Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 2803 CWSA 04⧸08⧸25

00:00:00.000 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.

00:00:12.700 It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time.

00:00:16.360 But if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that nobody can even understand

00:00:21.160 with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass of

00:00:25.220 tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.

00:00:30.000 Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:00:31.380 I like coffee.

00:00:32.800 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine.

00:00:35.820 At the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.

00:00:38.220 It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and it happens right now.

00:00:46.800 Oh, that's some good stuff.

00:00:52.460 Well, we'll talk about the stock market and all the tariffs and stuff, but let me ease into

00:00:58.080 it with some fun news.

00:01:00.000 Now, many of you saw the TV series Game of Thrones, and you remember that there were

00:01:06.600 some, these big, freaky white wolves, and they were called dire wolves.

00:01:13.520 Now, I didn't know that dire wolves were a real extinct species, but apparently it's a

00:01:21.040 real thing.

00:01:21.740 And a genetic startup company called Colossal has managed to clone some dire wolves.

00:01:30.840 So now you can get your own dire wolf.

00:01:33.020 Well, not yet.

00:01:33.860 I mean, they're not selling them, but I would think they'd want to.

00:01:37.960 So they've been extinct for some 12,000 years, but now you can get one.

00:01:42.860 I think a woolly mammoth is going to come soon, but I would like a woolly mammoth wolf.

00:01:50.580 Is there any reason we can't start combining things?

00:01:54.040 I mean, it's impressive that they recreated something exactly that existed.

00:01:57.840 I guess they took a regular wolf, and then they gene edited just the parts that were different

00:02:03.060 to make it a dire wolf.

00:02:04.940 Now, I heard from my neighbor once that if you have a dog of any kind, burglars will stay

00:02:14.100 away from your house because they don't like to mess with a dog. 0.99

00:02:17.420 But I've got a tiny little old dog, and I would like to, you know, maybe have something

00:02:25.480 a little scarier.

00:02:27.200 Do you think you could domesticate any of these dire wolves?

00:02:30.000 Because if a dire wolf comes to the door, nobody's going to rob your house if you have

00:02:36.760 a wolf.

00:02:37.920 So I want a well-trained, well-behaved, but deadly wolf.

00:02:43.820 In related news, there's a dog cloning business.

00:02:48.600 This already exists if you want to clone your own dog.

00:02:52.680 New York Post is reporting that you could take the DNA from your deceased pet.

00:03:00.000 And you can have it cloned.

00:03:02.780 And apparently, it's such a booming business, they can barely keep up with it.

00:03:07.040 But like I said, I think I'd like to clone Snickers, but I'd like her also to be a little 1.00

00:03:13.600 more dire wolf than she is.

00:03:15.720 So I'd be like, all right, you like treats, and you like bugging me all day, but could you

00:03:22.300 also be a wolf to protect my house?

00:03:25.100 And I think someday, someday I'm going to get my own wolf.

00:03:32.140 Well, meanwhile, on the X platform, Elon Musk is allegedly, according to the BBC, clamping

00:03:39.280 down on parody accounts.

00:03:41.460 I thought that was already done.

00:03:43.280 Wasn't it already a rule that you had to say you're a parody or you're fake?

00:03:47.840 But apparently, the rule is that you must say you're a parody or you're a fake.

00:03:53.080 I'm not sure how new that is.

00:03:55.180 It feels like that's been the case for a while.

00:03:58.920 But that's a good idea because I get impersonated now and then on X.

00:04:03.940 So I wouldn't mind having a little more clarity on that.

00:04:07.180 Thanks, Vic.

00:04:13.140 How many of you saw, I guess, Joe Rogan had an interesting guest, Ben Lam, and he talked

00:04:20.960 about, speaking of genetic stuff, he talked about gene editing of human beings in China.

00:04:27.240 So allegedly, China might be ahead of us, you could argue if that's really ahead, ahead of us in the ability

00:04:36.260 to gene edit humans.

00:04:39.060 So there's one story, I don't know how confirmed this is, that they did some testing on making

00:04:47.380 some babies that were gene edited to be resistant to HIV.

00:04:52.480 Does that sound real?

00:04:54.640 I don't know.

00:04:55.160 I give that a maybe, maybe.

00:04:59.520 But then there's rumor that maybe China has also experimented with making kids who are more

00:05:05.840 intelligent.

00:05:08.160 You know what I think?

00:05:10.260 I think if you tried to make intelligent humans more intelligent, you would have just the worst

00:05:16.860 problems.

00:05:18.480 Because there's a movie I used to love, it was one of the best movies ever, called Little

00:05:23.380 Man Tate.

00:05:25.180 And it was about a little kid who was a genius.

00:05:28.600 And the thing I loved about it is it accurately showed that if you're too smart, you can see all

00:05:35.920 the things that can go wrong.

00:05:37.740 You can see all the dangers and all the evil of the world, because he's smart.

00:05:41.480 And if you're a kid and there's nothing you can do about those evils, it just makes you crazy.

00:05:48.780 So yeah, so Jodie Foster played the mom in that movie.

00:05:51.960 It was a great movie. 0.97

00:05:53.480 And I think that the smarter you are, the more mentally tortured you are. 0.91

00:05:59.300 Elon Musk says that about himself.

00:06:02.420 And I have observed that there is a certain amount of intelligence that does make people a little squirrely.

00:06:11.740 Thankfully, I'm just below that level.

00:06:17.100 I'm smart enough to get some stuff done, but not so smart that I have to go to a therapist.

00:06:22.740 So I hit the sweet spot.

00:06:26.740 Kind of lucky there.

00:06:29.300 I don't know.

00:06:29.880 What do you think?

00:06:30.540 It seems to me that with AI coming, that having smarter citizens won't make that much difference.

00:06:38.980 Because in theory, we're only a few years away from AGI.

00:06:43.320 I'm not sure I believe it, but let's just go with it.

00:06:46.060 So if we add AGI, so that's what would be the next level of AI, do we really need extra smart people?

00:06:59.360 How much do we need them?

00:07:01.400 Because they're not going to know more than the AI.

00:07:05.100 So maybe China would create a bunch of sad, smart people who could only see that the world is going to fall apart. 0.94

00:07:12.560 And then they wouldn't even be able to get a job because the AGI would be doing the job.

00:07:19.000 And they would be like, huh, could you at least have given me some genes so I'd be good at welding?

00:07:24.760 Because that's still useful.

00:07:27.180 Anyway.

00:07:29.740 Here's another story that's like a million other stories.

00:07:32.780 Caltech has renamed its top diversity official while keeping the DEI office intact.

00:07:41.760 Washington Freebeacon is reporting on this.

00:07:44.740 So instead of getting rid of the DEI, which the federal government has required in order for them to get any federal funding,

00:07:55.060 they promoted that of DEI to associate vice president for campus climate engagement and success.

00:08:02.780 which is just the DEI person.

00:08:07.060 Now, if they were the only one doing that, you'd say to yourself, huh, maybe something should be done about this one college that's doing it.

00:08:17.060 But I feel like it might be almost all of them.

00:08:21.760 I feel like 8 out of 10 are just going to hide it and keep doing it.

00:08:25.500 And that's incredible.

