Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 3050 CWSA 12⧸22⧸25

00:00:00.000 come on in let me make sure my setup is working

00:00:06.400 come on in good morning happy monday

00:00:12.720 let me get my locals comments separate

00:00:18.480 we're gonna have a good show today oh so good

00:00:23.920 you're gonna learn about persuasion and cussing and so much more

00:00:30.560 so much more oh so good oh what

00:00:38.480 that shouldn't have happened

00:00:42.320 let me try this

00:00:46.320 we're getting a different there we go that's better

00:00:54.800 there we go come on in come on in

00:01:00.000 all right let me give a little uh announcement while you're streaming in if you were subscribing

00:01:07.280 to get dilbert reborn those are the naughty and daily comic strips you may have noticed that i

00:01:14.320 missed a week while i was in the hospital i did post the few extra that were in the can

00:01:22.960 but uh my my uh my art director and i need to catch up so i'm gonna try over the next month

00:01:33.360 to you know up my production of comics from once a day to you know 1.5 a day

00:01:41.040 and uh somewhere around a month i should get back to current so the dates of the comics will look

00:01:49.600 old they'll be a week old and five days old and four days old because as you know i am

00:01:57.120 uh genetically incapable of being lazy so i'm completely aware that you would give me a pass

00:02:07.360 for being in the hospital am i right like there's nobody who would say oh i'm gonna

00:02:12.720 i'm gonna unsubscribe because i missed five days of comics while you're in the hospital

00:02:17.600 i don't think you will do that but the reciprocity for that is i'm going to try really hard

00:02:25.760 to make sure that i produce the 100 percent it's just going to take a little extra work

00:02:31.920 now i think i can do it because i already i had already evolved into doing the writing

00:02:40.160 and then just doing some art direction for my actual artist who's worked with me for years

00:02:46.800 and can draw dilbert better than i can so you'll see a little bit of difference in the drawing

00:02:54.160 probably mostly in the backgrounds so at this point uh the characters will look exactly the way they

00:03:01.520 should that that should be perfect but there might be different choices made for the background art

00:03:08.160 and i'm also working with my artist to see if i can close that gap a little bit

00:03:13.120 all right so that's enough about that how would you like the simultaneous sip i know why you're here

00:03:24.640 all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tanker chalice or style it's time canteen jug or a flask

00:03:31.360 a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled

00:03:38.800 pleasure the dopamine to the day the thing makes everything better it's cold that's right the

00:03:43.840 simultaneous sip go

00:03:46.400 oh so good so so good

00:03:57.040 all right let's see what's happening this week it's a slow monday so i thought i'd start out with a

00:04:04.160 reframe anybody want to hear a reframe all right i was asked this morning during what is called the

00:04:12.480 pre-show and if you didn't know it i do a pre-show before this show the pre-show is only only for

00:04:19.440 subscribers of the locals uh platform and one of the locals people asked me uh how do you how do you

00:04:30.480 learn to change your mind and how do you recognize people who can do it and i thought that's that's a

00:04:38.960 really good question how do you learn to change your mind and here's the reframe

00:04:46.800 i'm reasonably sure that part of the reason it's not the 100 the reason but a big part of the reason

00:04:53.280 people don't want to change their mind is that it would look like weakness and maybe you would

00:04:59.040 look like well you're not so smart you know because you were wrong so the reframe is this

00:05:05.520 there's something i can guarantee you as an official smart person first of all would you accept

00:05:13.200 my do you accept my um starting assumption that i am a smart person true you know even if you hate me

00:05:24.560 would you agree that i would be classified as you know a smart person and so i'm going to talk as an

00:05:32.160 official smart person nothing is smarter than being able to change your mind so instead of thinking of

00:05:41.680 your your ability to change your mind as a weakness you should think of it as a strength almost a

00:05:49.200 superpower you've seen me change my mind in front of you how many times i mean how many times have you

00:05:56.160 seen me changed my mind a few right did i ever look like i got weaker did it make me look stupid

00:06:06.000 not at all you you probably said to yourself wow i wish i could have done that you might have said oh

00:06:13.280 that was probably pretty hard to change your mind so once you realize that changing your mind

00:06:19.040 assuming you have reasons for it is recognized by other smart people and this is the key it's not

00:06:28.560 recognized this way by dumb people but do you care what dumb people think you don't care what dumb people

00:06:34.160 think if you want to be impressive the only people that matter are smart people is smart people say whoa

00:06:43.600 there's somebody who can change their mind that that's a superpower you you come out way ahead

00:06:51.040 so i think that people mistakenly believe that when i change my mind i'm experiencing some kind of

00:06:58.320 sacrifice i'm not i'm experiencing bragging it's closer to narcissism yeah because i'm basically showing

00:07:08.240 off look i can change my mind so i've never once in my life not once did anybody give me a hard time for

00:07:18.000 changing my mind but a lot of times people have given me credit for changing my mind it really is a

00:07:26.640 one-way street so the answer is reframe it from oh no it's not a weakness to change your mind it is a

00:07:33.680 superpower now the second part of the question was how can you recognize this superpower in other people

00:07:40.560 and unfortunately i think the only way is to observe it so if you observe them changing their mind

00:07:47.920 you should immediately bump up your impression of their mental capacity you might even mention it

00:07:54.960 might even mention it you know that's that's impressive change your mind so that's your reframe of the day

00:08:01.120 okay so yesterday you remember i made a big deal about the talent stacks of a few people primarily

00:08:09.680 akira the dawn who's released his meeting wave music well he followed up with me and this is fascinating

00:08:18.000 to give me a list of his actual talents because the one thing i could tell just by observing i have no

00:08:25.120 musical ability whatsoever but even i could observe that whatever he was doing creating this mix of

00:08:33.760 podcast voices including mine with uh musical beats however he was pulling this off had to be a

00:08:41.600 combination of a wide range of talents but he gave me a list of his actual talents and i thought this is

00:08:49.440 so interesting i just read it to you and so apparently when he was young as young as seven he was already

00:08:56.160 making mix tapes all right if you've been making mix tapes since you were seven you know that's a

00:09:04.080 talent he was a dj and as he points out if you're a disc jockey you get this sense of how music affects

00:09:12.560 people physically that's a good one if you've experienced live what kind of music has what kind

00:09:19.840 of effect on people's bodies like a dj would wow what what a talent he was a rapper for years over a

00:09:27.840 decade so he says that gave me a weapons grade sense of rhythm you can observe that i wondered i

00:09:35.200 wondered where that came from when i was observing it but he had a decade of practice he was an ad music

00:09:41.600 composer so he learned to produce in any genre he uh he was he did music production he did uh ad music

00:09:53.760 composer he learned to produce in any genre he was a music journalist and he used to interview people

00:10:03.920 which was helpful for him to go through his uh podcasts and transcripts and pick out the

00:10:10.880 the vital points he was a comic artist i didn't even remember this but but he does his own artwork so

00:10:20.080 his album covers it's his own artwork that's a hell of talent of course i'm biased he he knows video

00:10:28.240 editing he learned web design he learned marketing and he he adds to his list that he's been a voracious

00:10:36.160 reader since he was three and that allowed him to delve into the philosophical writings of people and

00:10:46.080 and just be aware of more types of uh human thought because he just read more than other people

00:10:53.920 so i hope that i hope that's as interesting to you as it is to me i find that fascinating so thanks

00:11:01.520 cure the dawn if you want to see what we're talking about uh just google a cure of the dawn and my name

00:11:09.760 or meaning wave meaning wave one word meaning wave and you'll find you'll find this product

00:11:18.960 well there's another ufo sighting apparently according to the new york post

00:11:23.840 a pilot saw a silver canister that was floating off off the airplanes i don't know it was floating at the

