Scott Adams talks TikTok, Tesla, and more. Also, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem was taken to the hospital by ambulance yesterday because of an allergic reaction to food, and she's fine. Scott also talks about a senator who was taken down by security because he was trying to ask a loud, obnoxious question.
00:08:47.340Now, I'm waiting for other news sources to pick it up and validate it because I can't tell how big a deal this is.
00:08:56.580But the story is that Kash Patel found some documents in the FBI suggesting that the FBI had been alerted from some source that China was in 2020 trying to print a bunch of U.S. election ballots to throw the race to Joe Biden.
00:09:21.300Now, that was about the time the Biden crime family was taking millions of dollars from China while Joe Biden was vice president.
00:10:19.020And the reason given was that the source was not confirmed.
00:10:24.760So they weren't confident that they had the story right.
00:10:28.300But separately, time goes by, and the U.S. Customs Border and Protection captured about 20,000 fake driver's licenses, mostly from Hong Kong and China in July of 2020.
00:10:46.780And they were allegedly on their way to battleground states in the Midwest.
00:10:51.800Now, the driver's licenses, the fake ones, could have been used to give fake ballots, which could have been used to rig an election.
00:11:06.680But we don't quite have, you know, all those dots connected.
00:11:10.960So I would say there's an allegation that China might have been involved in creating or wanting to create some fake ballots.
00:11:20.760But we don't quite have all those dots connected.
00:11:29.640And then part of the story is why did the FBI claim they had the story and then take it back?
00:11:37.440But that part is hard to judge because I doubt it's that unusual for something like the FBI to say, well, we think we've got some information you should know about.
00:11:52.100And then they look into it a little bit more and find out, hmm, maybe that source isn't the best one, so we'll withdraw that.
00:11:59.120So some of it looks like business as usual, but it's a provocative story.
00:12:05.260So we don't know how much of this is real or if it affected the election, but it's quite a story.
00:12:13.760When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?
00:12:22.560Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
00:12:45.920Meanwhile, as you could imagine, Israel is striking Tehran again from the air.
00:12:53.920And they're going after Iranian regime military targets in Tehran.
00:12:59.480But coincidentally, some of those targets happen to be in the same part of the city that allegedly the supreme leader is hiding.
00:13:10.000Now, I don't know if he's, you know, really hiding or where he is or anything else.
00:13:18.340But allegedly, right after Khamenei, however you say it, their supreme leader, after he appeared on live TV, the Israeli jets struck that very area that he was in.
00:15:33.480So what would happen to China if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
00:15:43.380And the answer is, even if Iran wanted to punish the Western world, it doesn't look like they could do it with the Straits of Hormuz unless they punish their biggest supporter, which would be China.
00:16:00.500So do you think Iran would take out that much oil from China by closing the Straits of Hormuz?
00:16:14.120Because once they close it, I don't know how long it would ever take to open it up again.
00:16:20.080So I'm curious whether Iran will go after the Straits of Hormuz, because I feel like China would be tapping them on the shoulder and saying,
00:16:32.400you know, that would be the one thing maybe you shouldn't go after, because that would hurt us pretty directly.
00:16:42.780Anyway, I guess there are a couple of oil tankers that are on fire in the strait, but only because they crashed into each other.
00:21:22.640Meanwhile, the Hindustan Times, I saw this in a Mario Noffel post, the Hindustan Times is speculating who might take over if the Supreme Leader were to, let's say, have an accident.
00:21:42.800If something happened to him, who would take over?
00:21:45.680And they always show pictures of the top people who might take over looking exactly like the guy they would take over for.
00:21:55.740Like they have the same beard, they've got the same outfit on, they're wearing the same wire-rimmed glasses.
00:22:02.240I feel like if you took out the Supreme Leader, they would replace the Supreme Leader with another Supreme Leader that was so similar to the one that you just had that you wouldn't even know the difference.
00:22:19.660Like you could go down like five deep into, you know, who's next in line, and the fifth person would just look like the person who just left and all the people above them.
00:22:32.240Just a gray-bearded guy with the same kind of hat and the same kind of look and the same attitude and would say all the same things.
00:22:41.080So if you think that taking out the top domestic leader would get you a good result, I don't think there's any evidence of that.
00:22:53.180It just looks like you would get a younger, madder, more angry, you know, terrorist.
00:23:00.940It just seems like it would get worse.
00:23:04.260So I can see why Trump would not want to be rushing to take out the top guy.
00:23:10.740Meanwhile, both sides are talking about the military action like it's a movie sequel.
00:23:19.360They're using movie sequel language like, and I've never seen so much marketing talk about a war.
