Episode 2895 CWSA 07⧸12⧸25
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 30 minutes
Words per Minute
129.33017
Summary
Trump wants to take Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship away from the United States because she's "so bad for the U.S. that she should be kicked out of the country." Plus, fake news about Bridget McCrone falling out of a window.
Transcript
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Come on in here. Let's have some fun. It's Saturday, also known as Catterday, and that
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means all the lazy podcasters take the day off, but not me. No, I'm here for you. I'm
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here for you, and especially Beth. So Beth, this is the real show. Good morning, everyone,
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and welcome to the highlight of human civilization, possibly Martian civilization, too. It's called
00:00:46.200
Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time. But if you'd like to take
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a chance on elevating this experience to levels that no one can even understand with their
00:00:59.260
tiny, shiny human brains, well, all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass of tankard
00:01:07.200
shells with cider canteen jug or flask, a vessel of a kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
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I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing
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makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. And it happens. That's right. Right
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Oh, you feel better? You do. Yeah, you do. Well, after our show today, you might want to join
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Owen Gregorian, who's going to be hosting a Spaces event right after we're done. Spaces
00:01:55.920
is the audio service on X. So just go there and look for Owen Gregorian, or you can find
00:02:04.640
the link in my X feed, as Scott Adams says. Well, I wonder if there's any news about the
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health benefits of coffee. Oh, yeah. According to the Times of India, there's a new study out
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of the UK somewhere. And it turns out that if you have three cups of coffee every day, you
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can reduce your risk of liver disease by 49%. Right? So what I recommend is that when you drink
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alcohol, you drink one cup of coffee for every drink, because the alcohol will destroy your
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liver, because it's poison. But the coffee will just rejuvenate it. You'll break even. No,
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do not listen to any medical advice from cartoonist podcasters. Bad idea. Bad idea.
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Let's see what else is happening. Let's do some fake news. There's some fake news today on social
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media. OAN is reporting that this is not true, by the way. So before I even say what it is,
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according to Grok, there's no truth to this whatsoever. But the rumor is that Bridget McCrone's
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plastic surgeon, who was going to give a tell-all, has been found dead, fell out a window.
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But it turns out that it's probably a Russian disinformation campaign, and there's no credible source.
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And there's no credible source for the story. Does Grok really know? Marcella asks. And the answer
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is, well, it's pretty good at checking sources. So there's no other source that says it.
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All right. Here's my favorite story. I was doing a pre-show before we went live here,
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and I couldn't stop laughing for about 10 minutes. So Trump just published another truth social,
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in which he opines that Rosie O'Donnell, who, as you know, moved to Ireland because she is so unhappy
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with the United States. And Trump says that since Rosie is so bad for the United States,
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Now, I went to Grok, and I said, can a president remove somebody's citizenship?
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And he said, no. No, a president does not have that power. Yeah, I think it would be in some weird
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situation where they had lied on some official forms to become a citizen or something. There's a special
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case. But basically, no. So the thing that makes me laugh is wondering what Trump was thinking or saying
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or who was in the room when he wrote that message. Because if he wrote it alone, it wouldn't be as
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funny. But I just imagine him sitting there with some of his best friends or maybe just Melania or
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something like, all right, watch this. I'm going to send out a true social. This says I'm going to
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take Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship away because she complained about the United States from Ireland.
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I don't believe that he believes he has the power to do that. And you know that it's a slow news day.
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So the last thing that Trump wants is people talking about Epstein.
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So whenever the shelf of news is a little bare, Trump just comes up with something that he just
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creates out of nothing. That creates a story you can't not talk about. Do you think that the news
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can't ignore the fact that Trump has called for maybe removing the citizenship of a U.S. citizen for
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complaining from Ireland? All right. I hope you liked it as much as I did. To me, that's just hilarious.
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All right. Well, according to the Daily Mail, the New York Times is admitting their fake news from last
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year where I guess they were accusing Trump of lying or exaggerating about the Venezuelan gangs
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allegedly taking over a Colorado apartment building. And then the New York Times said,
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we looked into it. That's not true. And then a year later, they published an article that says,
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well, you know, it turns out it's a little bit complicated. And we can't really say it's not true.
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It's true-ish, maybe, kind of true. Maybe it was fake news. So, you know, they might describe what
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they did a little differently. But the Daily Mail is blaming them of admitting their fake news.
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That was a big one. As the fake news goes, that was kind of bold, because could they
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really not figure out what was going on there? Did the New York Times really? Really? Did they
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really not have the resources or the talent or the time or something to look into that and find out
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that, yes, there were armed gang members standing outside the apartment building? There was no way
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they could have figured that out on their own for a year. Sorry. Trust in the media? Pretty low. Pretty,
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pretty low. All right. Here's a story that, as far as I know, has not been debunked. But it doesn't
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sound real to me. So I'm going to tell you the story. But you, we're going to play a game where
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you tell me, does this sound real? Or does this sound a little too on the nose? Like a little too
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perfect? All right. Here's the story. I see Ian Miller's reporting this for Outkick. But I believe
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there were other outlets that are reporting it. All right. And the report is that JPMorgan Chase's CEO,
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the famous Jamie Dimon, said the following while at an overseas event. He said that, quote,
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I have a lot of friends who are Democrats and they're idiots. Bloomberg is reporting this.
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Well, I was speaking at a foreign ministry event in Ireland. Oh, well, I guess Ireland is where you
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go to say terrible things like Rosie. Then, allegedly, Jamie Dimon went on and said,
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I always say, they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world
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works. Almost every single policy rolled out has failed. Doesn't that sound a little bit like me?
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Or, you know, maybe Greg Goffeld? One of the things that criticize, well, one of the things that
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Democrats are often criticized for is policies that don't seem to understand how human beings work,
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that we have incentives and stuff like that. So, that is so on the nose that that makes me a little
00:11:00.780
suspicious. And then it goes further. And he describes how the Democrats, you know, lost their way.
00:11:10.180
And allegedly, and again, I'm not totally sure this is real. But allegedly, Jamie Dimon said,
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they overdid DEI. We all were devoted to reaching out to the black community, Hispanic, and LGBT
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community, the disabled. We do all of that, Dimon said. But the extent, they got to stop it. And they
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got to go back to being more practical. They're very ideological. And I'm thinking to myself, all right,
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well, it's sort of real-ish. But he would have known he would have been quoted. Would he really
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say that all of his Democrat friends are idiots? Would he say that and then go back to New York City
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where his subordinates and his friends are Democrats? Who says that? He is a little bit
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too smart and too smart and too savvy to insult 75% of all of his friends, knowing that it will
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get back to them. So, is that real? All right. But it goes further. I guess he was asked about Zoran
00:12:24.960
Mamdani. Who, by the way, you could call him Zoran Mamdani, or you could call him Moron Zemdani.
00:12:36.240
So, it's either Zoran or Moron. Pick one. Anyway, what Jamie Dimon allegedly said, and here I'm still
00:12:45.300
a little skeptical, he really did. But allegedly, quote, he's more of a Marxist than a socialist.
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And now you see these Democrats falling all over themselves saying, well, he's pointing out some
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real problems, affordable housing and grocery prices. Okay, maybe. There's the same ideological
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mush that means nothing in the real world. Now, again, that's the sort of thing that I would say
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that is sort of a word salad, meaningless nothing. Does that sound real to you? I'm going to put a pin
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in this one in this one and say, I'm not sure. Because a lot of the news today is fake or looks fake.