00:11:35.280 same speed as the airplane and there's a audio uh an audio of the air traffic controllers talking to the

00:11:46.000 pilot and uh you know what's missing you won't believe this

00:11:51.600 but it does not include a grainy video so the pilots obviously there were two of them

00:12:00.720 were sitting there observing a ufo that they believed was a silver canister that was matching

00:12:08.720 their speed and not connected to anything and neither of them thought to take out their phone and snap a

00:12:15.200 picture or take a video my advice is don't take seriously any sightings of ufos that don't come with

00:12:25.440 ufo with video and secondly don't take seriously any ufo sightings that have a very unclear video or photos

00:12:36.000 it's 2026 almost people if it's real somebody's gonna have a good photo of it

00:12:42.560 yeah well i don't know if it could be a balloon because it was matching their speed and even if it

00:12:49.360 were attached to something it seems like it would be a little fluttery or something so i don't know

00:12:55.040 what it was it seems more likely it was an optical illusion of some type i'm going to say optical illusion

00:13:02.880 but i don't believe i don't think it showed up on radar blah blah blah so this is a small story

00:13:13.680 but it shows you where things are going i guess waymo has now been approved at least a little bit

00:13:20.240 for driving on la freeways now it had already been used in california on side streets but allowing it

00:13:28.880 on freeways there's a big pretty big change now correct me if i'm wrong but waymo is a google

00:13:35.520 company is that true waymo is google right and google is so big and so connected and so powerful

00:13:46.240 that i can't imagine in my wildest dreams that the state of california can block them from being

00:13:54.960 fully autonomous as well as tesla i don't think california will be able to hold out for another

00:14:02.080 year so my guess is that 2026 sometime during the year will be the the the year of autonomous

00:14:11.680 self-driving cars that don't require you to pay attention so a waymo does not require you to pay

00:14:18.960 attention but is limited to where it can go now it's not limited to where it can go or at least

00:14:27.520 they're testing it on the freeway it's not it's not approved fully it's just being tested

00:14:34.240 and i would say every indication uh from including what everything elon musk is doing and saying

00:14:41.360 and then everything that waymo is doing and saying uh which suggests we're almost there

00:14:47.760 this is definitely the year can you imagine how the world would be different

00:14:54.000 with the self-driving cars you know for a lot of people especially people commute

00:15:01.440 especially people who are living in la traffic this is such a game changer if you told me scott

00:15:10.080 do you want to live in la probably the first thing i would say is no i can't handle the traffic

00:15:16.880 but if you said to me well the traffic will be bad but it will rapidly become less bad as people

00:15:23.440 start you know sharing sharing auto cars etc and by the way instead of being nailed to your driver's

00:15:31.840 wheel you could just do your own thing in which case the commute would just be productive time

00:15:38.400 if you said scott bring your laptop you have wi-fi presumably uh and you can just sit in that car

00:15:46.960 and treat it like it's an office that happens to be moving the commute is gone it would be like the

00:15:54.000 commute didn't exist it would just be extra work done so the way society is going to change in the next

00:16:01.120 12 months it's really really interesting so most of you will be here for that

00:16:11.840 so as i predicted in my mind but did not tell you the epstein files have turned into the trickle strategy

00:16:21.200 the trickle strategy is that they will continue releasing things that make us unhappy that's not

00:16:28.400 enough that's not enough i'm going to sue you but wait here are some more files oh all right i'll

00:16:35.520 wait another day because you said you'll give me some more files wait a minute they're redacted well

00:16:40.880 wait till tomorrow all right i can wait one more day uh oh wait we we had to pause because we haven't

00:16:49.440 redacted enough well then i'm going to put you in jail but wait you'll have them by tomorrow you don't

00:16:56.240 want to put me in jail if i'm going to produce them tomorrow okay that's reasonable and then tomorrow

00:17:02.320 comes drip drip drip so how long can the department of justice or whoever is behind it uh trickle us

00:17:14.560 without going to jail and the answer is forever

00:17:18.560 there's really no limit to to the the ability to stall now as i said yesterday and this is i would

00:17:28.560 say it's more of a mike ben's um realization that i'm stealing is that if you assume that the real

00:17:36.720 thing that's slowing things down is not so much not so much protecting the rich and powerful but simply

00:17:44.560 the intelligence agencies we don't know which ones but at least the cia at least if they're the ones

00:17:52.880 who are stopping the progress you're not going to see the files obviously they really really

00:18:00.960 really don't want you to see something so no there's no hope you'll see them uh do you think that

00:18:07.120 that rokhana and massey will succeed in getting some kind of impeachment of bondi doesn't matter

00:18:18.080 it doesn't matter at all she might be impeached she might not be impeached but do you think that

00:18:23.520 will make any difference on whether you see the files no they're not even related it's just something

00:18:31.360 bad that might happen to bondi so you know if you don't like bondi then you'd be happy about it i

00:18:36.560 guess i'm not even sure if i would remove her from office so no there's absolutely no recourse

00:18:44.560 no recourse even if she went to jail you're not going to see the files so there's no path that would

00:18:53.040 produce the files and i think i think rokhana and by the way i give him credit as well as massey

00:19:01.440 it was a pretty good try but as soon as they included that you can redact things for national

00:19:07.680 security or to protect the victims as soon as that was part of it there was no chance you would

00:19:14.000 see them you're just going to get the trickle trickle trickle well house leader minority leader

00:19:22.880 hakeem jeffries i guess he predicted yesterday that they would get enough votes i think this would be in

00:19:30.000 january to extend the subsidies under the affordable care act the aca now why that's important is if

00:19:39.680 these subsidies run out then millions of americans will be priced out of the health care market that

00:19:47.920 would be bad and republicans can't seem to agree on extending it because that would look like wasting

00:19:55.200 more money to them and democrats of course insist on it so the question is scott if you're so good at

00:20:05.440 persuasion how do you get past the fact that there's going to be a total health care apocalypse unless

00:20:14.160 republicans do what republicans don't ever do which is a sign up to spend

00:20:22.160 way more money than they think they should be spending it's not something that the republicans

00:20:28.000 are going to say you know well you know why not extend it three years because they're talking about

00:20:33.200 a three-year extension so i would like to offer the following path republicans probably could agree or

00:20:43.680 enough of them could you don't have to get all of them you just have to get enough to have a majority with

00:20:49.520 the the democrats but i believe you could convince some republicans to temporarily maybe not three

00:20:57.440 years not three years necessarily but temporarily extend it but they'd have to guess something in

00:21:03.920 return now what could republicans ask for in return for this thing they definitely don't want to do which

00:21:12.400 is extend it uh what would they ask for that would make sense that you would say oh well if you got

00:21:21.200 that i'm okay with it and i don't know what the answer is but let me just throw out an idea okay

00:21:28.560 so the suggestion would be this that republicans could demand that if they vote to extend the aca

00:21:37.760 they would have to get in return some kind of guaranteed audit and fraud reduction

00:21:44.960 system that is stronger than whatever is happening now now what i've learned recently is apparently

00:21:52.480 almost all big expenses in the government do in fact compared with a requirement to audit did you know

00:22:00.560 that so auditing is actually built into a lot of government processes but it doesn't work and i think

00:22:09.200 the reason it doesn't work is that the people in charge of spending the money are the same people in

00:22:14.960 charge of the audit so so of course it doesn't work if the auditors are part of the same political party

00:22:24.560 as the people who are stealing the money they're just going to be in on it so apparently what happens

00:22:31.680 in the real world in the real world there'll be a requirement to audit and they just don't do it

00:22:38.720 or if they do do it and they get a bad result they don't do anything about it nobody goes to jail