00:08:28.480 I mean, at this point, it's hard to imagine sending a child to a college.

00:08:33.360 Why would a white person send somebody to a college that's going to overtly discriminate them against them for their race or their gender?

00:08:42.780 There's got to be a better way.

00:08:47.140 I want homeschooling and robots.

00:08:50.440 I want to be taught by a robot.

00:08:53.980 Well, Trump has signed an executive order to revive U.S. coal industry.

00:08:58.180 So I guess he's going to tell the Interior and Energy Department to remove any impediments so they can have more coal plants.

00:09:09.220 And to be fair, Trump did campaign on unleashing American energy.

00:09:14.640 So, you know, he always says that, Trump says that we're going to use that clean coal, you know, that beautiful clean coal.

00:09:24.300 So I went to Grok to find out just how dangerous is a modern coal plant.

00:09:30.240 And the answer is super dangerous.

00:09:33.560 Now, Grok is also still worried about climate change.

00:09:37.200 So it worries about CO2.

00:09:38.760 But even without the CO2, if you're just looking at the pollution to the air and water and soil, it's pretty sincere.

00:09:50.900 Now, it's pretty substantial.

00:09:54.640 So this is not like a small change in the health of people who are living in that area.

00:10:00.920 If you lived anywhere near a coal plant, and, you know, if you did, you probably need to get out of there.

00:10:09.200 Because it just sounds terrible.

00:10:11.080 The soil, the air, the water.

00:10:13.600 And then I looked, then I asked Grok if that's a regular coal plant.

00:10:18.240 What about clean coal?

00:10:20.760 And apparently this clean coal is overrated, meaning that they can't really get it that clean without excessive expense.

00:10:28.940 So the big point of having a coal plant would be that, you know, it's inexpensive and you can get it up and running pretty quickly in this case.

00:10:41.540 But, no, the clean coal is still plenty dangerous.

00:10:46.520 Is everybody okay with that?

00:10:48.820 Do you think that's the right tradeoff to sacrifice the environment to a fairly substantial amount?

00:10:57.660 Because energy is a requirement for survival of the country?

00:11:04.940 I don't know.

00:11:05.700 It's a tough one.

00:11:06.400 I guess I'm cautiously, I guess I'm going to be an observer on this one.

00:11:15.660 Because there's no way I can say I like it, because it's pretty bad for health.

00:11:20.460 But I can't say I don't like it, because it might also be vital for the survival of the country.

00:11:27.240 So these are tough choices.

00:11:29.300 But one thing I do like is that Trump makes tough choices.

00:11:32.320 So it would be so easy for him to, like, kick the can down the road and just say, well, if I approve this plant, everybody will be mad at me, and they won't see the long-term benefits.

00:11:46.480 But Trump just says, long-term benefits, done.

00:11:49.960 I do like that.

00:11:51.800 I do like that.

00:11:52.860 But this one's a tough one.

00:11:54.000 Also, Trump approved a, one, allegedly, he's going to approve a $1 trillion military budget.

00:12:03.480 $1 trillion.

00:12:05.100 I think that's like $150 billion more than normal.

00:12:09.360 Now, here's the other thing I worried about.

00:12:13.140 I was worried that Doge would be working hard to reduce expenses, and that the government, in this case, would be Trump,

00:12:24.000 would say, oh, all those expenses you reduced, I'm going to use that for extra expenses.

00:12:30.580 And it looks like maybe some of that's happening.

00:12:33.820 So what does Elon Musk think about the fact that the defense budget is going up, at the same time, he's literally risking his life to decrease expenses?

00:12:46.100 I would love to know what that conversation sounds like behind closed doors.

00:12:50.540 Because I can't believe that the military doesn't have $150 billion that they could have reduced from the budget to give them room for the extra stuff they do want to do.

00:13:02.720 I just have a, I mean, how many tanks do we need, for example?

00:13:07.220 So the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Trump being able to use that Alien Enemies Act to get rid of the gang members.

00:13:22.160 Is that true?

00:13:24.040 Fake news.

00:13:25.420 Fake news.

00:13:26.240 So most of the news about this is fake news.

00:13:28.440 I'll tell you why.

00:13:29.020 So remember, Trump tried to use this very old act, the Alien Enemies Act, and he said that the Tren de Ligua, the Venezuelan gangs, whatever they are, that they were terrorists, domestic enemies, and so he could use that act to deport them.

00:13:49.120 And then Judge Biasberg, I changed his name.

00:13:55.980 It's actually Boesberg, but I'm going to call him Biasberg for all the obvious reasons.

00:14:01.760 So Judge Biasberg, he would be a D.C. judge, ruled that even though the people were held in Texas and deported from Texas, he ruled that he as a D.C. judge could block it.

00:14:16.000 But then the Supreme Court overruled Biasberg and said, this is not your domain, this is a Texas question, so they would need a Texas judge to even determine if they could do it or not.

00:14:32.280 So the fake news is that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump.

00:14:37.960 What did happen is that something that wasn't bad for Trump happened, but it wasn't ruling in favor of him.

00:14:45.560 It was simply saying that the process that got us to that point was not an appropriate process.

00:14:51.940 Now, this seems like a big step forward because it means the Supreme Court is saying the D.C. judge has to stay in his lane.

00:15:01.000 Now, I don't know how extendable that is or whether that will be more generalized to the rest of the country, but that problem of being able to shop for a judge and then getting one that will stop something anywhere in the country, no matter where the judge is, that's got to stop.

00:15:20.200 So maybe this is the first indication that the Supreme Court is going to be serious about that.

00:15:26.260 Now, what was the story I heard about Biasberg?

00:15:31.320 He was on vacation and he ended up volunteering for or he got assigned this case.

00:15:39.480 But is this the same case or was it a second case?

00:15:42.980 But there's a story where he wasn't the emergency judge.

00:15:46.220 And I guess the emergency judges are just picked sort of automatically.

00:15:51.080 Whoever is the whoever is the emergency judge at the time just gets the case.

00:15:56.780 But somehow Judge Biasberg figured out how to get the case to himself, which is not the normal process.

00:16:04.860 So he got the case and not the normal process.

00:16:10.120 And then he made a judgment that the Supreme Court said wasn't even good judging.

00:16:17.040 So that's a lot to explain, isn't it?

00:16:20.940 Judge Biasberg.

00:16:23.500 We'll see how that goes.

00:16:24.860 Well, according to the New York Post, Apple is trying to figure out how to make the iPhone affordable with all these tariffs.

00:16:34.960 So one of the things they do, plans to do is, is to assemble more of them in India.

00:16:40.380 But the parts are still made in China.

00:16:42.440 So, so, so the parts, even if they're assembled in India, now, apparently that would allow them to say it's made in India.

00:16:51.920 And then there wouldn't be a, there wouldn't be a tariff or, or it would be whatever tariffs are appropriate to India, not, not the ones on China.

00:17:00.820 And that's weird because all the parts are made in China.

00:17:05.820 So, but that wouldn't take care of all the problems.

00:17:10.480 It might help a little bit.

00:17:11.480 But, and the cost of an iPhone could balloon to more than $2,000.

00:17:18.980 Does that sound true?

00:17:20.660 The cost of an iPhone could go to $2,000.