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This one, I don't know. I'm not buying it. I'm willing to be talked into it being real if Jamie Dimon
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says, yeah, I said that, or there's a video that comes out someday. But at the moment, I'm going to say
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probably not. I'm leaning toward fake news on this one. But I could be wrong. I'm going to say
00:14:02.860
55% fake news, 45% real. That'll be my, that's my final answer.
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Well, somebody named Eddie Zhu has developed AI glasses that will be used to train robots.
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And the way it will do that is they'll put these AI glasses on Chinese factory workers,
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and it will watch them work. So the glasses will be on the human, and it will be watching the human
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doing something with their hands that's assembling something or doing some kind of a, you know,
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assembly line kind of thing. And that's how they will train robots. So they'll collect all that data
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and feed it into robots, and then robots will know how to put everyone in China out of work.
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I think the Chinese government is going to have to throw him out of the window,
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because I don't think you can put a hundred, few hundred million Chinese factory workers
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out of work with robots. But maybe. Maybe it's coming.
00:16:13.680
Well, Sam Altman was talking about a delay at ChatGPT.
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And he says, they're planning to launch their open weight model next week,
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but they're going to delay it for more safety testing. And you might say,
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what the heck is an open weight model? Well, I didn't know. So I went to Grok.
00:16:38.220
I had to go to Grok today five times while I was reading the news. Five times the news told me
00:16:47.320
something that I just said, I don't even know what that is. Like, why don't you tell me what that means?
00:16:53.040
And then maybe I'll know what I'm looking at. But the open weight model is an AI that is a little
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bit open sourced, not completely, but it allows developers to know how the model works. So if they
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want to build their own product on top of it, it operates with the AI in the best way.
00:17:19.880
Now, so he's saying the tech got delayed because they want to review the high risk areas.
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Now, when he's talking about a high risk, he's not really just talking about it having a bug, right?
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They're talking about, well, it might be the end of all civilization. But we're going to take an extra
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week to make sure that it doesn't destroy civilization. Well, it's possible that all humankind
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will be eviscerated and possibly incinerated by the end of next week. But just in case,
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we're going to take an extra week, we're going to take an extra week. I can't tell how much of this is
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real. Because there's almost nothing I've heard about AI that I understand and also scares me. So why
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is it that the people who know the most, way more than I know, why are they so scared of AI? Is it
00:18:30.100
like a mass hysteria? Is it possible that they don't want to be the one who didn't say it was
00:18:36.660
dangerous when everybody else does? So maybe they just have to take that position because it sounds
00:18:44.340
more socially responsible. If something bad happens, we'll say, well, we told you it wasn't fully safe.
00:18:52.080
Yeah, I've been saying since the beginning, good things might go wrong. And then at least you would
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think, oh, well, they're not morons, but something did go wrong and now we're all dead.
00:19:05.380
So I'm a little bit worried about what the smartest people know that I don't know about AI, but
00:19:13.400
still, I'm not afraid of it. Does anybody else have that feeling? That you're watching the news,
00:19:22.980
you're hearing what the smart people say, and they tell you, you know, it might be a 10 or 20%
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chance it will destroy all humankind. And I still don't worry about it. What's up with that?
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How many of you actually worry about it? I don't understand the risk enough to be actually worried.
00:19:47.220
I just, it just, you know, it's like news that just passes through. But I'm going to add my own
00:19:55.280
prediction. I would say that we could say at this point, there's a hundred percent chance that human
00:20:04.240
evolution, you know, with our organic bodies will be replaced by machine evolution and robots.
00:20:13.220
And I don't mean cyborgs. I mean, just machines. And that the obvious evolutionary path is for the
00:20:24.480
organic humans to die off from one thing or another, not necessarily from AI. You know, it could be,
00:20:32.460
I don't know, it could be we last a million years and then the sun explodes and we haven't gotten to
00:20:39.200
another planet. So could be there's a new virus that comes out of a lab and kills all the humans,
00:20:48.460
but we're not there yet. But we're very close to having these, you know, artificial general
00:20:57.460
intelligence and artificial super intelligence robots that could potentially take over civilization
00:21:05.960
and keep things running after all the human organic people are gone. So if you look at the history of
00:21:16.540
other species and you look at the history of like civilizations that were here 20,000 years ago,
00:21:24.500
but somehow they all got wiped out, is it more likely that we humans will find a way to be permanent
00:21:32.720
and just keep evolving for millions of years? Is that more likely than all the organic people being
00:21:40.420
killed? Not even, not even being murdered, but just, you know, apparently if you wait long enough,
00:21:49.420
there's going to be a meteor, something's going to hit the earth, you know, something's going to go
00:21:55.300
wrong. But the robots might be capable of, you know, as long as I can get electricity of just rebuilding
00:22:04.360
civilization. So I'm going to make my prediction right now that human civilization will turn into
00:22:12.500
machine evolution and it might live forever, but as machines, maybe. All right. Trump and
00:22:25.140
Melania visited the Texas flood zone and he did his presidential thing. Trump is very good at the
00:22:34.920
empathy and, you know, meeting with people who have had tragedy and whatever, but Melania was very good
00:22:43.120
as well. She was at the table with him and, and, and Trump said, you know, Melania might have a few words.
00:22:52.260
And I wasn't sure if Melania was happy about that. I didn't know if she was prepared to speak.
00:22:59.760
I still don't know if she was prepared, but she very effortlessly went into an empathy related,
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we feel your pain, I'll come back kind of a thing. And I was watching Trump because, you know,
00:23:16.380
Trump will be very careful about managing his brand and would certainly want his family members,
00:23:22.580
especially his wife to, uh, to look good in public. And I thought to myself that he was looking at her
00:23:30.340
with a lot of pride because she was really good. Very good. I, I didn't know, I don't know how much
00:23:38.480
game she has, but, uh, yeah, she nailed it. She got all the, she had all the notes and looked very
00:23:45.940
capable. And, uh, um, I think he was probably quite happy with her, uh, response.
00:23:55.720
Uh, let's see what else. According to just the news, Ben Whedon is writing that the treasury has
00:24:03.700
announced that in June, the government will have a $27 billion surplus from tariff revenues.
00:24:13.060
Surplus meaning that after the government paid all of its bills, it would have an extra 27 billion
00:24:21.080
left over. And that happens to be the amount that came in from tariffs. Does that sound real?
00:24:29.620
Doesn't that sound a little bit too impossible? Did we just go from, uh, deficits that could never
00:24:39.800
be solved to, oh, it looks like June we spent less than we made. So I went to Grok and said,
00:24:48.800
is this true? Is it possible that even for one month of the year that we would take in more revenue
00:24:57.760
as a country, we would take in more revenue than we spent? And, uh, Grok said, yes, but it also said
00:25:08.480
that in May, uh, that we spent $316 billion more than we made. So is that a thing? Can, can the month of
00:25:21.340
May be spending over $300 billion more than you have, and yet by June, you're making $27 billion more
00:25:30.180
than you spent? Is it possible that the way budgets work in the government is that they do most of their
00:25:38.060
spending in a few months so they don't, don't necessarily smooth it out? Is that what's going on?
00:25:44.560
There's something about this story that doesn't seem like it could possibly be real. Does it?