00:22:45.280 so when i say that the republicans could demand some kind of audit control i mean a different form

00:22:54.160 from whatever we're doing now that doesn't work a different form might include

00:23:00.960 some better approach to getting let's say republican auditors suppose republicans said

00:23:07.360 if you allow republican majority but not 100 percent republican majority control over auditing this

00:23:18.320 this domain we will approve the expense because there's so much fraud and waste and the only way

00:23:25.920 anybody's even going to mention it or even look for it is if they're on a competing political party

00:23:33.200 so imagine you the democrats and the and the republicans offer this we will extend we will vote to extend

00:23:43.520 if you vote that we're going to create auditing entities that are by a majority could be three out of

00:23:51.600 five people but majority republican if you let us pick the the auditing team we will promise it will

00:24:01.840 include some democrats but they will be in the minority what would democrats say to that would democrats say no

00:24:11.600 we do not want a stronger form of auditing

00:24:17.040 right so you tell me is that the best idea you've heard so far because as you've seen in many negotiations

00:24:28.240 nothing gets solved until both teams can claim victory if the republicans could claim victory

00:24:36.320 over strengthening the anti-fraud pro-auditing part of the world then they can claim victory they

00:24:44.720 say you know it's not perfect but we can really get to the bottom of this if you give us another year

00:24:50.160 so i would say extend it for not three years you might you might get that three years down to a year

00:24:58.400 or something reasonable but uh go for the audit and again it's not audit versus not audit you would

00:25:06.880 have to revise how you audit to make it credible and that support that can be improved boarding for

00:25:14.080 flight 246 to toronto is delayed 50 minutes uh what sounds like ojo time play ojo great idea feel the

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00:25:42.320 comics ontario.ca well here's another persuasion lesson uh i hope you've been as amused as i am

00:25:52.800 that trump is good at cursing at just the right amount and uh and democrats are bad at it so when

00:26:01.840 when trump curses it guarantees that that will be you know the big quote the next day it puts a focus

00:26:08.960 on things and he never overdoes it you know you you can tell that he very carefully selected where he's

00:26:17.040 going to put that f word but it turns out that jd vance has the same skill and why democrats can't

00:26:26.000 do this i don't know but the context here is that uh i guess jd vance was giving a speech it was that

00:26:34.160 i think it was that turning point usa and he was defending his wife because apparently both uh uh jen

00:26:43.280 saki and nick fuentes have said bad things about her i don't know what jen saki said but nick fuentes

00:26:52.560 is a let's say a white white supremacist i'm not sure what he is but he uh he has some negative

00:27:00.800 things to say about her ethnicity and uh i of course do not approve of that but jd vance

00:27:07.760 the the first thing he did right is he directly defended his wife you do that first and here's

00:27:15.680 what he said he goes let me be clear anyone who attacks my wife whether their name is jen saki or

00:27:22.640 nick fuentes can eat oh he said it at an unheard in an interview all right it wasn't during a speech

00:27:31.840 it was during an interview with unheard and then he went even better he goes that's my official policy

00:27:39.680 as vice president of the united states my official policy is that is that uh jen saki and nick fuentes

00:27:47.520 can eat now the first thing that's brilliant about this is that he paired jen saki with nick fuentes

00:27:54.880 which is just brilliant because you know they don't really have much in common except maybe they

00:28:01.520 said something about his wife but putting them together really makes you a lot what uh and it

00:28:09.440 and it dismisses uh nick it dismisses fuentes in a way that republicans wouldn't mind at all

00:28:18.240 which is really you're like a democrat he's not like a democrat but it's a good it's a good

00:28:24.720 approach and i think you can confirm that jd vance is not noted as a prolific cursor so when he

00:28:36.000 pulls out the the s word it's in the context of protect you know defending his wife who minds that

00:28:45.200 every one of you say oh okay if you're defending your wife your spouse if you're defending your spouse

00:28:51.920 yeah there's no limit on the words if you're defending your spouse there's not really any

00:28:58.000 limit on what you can do we all get that um let me make a an appeal that i think would be compatible

00:29:07.840 with some of you but not all there is definitely an anti-indian american sentiment within the republican

00:29:16.160 party would you agree would you agree would you agree that there's a sort of a rolling anti-indian

00:29:24.160 american sentiment in the republican party well i think that conflates people's complaints about

00:29:31.520 employment you know the h1b stuff and it conflates that with who they are as a people

00:29:38.240 uh i have lived in california for all my adult life and so i'm always surrounded by and especially

00:29:47.440 now in my current neighborhood a very large indian american population i can tell you i promise you

00:29:56.160 this is true the indian americans are awesome people and if you ever get to know your indian american

00:30:03.680 neighbor you've got to be happy about it they're actually just some of the best people in the

00:30:08.640 world they're funny they're smart they're hard-working great great people so don't do not do not conflate

00:30:18.800 the ethnicity with the fact that we have an immigration issue that you would prefer to be

00:30:25.840 more pro-american and not bringing in people who are from other countries as much now that's a separate

00:30:33.200 it's a separate argument so i'm not putting up an argument that we should be flooding the country

00:30:39.200 with extra indian technology workers that's not what i'm saying i'm just saying if you're looking at

00:30:45.680 the ethnicity they're amazing people and if you if you get to know them you'll be happy all right

00:30:53.280 uh so apparently speaking of jd vance people are chattering because erica kirk who has taken over

00:31:05.760 the turning point usa and it just had a big event uh she has come out and endorsed jd vance for 2028

00:31:14.480 some people say it's too soon do you think it's too soon

00:31:18.240 it's not too soon so uh let me let me give you the i was trying to think what weaknesses

00:31:31.280 does jd vance have that would matter so i'm thinking all right jd vance he's an amazing speaker

00:31:39.680 so they wouldn't be able to match that not the democrat candidate would not be would not be as

00:31:45.920 good a speaker as he is no matter who it is he's just going to be better he's very quick-minded he's

00:31:51.600 very smart obviously smart he also has all the right backers so he's got he's got some of those

00:31:59.520 powerful and smartest backers that the republican party can produce but more importantly he's probably

00:32:08.640 going to have we assume trump's support nobody nobody's going to run for president as a republican

00:32:16.240 unless trump supports us so if trump supports him you know you're 90 there right yeah i was thinking what

00:32:24.720 qualities does he lack and i'm watching him having obviously learned from trump you can see you can see

00:32:32.880 that he's picking up the the most uh powerful parts of trump including the cursing at just the right

00:32:40.560 amount um and he's learning to be provocative but unlike trump he probably holds back a little bit

00:32:50.640 and that makes sense he's vice president he's not president so i would say he's definitely learning

00:32:56.400 technique he's learning persuasion he would have trump and trump lovers backing him uh the only thing i'm

00:33:04.400 worried about is that it puts a target on his back too soon but on the other hand it's so obvious that

00:33:12.080 he's the front runner that i guess that target would have been there anyway so i'm going to say that

00:33:17.920 uh erica kirk's early endorsement does not hurt him it might help him and i'm fascinated to find out

00:33:28.720 if the democrats will have any way to attack him that would be reasonable does anybody i'm looking at

00:33:34.240 the comments right now does anybody have any idea what negative stuff you would put on them because the

00:33:41.040 only negativity is coming from republicans right basically republicans who are a little bit

00:33:49.440 anti-diversity let's say that's the best thing i can say about it uh might not like who he was married

00:33:56.240 to but are they going to vote democrat are you going to vote democrat because you you think his wife

00:34:03.200 should be whiter really so i don't know that there's anything that would slow him down uh and so i'm uh

00:34:12.720 i don't think that my endorsement per se is useful so i'll put it in the form of prediction so prediction

00:34:22.480 not endorsement later later i might i mean i might endorse them later but it's too early for me