00:17:23.700 Some say if, according to a group called Wedbush, a research firm, that the phone could cost as much as $3,500 if we made them in the U.S.

00:17:39.740 So do you think that's true?

00:17:42.320 I think I've seen some smart people say, well, you know, we're not going to have, we're not going to have people, you know, with little screwdrivers putting tiny screws into phones.

00:17:53.140 We would use robots.

00:17:54.520 So we would be able to make them cheaply with our smart robots.

00:17:59.280 Well, I don't know about that.

00:18:02.600 But I do know that Apple's CEO was recently explaining that China hasn't been the low labor place for a long time.

00:18:17.520 What they are is a high skill place.

00:18:21.320 So the skill they need is to be able to create these advanced tools that make stuff like phones.

00:18:27.680 And so the real thing that China has an advantage in is that they've trained just a huge, vast number of people to be able to build a factory, build a special tool that will help manufacture in that factory, and then make it all work together.

00:18:44.920 It's a very special specialty, and we don't really have much of any of that in the United States.

00:18:53.220 So I'd love to see something from the Trump administration that addressed that directly, as in, if you want to go to college to be one of these manufacturing tool making experts, we'll pay for it.

00:19:09.500 Just imagine that if you want to go to college for that very special specialty, which the United States desperately needs to bring manufacturing back to this country and implement robots and all that, that the government will just pay for the whole thing.

00:19:26.840 Because I can't think of anything that would be a more direct, smart investment.

00:19:33.500 Because if we don't have that kind of expertise to build manufacturing, we don't have anything.

00:19:41.500 We're not going to bring any manufacturing back to this country unless we hire the Chinese to build it for us. 1.00

00:19:48.040 So that would be one case where I'd just say, all right, federal government's just going to pay your entire cost to college.

00:19:59.940 That would give some action, wouldn't it?

00:20:01.700 Seems like that would be a fun job, by the way, designing tools for factories.

00:20:08.740 Well, here's something that sounds sketchy, but maybe it isn't.

00:20:11.800 According to user Publius, I saw this on X, the Department of Justice filed a sealed motion in that case about that Ryan Ruth.

00:20:22.020 He was the attempted assassin at the Trump International Golf Club.

00:20:26.540 But what's weird about it is that it's a sealed motion that's marked ex parte in camera and under seal.

00:20:37.140 So it's so secret that even Ruth's lawyer can't see all of it.

00:20:42.780 So you might say to yourself, what's up with that, that it has to be so secret that even the defendant's lawyers can't know what's happening?

00:20:52.140 And the answer, according to the smartest person I know, is that it might involve Trump's security.

00:20:59.980 So there might be some things that can't become public because it would give away, you know, the Secret Service method or something about Trump.

00:21:11.920 So it doesn't mean that the secret they're covering up is about Ruth, the attempted assassin.

00:21:17.120 It could be just something generically government important, but we'll see.

00:21:47.120 All right, let's check in with the Democrats who have been trying desperately to come up with a coherent message and an attack against the Republicans.

00:22:04.920 So here's what Chuck Schumer did.

00:22:06.860 And I think this is probably a good list of what the Democrats think is their tightest, most effective message.

00:22:14.940 And they might be right.

00:22:16.440 So you had a post on X.

00:22:18.620 This is Chuck Schumer.

00:22:19.920 And he's just listing the bad things about the Republicans.

00:22:23.600 And he says, Trump has unleashed chaos in America.

00:22:27.340 Now, remember I told you that whenever you see the word chaos, that's a propaganda brainwashing word.

00:22:35.700 Because it's so generic, it's like dark.

00:22:38.480 Do you remember dark?

00:22:39.380 Back in Hillary's campaign, when I said, no, whoever came up with that, labeling everything that Trump does as dark, is some kind of persuasion expert.

00:22:51.080 Now, I don't know if the chaos came from a persuasion expert.

00:22:55.000 I'd love to see how it tests.

00:22:57.180 But chaos is the last thing that seniors want to hear.

00:23:01.140 Seniors do not want to hear there's chaos.

00:23:03.120 Young people, not so concerned, which might explain why there's so many old people at the protests, because they don't like chaos, even though they're creating it. 0.85

00:23:15.640 Whereas young Americans are moving toward Trump, because chaos would not scare a young person.

00:23:21.980 But it would definitely scare somebody nearing retirement, because the last thing they need is some chaos.

00:23:26.500 All right, so he starts with chaos, which is probably a professional word.

00:23:34.580 I don't know for sure.

00:23:36.560 I was sure when I heard Hillary use dark. 1.00

00:23:39.780 I was sure that was a professional, and that checked out later.

00:23:44.500 But this one could be their own invention.

00:23:47.640 But they're sticking to it so slavishly.

00:23:50.640 I just say chaos every time they open their mouths now, that it makes me think it's, first of all, organized.

00:23:58.460 I don't think it's accidental that they're all using it.

00:24:01.240 But secondly, probably it's been tested.

00:24:04.180 And it must test well, at least for older voters.

00:24:09.140 And then Schumer goes on.

00:24:11.460 He goes, talking about Trump, his tariffs hit families with the largest tax hike in more than 50 years.

00:24:17.360 Now, of course, you can say that if you're leaving out all the nuance.

00:24:22.720 The nuance would be, we don't know how it's going to shake out.

00:24:26.580 There might be some things that are cheaper.

00:24:28.980 Might be some things more expensive.

00:24:31.120 It could be that if you just adjust your spending to buy more American products, your costs go down.

00:24:37.740 If you said, well, I won't buy this foreign car. 1.00

00:24:41.220 I'll buy a Ford, and then you look at if Ford is offering these employee-level discounts to people, which sounds like a pretty good deal, your costs will go down.

00:24:54.780 That's why he's calling your tax hike.

00:24:57.620 We also don't know where it all ends.

00:25:01.100 So if you don't know where it ends, it's hard to say that it's a tax hike.

00:25:07.100 And he also leaves out the fact that the families, the average middle-class families, are the intended benefactors.

00:25:17.660 They're the ones who should come out the best in the long run.

00:25:21.140 It's literally being done for them.

00:25:22.700 Because I don't think the rich people who own the factories in China are exactly very happy right now.

00:25:29.380 But the people who just rely on jobs and manufacturing jobs, they should be the direct beneficiaries.

00:25:38.300 But it might take a few years.

00:25:41.280 And that's a nuance that Democrats can just leave out and call it a tax hike. 0.88

00:25:48.680 So unfortunately, that's a good persuasion.

00:25:52.700 It's not accurate, but it's not inaccurate in the short run.

00:25:58.660 So persuasion-wise, unfortunately, it works.

00:26:03.780 And then they say, as far as I know, this is a complete lie, that Doge is sabotaging Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

00:26:11.980 Now, I think what he did, Schumer, I think what he did was he wanted to avoid the most debunkable lie,

00:26:23.460 which would be that Trump wants to cut those things.

00:26:28.100 Because he doesn't.

00:26:29.080 He's been very clear, 100% of the time, Doge and Trump and Musk have all said the same thing.

00:26:37.020 Nobody's ever deviated once.

00:26:38.920 They do not want to cut the benefits.