00:25:52.400
Do you think it's real? That the government took in more revenue than it has spent, even in one month,
00:26:00.720
any one month? I don't know. I'm going to put a pin in this one and say, I don't believe it. Don't believe it.
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00:26:26.320
Well, Peter Navarro, um, wrote an article for Fox News, an opinion piece. He was talking about the, uh,
00:26:36.420
CBO and how their estimates were failures. Now the CBO is the entity that, um, tells the public,
00:26:47.320
if you're a Congress does this or that, this will, this will be what happens with the,
00:26:53.000
the deficit and GDP and all that. So if you have a plan to do something for the country,
00:27:00.220
you want the CBO to say that's a good plan because that's the, supposedly would be the independent
00:27:07.960
nonpartisan analysis. However, what if I told you about complicated 10 year projections of anything?
00:27:21.040
Could be, oh, something about the budget with lots of variables and lots of people in years and
00:27:28.980
assumptions, or, or, or it could be something about the climate. What do I say about all of those
00:27:37.120
situations? There's no human being who can predict any of that. Those are not predictable things.
00:27:46.480
Um, but Peter Navarro points out some specific things that the CBO does wrong. And in there,
00:27:56.920
there's a lesson. And so I wanted to share that with you. So one of the things that they, uh,
00:28:03.060
they don't do, well, I guess they, they front load spending. So they act like the spending happens
00:28:10.460
right away, which would push up maybe your, your inflation and your interest rates and then bad
00:28:17.920
things would happen. And they also don't calculate the benefit of economic growth.
00:28:26.060
That might be the whole point of your spending bill. So Trump's spending bill, whatever you want
00:28:33.420
to call it, the latest one is designed to give money back to taxpayers, which presumably they would
00:28:40.100
spend, which would be good for the GDP, um, and a bunch of other stuff, which should goose the economy.
00:28:47.740
But when the CBO does their analysis, they do not assume that the GDP goes up more than it normally
00:28:56.640
would, you know, historically. So long story short, um, whoever is ever in charge of these big,
00:29:07.120
complicated estimates of what's going to happen in the future. The result is always
00:29:14.020
based on their assumptions. It's not really based on some kind of factual thing. We like to think it
00:29:22.900
is. It's not based on facts and it's not based on math. It's based on the assumptions. So if the
00:29:30.560
people who do the analysis, make an assumption that's friendly to the Trump administration,
00:29:36.540
it might look like we made money by cutting taxes, but you can very easily make different assumptions
00:29:45.760
and make it look like it's a huge economic disaster. So Peter Navarro does a good job of simply pointing
00:29:53.980
out that these are assumption based estimates and not necessarily some kind of fact that you should
00:30:00.500
trust. And he is quite confident that the latest moves by the administration will be good for the
00:30:08.940
economy and reduce the deficit if the CBO were good at doing estimates. Well, the post-millennial
00:30:18.080
is talking about how there's a Gallup poll that says only 17% of American adults believe climate change
00:30:28.180
will impact where they live, where they live. Now, isn't that funny? As soon as you put the where you
00:30:35.660
live part on climate change, then suddenly the number of people who believe in it just drops way down
00:30:43.480
because people have usually, if they're adults, have lived wherever they lived for a number of years.
00:30:51.840
And they probably said to themselves, uh, I've been here for a long time and the weather looks the same
00:30:59.900
to me. So I've been in California for 35, 36 years, something like that. Now, how long have I been here?
00:31:10.820
Longer than that. 46 years I've been in California in roughly the same area of California. Do you know
00:31:26.060
how much the climate has changed in my 46 years of being here? Not really at all. As far as I know,
00:31:36.540
it feels and looks the same to me. We go through some periods of drought, but California always did.
00:31:46.320
And then we have some rainy years and everything's okay for a while. So is it the same where you live?
00:31:54.940
How many of you live somewhere where when you first moved there, uh, it was a different climate than it
00:32:02.340
is now? Is there anybody? No. If you have your own experience, you just look around and you go,
00:32:13.760
oh, doesn't seem like it's any different where I live. So let's see how to have an impact over time.
00:32:19.780
And, uh, people are less worried about, uh, big, horrible weather disasters, uh, than, than they used
00:32:29.500
to be. And they should, because we get better at handling weather disasters every year of human
00:32:37.040
existence. Uh, let's see. Um, according to, uh, Princeton University, Colton Poore is writing about this.
00:32:49.780
Um, did you know that, uh, geothermal energy has a lot of potential? Yes, you did because you listened
00:32:59.140
to my podcast. Now, geothermal means that if you dig a hole that's deep enough, you'll get to where the,
00:33:06.820
uh, the earth is super hot. And if you were to pump some water down there, or if there was a natural
00:33:14.040
water source, um, you could super heat that water and create energy from it. And it would be a real
00:33:21.880
clean source of energy. No, no CO2 if you, if you don't like CO2, but it's not really economical.
00:33:32.600
Um, most places don't have the ideal place where you can dig a hole that was deep enough.
00:33:38.940
And the rocks would be in the right place close to the surface and all that stuff. So if you were
00:33:46.780
to look at, should we go hog wild and geothermal right away? Well, somebody would do a CBO-like
00:33:54.540
economic analysis and they would say, hmm, doesn't look like the economics are good.
00:34:00.460
However, according to this article, which seems right to me, the thing they don't include when
00:34:09.100
they look at the economics of geothermal is that we would start by picking the ideal places.
00:34:18.220
So the, the place you put geothermal on day one is going to be where it is economical.
00:34:24.780
And then you're going to learn much more about how to do it economically. And then
00:34:30.220
you'll do the next one where there's yet another place where it's perfect for geothermal.
00:34:36.540
So the costs would be much lower than if you were in a place that's bad for it.
00:34:41.660
And so the thinking is that, uh, we're underestimating, uh, how much of an impact
00:34:48.780
geothermal will someday have because we assume that the economics will not improve that much.
00:34:55.180
But in fact, it wouldn't be hard to improve the economics.
00:34:58.780
All you have to do is make sure you're starting in the places where it's economical.
00:35:05.020
And then the rest would be sort of the, the normal decrease in technology costs over time.
00:35:11.500
So they think maybe it could be the third best green source of energy until, until, uh,
00:35:23.980
Um, meanwhile, over Harvard, Harvard's having a tough time because all the pressure from the
00:35:30.700
Trump administration, but according to Newsmax, um, they're thinking about creating a
00:35:37.660
conservative think tank. So would that help? Well, wouldn't be nothing because, uh, Harvard has
00:35:48.220
almost no conservatives there. So if they said, Hey, here's our big old Harvard conservative think
00:35:55.660
tank, that would maybe, you know, give them a little bit of relief from the criticism.
00:36:01.980
Um, but reportedly also the crimson, that would be the Harvard newspaper, um, is reporting that
00:36:11.020
Harvard is dismantling some, they say some of its DEI apparatus. So it looks like Harvard
00:36:20.700
is at least doing a lot of talking and scrambling and maybe trying some stuff to get back in the good
00:36:29.180
graces of the government because the government has them in a, in kind of a vice grip that says,
00:36:36.300
if you continue to be antisemitic and, uh, not open to, let's say different points of view,
00:36:43.900
such as conservative ones, uh, we will not give you the funding that you require from the government,
00:36:50.060
federal government. So Harvard, they had been trying to hang tight and not do what they're told.