00:34:28.400 uh so i'll call it a prediction he'll be the nominee now what about rubio rubio as very cleverly and

00:34:40.480 smartly well that would be the same as same as clever uh he's he's already taken himself out of the run

00:34:48.080 onto the condition that jd is running and we assume that to be true so imagine if there is some kind of

00:34:58.560 let's say opposition research or something comes up that takes jd out of the race i don't know what

00:35:05.120 that would be but you know you just imagine something you don't know or something that hasn't happened

00:35:11.120 you know hits them and takes them out rubio would just be sort of loyally sitting on the sidelines

00:35:19.040 just the obvious person to step in so rubio probably increased his odds of becoming president

00:35:28.560 by taking himself out of the race does that make sense by taking himself out of the race he doesn't

00:35:35.760 have a target on his back and jd does so as time goes by if the bad guys make a dent and i don't know

00:35:44.960 what that would be but if they make a dent in jd the the only replacement that would seem obvious

00:35:52.960 would be rubio and if he would look like a loyal supporter he would

00:36:01.440 he would by then have some major accomplishments as you could say he already has major accomplishments

00:36:10.480 and he would probably instantly get trump's support under the condition that trump agreed

00:36:16.800 something took jd out so i think if he ran straight up against jd there's no chance he would win

00:36:23.440 but if he sort of loyally stands aside and said you go first and it doesn't work out

00:36:32.640 and now i don't know what the odds of it not working out are let's say 10 percent

00:36:36.400 you would go from zero percent chance of winning to 10 percent without any risk whatsoever

00:36:44.160 so good play rubio being smart

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00:37:17.120 so you've probably watched as uh the minnesota fraud stuff makes more headlines but as it does

00:37:30.000 people seem to agree that the california fraud and california mismanagement might be something like 10

00:37:36.960 times as big how in the world could governor newsom ever become president under the context of by the

00:37:45.760 midterm we're going to know a lot more about all the hundred billions of dollars that were stolen

00:37:57.760 um in a state but not just stolen also mismanaged because it's kind of hard to tell what is stolen

00:38:04.560 was mismanaged it might end up being the same thing

00:38:07.360 um but here's just some examples all right so by the midterms the some experts are saying that the

00:38:19.280 cost of gas in california could reach as high as 10 to 12 dollars per gallon

00:38:25.840 and that that cost would be almost entirely because of california mismanagement and almost entirely

00:38:34.640 because california is what i call a hoax hoax driven government so the reason gas will cost so much

00:38:44.240 is a variety of regulatory things that were designed to protect the climate from catastrophe

00:38:52.080 now there was no chance it was ever going to protect the climate from catastrophe because one state

00:38:57.120 couldn't do that anyway but what it did do is it created this gigantic umbrella for fraud so the

00:39:05.120 only thing that happened was our gas might go to ten dollars it might go at least five or seven dollars

00:39:10.400 but some say as high as 10. we got a 20 decrease in capacity when january hits because two refiners just

00:39:19.120 said that were out too much regulation around so there won't really be any serious argument about

00:39:27.280 what caused gas prices to be out of control in this one state because all the other states will not have

00:39:34.320 this problem and you can directly tie the cost to california believing incorrectly the hoax that we were in an

00:39:44.720 existential crisis that could somehow be fixed by california alone doing things that other states were

00:39:52.480 not doing how in the world would somebody who was the steward of that process as governor how in the

00:40:01.520 world do you get elected president i mean that the fact that even bill gates has said we don't have an existential

00:40:09.440 threat that completely pulls the rug out of the entire california strategy for the last 10 years

00:40:17.760 so that's going to look like a disaster right so the first example of the hoax driven government of

00:40:24.800 california is that there was a climate hysteria or a climate crisis and they had to address it that's

00:40:33.600 hoax number one but what governor newsom and other democrats blamed the problem on was price gouging

00:40:42.720 by the oil companies price gouging when it was looked into audited there was no price gouging found

00:40:52.320 that was a hoax hoax number two that the energy companies are the problem not the policies of the

00:41:00.880 government those are big hoaxes how about when there was a border crisis in california what did california

00:41:10.480 say california said there's no border crisis hoax number three literally a hoax saying that there was

00:41:20.400 no border crisis how about the homeless problem is one that can be solved by building them homes

00:41:27.120 was there ever any hope they could solve homelessness by building homes for the homeless no no there was

00:41:36.960 never any chance that that would make a difference because it's based on the misperception that the

00:41:42.640 homeless have a no home problem the reality is they have mental problems drug problems and if you gave

00:41:49.120 them a home they wouldn't be able to maintain it or live in it and wouldn't even want to live in it

00:41:54.080 they'd rather be on the sidewalk because they're insane or they're drugged or whatever so that would

00:41:59.360 be what am i up to the fourth hoax and then i'm not even throwing in reparations so we've got a state

00:42:08.080 that's trying to pay reparations when california never had slaves none of the people lived here uh were

00:42:16.240 victims of california slavery it's a complete hoax what about the trans issue that that uh you could

00:42:25.440 be born one sex but really you're the other sex now i usually stay away from that one but i think most

00:42:32.400 of you would say hey throw that one in there as another hoax uh so i could probably go on but i see

00:42:41.680 that elon musk had replied on x that california would go bankrupt if all the federal transfer

00:42:48.880 payment fraud was stopped so you got the federal transfer payments fraud i'm not sure what the

00:42:56.000 hoax is there that hoax might be the wrong frame for that it's just crime but here's an example of what

00:43:03.680 california did the other states did not i think this was maybe mario anawful i saw this on x so

00:43:12.000 apparently uh after the pandemic there were all these stimulus funds that came from the federal

00:43:20.080 government and every other state used the government funding to pay down their debt except california

00:43:29.040 so california instead of paying down the debt and now we're basically bankrupt they used it to just

00:43:36.160 spend more on more stuff which almost certainly was fraud or partially so the result would be that the

00:43:45.440 californian businesses are going to be hit apparently with some enormous payroll tax to compensate for the

00:43:53.040 fact that california was the only only mismanaged state we got 50 states and only one of them

00:44:03.440 didn't know how to handle the money from the federal government and even the other blue states

00:44:09.200 didn't make this mistake it's the worst of the worst of even the democrat states how do you become

00:44:16.240 president how in the world did the person who was presiding over all that become president now i have

00:44:22.800 even gotten into uh i haven't even gotten into the what 50 billion dollars for the bullet train that

00:44:29.280 never happened how do you how do you possibly become president so one of the things i suspect

00:44:40.800 fairly strongly is that republicans are doing the uh what is the what's the what's the movie where the

00:44:49.760 scottish warrior goes hold what's that movie hold hold you recognize that which movie is that i have to

00:45:03.760 get the right movie uh uh uh braveheart thank you yeah the movie braveheart when the two armies are getting

00:45:16.320 they're ready to face off they're ready to face off and uh and then what's his name the actor

00:45:24.080 what's the actor's name well william wallace was the character let's go with that william wallace was

00:45:31.840 the character and before he attacks he's uh going down mel gibson thank you mel gibson is the actor and mel gibson

00:45:41.920 is on his horse and he's going hold hold i always loved that that was one of my favorite movie bits

00:45:50.160 but it feels like the smartest people in the republican party by now they must have figured out

00:45:58.160 that newsom is the weakest candidate they could possibly run i mean maybe even worse than kamala harris

00:46:05.040 so i i feel like the republicans are saying hold wait until he gets uh wait until he gets nominated that will take him out

00:46:19.280 well apparently uh yale has uh no republican uh professors across 27 of their departments

00:46:27.680 so as you know the uh liberal elite colleges are all cesspools of uh one-sided thinking and that