00:26:41.120 They will not cut the benefits.

00:26:42.500 But since that's been one of the main attack lines, and it seems to work, Schumer's looking for something that's not exactly that, but you could kind of hear it that way.

00:26:55.920 So instead of saying that he's going to cut your benefits, which would be debunked, he says that Doge is sabotaging them.

00:27:05.420 What does sabotaging them mean?

00:27:07.160 Now, he's probably making an argument that if you change the systems, the systems might have some hiccups during the changeover.

00:27:16.340 But anybody with an ounce of common sense would know that eventually every kind of computer system for every kind of everything has to be upgraded.

00:27:25.900 And it's been probably decades overdue for some of these systems.

00:27:30.940 So this is a clever little lie that Doge is sabotaging those things.

00:27:39.400 Now, do you think that Doge is intentionally sabotaging them?

00:27:42.940 Because sabotage is something you do intentionally.

00:27:45.860 He's not saying that Doge is wrecking them, because that would suggest it would maybe happen accidentally.

00:27:53.280 He's saying that they're sabotaging them.

00:27:56.580 Now, here's the other thing that the Democrats do.

00:27:59.180 And I'm not going to say that Republicans don't do it, but for some reason, I notice it more when Democrats do it.

00:28:06.560 They do this weird mind-reading thing where they'll just look at somebody who's a Republican,

00:28:12.440 and the Republican will just be doing normal things like, in this case, trying to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of three vital systems.

00:28:23.240 And instead of saying, well, we observe that they say, and they're acting on preserving these systems and making them stronger.

00:28:32.920 So instead of that, which would be observable, they come up with their secret thoughts are that they really want to sabotage it for what?

00:28:46.200 Why would they want to sabotage it?

00:28:49.160 And what would be, like, how can they imagine that would work out for them?

00:28:52.720 Who believes that if you sabotage these vital systems, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, who thinks that would be a good idea?

00:29:02.700 Do you think there's even one person at Doge who thinks, you know what?

00:29:07.200 I think I'll just sabotage these things.

00:29:09.440 It's batshit crazy, but it's something that Democrats are always poised to believe, because they somehow believe that their leaders can read the minds of Republicans.

00:29:22.660 And what they see when they pretend to read the minds, it's just crazy stuff.

00:29:27.240 Stuff that literally nobody would be thinking, ever, like even once.

00:29:31.360 And still the Democrats will be like, uh-huh, uh-huh, I think you have accurately read that mind, and now I see it too.

00:29:41.100 And then Schumer says, the market is having its worst three days since COVID.

00:29:47.060 Well, maybe not, because do any of you remember my prediction about where the market was heading?

00:29:56.540 Now, I'm no market expert, but from the point of view of persuasion, I think I told you on the podcast that I was guessing that around a 20% pullback is where people would say,

00:30:13.360 huh, that feels like enough, and there wouldn't be any logic to it.

00:30:18.120 It would just be that 20% feels like the right number. 1.00

00:30:23.200 And sometimes there's no explaining it.

00:30:26.440 It's just when I thought about it myself, and I just was sitting in a room by myself, I thought, you know what?

00:30:32.500 I wouldn't be surprised if the market goes down 20%, but I would be surprised if it went down 50%.

00:30:39.320 So there's just something about some numbers that are sticky.

00:30:44.620 And 20% when it comes to the stock market, because it's often, it's a number that people refer to a lot, you know, that's 20% is a recession, 20% is something.

00:30:58.580 But we hear 20% a lot.

00:31:00.040 So I thought, human brains have a snap-to-grid quality, that as soon as our mind gets close to something that it's used to, it snaps to it.

00:31:14.560 So if 20% is something that people often think about when they think about markets pulling back, that when it got close to 20%, if there wasn't something beyond the uncertainty, and I'll talk about that next, that you would just snap the grid.

00:31:31.040 And you'd say, 20%, huh, that's far enough.

00:31:34.360 So today there's some buying.

00:31:36.300 The excuse is that it looks like there's progress on negotiating tariffs.

00:31:43.400 I don't think there is.

00:31:45.980 I don't think there's any progress.

00:31:48.160 But if people want to see it that way, good.

00:31:54.400 So it looks like that's maybe tightening up.

00:31:56.840 Tomorrow everything can be different, right?

00:31:58.760 So whatever's happening today does not predict tomorrow.

00:32:04.060 And I'm not giving you any financial advice.

00:32:06.700 I'm just observing.

00:32:08.480 Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament.

00:32:10.640 I've been visualizing my match all week.

00:32:13.400 She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car on her backhand side.

00:32:19.340 Good thing Claudia's with Intact, the insurer with the largest network of auto service centers in the country.

00:32:25.040 Everything was taken care of under one roof, and she was on her way in a rental car in no time.

00:32:29.480 I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round.

00:32:32.940 But you got there on time.

00:32:34.800 Intact Insurance, your auto service ace.

00:32:37.080 Certain conditions apply.

00:32:41.760 So I was reading on Mario Norfall's feed, which is excellent.

00:32:49.220 You should follow Mario Norfall on X.

00:32:52.640 Tesla is introducing cabin radar for some of their models, the Cybertruck and the Model Ys.

00:33:00.460 So the cabin radar will be able to tell who's in what seat, not the personality, but it'll know if a child or an adult is in what seat.

00:33:10.620 And then it will be able to detect health problems and do dynamic airbag deployment based on the size of the passenger and maybe the age.

00:33:21.860 There will be an assumed age, I think, with the size, and a number of benefits, such as you would know if somebody left a child in a hot car, for example.

00:33:33.660 So that's amazing.

00:33:36.160 So this would be another case where Elon Musk and his company are trying hard to protect the health and well-being of American citizens.

00:33:46.360 So what do you think would be the outcome of Elon Musk spending his full time trying to save humanity by making us interplanetary, trying to bring communications to everywhere on the planet through Skylink, trying to cure people with blindness and serious disabilities through Neuralink,

00:34:12.000 and then making Tesla, which, if you believe in climate change, would be a huge step forward.

00:34:19.080 And even if you didn't, there are excellent cars, which will be safer than other cars because the self-driving will be way safer than human driving.

00:34:28.860 I think it already is.

00:34:30.600 And then he's going even further with his cabin radar to make it safer in a whole new way than other cars I've even thought of.

00:34:40.240 So, and then he's also working on Doge to save America because the biggest existential threat to America is the debt, and only he would be brave enough to take that on.

00:34:52.840 So how do you think he would be rewarded for this nonstop, high-energy, continuous, pro-human, pro-American, pro-survival point of view?

00:35:05.920 Well, you would not be surprised, according to the New York Post, there's a Democrat murder culture. 0.95

00:35:13.900 So they did a survey and asked who's up for murder, if the people are Trump or Musk, and 38% of respondents said it would be at least, quote, somewhat justified to murder Trump, and 31% said the same about Musk.

00:35:31.560 Murder, murder, murder, murder, murder, and if you're looking at only the left-leaning respondents, the number thinking that murder might be justified of Trump is 55%, and Musk is 48%.

00:35:46.560 So I would argue that Musk is the one American who, by far, by far, is doing the most for the economic and future of humanity and America in particular.

00:36:06.340 And what did the left do?