00:36:59.180
But there might be a little movement there. Um, I missed part of this story. So it's a few days
00:37:08.140
old. Um, but Roger Stone, I guess, said in a post, uh, a few days ago, um, why would Bannon,
00:37:19.340
Steve Bannon meet with Jeffrey Epstein, both at his New York home and in Paris after Epstein was
00:37:25.660
convicted on sex crimes in Florida? Uh, why would he coach Epstein for his 60 minutes appearance?
00:37:33.900
And allegedly Bannon took 15 hours of film of Epstein for a documentary that never got produced.
00:37:42.060
So, um, um, here's what Elon Musk said when he saw Roger Stone's accusation. Now, I don't know,
00:37:53.740
I don't know independently if any of this is true, but you know, Roger Stone is saying it and Elon Musk,
00:38:02.140
Elon Musk, um, commented, Bannon is in the Epstein files.
00:38:09.820
Okay. Uh, now, is he just joking? Is, is, uh, Elon Musk just screwing with us because he knows we
00:38:23.100
won't believe that? Or does he know something we don't know? Or is he just guessing? I don't know.
00:38:29.260
But that would explain why Bannon is going, uh, all in on trying to destroy Musk, uh, destroy all of
00:38:39.580
his businesses, nationalize SpaceX, and then deport him, deport Musk. And I thought, I heard that the
00:38:48.060
other day and I thought, wait, is he serious? I mean, I can understand why you don't want Elon Musk to be
00:38:56.060
involved in politics. I can understand that. But do you really need to nationalize SpaceX, which would
00:39:03.820
ruin it? And do you really need to deport him? What? What? So I wondered, like, where, where was
00:39:11.980
any of this coming from? So I don't know who started the fight, but it looks like it's a, uh,
00:39:18.940
cage match to the death. Cause, um, when Elon Musk says that Bannon is in the Epstein files,
00:39:28.700
again, this is a claim, which I'm not aware of any evidence to support it. It's just a social media
00:39:34.860
claim. It feels like he's going for a kill shot. And when Bannon talks about essentially destroying
00:39:43.260
Elon Musk's, you know, us connection and deporting them, that feels like he's trying to take a kill
00:39:50.300
shot. Is that really, is that really what we want? Um, I don't, I don't want either one of them to
00:40:01.100
kill either one of them, but I don't know what's real. And I don't know how to value any of these claims.
00:40:08.140
It's just out there. Now let's follow up with the summer rumors about Bongino Patel and Bondi.
00:40:20.460
So as you know, we were supposed to get a big reveal about the Epstein files and Pam Bondi had
00:40:28.060
suggested that, you know, maybe there was something more there. And now we hear, and again, this is all
00:40:36.300
rumors. Um, I would say that the credibility of this story is about as low as you could get.
00:40:45.020
We don't really know what people are thinking, feeling said to each other privately. We don't
00:40:50.620
really know. But the rumor is that Dan Bongino, um, stopped coming to work for a few days so that he
00:41:00.220
could think about whether he would resign, presumably over the fact that Pam Bondi, uh,
00:41:07.020
either botched the Epstein reveal or they just can't work with her for some reason.
00:41:13.900
And then further, the rumor said, and I don't think the second part is real for sure,
00:41:19.020
is that, uh, Kash Patel had said that if Bongino quits because Bondi is still there,
00:41:25.660
I guess he would want her to quit first or something, uh, that he would quit. Now, how
00:41:30.860
much of that do you believe? I do believe that they probably are a little angry at each other.
00:41:39.420
I don't know who would be angry who or for what, but beyond that, how much do we really know about
00:41:46.300
what they think and why they're doing what they're doing? If you tell me that Bongino took some days off
00:41:54.860
from work, I'm going to say, you mean around the 4th of July, in the middle of July, when he's been
00:42:03.740
working like a dog for months and months and he took a few days off around a weekend and I'm supposed
00:42:10.140
to make something out of that? Uh, almost everybody in the government has taken a week off in the
00:42:17.260
summer. Does that really mean anything? Well, here's some of the other facts around this story.
00:42:26.940
Um, number one, uh, do you remember when Pam Bondi gave some influencers some special access to the
00:42:37.180
first wave of Epstein files and she invited him to the White House and had them all hold up their own
00:42:45.580
file that they had been given secret, you know, advanced knowledge of the Epstein information.
00:42:53.420
And then when they looked at it, they found out it was all public information. There was nothing new
00:42:58.620
in it whatsoever, which was some say almost like intentionally trying to embarrass the influencers.
00:43:08.220
Now I think that goes too far. I doubt anybody would have done it intentionally,
00:43:14.140
but it was a bad play and it looked like it was a little bit, you know, a blown opportunity, I guess.
00:43:21.900
So there's, uh, there's some reason to believe that some people would have a reason to be mad at
00:43:31.180
Bondi and we don't know exactly who said, um, tell everybody that there's nothing to see here,
00:43:38.220
but don't you assume it was Trump? Don't you believe that whatever, uh, Cash Patel and Bongino
00:43:47.020
and Bondi said about Epstein, don't you assume that that was all run past Trump and he said,
00:43:55.180
this is what you're going to say? Don't you believe that? Because I definitely don't believe that any of
00:44:02.300
them went rogue and said, you know, I'll just say what I think. And this is what I think. Oh, there's
00:44:09.100
nothing there. I don't buy it. So I think it's, uh, Trump's decisions, but maybe he was influenced by
00:44:18.780
one of them more than the other, something like that. But if you're, if you're going to try to bet
00:44:24.620
whether Dan Bongino is really going to quit his job over any of this Epstein stuff, um, I would give
00:44:32.380
you the following equation. So Bongino went from the top of the pile in the best job you could ever have.
00:44:42.940
What I'm doing right now. Yeah. I laugh because even though I monetize my podcast,
00:44:50.060
um, I wouldn't do it unless I sort of enjoyed it every day. Well, not even sort of, I enjoy it.
00:44:57.740
I have absolute enjoyment of doing it. Even the prep, you know, which takes hours. Absolutely enjoy it.
00:45:05.740
Now, do you think that Dan Bongino went from the top of the pile, one of the top podcasters in the
00:45:13.660
country, and the podcasting is, you know, sort of the hottest area you could be in.
00:45:19.340
And then he left there to have some government job that probably involves commuting and people hating
00:45:28.300
him and all this drama and the rumors. How much do you think he wishes he had his old job back?
00:45:37.020
Just, you know, just to use your common sense. Do you think he goes into the FBI every day and says,
00:45:43.740
man, I made a good choice? I don't think so. I think he made the patriotic choice.
00:45:53.900
I believe he took the job because he is a genuine patriot. That's my belief. Now, again, I can't read
00:46:01.420
his mind. And I don't know him personally. But, you know, we all have to be judges of character,
00:46:08.620
because you can't avoid it. My judge of his character is that he's the real deal. Meaning
00:46:15.500
that he would have only taken the job if he thought he could do something that would help
00:46:20.620
help the president and help the country. Because he was giving up a lot. Giving up the best job
00:46:30.860
for the worst job. Who does that? Well, I mean, it's like somebody joining the military because the
00:46:38.380
country got attacked. It's a really big sacrifice. And he made it. Now, suppose that he found out he
00:46:50.060
couldn't do the honest job that he thought he wanted to do. Because let's say somebody,
00:46:56.620
we don't have to know who, said, well, you know the truth, but you're not allowed to say it.