00:46:39.440 conservatives are basically shut out from uh from higher higher education i mean in terms of being the

00:46:48.240 professors and i'm wondering if that will quickly be resolved by ai

00:46:55.200 so what we need is a grok college i don't think grok is where i could do that yet but it's very close

00:47:04.320 so don't you think that maybe in a year or two you're gonna have a choice of going to yale or harvard

00:47:11.120 or grok and if you go to grok it will take out the bias and you can get a degree that more that your

00:47:22.480 employer will say oh you mean you learned all the useful stuff and then somebody from harvard comes

00:47:29.680 in to apply for the job and the employer will say oh you learned to be a pain in the ass and care about

00:47:35.920 all the wrong stuff so clearly at this point in history it would be way better to have a ivy league degree

00:47:44.480 than some kind of made up you know ai grok degree but i feel like that could be completely reversed

00:47:52.880 in maybe two years two years so i think the free market given the new tools of ai and stuff that will

00:48:01.600 be available i think the free market is going to fix this and it won't be because the government did it

00:48:07.440 and it won't be because the higher education decided that they needed to be less biased i don't

00:48:13.360 believe it's self-corrected but it doesn't need to be if alternatives pop up and i think maybe two years

00:48:23.120 well there's a story in the news i think there's no story at all which is um barry weiss who's now the cbs

00:48:30.560 news news news editor uh in chief she killed the story there was 60 minutes segment about venezuela

00:48:39.600 migrants being deported to that notorious el salvadorian prison now the the knock against her

00:48:47.920 is that the segment had already been had already been blessed by their lawyers and uh they'd done all

00:48:55.040 the work and they're ready to go on sunday and that mean old barry weiss told them that they should

00:49:01.520 wait until they at least had some comments from the administration because apparently it was a story

00:49:08.160 about what the administration did that did not include any quotes from anybody useful from the

00:49:13.840 administration and so the way the reporters at 60 minutes and others i guess are complaining about it

00:49:21.920 is they're saying hey you're you're censoring us or you're just agreeing with the administration

00:49:29.120 i don't think that's what's happening if you've been involved in any kind of news or editing environment

00:49:37.360 as i have for most of my uh career this is the most normal stuff in the world if you had an option

00:49:45.280 of you could see this segment right now and i guess it would have run on sunday so your options are you

00:49:54.880 can see it now and it would not include any important uh opinions from the administration

00:50:01.920 or you could wait a week maybe two weeks and you can see the exact same thing except it would include

00:50:09.520 um i think she wanted steven miller to be the uh to be the voice of the administration and that would

00:50:17.120 be a good choice it doesn't have to be him what what would you pick as a consumer wouldn't you rather

00:50:23.520 wait a week and then have some chance of seeing both sides of the argument of course you would so

00:50:32.080 so so i think that this this feels like more of a an anti-barry weiss story than it is about anybody

00:50:42.800 made a mistake this is definitely not censorship in the real world of news in the real world of editing

00:50:52.400 in the real world of anybody who has an editor this is just normal behavior

00:50:57.280 uh now if you wait a few weeks and the story never runs well then i revise my opinion so we'll go back

00:51:08.480 to the very first reframe that began today's podcast i will change my mind if this does not produce a useful

00:51:18.480 counterpoint that makes the story more valuable because i think she was hired to make the news business

00:51:25.600 better not worse and if you put me in her job well let me say it this way if you put me in her job

00:51:34.400 tomorrow i would have made the same decision i would say this is not ready to go so i'm not defending her

00:51:44.000 because then you're gonna say oh you're just being a pro barry weiss i really don't know what barry weiss

00:51:50.800 is up to i have not been following her i don't know if she is a you know good egg or a bad egg i

00:51:57.120 don't know if i don't know if giving her any support makes the world a better place or a worse place i

00:52:03.280 don't know i have no idea but if you take the personalities out of it i would do the same thing

00:52:10.240 i'd say you're not ready now how many reporters have ever finished a story wrapped it up and then

00:52:17.840 when their boss delayed it said i'm happy about that never in the history of reporters no reporter

00:52:25.520 is going to say i agree with my editor this story was not good no that's not going to happen

00:52:34.000 so i say hold your opinion on this for at least two weeks if after two weeks you hear that

00:52:40.480 uh it's just going to be banned forever and they'll never run

00:52:47.360 i might revise my opinion everyone's story sounds different we get it so when it comes

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00:53:14.080 cooperators.ca life insurance is underwritten by cooperators life insurance company

00:53:19.840 well apparently the pentagon pentagon has failed an audit for the eighth consecutive year

00:53:26.160 the epoch times is reporting now you probably knew that the pentagon doesn't pass audits

00:53:33.760 it's good that audits exist but remember i've been complaining that it's not that audits exist or don't

00:53:42.960 there's something about the way we do it that the guarantees they don't work

00:53:47.760 or that they don't have the effect you would like which is fixing all the problems

00:53:54.320 but part of the problem is that auditing is such a boring story that the public hears the story they go

00:54:00.160 oh the pentagon failed an audit well better luck next time then they think about something else

00:54:05.840 because it's just not interesting so one of the questions i have is in a cursory reading of how they

00:54:16.400 failed the audit again a lot of it is they can't find their assets or they can't account for things like

00:54:24.800 spare parts and if you can't account for your assets the possibility that they've been stolen and sold

00:54:33.440 is pretty high or just in general if you can't account for your assets uh we don't know that that

00:54:40.800 signals gigantic fraud but it does signal that we don't know if there's gigantic fraud

00:54:47.600 so again i would say the problem might not be the pentagon the problem might be that the way we audit

00:54:55.760 either doesn't have any teeth or we're doing it the wrong way or it's the wrong people doing it

00:55:03.280 or some combination of all those things so i would look at auditing the auditing

00:55:07.840 it could be and i'm starting to form this opinion that it's not it's not that something is or is not

00:55:15.280 audited it's that the auditing doesn't work because it's also corrupt or incompetent or we don't do

00:55:23.040 anything about it now let me ask you this do you think anybody got fired or demoted because they

00:55:29.200 they they uh failed in well hegseth says that they're improving and that they might pass their

00:55:38.080 first audit by 2028 that's their goal i am in favor of having a goal in this case it makes sense

00:55:46.560 to have a target for when you get it fixed but it coincidentally is when they'll be out of office

00:55:53.440 so uh i've got an idea uh how about we promise to have everything fixed when uh i'm no longer here

00:56:03.280 oh when would that be uh 2028 so are you happy that they have a plan that it will be fixed when

00:56:12.880 they're no longer here because you really don't need to fix it if you're not really going to be there

00:56:17.680 so i would say i'm not happy with the excuse that we'll get it done by 2028 there's something

00:56:27.840 something far more aggressive has to happen before then now i will wait to 2028 if something

00:56:34.640 happened that was aggressive so if for example they said we just chickened our entire audit process

00:56:41.120 or we just put a general in jail something like that like a big shocking change if you give me a

00:56:50.560 big shocking change that clearly is directionally correct i might wait yeah i might hold my opinion

00:56:59.040 to 2028 but if you're not showing me that anything is going to be different and it's going to be the

00:57:04.560 same people doing the audit as did last time and the same people hiding hiding the assets i hit it last

00:57:10.560 time i don't want to wait i'm not i do not find that acceptable you know somebody criticized me the

00:57:18.720 other day on social media says i i would be more credible if i if i ever criticized the trump

00:57:26.640 administration to which i say that's true i would be way more credible if i ever criticized the trump

00:57:35.360 administration i've definitely criticized the trump administration i'm doing it right here are are they

00:57:42.480 doing enough no no they're not doing enough are they satisfying me that they're even capable even

