Maher has finally figured it out.
00:33:44.820 It doesn't seem to matter.
00:33:46.100 It would be hard for you to come up with, after years of Trump, not passing the fact-checking, what happened
00:33:55.220 because of it?
00:33:56.600 What's the downside?
00:33:58.760 And I've used the phrase directionally correct, which I think I inserted into the, at least the Republican
00:34:05.700 part of mind, that once you realize that every time he doesn't pass the fact-check, it doesn't matter
00:34:14.560 because he is persuading in the right direction.
00:34:18.900 So, if he says, you know, I brought down inflation this much, but you think it's not that much?
00:34:26.460 Well, he's fighting hard to bring down inflation.
00:34:29.780 So, every time he does something that seems like a little hyperbole, a little exaggeration,
00:34:34.940 or maybe just a made-up fact, they're all in the right direction.
00:34:39.580 So, for example, the Doge stuff, is it true that he may have mentioned some things that
00:34:48.320 weren't actually things, like condoms for the Palestinians in Gaza?
00:34:56.040 Well, not exactly true.
00:34:58.720 But directionally, it was completely true that money was being spent overseas.
00:35:04.940 On things that you and I would think would be not good uses of that money.
00:35:09.760 That's the point.
00:35:11.460 So, and that's very different from the Democrat lies.
00:35:15.720 The Democrat lies are, there's no way to close a border.
00:35:19.680 No, that's not directionally correct.
00:35:22.120 That's opposite.
00:35:22.980 When Democrats say the election was secure and there's no way, there's no way, any possibility
00:35:33.560 that it was a rigged election in 2020, that's not directionally correct.
00:35:39.340 It's the opposite.
00:35:41.360 So, if you look at the Democrat lies, they're opposites from the truth.
00:35:46.120 If you look at what Trump gets criticized for, it's always directionally correct.
00:35:52.640 It's stuff Republicans want.
00:35:54.340 It's stuff that Republicans, you know, think is important.
00:35:58.460 It's exactly the right direction.
00:36:02.000 There's a big difference.
00:36:03.460 But it's kind of important, I think, that Marr is very close to understanding that in context.
00:36:12.640 Now, the way he says it is that Republicans are completely aware of who Trump is and how
00:36:18.060 he talks and how he acts, and we just don't care.
00:36:22.260 That's almost just right.
00:36:25.100 He's so close.
00:36:26.020 It's not that we don't care.
00:36:28.980 It's that we know he's directionally correct.
00:36:32.660 That's what we care about.
00:36:34.880 We don't care about the specifics.
00:36:37.900 We care about the direction.
00:36:39.840 We care about the energy.
00:36:41.500 We care that he cares.
00:36:43.460 We care that he cares.
00:36:45.720 And even the hyperbole shows he cares.
00:36:48.780 So, you can't compare those two things.
00:36:52.060 Bank more encores when you switch to a Scotiabank banking package.
00:36:59.940 Learn more at scotiabank.com slash banking packages.
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00:37:05.780 You're richer than you think.
00:37:07.880 Believe it or not, according to Outkick, Kid Rock has set up a dinner between Bill Maher and
00:37:15.720 Trump and himself so that sometime soon, if this reporting is accurate and it happens,
00:37:23.360 Bill Maher and Kid Rock and Trump would sit and have dinner.
00:37:28.080 Now, this is after a long period of Maher really disliking Trump, you know, on a personal level.
00:37:36.480 I think they've had personal problems in the past, even before the presidency.
00:37:41.800 So, a lot of it is personal.
00:37:44.080 But the one thing that everybody experiences with Trump is that if you spend time with him
00:37:50.700 in person, even if you had a bad opinion of him, it's hard to leave with a bad opinion.
00:37:57.640 Because he's genuinely really gifted at dealing with people in person.
00:38:04.060 He's just gifted.
00:38:05.440 So, he's going to really care about what you say.
00:38:09.120 He's going to absolutely listen to you.
00:38:12.740 And you're going to feel that, oh, he listened to everything I said.
00:38:16.860 Like, I feel like he's not exactly what I thought he was.
00:38:21.780 People always have that opinion when they leave him.
00:38:23.800 It's very consistent.
00:38:25.460 And I'm wondering what would happen.