00:47:03.340
What would Dan Bongino say if somebody who had enough power to make it happen said you're not
00:47:12.220
allowed to tell the truth on this issue, let's say the Epstein issue, that your base and your fans
00:47:21.500
really, really care about. But you're not allowed to tell the truth. What would you do? Or what would
00:47:28.700
you assume that Dan Bongino would do? Well, at the very least, I would make some threats.
00:47:36.700
And I would say, look, here's the deal. I think we botched that Epstein rollout. But if we can fix it,
00:47:44.140
maybe I'll stay. But if we can't fix it, I don't want to be part of a fraud.
00:47:50.700
And I'm going to go back to my perfect job. Now, if he quit, and even if he didn't tell you all the
00:48:01.100
details, so this will be hypothetical. If Bongino quits, and the only public statement he makes
00:48:08.940
is something like, my ethics were incompatible with the job I was asked to do.
00:48:15.500
I suppose that's it. No details. My ethics, my moral center was incompatible with the job I was
00:48:24.940
being asked to do. So I'm going to go back to podcasting. Would he retain his audience?
00:48:32.380
Because it would be a little bit like admitting that he lied, but telling you that he was asked to do it,
00:48:40.940
and then you would be noticing that he quit his job in protest, which is a very clean way to tell you
00:48:47.740
that he didn't mean what he said, and that he's not in favor of it. Would you then say, you know what,
00:48:55.980
I really respect that guy, because he resigned? You know, we always say, if you really believe that,
00:49:03.660
why didn't you resign? We say that all the time about other people. So if we thought that he was
00:49:11.660
forced to be a little disingenuous, and then you saw him quit, and then he said, I'm not going to give
00:49:19.740
you details, but, you know, let's be honest, you probably know exactly why I quit. Now, going back to
00:49:26.140
my podcasting job, what would his audience do? I think they would go back, wouldn't they? I think
00:49:34.700
they would say, you're an honest man who got caught in a bad situation. You did the best you could. It
00:49:41.420
doesn't make sense for you to stay there any longer. Glad you're back to podcasting. And then his family
00:49:47.500
would say, oh, finally, you're back to doing what you love. You're not commuting to Washington.
00:49:55.740
Wouldn't this be the very best time for him to quit, if he wanted to quit anyway? Do you think
00:50:02.700
he wanted to quit anyway? Probably. And I'm only saying that because he left the best job you could
00:50:10.460
ever have, podcasting, to go to the worst job you could ever have, which is you have to do what you're
00:50:17.900
told and you can't do what you think is right. The worst. So I don't believe he's made a decision
00:50:27.820
because, you know, he probably is going to wait to the last minute to make one. But if he decided
00:50:34.460
to go back to podcasting with just a general statement about why he's leaving, I would fully
00:50:41.900
respect that. Now, I would also respect if he stayed because I don't have any negative knowledge
00:50:50.220
about him at all. But I wouldn't believe anything about this story until it's really confirmed.
00:51:00.220
I don't believe all the who's mad at whom and why they're mad and who thinks who botched or whatever
00:51:06.860
and who's talking to who. I don't know if I believe any of that. But let's watch him. So Bungino's kind of
00:51:14.860
the canary in the coal mine because we just assume he's going to do whatever is the right thing.
00:51:23.340
And we don't know what that is because we don't know what pressure he's under or anything like that.
00:51:28.460
But I do think I'd expect him to do the right thing. And given that his own personal interest
00:51:37.260
would suggest that quitting kind of soon and making this the reason for quitting,
00:51:44.780
that might kill two birds with one stone. One bird would be he could get back to his awesome career
00:51:51.900
without destroying his reputation. And the other is, it would tell you exactly what was going on there.
00:52:00.300
Yeah. At that point, you would know for sure that there's something going on with the Epstein files.
00:52:10.300
So anyway, so we'll keep an eye on that. I like all three of them. I like Bondi, I like Bongino,
00:52:20.700
and I like Kash Patel. So I'll tell you what I'm not going to do is take sides. Unless some new information
00:52:30.220
comes up comes up that I've never heard. To me, they all look like they're loyal, Trump, mega-compatible people.
00:52:38.780
And, you know, I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to any of them.
00:52:47.900
Anyway, Bill O'Reilly is pretty sure that the president is behind whatever happened.
00:53:00.380
He had the Epstein file release. He thinks that the president was behind how it was handled.
00:53:22.380
his team has filed a FOIA request, freedom of information request,
00:53:26.780
to get all of Dan Bongino's texts and emails regarding Epstein to Pam Bondi.
00:53:34.460
Now, that's something you could do? Are you telling me that the Freedom of Information Act
00:53:41.580
would allow any citizen to just file some paperwork, and then we could see the private emails
00:53:49.740
of two people who are currently in the government?
00:53:52.620
What? Is that real? Well, when did that become real? Has that always been real?
00:54:01.660
Now, I understand if people were not in government anymore, or, you know, maybe time had gone by or
00:54:07.740
something, or maybe it was part of a, you know, let's say, part of a legal action or something.
00:54:13.340
But, oh, with the redactions. With the redactions. Okay. So, that's the catch. So, as long as the
00:54:21.660
government can redact anything they want, I'm just gleaning this from the comments. As long as the
00:54:28.860
government has the option of redacting whatever they want, then I guess the citizens can ask for
00:54:35.260
whatever they want. Doesn't mean they'll get it. But, interesting play. It's an interesting play.
00:54:45.820
All right. Here's some more fake news, maybe. I saw a claim on social media that Epstein gave all of his
00:54:58.220
money to his brother right before he died, like two days before he died. Grok says that's not
00:55:06.780
technically true, but that Epstein did. He put all of his money in a trust. I think it was an overseas
00:55:15.500
trust. Virgin Islands. Oh, U.S. Virgin Islands. And we assume that the trust beneficiary was his only
00:55:24.620
relative, which was his brother. So, in a way, he did sign over his money to his brother. But probably,
00:55:33.900
probably through the mechanism of the trust, we don't know the details.
00:55:41.500
And then, allegedly, the brother claimed his brother's body and buried it in an unmarked grave
00:55:49.980
next to his parents in Palm Beach. Unmarked grave. So, if you were Jeffrey Epstein and you wanted to
00:56:03.020
fake your own death, would you make sure that your body could not be examined? Check. And would you
00:56:14.380
make sure that all of your money went to a trusted person so you still had access to it after you're
00:56:20.460
dead? You know, allegedly dead. Yeah. Now, I don't have a belief that he's still alive.
00:56:31.740
I have a belief that if you rule that out, I don't know if we could rule that out. Can we? I'm not
00:56:41.900
going to say I believe it, that he's still alive. I'm just going to say, if you're asking me to rule
00:56:49.100
it out, I don't have any basis upon which to rule it out either. It looks like, coincidentally,
00:56:56.700
he did the very things you would do if you were trying to fake your own death and still have resources
00:57:04.140
when you're done. So, keep an eye on that. I saw a post on X by Patrick Byrne about John Brennan.
00:57:16.780
John Brennan. Apparently, Patrick has some inside information that says John Brennan is abroad,
00:57:23.980
operating from a recreated MSNBC set somewhere, and that at one point he was operating from a
00:57:32.780
SCIF in Australia, continuing to coordinate against Trump. So, do you think that John Brennan
00:57:40.220
left the country because he's worried about consequences? I don't know. Maybe.