00:23:27.540So the Israelis are saying that very soon, like maybe today or tomorrow, we're going to see an operation from Mossad that makes the pager deal they did with Hezbollah look like child's play.
00:23:45.400So do you believe that in the next 24 hours, Mossad will have done some gigantic, you know, effective attack that nobody saw coming and it's more impressive than the pagers blowing up on Hezbollah?
00:24:09.580Maybe it's just to scare the Iranians.
00:24:13.220And meanwhile, the Iranians say, oh, so what Mossad said is, quote, when the dust settles, you're going to see some surprises on Thursday night and Friday that will make the beeper operation almost seem simple.
00:24:33.480And then Iran says that Israel is going to have a, quote, great surprise that the world will remember for centuries.
00:25:16.540But Tulsi Gabbard had apparently said not too long ago that the intelligence community believed that Iran was not intending to build a nuclear weapon.
00:25:32.660But Trump had been saying that their capability was that they could have it very soon.
00:25:39.620And so the news said, hey, you guys are disagreeing.
00:25:43.520It looks like we found some disagreements in the administration that we'll talk about.
00:25:48.060But I don't think they were exactly talking about the same thing.
00:25:54.420So my take is that Tulsi Gabbard was talking about their decision that they had not decided to go nuclear, which might be true, might not be true, but it was about the decision.
00:26:10.380Whereas Trump's comment was about their ability.
00:26:13.940So I think Tulsi Gabbard would agree that they have the ability to build a nuclear weapon maybe within a year or months or something.
00:26:27.220But that when they did their original analysis, they didn't see the intention.
00:26:34.920Now, I'm not sure if he can measure intention.
00:26:38.860So it does make sense that you would worry a little bit more about their ability.
00:26:47.120And so I think Trump is a little bit closer on what matters, you know, which is the ability.
00:26:54.400Because, you know, if you're depending on their intention, they could change their intention any minute.
00:27:00.900And we also don't know what's happening inside that Fordow underground facility.
00:27:06.820How would we know what their intention was?
00:27:09.840And even if their intention was to not build a bomb, is it possible that their intention is to go right up to the line where they could build one any minute now?
00:27:22.800Because that would look a lot like intending to build it, but not tactically.
00:27:27.600So I think Trump's on more solid ground by just talking about, you know, whether they could or not.
00:27:36.440Meanwhile, we're looking at the range of options that the U.S. might be involved in.
00:27:45.500And at the top of the list is the use of these bunker buster bombs that they say only the U.S. can deliver with their special bombers.
00:27:57.420And they're called MOPS, or Massive Ordnance Penetrators.
00:28:02.460Now, I've never heard of any weapon that sounded more sexual than that.
00:29:28.480If they'd said, had they said it might take two, then I would think, oh, they know what they're talking about.
00:29:36.320That, you know, one will almost certainly get it done, but you might need to have a second one.
00:29:42.500But when they say it might take six for each of those underground facilities, what I hear is, we don't know if this'll work.
00:29:52.420So is it possible that the worst-case scenario is that you destroy the front door of the underground facility, but you don't destroy anything that's under there?
00:30:08.240And then whenever you're done, Iran just digs out the front door, and then they go right back to work.
00:30:15.960How would we know exactly if we had collapsed the underground facility?
00:30:24.260We could tell what the bomb damage was on the top of the ground, but how would you really know if it got this stuff underground, especially after dropping six of those, you know, mother-of-all bombs on it?
00:30:40.700So suddenly my confidence that all you need is the U.S. to say yes, and those facilities will go away, I'm not so sure.
00:30:53.600I feel like the U.S. involvement would be maybe, you know, maybe we could destroy them, maybe we couldn't.
00:31:01.360So it might be worse if we try and fail, because that would also tell them exactly how deep they have to build it next time.
00:31:13.260If we use up six bombs and four now is still operational, then we're going to have to really rethink things.
00:31:23.920Well, Israel says they've destroyed 40% of Iran's missile launchers, and that might be true because the number of missiles that Iran has launched toward Israel has gone down each night.
00:31:43.180And I guess last night, and I guess last night there were only 30, if I have that right.
00:31:47.800So they went from a few hundred to a hundred to 30.
00:31:52.780That would sort of suggest that Iran is running out of usable, good missiles.
00:32:00.960So they started with what were estimated as 2,000 ballistic missiles, and allegedly they fired around 400 so far.
00:32:09.560But you wonder why they're not firing the rest of them.
00:32:16.960Is it because they're going to save them for one big hit somewhere?