00:38:28.520 I'm not going to predict it will necessarily happen.
00:38:31.700 I feel there's at least a 50% chance that maybe it doesn't happen or it wasn't exactly reported 100% accurately.
00:38:41.860 Or there was an idea that just won't come together.
00:38:45.500 So, I don't know if it's going to happen.
00:38:47.000 But if it does, it's going to be a problem for Bill Maher.
00:38:54.720 Because he's going to have to explain it to his audience that's already mad at him for trying to, you know, find some kind of a middle ground.
00:39:02.760 And I think it will change how he would talk about Trump, no matter how much he didn't want it to.
00:39:11.520 So, that would be interesting.
00:39:14.280 And I just love the fact that Kid Rock, of all people, can dial up the president anytime he wants.
00:39:23.400 He could just call the president, say, hey, I got an idea.
00:39:26.600 And then the president of the United States, the most powerful politician in the history of the planet, can say, what's your idea, Kid Rock?
00:39:36.500 Well, how about we have this dinner with Bill Maher?
00:39:39.260 Yeah, it's a pretty good idea.
00:39:40.400 Why don't you set that up?
00:39:42.560 The fact that that can happen in our world is just so cool.
00:39:46.780 It's just so cool.
00:39:48.360 So, I hope it does.
00:39:49.800 I wouldn't bet on it, but I hope it does.
00:39:51.360 According to the Gateway Pundit, there are reports that the U.S. has told its European allies that it doesn't plan to be part of future military exercises in Europe.
00:40:05.080 You think that one's true?
00:40:07.260 Do you think we've already told Europe we're not going to be part of their military exercises?
00:40:12.220 Maybe.
00:40:13.360 Maybe it's just part of trying to convince them to spend more on themselves.
00:40:18.400 But it's very possible that that's true.
00:40:21.360 All right.
00:40:24.540 Here's where I make some people mad, and the rest of you are going to learn something.
00:40:32.160 I have to do my obligatory anti-Putin speech, because after that, I'm going to say that he did some really good persuasion.
00:40:41.160 So, I'm going to talk about his persuasion skills, which I've talked about before.
00:40:45.360 He's really good at it, like unusually good.
00:40:48.800 So, you can really learn something by looking at Putin's skills.
00:40:52.240 But let me do the obligatory Putin speech before I do.
00:40:57.420 Putin is a terrible, murderous dictator, lying, and he has ambitions to conquer the entire world.
00:41:08.060 You can't trust anything he says.
00:41:10.600 He kills people.
00:41:11.580 He puts them in prison.
00:41:13.000 He's the worst person we've ever heard of in our entire lives.
00:41:16.120 Okay?
00:41:18.040 We're all on the same page now?
00:41:20.380 Now, can I say that he does some things that are actually impressively good for persuasion?
00:41:26.820 All right.
00:41:27.520 So, he gave a speech recently, and Joe Hoft is summarizing this.
00:41:35.660 And here's what he said to the Europeans.
00:41:42.160 He said, basically, he was telling Europe that Russia has never been their enemy.
00:41:49.420 It's not their enemy and never has been.
00:41:50.960 He said, Putin shared that Russia was not the enemy of Europe, but here's what he said specifically.
00:42:00.040 He said, quote, Russia has never been and will never be your enemy.
00:42:04.440 Now, the has never been part is the persuasive part.
00:42:10.880 Never have been.
00:42:13.260 He said, we do not want European raw materials and wealth.
00:42:17.080 We have our own raw materials and wealth.
00:42:20.060 We absolutely do not need your raw materials.
00:42:23.700 Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of raw materials.
00:42:27.400 Okay, that's a really strong point.
00:42:30.180 Why do countries ever conquer other countries?
00:42:32.740 Because they want something.
00:42:35.340 They either want to protect their border from NATO, or they want to take advantage of their resources,
00:42:42.740 or they want to, I don't know, rob them of their wealth somehow.
00:42:48.180 But Putin's saying, you don't have anything we need.
00:42:51.200 So, you've got this giant NATO military force, and Putin's saying, why would I even want to?
00:43:00.560 Like, what would be the reason?
00:43:02.800 So, not for raw materials.
00:43:05.380 He says, we do not want your land or your territory.