00:57:50.720 capable of doing enough no no i see no signal that the trump administration is fixing this problem

00:57:58.880 so that is criticism i think i'd say almost exactly the same thing if democrats were in charge so the next

00:58:07.760 time you say to me hey you never criticize your own team i say that's what this is my own by the way let me be

00:58:17.280 clear my team is not republicans my team is not mega my team is america right if you if you're on team america

00:58:29.920 which would include all of us you need to get this shit fixed this is not about one side versus the other

00:58:37.520 this is america versus the end of america right it is it's an existential problem it's do you exist or

00:58:46.720 don't you exist it's way beyond way beyond democrat or republican

00:58:54.400 all right well apparently the u.s is putting more pressure on these so-called dark fleet of tankers coming

00:59:02.240 out of venezuela so i guess some tankers that were incorrectly flagged i think that's the the

00:59:10.160 they had a false flag are being subject to a seizure and i believe that now the third one has been seized

00:59:19.440 we already had two and some people said hey those particular tankers are exempt because they're a

00:59:27.360 different flag well it looks like the flags were fake so so the u.s is taking the position i don't

00:59:36.400 know if it's you know valid or not but they're taking the position that these can be seized and

00:59:42.800 apparently we're gonna we're gonna um escort them to american ports and just take the oil now that is a

00:59:53.040 very trumpian way to handle this which is i'll just take your oil thank you now some of that oil if we

01:00:01.520 take it would we use it to offset the military cost of of controlling or or the military cost of leading

01:00:12.560 on venezuela if we do that would be a very very trumpian thing to do well thank you for the free oil you

01:00:22.400 know i always say that trump picks up free money if you leave free money on a table and everybody

01:00:28.880 walks by it trump is the only one who say does anybody own that who's who's free money is that

01:00:37.120 and after he asks maybe the second time and nobody says it's theirs he takes it he just takes it so

01:00:44.720 uh clearly this is theft but it's also free money so very trumpian um now the big mystery about the

01:00:56.880 whole venezuelan operation is does it have one purpose or does it have multiple purposes and what

01:01:05.280 would they be and i don't know the answer to this question but it could be a threefer meaning that if you

01:01:13.280 think of it in terms of trying to accomplish any one thing then you would be confused because it's

01:01:19.440 really meant to accomplish more than one thing so the possible things some people say some people were

01:01:26.400 not me but are smarter than me about this topic say that really is lead that are leaning on venezuela

01:01:35.920 is also a way to lean on cuba because cuba and venezuela have a economic relationship that if you hurt one

01:01:45.520 you would hurt the other especially if you hurt venezuela's oil business i think that would hurt cuba the most

01:01:54.160 so question number one is our actions at the moment are they designed to take down or control two countries

01:02:05.280 uh you know via the monroe doctrine idea that you know we're the dominant or the big dog and that if

01:02:14.080 you don't do what we want and you happen to live in our part of the world we're going to come for you

01:02:20.160 so i would say maybe or maybe it just makes the anti-cuban people happy but it's not part of the primary

01:02:28.960 primary goal but i guess i would argue obviously it does put pressure on cuba but what do we expect

01:02:38.640 will happen from that do we expect that cuba will have a regime change have we not been expecting that

01:02:45.920 for six well how many years have we assumed that if we put pressure on cuba they'll have a regime change

01:02:54.400 so i don't know what we're trying to accomplish other than making cubans poorer

01:03:02.880 then of course the stated objective is to put pressure on the drug cartels well it does that

01:03:12.080 but as many people have pointed out fentanyl will probably just find another way and by the way venezuela

01:03:19.280 is not the big fentanyl um producer in the first place so yeah yeah it's bad for the cartels

01:03:29.200 but is that why we're doing it i i do agree with this thinking that the cartels have become so powerful

01:03:37.760 that you you risk them becoming like a major military now you could argue they're already a

01:03:45.280 major military but they're not any they're not any match for the american military at some point they

01:03:52.240 might become so powerful that you couldn't really directly attack them because it would just be too

01:03:57.360 much catastrophe so it could be that we're thinking ahead to make sure that the drug cartels don't reach

01:04:04.480 a certain scale and power and we're worried that they're coming to some kind of crossover point

01:04:10.560 so i don't think we're doing it uh well here's the fourth possible thing the fourth possible

01:04:19.920 reason is that the big money people i don't know the big energy money billionaires may have decided

01:04:27.360 that uh if we can just steal the oil from venezuela they will make enormous profits

01:04:33.360 which presumably would happen right if venezuela crumbled but we we captured their uh their energy

01:04:44.560 assets would that make any american companies richer or any billionaires from anywhere richer the answer is

01:04:53.840 maybe maybe so we've got at least four possible reasons that venezuela itself is a problem

01:05:03.360 and they want a regime change that doing that will take down cuba somehow but i don't see how

01:05:09.360 that the drug cartels got too powerful it was time to knock them down

01:05:14.160 uh or that some rich people have some enormous enormous financial gain

01:05:23.040 it's kind of a weird one

01:05:24.400 so i do not believe that our full military will move in and just occupy the country but i do like

01:05:35.840 the fact that trump never takes that off the table this episode is brought to you by square you're not

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01:06:06.480 visit square.ca to get started all right let's talk about ukraine and russia there's something

01:06:14.240 interesting going on here so apparently there's been yet more meetings with witkoff and jared and russia

01:06:22.720 uh ukraine and uh mostly ukraine and uh they're working on their 20-point plan

01:06:30.320 for a multilateral security agreement so what witkoff said is an interesting hint of where we're at

01:06:38.640 he said that negotiators focused in the recent talks on quote timeliness and sequencing of next steps

01:06:48.320 now it doesn't seem to me that you would talk about the timing of steps unless you thought you

01:06:53.840 were close to agreeing on what the steps were and i don't believe that we've been close to that before

01:07:01.120 so is his choice of words timeliness and sequencing is that telling us we've achieved some kind of

01:07:10.640 minimum negotiations and minimum state where we're close to agreeing on the content but not the timing

01:07:20.080 because if it comes down to timing that would suggest we're close to something that could work

01:07:25.520 and i'm not suggesting we are but his choice of words does suggest that and i have not seen that

01:07:32.160 before so that's that's my persuasion uh related observation so now u.s ukrainian and european officials

01:07:44.720 earlier this week uh they said that uh the problem is security guarantees for kiev

01:07:52.000 and here's what lindsey graham said now remember lindsey graham is a very anti-russian guy

01:08:02.480 and he said recently i meet the press i guess this weekend

01:08:07.920 that it was unclear if putin would accept the current deal so the negotiations were with ukraine

01:08:15.440 to tighten up the 20 points but we don't know if putin would accept it

01:08:20.160 and he says if he doesn't accept it that the approach should be to start seizing uh oil tankers

01:08:29.760 uh of that are carrying russian oil

01:08:34.480 and then to label russia a state sponsor of terrorism for what he what he says kidnapping 20 000 ukrainian kids

01:08:42.480 now you know one of the problems with getting a deal is that trump will be accused of making

01:08:52.240 a deal that's pro putin right that's a big problem how does how does trump avoid the accusation

01:09:00.720 that he's just working for putin he's a he's a puppet of putin and he's not trying to protect ukraine

01:09:07.120 he's not trying to protect europe he's just trying to make putin happy well it's a tough one uh because

01:09:14.560 we're at a point where putin is going to get something out of this deal that a lot of people

01:09:19.840 don't want him to get out of the deal so one way you could address that which is not a total answer

01:09:26.240 is you can send the most anti-putin guy onto the tv to say that he would be willing to support some kind

01:09:34.800 of a deal that looks like what we have now so if lindsey graham the most anti-russian guy