00:32:21.640Or have their rocket launchers been so degraded that they don't even want to load one on a rocket launcher because it means the rocket launcher will disappear?
00:32:32.740So we don't know what they're thinking.
00:32:34.760But it does look like their capabilities have been degraded, but they might have plenty left.
00:32:43.500Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament.
00:32:45.780I've been visualizing my match all week.
00:32:48.300She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car on her backhand side.
00:32:54.340Good thing Claudia's with Intact, the insurer with the largest network of auto service centers in the country.
00:33:00.020Everything was taken care of under one roof, and she was on her way in a rental car in no time.
00:33:04.340I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round.
00:34:37.180So it's about a third the size of the United States, which is really big.
00:34:41.020And then Tucker asked him if he knew how many ethnicities are in Iran.
00:34:49.000And I think the right answer is there are around a dozen major ones and probably infinite smaller varieties.
00:34:58.540But Ted Cruz did not know the answer to either of those questions, but also didn't seem to think it was terribly important.
00:35:06.760And I'm not sure he's wrong, because if I said to you Iran has 50 million people, or I said to you they have 150 million people, would you have a different idea of what to do?
00:35:23.860I mean, in both cases, you would still, if you were Ted Cruz, in both cases, no matter what that population center was, you'd still say, you know, should we take out the underground facilities?
00:35:38.360So I'm a little bit on Ted Cruz's side that he really didn't need to know the details, because if you know that there are two or three underground nuclear sites, and you know the history of Iran and Israel, and you know what the current military situation is, you really need to know that the best estimate is they have 92 million people.
00:36:06.160Well, it'd be better if you did, but does it make that much difference?
00:36:13.040I'm going to say it was a really good gotcha.
00:36:16.220So it was, you know, it embarrassed Ted Cruz, but I don't think it made that much difference.
00:36:21.580I feel like he knew enough to be part of the conversation.
00:36:27.360Meanwhile, the news loves reporting on whether the Trump allies are splintered.
00:36:33.400So it looks like Charlie Kirk and J.D. Vance are on the side of Trump has earned the freedom and flexibility to make the decisions, and that we would trust whatever Trump does to be America first.
00:36:51.800That's not a bad opinion, but Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and some other notable people, comic Dave Smith, are very much, you know, don't get militarily involved.
00:37:08.240Now, I criticize them, not because I disagree, but because I think their opinions are incomplete.
00:37:17.520They need to tell us what they think it would look like if we allowed the nuclear facilities to remain and didn't get involved.
00:37:34.400But I do note that the people who pretend they do have an opinion, they're incomplete.
00:37:41.420You need to say, I want to walk away and not be involved, and I want Iran to reconstitute its nuclear capabilities.
00:37:52.620Well, they're way more mad at us than they were before.
00:37:55.800However, if that's your opinion, then you should proudly put it out there.
00:38:02.980But it's not really enough just to say we've been wrong every time we try to do regime change or nation building, because this is a little bit less than that.
00:38:15.440It's very specific to get rid of the nuclear and the missile programs.
00:38:21.180So I don't know if that's enough difference.
00:38:23.420I do respect those opinions, by the way.
00:38:27.140I do respect the opinion that says every time we've tried to do this, it's been a disaster.
00:39:55.200I'm not smart enough to know who's right.
00:39:57.480Because it depends a lot on the implementation.
00:40:00.560If it were true that one bunker buster apiece would solve the whole nuclear program question, if that were true, that would be a reasonable argument that you should go ahead and do it.
00:40:19.440But as soon as you say we might need six apiece, it just doesn't sound doable to me, even with our technology.
00:40:27.740So in that case, it's hard to know what would work out.
00:40:36.280Meanwhile, Iran is asking its people to delete the WhatsApp app from their devices, because I'm sure the Iranians are at this point wondering,
00:40:48.720how is Israel finding us so easily and killing all our generals?
00:40:53.960Is it because they're trying to communicate on WhatsApp?
00:40:56.700Well, do you believe that the U.S. and or Israel is reading WhatsApp messages out of Iran?
00:41:31.120WhatsApp says, we do not track your precise location.
00:41:35.300We don't keep logs of who everyone is messaging.
00:41:39.180And we do not track the personal messages people are sending one another.
00:41:43.120And we do not provide bulk information to any government.
00:41:49.980Does that seem to you like being a little bit too specific about what they don't do?
00:41:55.780And was there anywhere in that where it said, we don't provide a back door to the United States CIA, which, of course, the United States would require, right?
00:42:09.640Is there any chance that the CIA doesn't have a back door to all of the messaging platforms?