00:43:09.020 Look at how wide Russia is on the map.
00:43:12.040 Russia is twice the size of the whole of Europe in one place.
00:43:15.540 What would we need your land for?
00:43:18.140 What would we do with it?
00:43:20.140 Okay, that's just so, so persuasive.
00:43:24.780 What would we do with your land?
00:43:27.020 Why would we want it?
00:43:29.400 Exactly.
00:43:30.880 Exactly.
00:43:31.320 This is a version of something I've been saying for years.
00:43:34.260 I'll tell you about it afterwards.
00:43:36.260 He goes, why do you think Russia is an enemy of Europe?
00:43:39.440 What damage has Russia done to you?
00:43:42.180 Have we sold you gas and raw materials at lower prices than the prices at which your, quote,
00:43:47.920 friends are currently selling you?
00:43:50.300 Yes.
00:43:50.780 And I'm thinking, okay, that's true.
00:43:56.660 And then he said, did Russia sacrifice 20 million people in World War II to get rid of the Nazis?
00:44:04.460 Yes, he says.
00:44:05.800 He's answering his own questions with yes.
00:44:08.100 Was Russia the first country to help Europe during the COVID pandemic?
00:44:12.140 I don't know anything about that, but he says yes.
00:44:15.380 He said, did we help Europe when there were fires and natural disasters?
00:44:19.560 Yes.
00:44:20.920 What has Russia done to you that you hate us so much?
00:44:26.780 He said, Russia is not your enemy.
00:44:28.320 Your real enemies are your leaders, those who lead you.
00:44:34.660 That is really persuasive.
00:44:37.120 Now, here's the version that I've said.
00:44:39.200 Again, I know Putin can't be trusted.
00:44:43.120 He's a murderous dictator, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:44:45.460 But I've been saying forever that Russia is a natural ally to the United States, but I would extend that to Europe.
00:44:53.820 Now, the countries that border on Russia, those are a security concern.
00:45:00.480 And in some cases, they're Russian-speaking, kind of special cases.
00:45:03.580 But the idea that Russia would want to try to conquer and hold territory in, let's say, France or the UK, it seems a little weirdly crazy to me that they would even want to do that.
00:45:18.580 Why?
00:45:19.060 Why?
00:45:19.860 They couldn't hold it.
00:45:21.740 It would just be the end of Russia, and they don't need anything.
00:45:24.940 So, this is really solid persuasion.
00:45:30.600 And, again, it's worth pointing out, because there are very few people operating at this level of persuasion.
00:45:38.980 Compare this to Canada's Justin Trudeau.
00:45:45.280 When Justin Trudeau does his little speeches, they're not persuasive.
00:45:50.320 He doesn't really have that gene.
00:45:53.280 But Putin does.
00:45:56.840 Anyway, if you heard about this gigantic project in Saudi Arabia called Neom, N-E-O-M, and it was going to be like this hundreds-long, hundreds-of-miles-long futuristic city where the architecture would be practically magic.
00:46:16.740 And, you know, they'd build, nine million people would live there.
00:46:21.300 And I thought to myself, holy cow, Saudi Arabia is just looking to lap the United States.
00:46:29.920 You know, they're diversifying away from energy as their only thing to create a city that, you know, anybody would want to live there.
00:46:37.260 That just sounded amazing.
00:46:38.860 And all the futuristic things and everything they were going to do there.
00:46:41.900 Let's see how that's going.
00:46:44.740 Total debacle.
00:46:48.360 The costs have overrun by fantastical amounts.
00:46:52.280 And I guess the crown prince was asking his people to do something that was really just wildly visionary, but not necessarily something they could know how to do.
00:47:06.680 He had what's been called a sci-fi-inspired dream about creating ski resorts, you know, indoor ski resorts in the desert, a floating business district, 106-mile-long pair of Empire State buildings, basically just the most impressive urban planning you've ever seen in your life.
00:47:35.080 Yeah.
00:47:36.680 And everything appears to be going wrong, and the blame for that is being put on the fact that nobody can tell the boss the truth.
00:47:48.100 Apparently, if you're the Saudi crown prince, and you behead people for various reasons, and you bone saw them, nobody wants to be the one to say, you know, that sounds good on paper, but I don't know if we can do that at the budget you want and the time you want.