01:09:42.960 and nobody doubts that so there's nobody in the world who who doubts that he's anti-russian

01:09:48.480 if he says this deal works for us meaning america wouldn't that be a pretty good signal that we're not

01:09:56.800 doing it for for putin's benefit if lindsey graham says yes now i'm not a i'm not a giant fan

01:10:04.480 of lindsey graham's military first you know kind of approach to things i'm simply observing that if

01:10:14.240 he has a long long track record of being anti-putin he's exactly the person you want to send out to say

01:10:21.680 i could live with this deal that would mean something now of course no matter what happens

01:10:27.600 the democrats will use it as an attack on on trump but it was certainly weakened the attack so as i've

01:10:35.440 said before you never get a solution to a war under the condition that both sides are happier fighting

01:10:43.600 than not fighting which is the current situation or if one of them loses and nobody's losing that hard

01:10:52.480 yet you could argue that ukraine is losing but they're not losing hard enough that they would

01:11:00.080 instantly sue for peace so what do you do well as i've often told you the only path would be to find

01:11:08.560 a way where both sides feel like they won

01:11:15.600 so how can you create a situation with ukraine and europe and well in this case there are four sides you

01:11:23.360 can say how does u.s europe ukraine and russia how do they all win and i would argue that the one and

01:11:31.920 only way that could happen is if they find a way to reframe the war as an economic opportunity

01:11:38.880 now this is not a new idea obviously but as soon as you say hey i've got an idea where we all get rich

01:11:48.880 suddenly the war doesn't seem like such a good idea so let me just develop this idea a little bit

01:11:55.920 suppose instead of giving russia what's the better way to say this suppose we come up with a plan

01:12:04.560 where the energy and other resources of ukraine could be equitably i don't want to say shared but

01:12:12.720 could become the launching pad for the u.s to make a lot of money by investing in their energy

01:12:19.760 infrastructure uh ukraine could make a lot of money because their energy infrastructure could become great

01:12:26.720 um europe would be simply protected by the fact that the u.s would have such a big investment

01:12:35.760 that if putin attacked he could be guaranteed that the oligarchs in the united states would say

01:12:42.480 unleash the army because we have too much money resting in ukraine so could you create a situation

01:12:51.760 where russia would be better off economically you know they'd lose their sanctions and they'd they'd

01:12:57.600 give some relief um and they get to keep keep the stuff they've already conquered i think that's that's

01:13:05.120 a given and the u.s gets rich or has so much economic opportunity that that becomes the the security

01:13:15.360 guarantee so we would not necessarily have to say we will place our u.s army on ukrainian soil

01:13:24.160 we would only need to say you think we're going to make a hundred billion dollars no we're going to

01:13:30.000 make a trillion dollars so if you could create a picture where the u.s could get to a trillion dollars

01:13:38.640 of economic benefit just just for investing in ukraine it might take a while but you you throw the trillion

01:13:47.440 in there and people's people's eyes open it do you think that the u.s would employ military might

01:13:55.440 if uh if russia tried to encroach on our trillion dollar economic opportunity and the answer is of

01:14:02.880 course we would you might not like it you know a lot of people might disagree with it but yes yes you

01:14:10.400 could guarantee that if we had a trillion dollars at stake that our richest people would say uh you know

01:14:18.880 how i have a lot of influence over the government well this is where you pay me back uh this is where you

01:14:26.560 go to war with putin so i think there's some possibility that if we could tell a story where

01:14:33.920 the u.s has a trillion dollars to benefit uh that putin would know that attacking it had nothing to do

01:14:43.040 with uh europe and had nothing to do with nato that the u.s would unilaterally say okay we're gonna

01:14:50.320 fuck you up bad so maybe maybe we're getting close well apparently trump has tapped i like how they say

01:15:02.320 tapped he chose louisiana governor as a special greenland envoy new york post is reporting this

01:15:10.320 so in addition to being governor of louisiana uh this gentleman whose name i forgot to write down

01:15:18.000 a governor of louisiana will be the special envoy to greenland i guess we didn't have one we had no

01:15:26.560 special envoy now denmark of course is objecting because they they think oh no there's one more step

01:15:35.360 toward you trying to strong arm us out of owning greenland to which i say you know trump has already

01:15:42.400 established that uh has already established that he's going to go strong on what looks to me like

01:15:50.560 you know monroe doctrine doctrine times three and if you're in our part of the world you don't get to

01:15:57.680 say no if we have a legitimate security interest and do we have a legitimate security interest in

01:16:06.080 having at least a military uh military let's say strong association with greenland

01:16:15.040 and i would argue that if they don't give it to us we're going to take it not right away

01:16:21.600 but uh that is what i like about trump he's very clear you're either going to work with us or we're

01:16:28.560 going to take it and that's the modern road document right there in my in my opinion that's the monroe

01:16:34.560 doctrine so uh in the context of trump leading on venezuela uh that surely gives denmark some pause

01:16:47.520 because i don't think they expected our our navy to surround venezuela now even though venezuela has

01:16:55.600 nothing to do with greenland it suggests what level of military might trump might employ if we have an

01:17:04.400 economic slash security reason to do it so it's got to rattle them so i would say the current context

01:17:12.560 is good for trump uh he's kind of taking down the the verbal pressure um but it kind of suddenly puts

01:17:22.000 a little more pressure on them now here's what the new york post says it says that behind closed doors

01:17:28.960 administration officials have mapped out a plan for the island greenland to become independent and then

01:17:36.160 enter into a compact of free association with the u.s giving washington a role in certain areas

01:17:43.360 such as defense so it looks like step one is to get greenland to vote for their own independence

01:17:52.240 do you believe that our cia if it worked hard to co-opt the influential people in greenland we can't

01:18:02.080 be a lot of them you know you you could basically bribe every politician in greenland in about five

01:18:08.080 minutes because there are not many so between what the cia could do to bribe people plus what they could

01:18:16.160 do to threaten people plus the fact that when i say people i'm only talking about the you know the most

01:18:23.120 influential people who are already in greenland do you think we couldn't get them to say you know

01:18:29.840 we should be a free country if we're if we're asking them to join the united states that's too far

01:18:39.200 we wouldn't get that but if you said hey what do you think of your idea of more independence no we're

01:18:47.520 happy being owned by denmark but are you are you happy being owned by denmark because the other option

01:18:54.240 is you could vote for independence do you think that denmark would uh deny you your independence

01:19:03.440 if let's say 70 percent of you voted for freedom no so if you could get the the local leaders by

01:19:12.880 bribery or incentive or i will make you rich which wouldn't cost as much i mean it would be it would be the

01:19:20.160 cheapest color revolution of all time because it's a small population um we absolutely 100 percent

01:19:31.360 could co-opt their government the influentials into agreeing that greenland should be independent

01:19:38.720 we would not be able to get them to say they should join america but if you became independent

01:19:44.960 and you no longer had the support of denmark could you survive unless you had really productive

01:19:53.280 some kind of association with the united states and probably canada too and the answer is not really

01:19:59.760 i mean you you would have to make deals with the united states for example uh you can share in our

01:20:07.040 development of our development of our natural resources if you provide physical security against russia and

01:20:15.440 china which they're gonna need they're gonna need it so it feels to me like they have a 100 functional

01:20:25.680 long-term plan to get some kind of at least monroe doctrine control over greenland's physical security

01:20:35.440 which would be paired with some kind of sharing of resources

01:20:41.360 and i would say that if you wait long enough we almost 100 are going to get that done i don't know

01:20:48.320 if it could get done under the trump administration it might be a 10-year thing but if you give me 10 years

01:20:56.800 i say there's a hundred percent chance that this plan would work 10 years i don't know if the government

01:21:06.400 would be consistent for 10 years so the the big if is what happens if trump leaves office or what happens