00:36:09.440 Because that would take their power away, they brainwashed their people to think that murdering him is the right response. 0.98

00:36:20.100 Murder. 0.91

00:36:21.480 And you could all see this coming.

00:36:23.840 I mean, it's been happening since the January 6th trials, that as soon as they started getting away with Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, and I blame the media, by the way.

00:36:32.760 Imagine you're a host on CNN, and you let one of your hosts say that Trump or Musk or Hitler.

00:36:43.720 You created a murder culture. 1.00

00:36:46.800 If you didn't shut that shit down, you are absolutely guilty of aiding, abetting what will look like probably murder attempts. 1.00

00:36:57.960 Murder. 1.00

00:36:59.340 So that's where we've gotten to.

00:37:00.840 The Democrats have so little to offer in terms of policy and ideas that they've literally turned to murder.

00:37:10.340 Murder as a strategy that they're not ruling out.

00:37:16.280 Murder.

00:37:17.780 Now, I blame the media 100% and MSNBC most of all.

00:37:23.120 Because if you demonize people as their intention is to steal your money so billionaires can get tax breaks, which is absurd, and everybody is Hitler, what the hell do you think is going to happen?

00:37:38.500 Eventually, it's going to look like murder is a good idea.

00:37:43.940 Now, there is some thinking, and the article pointed out, that the whole murder of the healthcare executive by that Luigi guy, where it turned into, surprisingly, a lot of young people especially, thought that murdering a CEO of a healthcare company was completely justified.

00:38:02.560 And weren't you shocked by that?

00:38:06.860 I was.

00:38:08.120 But I thought somehow it was maybe a special case where there was something about healthcare in particular that people were always mad about.

00:38:16.020 You know, they weren't getting the healthcare they needed or something.

00:38:18.240 But apparently, it's an extendable thing.

00:38:22.740 And when you look at, like, Norm Eisen trying to put Trump in jail to keep him from running, to put him in jail so that he wouldn't run for office, there's a level of violence and implied violence from the left that I've never seen in my life.

00:38:40.980 I've never seen anything like this.

00:38:42.660 And it's not even safe to walk outside with a, you know, a Trump sporting hat.

00:38:49.280 You would literally be physically attacked.

00:38:52.920 And I think it's now gone beyond just the crazies.

00:38:57.340 I think we've reached the point where the normal Democrats are like, well, you know, I'm usually opposed to murder.

00:39:04.300 But if you've got a good argument, like somebody's creating chaos, and they intend to steal your Social Security money and use it for tax breaks for oligarchs, well, yeah.

00:39:16.440 I mean, in that case, I guess a little bit of murder would make some sense.

00:39:19.700 And it's all made up.

00:39:21.520 It's completely made up.

00:39:24.640 And they've turned half of the country in favor of murder.

00:39:31.400 Unbelievable.

00:39:31.880 I mean, I don't even know how to say enough about this topic.

00:39:35.980 It's the worst thing I've ever seen in terms of persuasion.

00:39:41.380 So I don't know how we get out of this.

00:39:44.340 But the Democrats who are pro-murder, I feel like maybe the Republicans need to make a point of this.

00:39:53.420 That only one side is pro-murder.

00:39:58.400 But maybe they're proud of it. 0.60

00:39:59.900 Maybe they would say, well, we're pro-murder against Hitler.

00:40:06.320 Yeah.

00:40:07.720 Anyway, unbelievable.

00:40:09.820 But that's the power of brainwashing.

00:40:11.460 If you're wondering how powerful brainwashing is, half of the country, well, half of one side, half of one side has been convinced that murder is acceptable in a political context.

00:40:24.740 That's how powerful persuasion is.

00:40:28.260 If you ever wondered, like, what's the limit of it?

00:40:30.600 What's the most you could do?

00:40:32.840 There it is.

00:40:33.740 I mean, the whole trans situation should have been a tip-off that persuasion can get people to almost any opinion.

00:40:41.080 But this one really seals it, I think.

00:40:44.280 Anyway, I saw a post on X by a small electronics business owner in America who is explaining why it's so hard to sell into the European Union.

00:40:59.080 And this is stuff I didn't know before.

00:41:00.800 You know how Trump has said that tariffs alone are not the problem because other countries put up all kinds of other barriers?

00:41:10.760 And you've heard about, I guess, American agricultural products such as meat.

00:41:16.460 So the problem is that we can't sell our beef, I think it is, to Europe because it's got some chemicals that they don't allow in Europe.

00:41:27.220 Now, some people say, but, Scott, they're just being wise and healthy, and that's why European food is better than ours, because they don't allow all these chemicals in.

00:41:38.080 But then you go to the next level, and somebody says, well, it's because they don't allow chemicals that haven't been tested.

00:41:45.260 But I guess in America, you can shoot your beef full of chemicals that haven't been tested, as long as there's no indication it would be a problem.

00:41:55.860 I don't know how you know that.

00:41:57.620 But I wonder if there's some solution where we actually do test our beef to find out if it's a problem with that chemical in it.

00:42:05.200 It couldn't be impossible to do that test, right?

00:42:08.020 So maybe there's some way to get a valid test that says this won't hurt you, or to find out if it does hurt you.

00:42:17.260 Because if it does, I don't want to be eating that beef.

00:42:20.240 Not that I'm eating a lot of beef, but I don't want you eating that beef if it's dangerous.

00:42:26.200 So the truth is always a little complicated.

00:42:30.120 But here's what I found out.

00:42:32.860 Did you know that it's much cheaper to ship goods into the United States than it is to ship them from the United States into the European Union?

00:42:43.380 And you might say to me, that doesn't make sense.

00:42:46.540 It's the same shipping companies with the same goods.

00:42:49.500 Why would it be twice as much to ship into the European Union?

00:42:53.500 But apparently they've got landing fees, which we don't have, and green taxes, which we don't have.

00:43:05.360 And somehow the price of aircraft fuel is imposed on shipping carriers, I think maybe even if they don't use aircraft.

00:43:14.140 So in Europe, they just come up with a bunch of reasons why your shipping costs will be twice as much as the shipping costs in the other direction.

00:43:24.400 So those are the things you have to watch out for.

00:43:27.640 And those are the things that are perfectly, those are the things you want to negotiate.

00:43:34.260 So when you talk about tariffs, remember, you're talking about all these weird little things like green taxes and landing fees and duties and prohibitions against chemicals.

00:43:47.780 And it's a whole mess.

00:43:49.660 But a lot of it is just designed to keep our products out of their markets.

00:43:53.320 And Trump is smart enough to know that.

00:43:56.940 I gave you some fake news yesterday in real time.

00:44:00.180 People were telling me in the comments that there was a 90-day pause on tariffs.

00:44:04.800 That was never real.

00:44:06.480 That was just fake news.

00:44:08.540 So there was never a serious thought of a 90-day pause.

00:44:13.680 Bill Ackman had been asking for it, but the administration had never taken that seriously, I guess.

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00:45:20.220 Well, here's a communication problem that I think the Trump team needs to solve.

00:45:28.440 I saw Bray Hume and some other people saying the following, that they're having trouble understanding what's the point of the tariffs, because there's more than one thing they could be doing.