00:48:07.560 So, so basically, I'm summarizing it in a Dilbert way.
00:48:13.360 So this isn't real, but this is what it feels like.
00:48:17.280 Crown prince.
00:48:18.160 Can you build an anti-gravity luxury hotel that just sort of hovers?
00:48:23.680 Employees.
00:48:24.480 No problem.
00:48:25.600 And it will only cost $1,000.
00:48:27.820 We should be done by Tuesday.
00:48:29.260 And then you multiply that by every part of it.
00:48:34.380 It was just people lying and just saying, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we could do that.
00:48:40.120 And suddenly, it looks like it's going to cost trillions of dollars, way more than Saudi Arabia has or could have.
00:48:46.820 And they've got consultants working on it, which is funny.
00:48:52.720 Who are the consultants?
00:48:54.780 McKinsey and company.
00:48:57.200 So McKinsey and company are the consultants on this big project.
00:49:01.680 That's just completely falling apart.
00:49:04.980 Now, I first met McKinsey and company, I think I've told you this story, when I worked at the phone company.
00:49:10.440 So one of my, you know, corporate jobs before I was a cartoonist.
00:49:16.160 And it became one of the central experiences that created Dilbert.
00:49:22.320 Because the whole consultant experience is just so otherworldly and weird that it was just perfect Dilbert fodder for a long time.
00:49:30.940 But let me tell you my experience.
00:49:32.980 So the McKinsey senior executives come in to sell the senior executives of the phone company.
00:49:40.440 On the idea that, you know, they're geniuses and they can figure out your strategy better than your employees can.
00:49:49.180 So the idea is that they're so smart, so experienced, that they can just sort of turn around your company if you follow their advice.
00:49:57.600 But the person who comes in and sells the ideas and makes the sale of, okay, now our consulting company has been hired.
00:50:08.120 They're not the people who do the work.
00:50:10.440 The people who sell it actually are pretty brilliant, like actually impressively brilliant, or you don't get in those positions.
00:50:17.860 But then they assign you somebody who's just out of business school and doesn't know anything about telecommunications.
00:50:27.040 And the way they do their work is they talk to the employees and they say, all right, so what would you do in this situation?
00:50:35.060 And then they figure out a bunch of numbers and slide decks and they put together these impressive impressions or impressive presentations that are basically just a bunch of math applied to what the employees told them.
00:50:51.900 And then they sell it, like me, we'd sit in a meeting and say, well, that's just what we told you.
00:51:02.840 That actually is what we've been telling our bosses for years, but they never listened to us.
00:51:10.160 But because the ideas from the employees got laundered through the high-end McKinsey and company consultants, our senior executives would be like, finally, we know what to do.
00:51:21.260 And then they would put those plans in place.
00:51:27.800 So Pacific Belt doesn't exist anymore.
00:51:33.140 I'm not going to say it's because of McKinsey and company, but I will say they didn't turn around the business, let's just say.
00:51:39.680 So it got absorbed by another phone company and absorbed by another one.
00:51:45.400 So it didn't work out.
00:51:48.500 Anyway, so Saudi Arabia may be no different than the United States when it comes to that stuff.
00:51:55.080 Well, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is talking about the Houthis in Yemen because they're not only threatening U.S. ships and they've attacked U.S. ships,
00:52:05.940 but they apparently, quite pointedly, are not going to go after Chinese, Iranian, or Russian ships.
00:52:14.560 So it does seem aimed at us specifically.
00:52:17.380 And of course, the Houthis are proxies for Iran.
00:52:22.180 So Iran is causing our shipping costs to be way higher because the insurance on the ships is through the roof.
00:52:29.120 And on top of that, if they want to take an alternate route around the Horn of Africa, it's way more expensive.
00:52:37.700 So part of this solution for bringing down the costs in the United States is to stop the Houthis.
00:52:44.500 But as Balaji Srinivasan said the other day on X, we have sort of a problem because we've got these $2 million missiles
00:52:55.380 and they've got $2,000 drones and we could pound them all day long and they would probably just pop right back up with a few more $2,000 drones.
00:53:04.800 Because unless you killed every single one of them, a few more are going to pop up and it's not going to cost them much to be back in business, especially with Iran's help.