00:57:53.820
Apparently, some more, seven more people who had worked with the Jack Smith team that was working on
00:58:01.820
the cases against Trump. They have been let go. And I guess there were already a whole bunch of them
00:58:09.500
who had been fired for the same reason that they worked with Jack Smith as part of the prosecution
00:58:16.380
attempt or the attempt to lawfare Trump. And what's interesting is these are not even lawyers.
00:58:24.460
They were support staff. Now, does that seem like going a little too far?
00:58:30.860
I can totally understand why Trump would get rid of the lawyers who were acting against him for years. Of
00:58:38.780
course. But the support staff? Really? That's going a little deep. But, you know, it would be fair to
00:58:49.660
assume that the support staff was not pro-Trump. So, maybe that's all he needs. He doesn't need a reason.
00:58:55.740
Um, so he's cutting pretty deep there. Um, Hillary Clinton was on Smirkanish on CNN with a big old
00:59:07.660
Hillary Clinton pumpkin smile. And she says, quote, if social media platforms don't moderate content,
00:59:15.260
then we lose total control. Well, I guess that's saying it directly, isn't it? You could interpret
00:59:24.060
that sentence two different ways. One is just that bad things will happen. The other way is exactly what
00:59:30.780
she said. We will lose total control. We? Who's we? Now, what kind of total control are they going to lose?
00:59:40.780
No. Did Hillary say it exactly the way she meant it? That the Democrats and her posse would lose total
00:59:52.460
control of the narrative if they let social media just do what it does? Unbelievable.
01:00:00.380
So, yeah. And you wouldn't believe if you didn't see the video of her talking about this. She could not
01:00:08.460
get the smile off her face when she talked about the need to censor people on social media. I mean,
01:00:15.340
she seemed so genuinely happy. It's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, we're gonna lose control unless we censor the
01:00:23.660
hell out of them. Yeah. Yeah. Can't wait. Oh, she says she's the personification of evil.
01:00:33.340
The State Department, Marco Rubio, I guess it got 1,300 staffers as part of a big overhaul of the
01:00:42.620
State Department. And when I see something like that, 1,300 people have been downsized.
01:00:53.100
What were those 1,300 people doing? How could you take any organization? I mean, I know the answer,
01:01:01.020
but it's still mind-boggling. That there were 1,300 people that, according to management,
01:01:09.100
were unnecessary. And they were all being paid. They're all commuting to work. How would you like
01:01:16.140
to be one of the 1,300 when you'd been working every day for, you know, maybe years and years?
01:01:23.420
And then somebody says, oh, we just realized, you know, all that work that you did for decades
01:01:30.060
probably didn't need any of it. That was my corporate experience that gave birth to Dilbert.
01:01:38.940
One day I realized in my corporate jobs that if I had never existed in my job,
01:01:48.380
nothing would be different. Nothing about the company would be different.
01:01:56.540
Every day I was going to work and getting paid, putting all the, in these hours.
01:02:01.500
And I was completely aware that none of it made any difference to anybody.
01:02:10.700
I think comedian Nate Bargatze, he has this little, little joke. He says that if he went back in time,
01:02:19.260
was that if he goes back in time, that nothing would change.
01:02:29.340
I forget his exact punchline, but it was something like,
01:02:33.180
oh, so how do you make a nuclear power plant? And he'd be like, I don't really know.
01:02:43.500
That wasn't his punchline. He had a better one.
01:02:45.980
But the idea was that he wouldn't be able to affect history because he doesn't know enough
01:02:51.020
about even our current time. That's pretty funny. All right.
01:03:01.100
So what about this story that after lots of investigation, several of the agents who were
01:03:10.220
protecting Trump at the Butler, Pennsylvania event where he got shot in the air,
01:03:14.620
that several of the agents were suspended now only for days or weeks, right? Not a permanent
01:03:21.500
suspension. But here's my question. How could there be so many agents who on the same day
01:03:31.500
and at the same time and in the same place, all of them independently were doing something worthy of
01:03:39.420
suspension? What? How is that even possible? What the hell were they doing that several of them
01:03:51.100
were worthy of suspension? Now, if they said to me, well, you know, one of these people should have kept
01:03:59.340
the door locked. Or one of these people should have said, make sure there's somebody on the roof.
01:04:07.420
Or one of these people should have said, hey, there's a guy walking around with a range finder
01:04:14.860
and a drone. Maybe we should stop what we're doing and check this out. Now, you could easily understand
01:04:21.820
how there'd be one or two people there who did something that was sketchy enough
01:04:29.020
that you think they should be suspended for temporarily. But how could there be several?
01:04:35.900
Like, how could you have a handful of people who all independently did something so non-standard to
01:04:43.660
their job? At the same time that they all get suspended? I would love to know what their particular
01:04:52.780
crimes were. Because it does get to the question of, were they doing it intentionally? Now, I doubt it
01:05:02.060
was a big, well-organized anything. Because if you're going to do an assassination like that,
01:05:09.900
you're not going to have a dozen people in on it. And this would assume that, you know,
01:05:15.820
something like a dozen people did all the wrong things to get him killed. It doesn't feel like
01:05:23.980
that would be the way anybody would do a plot to have too many people involved in it. But anyway.
01:05:30.780
So, as you know, the border enforcement people, ICE, they raided two different cannabis farms in
01:05:42.300
California on Thursday. And collectively, they got 300 people detained for deportation. 300?
01:05:53.580
So, these were two businesses. They were both pop farms. And collectively, they had 300 people who were
01:06:01.420
undocumented and working there. What kind of pop farm these 300 people?
01:06:06.540
And I would say that's a dead and robot situation. So, eventually, robots.
01:06:16.700
But apparently, one person died in the process of these raids. I didn't see the details of how
01:06:22.940
they died or what they died of. But that's tragic. And I guess one of the cannabis farms had been
01:06:45.340
The thing that bothered me is that the price of weed in California is going to go up now.
01:06:50.700
Hey, I thought Trump was going to reduce the price of my essentials. But no. No.
01:06:59.340
Apparently, the supply of marijuana will go down quite a bit. And prices might go higher.
01:07:06.700
I don't know if you know this, but the prices for marijuana have dropped quite a bit
01:07:12.540
in recent years since it was legal. When it was first legalized, I think an ounce cost
01:07:23.500
would be $200. So, the price of weed did, in fact, respond to supply and demand. And
01:07:41.020
at least there was no inflation on weed. But maybe there will be.
01:07:52.060
There's a new poll that says Democrats look out of touch and awoke and weak. We may have talked about
01:07:59.500
this one. And there was a super PAC who did the poll. And they've decided that the Democrats focusing on
01:08:10.780
fighting for democracy. It was still popular within the party, but not in the general electorate.
01:08:18.780
How much do you surprise? Remember how many times I told you that it was ridiculous? That the Democrats
01:08:26.940
thought that fighting to maintain your democracy was not going to resonate with the public?
01:08:36.380
That's just something that news geeks say. But I don't know anybody who's just living their life,
01:08:45.180
who's worried about democracy being taken away by Trump.
01:08:49.740
And here's the poll that supports my hunch that the public didn't really care about the stealing
01:08:56.540
democracy part because they didn't see it as real. They also didn't care about the oligarchy.