00:45:41.740 One thing it is, it could be raising revenue.

00:45:45.160 So, Trump always says, I'm going to raise revenue with all these tariffs.

00:45:50.800 But at the same time, they're saying they want to negotiate the tariffs away.

00:45:56.360 So, how do you use the tariffs to raise money at the same time you're negotiating for no tariffs?

00:46:03.840 It feels like that's a conflict.

00:46:05.760 Now, when Trump was asked about this in his meeting with, I think he was in the White House with Netanyahu and somebody asked him that question, he said it could be both, which does make sense.

00:46:19.480 But I don't know if he's, but I don't know if he can get the dollar amounts from his tariff revenue.

00:46:26.120 But it could be both in the sense that if you look at every country individually, there may be some countries that are not going to change their landing fees or duties or green penalties or whatever.

00:46:39.980 And if they don't, the easiest thing for America to do would be to put a tariff on them so that the cost of their stuff and the cost of our stuff is the same.

00:46:51.180 So, we don't have to necessarily negotiate away all the little things that keep us out of their market.

00:46:56.940 We could just say, oh, you're going to put six little things on us.

00:47:00.740 We'll give you one big tariff.

00:47:02.300 So, it does make sense that you would get rid of tariffs everywhere that you're doing it fairly, where there's nothing that's like a fake tariff, you know, like the landing fees and the other stuff.

00:47:14.560 So, as long as the country you're dealing with is an ally who wants to treat you right and be treated right, then getting rid of tariffs makes sense.

00:47:25.280 But there'll probably be, you know, a fair number of companies or countries, and maybe China will be one, in which there's just no other way to do it.

00:47:35.380 You're just going to have to keep the tariff there because they're not going to change their internal rules to, let's say, accept American beef or, you know, lower their transportation costs or any of that stuff.

00:47:47.220 So, I do accept that it could do both.

00:47:51.120 But it's a good question, you know, is he communicating that right?

00:47:55.920 They need to communicate that better.

00:47:58.260 And then there's this third thing that Trump says it's about closing the trade deficit.

00:48:05.740 Now, I saw that Israel, through Netanyahu, said that they plan to close the trade deficit and to do it very quickly.

00:48:13.620 Now, the only way you could do that is that they could sell fewer things to the United States or they could buy more things.

00:48:20.740 Now, I'm guessing that they couldn't have a gigantic trade deficit because we manufacture a lot.

00:48:29.320 I think they buy a lot of our weapons, et cetera.

00:48:31.200 So, it seems like they probably didn't have far to go and it was just sort of smart for them to, you know, to play nice with the United States because there might be some military action coming up that they need to coordinate with, if you know what I mean.

00:48:47.720 Anyway, so that's what I understand about the tariffs.

00:48:50.240 There's at least three things he's trying to do, tariff revenue, negotiate tariffs away, or to close the trade deficit, and that might require some tariffs.

00:49:00.380 According to Scott Bessent, there are now 70 countries or so that have asked to negotiate, and that might be why the market is tightening up and responding because it feels like there's a little bit more certainty going on.

00:49:19.520 Maybe.

00:49:20.060 It might be something else.

00:49:21.680 But let's run through a couple of the other countries.

00:49:23.960 Let's see, there's some news that Vietnam, their currency, which is called the dong, D-O-N-G, according to Zero Edge, the Vietnamese dong is weakened.

00:49:40.880 I'll tell you, I'm a professional humorist, so I feel like I shouldn't touch this one.

00:49:47.400 I shouldn't touch the dong.

00:49:49.660 But I just have to.

00:49:51.980 I just have to.

00:49:53.960 So, no, you don't want a weak dong.

00:49:56.740 So, Vietnam, you're going to have to do something about that. 1.00

00:50:00.300 The European Union says they're ready to negotiate for a zero tariff deal, so no tariffs either way.

00:50:10.380 Now, again, that's probably a trick because they do more than tariffs to keep our products out.

00:50:18.300 So, we would have to negotiate the end of tariffs, but probably the end of other stuff as well.

00:50:22.820 And now, Mike Benz, I saw him commenting on X, that if they throw in getting rid of the European Union Digital Censorship Act, which threatens to close down X for not censoring the way they want him to censor, there's no deal.

00:50:40.980 And I'm all on board with that.

00:50:42.980 I just don't think we should be doing trade deals with any entity that's trying to censor free speech in America.

00:50:51.480 You know, I've even gone stronger in saying we should reconsider being in NATO if they're attacking our free speech.

00:51:00.740 Because that's the, you know, the foundation of all of our freedoms.

00:51:07.320 If the people that we're protecting militarily are actively attacking the most basic foundation of our freedom, we should not be protecting them militarily at all.

00:51:20.140 But, you know, there are also practical reasons why we might want to do that.

00:51:25.660 So, I like this.

00:51:26.660 I like Mike Benz's throwing this in as part of the negotiations.

00:51:31.260 They're just going to have to get rid of the digital censorship on U.S. entities or we just can't do business with you.

00:51:38.540 That's just got to be a bottom line.

00:51:40.660 We cannot do business with you if you're trying to take out the foundation of freedom in America.

00:51:46.120 Absolutely not.

00:51:46.940 Well, Taiwan has also offered zero tariffs and more investment in the U.S.

00:51:53.460 Brabant News is reporting on that.

00:51:56.800 I wonder if we're going to find out that the country is most dependent on the United States for military assistance are also the ones who are fastest to say they'll negotiate for no tariffs.

00:52:10.300 But again, no tariffs doesn't mean you have a deal.

00:52:14.280 Well, it's more like the beginning of negotiation because there's probably a lot of other considerations here.

00:52:22.140 But I do like the fact that Taiwan is going to invest big in the United States.

00:52:28.240 So, that's good.

00:52:30.200 All right.

00:52:30.580 We've got to talk about China.

00:52:31.620 China has decided that, unlike these other countries, it's going to push back hard and it looks like it's going to take it to the wall. 0.52

00:52:41.580 So, these are all the things that China has said.

00:52:45.000 They said that the Chinese Commerce Ministry said that they will never accept the blackmail nature of the U.S.

00:52:52.720 Now, that's a good point.

00:52:56.420 You can kind of understand how Trump can get away with bullying some of our smaller allies that need us for survival.

00:53:04.700 You can understand how he can bully smaller economies that are just dependent on trade with the U.S.

00:53:11.200 And so, maybe his, you know, threatening and blackmailing and bullying is exactly right for every country except China. 0.98

00:53:22.680 Because China sees itself as not just a peer, but the eventual, you know, biggest power in the world.

00:53:29.660 So, the last thing that China is going to do is just bend to our will.

00:53:35.580 That's just not going to happen.

00:53:36.940 So, Trump has taken a stand against China that I don't see could possibly work.

00:53:46.540 Because if he's creating a situation where we win and you lose, and it's going to look like that to the public, 0.99

00:53:53.840 like America just turned China into its bitch, that's never going to happen. 0.95

00:53:59.660 So, I believe that China would take it all the way as far as it has to go, you know, right to the point of financial ruin, 0.99

00:54:08.620 to avoid doing what Trump tells them he wants them to do, even if they agreed with it.