00:53:15.260 So there's almost no path for us to fix this.
00:53:21.380 Or is there?
00:53:22.800 Because it sounds like the Wall Street Journal is, they don't say it directly,
00:53:26.700 but they're kind of calling on Trump to just level the Houthis.
00:53:33.340 And I don't know if he can.
00:53:34.920 I don't know if our military even has the ability anymore.
00:53:39.180 I have real questions whether we have the capability to do anything big that would make a difference.
00:53:45.320 But I'll tell you the only thing that would matter is total destruction.
00:53:49.720 And it would have to be so, so bad that the Houthis just said,
00:53:55.040 all right, we're never going to get near this again.
00:53:56.700 Because we just lost everything.
00:53:59.500 So could Trump do something so big that it just wipes out the Houthis everything?
00:54:08.020 And the other question I ask is,
00:54:10.740 wasn't it not that long ago that Saudi Arabia was doing terrible things to the Houthis?
00:54:17.540 And didn't we stop them from doing it?
00:54:21.180 I might need a little lesson on that.
00:54:23.660 But it seems like we should be able to unleash Saudi Arabia's military.
00:54:29.000 You know, they're closer.
00:54:30.440 They might have a better way.
00:54:32.220 And just maybe even just let them occupy the country, you know, with a little help.
00:54:39.100 But whatever we're doing now can't stand.
00:54:42.700 We can't just...
00:54:44.100 The current situation is untenable.
00:54:46.580 So we're either going to have to take out Iran, seems like a bad idea,
00:54:50.440 or take out the Houthis, or occupy Yemen, or something really expensive.
00:54:57.000 And maybe the economics never work out.
00:55:01.020 Because if we're trying to reduce inflation,
00:55:03.660 but we run up a trillion dollar military bill to get there,
00:55:07.960 well, then we're right back to printing money.
00:55:11.460 So it's not entirely clear there's a path.
00:55:14.280 But if Trump could come up with something to bomb and somebody to bomb
00:55:20.440 that would make a difference, we might see that.
00:55:24.800 It might be a whole bunch of mother-of-all bombs going off.
00:55:29.500 Meanwhile, according to The Hill,
00:55:31.920 Iran's supreme leader has rejected talks with Trump for any kind of a deal.
00:55:38.600 And, you know, I always think to myself,
00:55:42.400 why wouldn't they do a deal?
00:55:44.400 It just seems so logical.
00:55:46.280 Why would you want to be in this permanent military situation?
00:55:49.480 Just do a deal.
00:55:51.020 You know, we'd be reasonable.
00:55:52.900 We could work out a deal.
00:55:54.500 And then I see Iran's response.
00:55:58.120 And it's actually surprisingly persuasive about why they don't want a deal.
00:56:05.240 So, again, Iran is evil.
00:56:08.600 You know, blah, blah, blah, they're liars, blah, blah, blah.
00:56:11.520 I have to say all the bad Iran things
00:56:13.180 before I can say that they did anything smart.
00:56:16.460 So here's what the supreme leader said
00:56:20.660 about the push for a nuclear deal.
00:56:26.960 They said that the U.S.'s aim is to exert their dominance
00:56:30.500 and impose what they want.
00:56:32.180 Iran will definitely not fulfill these new demands.
00:56:44.360 They make new demands, meaning the U.S.
00:56:46.680 They make new demands regarding the country's defense capabilities
00:56:50.240 and international capabilities, telling us not to do this, do this,
00:56:54.780 not to meet with that person, not to go there, not to produce this,
00:56:58.560 and to limit the range of our missiles to a certain extent.
00:57:02.120 And then the supreme leader says,
00:57:04.480 how could anyone accept such things?
00:57:08.940 To which I say, oh, yeah, actually,
00:57:13.260 if you put any of us in that same situation,
00:57:17.940 why is some other country telling them
00:57:20.100 what the hell they could do in their own country?
00:57:21.780 Now, of course, they extend their range
00:57:26.100 to affect other countries that we care about.
00:57:29.040 But just think about it.
00:57:31.140 It's not really a negotiation we're asking for.
00:57:34.340 We're saying we want you to do all these things
00:57:36.480 that we want you to do,
00:57:37.600 like you're not even a sovereign country,
00:57:40.100 like you should just do what we tell you to do.