01:09:01.340
I'm seeing in the comments. Yeah, they didn't care about the oligarchy either.
01:09:08.620
If you're really into politics, that's the stuff you debate. But if you're just a casual citizen,
01:09:17.260
and somebody said maybe your biggest problems, how many just soccer moms and dads who are not paying
01:09:24.380
attention to politics, how many of them would say, well, I'm worried about the oligarchy,
01:09:30.380
or I'm worried about the attack on democracy? Probably none. But when you see that Mondani guy,
01:09:40.220
when he gets all this purchase and all this attention, because he said the right thing,
01:09:45.580
which is we're going to work on affordability. Affordability was really a good kill shot.
01:09:52.540
You know, I'm not a Mondani fan because he's a socialist. But when he found a message, he just
01:10:02.140
said energy and the right policy message. He didn't even have solutions, really. I mean,
01:10:08.540
not practical ones. But it reminded me of Trump. When people looked at Trump in the very beginning,
01:10:15.900
they just said, oh, there's no way. I mean, we see that he's exciting. He's bringing a lot of energy.
01:10:23.180
We get it. And yeah, yeah, when he talks about the border and the wall, those are popular with his base,
01:10:30.860
but that's not enough. You know, you're going to have to be an experienced politician to win an election.
01:10:37.340
That's what people said. But it turns out that Trump needed two things, the right policies
01:10:46.060
and the right amount of energy. And everything else we were willing to forgive or just enjoy as a show,
01:10:54.780
in my case. And I think that Mondani is another example of that. He definitely got the right policy,
01:11:02.460
affordability, better than I've seen anybody do it, really. So he nailed the policy, not the solutions,
01:11:12.940
but at least he said, I feel your pain, you know, sort of the Bill Clinton thing. I feel your pain.
01:11:17.820
It's affordability. And then he brought the energy. Now, you could talk about, you know,
01:11:25.260
all different things that he did that you might like in both cases, Trump and Mondani. But I feel
01:11:33.100
like it just came down to that. Do you have the right policy? I mean, have you even identified the
01:11:39.260
problem? And then do you have the energy to make it happen? And they both fit that energy plus the
01:11:49.740
When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering,
01:11:56.140
is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
01:12:01.580
Are those from Winners? Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings? Did she pay full price? Or that leather
01:12:07.740
tote? Or that cashmere sweater? Or those knee-high boots? That dress? That jacket? Those shoes? Is anyone
01:12:14.220
paying full price for anything? Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners.
01:12:18.940
Find fabulous for less. Anyway, Jen Psaki and her TV show on MSNBC that replaced Rachel Maddow's
01:12:31.740
time slot is doing terrible in the ratings. Lost 44% of her audience. You know, I'm always surprised.
01:12:42.540
Was Rachel Maddow was Rachel Maddow so popular that if you replace her with somebody who's,
01:12:50.700
in my opinion, a bit of a clone? You know, it's not like Jen Psaki is a completely different person
01:12:59.740
than Rachel Maddow. So why would the viewership go down so much? It doesn't seem like that much of a change. But
01:13:11.260
one of my favorite hobbies is looking at Fox News and what they do right and comparing it to MSNBC and what
01:13:21.980
they do wrong. MSNBC and CNN appear to be under the impression that news is something informing people,
01:13:33.980
especially about the bad news. So if you turn on CNN or you turn on MSNBC, you're mostly going to get some
01:13:43.020
bad news. And it's not all political. You know, some of it might be natural disasters and stuff.
01:13:51.340
And those will be on every network. But the thing that Fox News has been getting right for a long time
01:13:58.940
is the understanding that people watch news as entertainment. How many of you are in that category?
01:14:06.300
When I turn on the news, I'm sort of a little bit trying to find out what's new.
01:14:11.820
But mostly I'm looking to be entertained. And when I'm watching Fox News, I'm often entertained,
01:14:20.780
depending on what show I'm watching. And if I turn on CNN or MSNBC, because I do cycle through the three
01:14:27.500
of them, they're not trying to entertain. They're trying to get you worked up or angry. And I can feel the
01:14:35.100
difference. But I also note that Greg Gutfeld completely changes the nature of Fox News in a way
01:14:47.020
that's made them dominant. I think he's, more than anybody else, he's proven that people will watch for
01:14:54.940
the entertainment, which is why he has two shows. You know, he's on The Five, which is the top ratings
01:15:02.300
thing at that time slot. And then he's got his own show, Gutfeld, which again is, you know,
01:15:09.660
tops in the ratings. So he's now got, you know, two important time slots in which it's very clear to
01:15:17.740
the viewer that, you know, entertainment is why you turned it on. You learn some stuff because,
01:15:25.660
you know, they're dealing with the same news that the other networks are. So it's not like you're
01:15:29.500
going to be uninformed. But the intent is to make it entertaining. And then I realized the other day
01:15:36.860
that Jesse Waters is a similar kind of vibe. When you watch him on The Five, he's playing it for laughs,
01:15:45.420
and he does a great job. And now he has his own show. So he's got his own hour, is it? In which,
01:15:53.020
you know, he plays it a little bit more seriously, but you know, you can tell he's always got a smile
01:15:59.580
on his face. So they have something like, you know, three hours every night during the week,
01:16:08.380
in which it's unambiguously true that, you know, you're going to get entertained if you watch either
01:16:13.900
those or any of those shows. And it's amazing to me that CNN and MSNBC have not taken any kind of a
01:16:23.100
learning from that. CNN, I think they're still doing it. Maybe they, maybe not. But they launched
01:16:32.460
that show that was like a game show in which they would make fun of the news. And Michael Ian Black was
01:16:41.260
on that and some other people. And I never found it funny because it was a little too forced.
01:16:48.140
So I don't know if that's even still on, but they tried.
01:16:59.580
There's some crypto executive orders that are expected from the White House.
01:17:06.140
And I always have trouble following this topic. But the reason that Bitcoin is going up in value,
01:17:15.820
it had a good run this week. I didn't know why. But apparently, it's in anticipation
01:17:22.460
of it becoming a better, I don't know if I want to call it an investment. I guess I would.
01:17:28.140
Because of the upcoming executive orders. And they would do, among other things, ban a central bank
01:17:36.060
digital currency. I guess that would be taking away a competitor to Bitcoin. It would protect
01:17:43.100
self-custody so you don't have to keep it in the bank. And stable coins, which are coins that are
01:17:50.940
pegged to the dollar, meaning if the dollar goes up, they go up in the same amount, would be backed by
01:17:58.380
the treasuries. And then there'd be some market structure, blah, blah, blah. So some of it I don't
01:18:06.140
understand, but OAN is reporting this. So there might be something big coming with crypto.