00:54:14.980 Even if they thought, well, these aren't so bad, that would be fair.

00:54:18.460 They don't think that.

00:54:19.380 But even if they did, I don't think there's any chance they would do what he's trying to force them to do,

00:54:24.760 because it would make them look weak, and there's no way they're going to put up with that.

00:54:30.700 Other countries, they can just say, oh, we're not being weak, we're just being reasonable, and that works for them.

00:54:37.680 It's not going to work for China. 0.73

00:54:38.980 So, I'll be very interested to see if what Trump is doing is sort of nagging them, you know, basically going hard at first,

00:54:50.260 but then, you know, maybe there's a point where he turns it around and says, hey, instead of being fighting with each other,

00:54:57.680 why don't we cooperate more, or something like that.

00:55:00.520 Now, I don't know if that can work with China the way it worked with North Korea, because it's a whole different dynamic,

00:55:05.060 but I don't really see a way to solve this.

00:55:09.020 So, here are the things that China's done. 0.71

00:55:10.960 They've, of course, slapped right back with more tariffs, and then Trump's going to put more tariffs on them.

00:55:16.440 So, at this point, goods coming out of China, unless something changes, would be prohibitive,

00:55:24.620 and it would, you know, make your iPhone cost a fortune, and a lot of other stuff would just cost a fortune.

00:55:32.540 But that's just the first thing.

00:55:36.680 China also just announced it's going to impose export controls on rare earth minerals.

00:55:43.820 So, that's, of course, a threat to our entire supply chain.

00:55:48.260 They're going to ban import of U.S. films in China.

00:55:52.680 That's like a $500 million a year thing.

00:55:56.480 But I kind of laughed at that, because my first thinking was, America still makes movies?

00:56:04.280 Movies are kind of a dead industry to me, unless it's another superhero movie that always plays well internationally.

00:56:12.380 But it kind of makes sense that China would do that, because they would assume that the celebrities are anti-Trump,

00:56:20.320 and it will make the Hollywood people go harder at Trump, and they're fairly effective, because they can get a lot of attention.

00:56:28.640 So, that's a smart counter from China to try to get Hollywood on its side, the hard way. 0.94

00:56:36.960 They're putting a tariff on U.S. agricultural products.

00:56:40.260 They're banning our poultry, and they're going to suspend fentanyl-related issues.

00:56:46.280 Well, I'm not sure they ever did enough for fentanyl, but that's pretty directly F-you.

00:56:55.820 Fentanyl-related issues?

00:56:58.200 That's dark.

00:57:01.140 So, that's how far China is willing to go.

00:57:04.700 They're also talking about China investigating the intellectual property benefits of U.S. companies in China.

00:57:11.040 I don't know what that means, but that's not good for the U.S. companies operating in China.

00:57:17.220 So, it looks like they're going to get in their pockets even more than they have.

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00:57:35.200 Now, Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary, says that China's escalation was a big mistake,

00:57:44.140 and the country is playing with a losing hand.

00:57:47.340 All right, so here's what I haven't seen.

00:57:49.760 What I haven't seen is anybody smart doing the side-by-side comparison of what our leverage is

00:57:58.280 over China compared to what their leverage is over us, just in trade.

00:58:06.200 Why haven't we seen that?

00:58:08.400 Now, maybe somebody's done it.

00:58:09.980 If you've seen it, could you forward it to me on X?

00:58:12.680 I'd like to see it.

00:58:13.800 Because I don't really have a good sense of who has the superior negotiating position.

00:58:20.780 To me, it looks like mutually assured destruction.

00:58:23.220 As in, we sort of kind of need each other at the moment, but it's possible that China doesn't

00:58:31.060 need us much at all, because they can switch a lot of their consumption into domestic.

00:58:37.440 They don't have to sell everything overseas.

00:58:40.600 So, I don't really have a sense of who's got the upper hand.

00:58:46.140 I will say that if nothing changes, it doesn't look good.

00:58:54.320 And when I say nothing changes, I mean, if Trump doesn't come up with a reframe to make this not

00:59:01.460 a win-lose situation where we're going to win and China's going to lose, it just can't be a win-lose.

00:59:07.960 Because if you put it in that frame, you're both going to lose.

00:59:11.680 China would rather we both lose than America wins and China loses.

00:59:17.480 That's what it looks like to me.

00:59:19.780 So, Trump's going to have to come up with some kind of a wider deal or somehow include something

00:59:27.260 that China wants that doesn't matter that much to us.

00:59:30.880 I don't know that he has a winning plan on that.

00:59:35.140 Anyway.

00:59:35.400 Yesterday, I caused a stir by saying online that our stock market always comes back.

00:59:48.200 And I asked Grok, and it said 20 out of the last 20 times it went down by 20%, it came back.

00:59:56.660 But to be fair, it didn't come back quickly every time.

01:00:00.240 Sometimes it took 5 to 10 years, sometimes longer, and sometimes a little faster.

01:00:06.540 So, here's what you need to know about stock markets and coming back.

01:00:11.700 It depends what the reason was.

01:00:14.160 If the reason was something like an oil shock, where we thought we were running out of oil

01:00:19.820 and we didn't know where to get more, that might take a while.

01:00:23.320 Because you're going to have to figure out how to get more energy and nobody knows how.

01:00:26.580 So, that's like a real, like a physical problem, not enough energy.

01:00:32.780 But if your problem is like our current problem, where we're dealing with uncertainty,

01:00:39.100 uncertainty is the one thing that has the greatest potential.

01:00:42.560 You can't predict it for sure.

01:00:44.280 But in terms of potential, uncertainty is the one thing that's the fastest to reverse.

01:00:49.760 You just have to add certainty.

01:00:51.180 Now, I act like that's easy, but if you're talking about negotiating tariffs and you hear

01:00:58.320 those 70 countries just said, all right, let's talk, the market probably said, okay, that's

01:01:04.840 definitely moving in the right direction.

01:01:08.160 So, now there's at least some clarity that the other countries, and lots of them, are willing

01:01:14.740 to make a deal that might even make us better off.

01:01:20.700 But China is still the wild card. 0.92

01:01:23.820 We're going to have to get that right.

01:01:25.760 Now, it's possible that Trump's long play, but he doesn't want to say it, is to get the

01:01:33.220 U.S. and China just disconnected so that we're not depending on them.

01:01:37.380 Now, and it could be that the one and only way to do that is to create such a bad situation

01:01:44.720 and just force it to happen.

01:01:48.460 And, you know, maybe we pay way too much for iPhones for five years, and maybe we have to

01:01:55.140 open up dirty, you know, rare earth mineral mines in the U.S., and it's a health hazard.

01:02:00.620 And maybe we have to train a bunch of people to build tools and build manufacturing plants

01:02:06.700 in the United States, and it takes years.

01:02:09.360 But there's a decent argument that we're going to have to cut the cord with China eventually, 1.00

01:02:16.340 because they're too big of a rival, and we can't have them have power over us.

01:02:21.560 So, I don't think that Trump would say that, even if that was the actual goal.

01:02:27.960 As in, we're going to take some real expensive hits, but we have to get to the other side

01:02:35.100 of this.

01:02:36.640 So, anyway, so stocks seem to be in the positive today, because I guess people think they're

01:02:42.800 getting more clarity on things.