00:57:43.360 Now, of course, we don't want them to do what they want to do,
00:57:47.280 because they might build a nuke and threaten Israel,
00:57:51.460 and next thing you know, we're in a war.
00:57:53.900 It's pretty terrible.
00:57:55.340 So I can see why we want them to do different things
00:57:58.160 than they're doing,
00:57:59.080 as in, could you please not build those nuclear weapons?
00:58:03.020 But from Iran's perspective,
00:58:05.500 if you think they're going to agree to,
00:58:08.560 all right, here's the deal.
00:58:09.720 You do everything we want,
00:58:11.160 and that's it.
00:58:13.020 That's the deal.
00:58:14.640 You do everything we want and forever.
00:58:18.040 Who in the world is going to agree to that?
00:58:20.820 We're not offering them anything they can agree to.
00:58:23.980 How can you make a deal?
00:58:26.540 I mean, I'm genuinely curious.
00:58:28.920 Now, I get that if we threaten them enough
00:58:31.420 that what they would get in return is not being destroyed.
00:58:35.720 But that's not really the kind of deal
00:58:38.000 that other countries want to take.
00:58:41.360 We're forcing you to do what we want.
00:58:44.120 Dance for us.
00:58:45.560 You know, dance for us.
00:58:46.820 Do what we want.
00:58:47.560 Don't meet that person.
00:58:48.680 Don't build that missile.
00:58:50.940 It's not really something you could expect them to say yes to ever.
00:58:55.600 And I don't know if we could put enough pressure on them,
00:58:59.100 short of just, what, bombing the entire country into rubble.
00:59:03.700 That's not going to happen.
00:59:07.200 So I don't think we have anything to offer.
00:59:11.320 And, you know, Trump is the master of creating an asset and a nothing.
00:59:15.400 So if he does, that asset would be, you know,
00:59:19.000 you could make more money.
00:59:21.040 Your people would be happier.
00:59:22.920 You don't have to worry about us taking you out.
00:59:25.460 So he could create some assets.
00:59:28.840 But the way it's being presented to them is we'd like you now to not be a sovereign country
00:59:36.400 and do what you want.
00:59:38.040 We'd like you to do what we want.
00:59:40.540 Nobody's going to say yes to that.
00:59:43.640 So I guess White House Envoy Steve Wyckoff is going over there to see if they can figure out a deal.
00:59:53.860 I guess he's going to Doha, not to Iran.
00:59:57.240 But they're going to try to figure out if they can figure out a deal.
01:00:00.020 I'm not optimistic about that because it has to be completely reframed because the current frame is,
01:00:09.180 how would you like to be your bitch and just do everything we tell you forever?
01:00:14.960 No way they're going to say yes to that.
01:00:17.280 No way.
01:00:18.520 So how do you reframe that into somehow you win, we win?
01:00:23.620 Because that's how you get a deal.
01:00:25.940 Right now it's we win, you lose.
01:00:28.020 And that's our only offer.
01:00:30.300 We win, you lose.
01:00:32.900 I don't know.
01:00:34.700 According to Mike Johnson, Speaker Johnson, Zelensky did a belt face on a mineral deal.
01:00:42.720 And they think that eventually that will get signed.
01:00:45.860 Maybe not right away.
01:00:47.220 We might sweat him a little bit.
01:00:49.180 But we'll get that signed.
01:00:51.160 Here's what I would say to Speaker Johnson.
01:00:54.660 Don't call it an about face.
01:00:56.260 An about face makes Zelensky look like a chump.
01:01:02.600 Don't do that.
01:01:04.220 Like, even if you think it's true.
01:01:06.340 It's just the wrong phrase, an about face.
01:01:09.260 An about face makes it look like, I don't know, somebody who's weak or indecisive or not a good leader.
01:01:17.360 How about you just say that Zelensky's done what we hoped he would do, not what we wanted, but what we hoped.
01:01:29.940 And he's shown that he's definitely on board for a peace deal, which is what we wanted.
01:01:36.660 And now the situation is all set for maybe working at a deal.
01:01:41.400 But if you're trying to make something work, don't say stuff like about face.
01:01:48.300 That's just causing trouble that didn't need to be caused.