01:18:14.060
If you're watching the Trump and Jerome Powell saga, which is always fun. So of course, you know,
01:18:26.220
Trump wants Jerome Powell to quit as soon as possible, or better yet, just lower interest rates,
01:18:33.100
because that's what he really wants. But the Gateway Pundit is reporting that
01:18:37.740
Jerome Powell is getting some pressure now. And that, according to Bill Pulte, who's the chairman
01:18:47.820
of the board of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bill Pulte posted on X, quote, I'm encouraged by reports
01:18:55.900
that Jerome Powell is considering residing. I think this will be the right decision for America,
01:19:01.420
and the economy will boom. Now, I don't know what those rumors are. I'm not sure that rumors can
01:19:11.980
necessarily be trusted. But there's quite a push. And I think Bill Pulte is the right person to be
01:19:20.780
pushing this, because he's in the domain where the interest rates are going to affect affordability
01:19:27.660
of housing in a big way. So he certainly has a dog in this fight. Intel's CEO was talking to his own
01:19:38.300
company and told them it's too late for Intel to catch up in AI chips. What? Can you imagine your CEO
01:19:47.020
of a chip company saying, yeah, it's too late, and that the big companies like AMD and Nvidia
01:19:53.820
basically have already captured the market? And he says, on training, I think it is too late for us.
01:20:02.540
So Intel, that's a little too honest. He must have been an engineer before he was a CEO.
01:20:09.740
That's a little bit too honest. Yeah, it's too late for us. We'll never catch up.
01:20:14.620
So we're doomed. He didn't say they're doomed, but it feels like it.
01:20:19.500
Well, in good news, the U.S. is opening its first rare earth mine in more than 70 years.
01:20:33.580
And apparently it will provide six of the 17 rare earth materials and has tons and tons of supply.
01:20:42.220
Now, it's supposed to be refined. I don't know who's going to do that or if we've solved that.
01:20:46.780
But if you're wondering, is the U.S. moving in a useful way to be free of China's
01:20:56.060
control of rare earth minerals, the answer is yes, at least for six of 17.
01:21:02.620
And I expect we'll see more movement there. All right, let me give you a lesson in economics
01:21:10.060
so that I can say that you were smarter when you left.
01:21:16.140
I had made the observation that if it's true that Trump has decided that Russia and Ukraine
01:21:23.340
will never agree to a ceasefire, and it does look true. I don't know that that's true,
01:21:28.860
but from my perspective, it looks very much like Trump has given up and probably should,
01:21:36.860
that at least for now, Russia and Ukraine prefer to fight.
01:21:43.420
Now, a bunch of people said to me, Scott, you stupid freaking idiot. Ukraine isn't choosing to fight.
01:21:51.900
To which I say, did they stop? If they didn't stop, they choose to fight.
01:21:59.020
Now, what you really mean is they have a good reason to fight. I'm not talking about the reason,
01:22:05.660
and I'm not arguing that they don't have a good reason. I'm just saying that neither side has made
01:22:11.740
a decision to stop, and they would prefer fighting over whatever they see as the reasonable alternatives.
01:22:20.380
So, as long as they both want to fight, what would be the best thing for the greatest president
01:22:27.100
in our history to do? Let me tell you, if you know you can't fix it, you should monetize it.
01:22:41.020
And it looks like Trump might be doing that. So, what he's done is he's providing weapons to Ukraine,
01:22:50.300
but he's making NATO pay for it. Now, what's the next thing you're going to say to me? Scott,
01:22:57.100
you idiot. I thought you understood things like this. You know that we're one of the biggest funders
01:23:03.900
of NATO, so it's not like it's free. We're putting the money into NATO and then taking it right back out
01:23:12.620
to buy our weapons. So, it's not really monetizing it, right? It's not monetizing it,
01:23:19.980
because a lot of it's our own money. Here's why you're wrong about that.
01:23:25.660
It's a concept called sunk costs. Here's how you should do that analysis.
01:23:34.060
Were we going to pay our 5% to NATO, like the other countries are supposed to? Yes.
01:23:40.780
We were going to give NATO money no matter what they did with it. That's called a sunk cost,
01:23:48.060
meaning that part's not going to change. The money will come out of our pockets and it will go to NATO.
01:23:54.220
Nothing will change that. That's the most public agreed upon thing, that all of the countries will
01:24:02.060
try to get to their 5%, you know, not right away, but there's a schedule for that.
01:24:07.660
But the United States most certainly is signed up for a certain amount of money that we will
01:24:14.940
definitely take out of our pockets and definitely give to NATO. If you know that that won't change
01:24:21.660
and can't change in any reasonable way, then that doesn't count in the analysis. So, in other words,
01:24:29.820
if we're going to give NATO money anyway, the only question is, do we want some of it back in the form
01:24:36.620
of buying weapons from the US? And that's apparently what Trump's doing. So, if you understand the
01:24:43.580
concept of sunk costs, the money we give to NATO is just going to be there no matter what,
01:24:49.580
no matter what they do with it. Wouldn't it make more sense for us to have as much of that as possible
01:24:56.540
come right back to the United States in terms of purchasing American products, in this case,
01:25:01.580
war fighting products? Of course it would. Of course it would. So, we may have created a situation,
01:25:12.780
or Trump may have, in which we don't have to solve the problem at all, because the two sides that are
01:25:20.060
fighting prefer the war. And again, when I say they prefer the war, they would both like the other side to
01:25:30.140
stop fighting, and for their side to get everything they wanted out of it. But that's not going to
01:25:35.500
happen. So, instead, they don't prefer stopping, because that would give the other one the win.
01:25:43.660
So, they prefer to fight. So, Trump monetized it.
01:25:52.060
I could not be more proud of my president. If that's what's really happening, and you know, I'm
01:25:59.580
getting ahead of it a little bit. Maybe that's not what's happening. But if that's what he came up
01:26:04.620
with, well, we can't stop it. We might as well monetize it. I would be so impressed. I mean, I would
01:26:12.540
just be so, so impressed if he monetized it. Anyway. Russian President Vladimir Putin
01:26:22.700
allegedly is in favor of an Iran nuclear deal in which Iran would not be allowed to enrich uranium on
01:26:33.260
their own. But since Putin is a weasel, do we think he's just trying to be useful for world peace?
01:26:41.180
Or is it more likely that if Iran is not allowed to enrich, that they would have to depend on other
01:26:51.420
countries, such as Russia, to provide them with the uranium that's already enriched for their medical
01:27:00.700
use and for their domestic nuclear energy use? And that would give Russia some leverage over Iran.
01:27:11.100
So, I feel like this is more about Russia having some leverage over Iran.
01:27:16.140
Iran. But I doubt it's because he's trying to be useful.
01:27:26.860
there's some serious people who think that Britain should build more bomb shelters because they expect
01:27:35.340
to be in a war with Russia. Are you following that? That the UK is acting like it's preparing for war
01:27:44.460
with Russia? Why would the UK want to have a war with Russia? That seems like the worst idea in the
01:27:52.220
world for both teams. Anyway, that's all I got for today. As I reminded you, Owen Gregorian will have
01:28:00.860
a Spaces event in a few minutes as soon as we're done here. And you can continue talking about this
01:28:07.580
stuff or maybe some other stuff if you want. But go to X and look for Owen Gregorian and you'll find
01:28:15.980
a link to the link to the spaces, which will begin pretty soon. All right.
01:28:24.540
And I'm going to say a few words privately to the people on Locals, my beloveds.
01:28:30.780
Subscribers, I will see you. Thanks for joining. And I will see you tomorrow. Same time, same place.
01:28:37.980
I hope. Bye for now. Oh, no, it's not working again. All right. For reasons which I cannot determine.
01:28:49.340
I can't go private without turning off the studio and getting back in. So I'll just see you on Locals
01:28:57.340
or I'll see you on Spaces. All right, everybody. Say, see you later. I probably have to end it a different way.
01:29:07.340
All right. I'm going to have to close it and reopen it.