01:02:48.600 So, I was watching MSNBC today, which I do for entertainment, as most of you do.

01:02:53.860 Not because it's news or anything like that, but man, the whole mind-reading thing, where

01:03:02.420 the guests say they can see these weird motivations in Musk and Trump, once you see it, you can't

01:03:09.360 unsee it.

01:03:10.340 They just have this view that they can actually read the minds of other people.

01:03:16.000 I would love to know if Republicans do the same thing.

01:03:23.820 I think they probably do, but I don't know why I don't notice it as much.

01:03:28.200 So, anyway.

01:03:32.080 Apparently, according to Zero Hedge and some other reports,

01:03:37.860 the landscapers just got busy in my backyard, seeing my ears of noise in the background.

01:03:46.000 So, Trump says that the U.S. is in direct nuclear talks with Iran.

01:03:50.780 Now, that would be a surprise, because Iran, up until really recently, was saying,

01:03:57.440 no, no direct talks, but we'll run through Oman or something.

01:04:01.660 But Trump is saying that we've been in very high-level direct talks.

01:04:05.680 And when asked if there would be military action, if they don't come up with a Iran nuclear deal,

01:04:15.880 Trump said this.

01:04:18.980 He said that he wants to avoid doing the obvious.

01:04:23.200 So, he'd rather have a nuclear deal to avoid doing the obvious.

01:04:28.380 Now, here is another somewhat brilliant persuasion choice of words.

01:04:36.120 Here's what you, if you said, we might have to bomb you,

01:04:41.760 then they would think, maybe yes, maybe no.

01:04:44.680 They don't want to bomb us.

01:04:46.280 But if you say it matter-of-factly, like doing the obvious,

01:04:50.420 doing the obvious sounds like the decision's already made.

01:04:54.160 Doing the obvious sounds like you'd be crazy not to do it,

01:04:59.220 because it's the obvious.

01:05:00.580 Obviously, you're not going to let him have a nuclear weapon. 0.99

01:05:03.080 So, obviously, we'd bomb you.

01:05:05.180 So, there's something about the phrase doing the obvious 0.64

01:05:08.700 that is a little extra persuasive,

01:05:12.060 because it suggests a mindset where the decision's already been made to bomb.

01:05:18.260 And for negotiation purposes, that's exactly where you want to be.

01:05:22.140 And by the way, that might be true.

01:05:24.900 The thing with Trump, I don't know that he bluffs.

01:05:29.560 It might be entirely true that it's just obvious it's going to happen.

01:05:34.100 Now, I don't know if that means that the U.S. would directly attack,

01:05:37.700 or they'd simply supply some extra weapons in case Israel wants to attack.

01:05:44.360 So, we don't know what that looks like.

01:05:46.060 But I'm still dubious about Iran being serious negotiating.

01:05:52.660 I feel like they're still stalling.

01:05:55.460 But maybe not.

01:05:56.840 I mean, the sanctions are pretty brutal.

01:05:58.460 So, maybe Iran just says, we can't do this forever.

01:06:03.160 Maybe they'll just make a deal until Trump's out of office,

01:06:06.540 and then just go back to what they were doing.

01:06:08.120 So, I don't trust Iran to make a real deal. 1.00

01:06:12.680 But it's kind of interesting.

01:06:15.640 According to NBC News, Trump administration is considering drone strikes on drug cartels in Mexico.

01:06:22.280 Now, I don't know if that's real, but I don't care because it's exactly the right thing to make the cartels think about.

01:06:31.860 Don't you want the cartels to think, you know, I could stay in this fentanyl business, but I'm going to get droned.

01:06:38.840 Or, I could take the money I've already made and maybe open a farm.

01:06:46.080 You know, it's good persuasion to say, yeah, we're considering taking you out from the air without you ever knowing it's going to happen.

01:06:55.100 That's a really scary prospect.

01:06:57.860 If you were a cartel member and you were running a lab, you know, some big lab to make fentanyl,

01:07:04.440 and you knew that the drones knew where you were, and you knew that they'd been authorized to take you out,

01:07:11.500 how would you ever sleep at night?

01:07:14.240 I mean, that would be really disruptive to business.

01:07:16.660 So, even if we're not planning to do it, having it out there makes sense.

01:07:23.040 Here's a little invention that might save some people from really bad situations.

01:07:28.800 University of British Columbia.

01:07:30.260 They've invented a drink, a little stick for your drink that detects spiking.

01:07:39.060 So, the little swizzle stick for stirring your drink.

01:07:44.140 They've made it so it somehow can detect GHB and ketamine.

01:07:48.740 So, it's not for sale yet, but I'd be worried that there's some kind of chemical properties to that stick,

01:07:58.800 and if I stuck it in my drink, I'd be getting some chemicals I didn't want.

01:08:04.880 Anyway, but that's kind of cool, if it works.

01:08:09.120 In other news, Anduril, that's the American defense company that does more futuristic kind of stuff,

01:08:17.560 they've unveiled an AI-powered seabed sentry for submarine detection, according to NextGen Defense.

01:08:26.320 So, apparently, as you know, it's very difficult, nearly impossible to detect a submarine.

01:08:33.280 And that has always given me great comfort, because I thought,

01:08:37.040 well, if Russia and China can't detect our nuclear submarines,

01:08:41.760 they're not going to mess with us,

01:08:43.260 because it's only going to take one nuclear submarine to ruin their whole day.

01:08:47.740 So, I've always been happy that they were undetectable.

01:08:51.060 Now, this is a U.S. company that would be helping us detect, you know, other people's submarines.

01:08:57.980 But, if it's possible for us to do it,

01:09:02.160 it seems like it can't be that long

01:09:05.040 before China and Russia have a similar technology

01:09:08.900 and they can detect our subs.

01:09:11.180 So, that's really destabilizing, in my opinion.

01:09:16.140 So, as smart people have said,

01:09:18.980 it's all going to be about drone warfare in the future.

01:09:22.240 And maybe even submarines will become less of a weapon, a preferred weapon.

01:09:28.900 Because if they're detectable,

01:09:30.640 that's the end of submarines, I think.

01:09:33.180 I think the anti-submarine drones would just take them out. 0.99

01:09:37.580 Anyway, so that's coming.

01:09:39.660 All right, ladies and gentlemen,

01:09:41.220 that's all I had for you today.

01:09:43.220 I'm going to talk to the local subscribers privately.

01:09:48.400 And we'll keep an eye on the stock market,

01:09:51.440 see if Trump can pull a rabbit out of the hat

01:09:54.140 and get something going with China.

01:09:56.620 I don't see it.

01:09:58.540 But, you know, maybe.

01:10:01.900 I'll be optimistic.

01:10:03.180 And say, maybe.

01:10:05.000 All right.

01:10:06.360 Can you hear all that noise behind me?

01:10:08.980 It's like there's a chainsaw running, like, right below my window.

01:10:12.900 I think it's a chainsaw.

01:10:15.600 Anyway.

01:10:16.840 All right, locals, I'm coming at you. 1.00

01:10:19.340 In 30 seconds.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 08, 2025

Episode 2803 CWSA 04⧸08⧸25

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