01:01:53.360 Meanwhile, Mario Knopfel is reporting about this.
01:01:57.160 It was in the Financial Times.
01:01:58.540 But you're summarizing for us that apparently the Trump administration is trying to work out a deal with Congo so that we get our own supply of minerals without having to go through China that goes through the Congo.
01:02:17.540 I guess that's what it is.
01:02:18.880 And I always wonder, is there no way to get minerals out of the ground without these poor locals digging through it with their hands and, you know, barefoot?
01:02:32.660 It just seems like there's no robot that can do any of that.
01:02:37.720 Like, it seems like robots would be the answer, right?
01:02:41.860 It's like, okay, let's build a mine.
01:02:44.520 We'll put some robots there and some safety standards.
01:02:47.340 And then Congo gets some money.
01:02:50.940 We get some minerals.
01:02:52.720 Everybody wins.
01:02:54.400 So I hope there's a way for everybody to win.
01:02:56.940 I wouldn't be super happy if all we did was cut China out, but the locals are still scrambling around with their bare feet and their hands trying to get these minerals.
01:03:10.200 That's just really sketchy.
01:03:11.780 But apparently what we would offer Congo would be some kind of military support that I'm sure they would like.
01:03:19.800 So Trump announced on Truth Social, I guess, on March 7th, that he's going to ban all foreign aid flowing to South Africa, all foreign aid.
01:03:33.820 Now, I don't know how much that is or how much difference it makes to South Africa, but PGA Media is reporting this.
01:03:39.580 And listen to the way Trump simplifies this.
01:03:44.920 Now, this is the thing that drives his critics crazy, that he talks like regular people.
01:03:51.360 And this is the best example of talking like a regular person that you'll ever see in your life.
01:03:57.700 The fact that this is coming from a president is just so impressive that he can, you know, from the president's office, he can simplify all the way down to, oh, I get that.
01:04:10.900 Yeah, that's just ordinary people talking.
01:04:12.860 So here's what he said on Truth.
01:04:14.980 South Africa is being terrible.
01:04:17.580 Okay.
01:04:20.080 That's just the first part of the first sentence.
01:04:23.260 South Africa is being terrible.
01:04:25.060 Got it.
01:04:26.220 Plus, to longtime farmers in the country, they're confiscating their land and farms and much worse than that.
01:04:34.480 A bad place to be right now.
01:04:36.640 And we are stopping all federal funding.
01:04:38.700 To go a step further, any farmer with family from South Africa seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to citizenship.
01:04:56.780 This process will begin immediately.
01:04:59.720 That is so clear.
01:05:02.440 Don't you love the clarity of that?
01:05:04.420 But we're ending all funds because they're terrible.
01:05:09.820 And they're so terrible that we'll take the families of the people who are in deep trouble.
01:05:17.300 Now, the people, the farmers, I'm going to guess we would consider highly skilled people because farming is not easy.
01:05:26.640 But I think that the South African farmers probably could make the transition to farming in America with less trouble than somebody who'd never been a farmer.
01:05:38.980 So they could bring to America a farming, let's say, revolution, if there are enough of them, that would make a big difference to our food prices.
01:05:49.460 Not right away, but say five years.
01:05:52.440 So I like everything about that.
01:05:57.680 Did you know that the current law in South Africa allows the government to expropriate, which is just take, land from private parties if it's in the public interest?
01:06:11.120 Now, that would sound like eminent domain.
01:06:15.520 You know, countries do that to build roads and to build dams and stuff.
01:06:19.980 But that's not what they're talking about.
01:06:22.420 They're just talking about taking it.
01:06:24.720 And apparently, if they make an offer and the farmer, let's say a farmer, says, no, that's not enough,
01:06:33.000 then the law allows them to simply take it without compensation.
01:06:37.220 Do you think they're ever going to offer enough?
01:06:41.660 Why would they?
01:06:43.000 All they have to do is under offer.
01:06:45.700 The farmer says no, and then they take it for free.
01:06:48.940 Why would they spend money that they don't have to spend?
01:06:52.300 So it looks to me like it's a bad place to be if you're a white farmer in South Africa.
01:07:00.800 Well, in some technology news, it's kind of cool.
01:07:06.000 There's an AI breakthrough, according to VentureBeat, that uses a technique called a chain of draft.
01:07:16.880 I guess the researchers for Zoom Communications came up with this.
01:07:20.660 Now, you don't need to know what that is.
01:07:22.040 So chain of draft versus a way the AI is being done normally.
01:07:28.780 They can get as good or better results for as little as 7.6% of the text required with regular methods.
01:07:38.080 So this is one of those potentially enormous efficiency benefits.
01:07:44.800 And we keep seeing stories like this where somebody says, well, I've got this little trick, this technique that will make an enormous difference in energy consumption.
01:07:56.640 In this case, an enormous difference in how much training or what kind of training you give it.
01:08:02.820 So I guess they found out that if you fill it with every word, which is what the large language models do, it's no better than if you somehow can pick the words that make a difference.
01:08:15.980 I don't know how they do it, but I guess they've done it.
01:08:19.220 In other AI news, did you know that there's a lawsuit from various authors against Meta for Meta's AI?
01:08:27.720 And it says that Meta was allowed to read all their books and train on the contents of the books.
01:08:35.060 And so some authors are suing.
01:08:37.200 Sarah Silverman is one of those.
01:08:40.080 Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those.
01:08:43.040 So they're suing them.
01:08:45.080 Now, here's my experience, because I've asked several AIs.
01:08:49.080 I haven't asked Meta, so I haven't tested Metas to see if it's different.
01:08:52.800 But the AIs I've talked to, maybe three of them, they're aware of my work, meaning that they can explain some of the key points of my books.
01:09:05.780 Not the Dilbert books, but the ones that are about persuasion or career self-help stuff.
01:09:13.420 And they do know it.
01:09:14.920 They know what a talent stack is.
01:09:17.040 They know what systems over goals are and how to explain it.
01:09:20.460 They understand the keys of persuasion, etc.
01:09:24.780 But when I asked the AI, did you read the book?
01:09:28.780 Were you trained on the book itself?
01:09:30.720 They say no.
01:09:32.660 They say no.
01:09:33.860 They were only trained on people's public comments about the book.
01:09:38.660 So they could look at the reviews of the book, including extended reviews that would, you know, get into the meat of what I said.
01:09:46.480 But they haven't looked at the book.
01:09:49.000 Now, here's my question to you.
01:09:50.980 Do you believe that?
01:09:53.600 You think that's true?
01:09:55.640 That they didn't train on the book?
01:09:59.220 That they only trained on the people talking about the book?
01:10:01.940 Now, I will say that what it knows about the book does sound a lot more like they only trained on people who talked about it.
01:10:12.480 So it can't answer deep questions about the internals of the book because it says, I've never seen the book.
01:10:18.120 And it makes me wonder, are the AIs lying?
01:10:26.660 Is it possible that they had to train the AI to say, oh, I've never seen the book.
01:10:30.800 I just know about people talking about the book.
01:10:34.540 Now, in my case, since I'm a more notorious author, there are always people talking about the book.
01:10:41.320 So people are going to review it.
01:10:42.980 Even on Amazon, there'll be hundreds of reviews.
01:10:45.460 So they could definitely get the basic idea from my books.
01:10:49.940 But if you were a less-reviewed author, what would it know about your book?
01:10:56.620 Nothing?
01:10:57.880 Because nobody talked about it?
01:10:59.720 Nobody bought it?
01:11:01.920 No.
01:11:02.740 So I do wonder if any of them are trained to lie.
01:11:05.520 I'm not going to make specific accusations.
01:11:07.800 But all the ones I tested said they didn't read the book.
01:11:12.700 So maybe it's true.
01:11:15.460 But I haven't tested Meta, so I don't know about that.
01:11:20.300 All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's what I've got for you today.
01:11:23.600 It's a wonderful Sunday, even if you're a little bit tired.
01:11:27.420 So I think you should go forth and have an amazing day.
01:11:30.960 I'm going to talk to the people on Locals privately in a moment.
01:11:37.100 And the rest of you I will see tomorrow, same time, same place, for more fun.
01:11:43.440 All right, Locals, I'll be private with you in the next one.
01:11:45.460 Now, thank you.
01:11:51.440 Thank you.
01:11:52.140 Bye.