01:21:14.640 if uh uh a democrat becomes president and everything will change

01:21:21.600 well that story is boring so i saw on x that elon musk stated that tim waltz

01:21:29.520 is guilty of hiding vast fraud now who would know more than that than elon musk because he was doging

01:21:39.120 things uh and apparently and you also remember that tim waltz was the strongest voice uh accusing

01:21:47.920 elon musk of being the corrupt one what is it we've learned about democrat strategy

01:21:53.920 well we've learned that they literally this is not a joke they've literally uh accuse you of whatever

01:22:01.200 they're doing so the fact that tim waltz made such a big deal of accusing elon musk of being the corrupt

01:22:09.120 one uh that does strongly suggest that he was the corrupt one meaning tim waltz was and it's hard for

01:22:16.960 me to believe that tim waltz was not in on at least some of the corruption because he's also being

01:22:23.920 accused by credible people of of moving against whistleblowers so at the same time that he was

01:22:31.760 accusing elon musk of being corrupt he was frying whistleblowers in his own state who were the ones

01:22:40.560 who would have outed him and others for being the corrupt ones so just hold in your mind for a moment

01:22:48.720 that newsom and and tim waltz are two of the most prominent democrats and i would say almost certainly

01:22:57.440 they have a lot to answer for a lot to answer for anyway i don't know if i even care about this next

01:23:06.160 story but israel approved 19 new settlements obviously they're trying to make it impossible to

01:23:12.480 have a two-state settlement but that is no that's no surprise and i guess israel is bombing and attacking

01:23:21.920 hezbollah in beirut they think they can they think they're very close to completely destroying the

01:23:28.560 military of hezbollah so that's just more than more of the same uh i will remind you that israel is not my

01:23:39.200 country so i observe what they do it's not up to me to approve it or to deny it it's not my country so

01:23:50.240 i i simply observe um if it affects america then i get i get involved

01:24:02.640 so according to the university of minnesota there's been a breakthrough in lab-grown spinal cords

01:24:12.640 so apparently they use 3d printing to create a structure that stem cells can be attached to

01:24:20.480 that become lab-grown tissues that can repair nerve fibers in spinal cords i might need that

01:24:30.480 apparently the problem with repairing nerve nerve cells is that you you can't control them when

01:24:39.040 they're growing and you need them to be sort of on a on a straight path but i think the 3d printing

01:24:46.800 allows you to take the lab-grown cells and put them in a path that connects broken tissues or broken nerve

01:24:57.760 endings i guess that might be exactly what i need to walk someday so hurry up hurry up

01:25:05.200 so the national debt's going to approach a trillion dollars in just interest payments and i saw somebody

01:25:16.000 estimate that uh we're doomed by 2035 which is longer than i would have expected um and i always wonder

01:25:25.440 why we're not more worried about debt because it seems like the biggest problem that's coming

01:25:30.560 um but then i wonder is there reason that we don't obsess about our debt problem

01:25:37.280 because the only things we ever obsess about are things that some billionaire with dark money

01:25:43.440 makes us think is the top priority do you ever wonder about that with all the problems in the world

01:25:50.880 how do we decide which of the big ones that we talk about and address

01:25:54.480 i don't think it's because of the big ones i think it's because nothing becomes a big story

01:26:01.680 whether it's climate change or anything else unless there's some gigantic big money dark money

01:26:08.320 thing driving the story and i don't think any of them are driving the story about our debt is too high

01:26:14.960 that's like there's no billionaire who is putting money on that story

01:26:19.600 so that might be why we don't worry about as much we just haven't been trained to worry about as much

01:26:24.960 as we should but i do wonder if elon must is right that uh in the ai and robot future which is coming up

01:26:34.880 fast that that will make money worthless because everybody will have everything for free the the robots

01:26:42.880 and the ai will just do all the hard work and we will just enjoy the abundance now if that's true

01:26:50.560 does that give us some kind of escape path from debt because money wouldn't mean anything so even if

01:26:58.240 you said hey we're going to cancel our debt we're not going to pay you back that even the even the people

01:27:04.320 who owned the debt would say oh sure whatever you know you could pay me back but the money isn't worth

01:27:10.000 anything because everything's free so that's pretty optimistic i can't quite get there that's a lot of

01:27:19.440 optimism but it's not impossible and i don't want to bet against the elon musk view that's always a bad idea

01:27:27.520 but i wonder in a related story uh you know scott besant uh is pushing the uh the trump accounts

01:27:36.320 where where every baby that's born gets a thousand dollars in an account but you could add several

01:27:43.040 thousand dollars if you're a parent up to five thousand dollars a year so that by the time the

01:27:48.080 kid becomes 18 they would have a nice little nest egg but here's the here's the problem that automatically

01:27:57.280 falls out from that so these accounts would be available to rich and poor and whether you're rich or

01:28:03.920 poor you get a thousand dollars in your account but whether you're rich or poor you also get to add

01:28:12.560 your own parental money say five thousand dollars a year if the rich people add the five thousand

01:28:18.560 dollars a year but the poor people obviously do not what happens when the poor kid and the rich kid

01:28:25.840 turn 18. the rich kid will have ten times as much money than the poor kid so if what you're worried

01:28:33.360 about is income you know inequality doesn't this guarantee that it's going to be really really bad

01:28:42.960 so i wonder how to deal with that i do think that that raising money for babies is easier than raising

01:28:51.360 money for other things because even i'm thinking i think huh maybe i should donate some money to that

01:28:57.280 thing that that looks like but then i think wait a minute in 18 years which is when the first kid

01:29:05.680 would get the benefit from it money might not be worth anything so either the debt will have killed us

01:29:13.360 by then or elon musk is right and money will have no value so we've got this weird situation where if

01:29:21.840 if it were a steady state which it never is this would be one of the best ideas ever

01:29:29.280 but because we absolutely cannot predict what the world looks like in five years much less 10 years

01:29:35.360 much less 18 it's hard to imagine that things would stay as stable as they are now such that this goes the

01:29:44.640 way you think it would go the the changes in the world are just so big you know debt plus ai plus robots

01:29:54.000 i don't know i'm not opposed to this idea it's just hard for me to imagine everything works out

01:30:01.200 anyway there's a russian general they got killed with a bomb under his car in moscow

01:30:06.240 so in moscow is the key point here and i thought to myself wouldn't that be the perfect murder

01:30:13.280 if you wanted to kill a russian general because everybody assumes ukraine did it but suppose you

01:30:20.080 had some other reason to do it and you just wanted to murder that guy you could so get away with it

01:30:27.040 because because the russians would just assume that the ukrainians did it that i don't even think

01:30:33.360 they would look at anyone else it'd be the perfect murder but it does make me wonder if ukraine has

01:30:38.640 taken a decapitation strategy like israel so you know how israel just consistently kills leaders of

01:30:48.720 their their enemy countries they just never stop doing it well there's a head of hamas well there's

01:30:55.280 a head of this well there's that and i've always said that taking out the top leaders is an excellent

01:31:02.720 long-term strategy because eventually you eventually you've taken out all the capable people

01:31:10.720 and the only people left to assume control are less capable but also if you're in a context of

01:31:18.640 negotiating for peace if you're the generals and generals would have some influence with putin

01:31:24.720 um if you could convince the generals that if they stop now they are not um targets but if they don't

01:31:35.040 stop now or convince putin to make pace if they don't do it that there will be continuous

01:31:41.840 assassinations of generals so as a strategy i would call that the israel strategy and i think it's a strong

01:31:50.320 one it doesn't mean it's going to work but as a strategy it looks pretty strong all right that is

01:31:57.440 everything i wanted to say today would anybody like a closing sip how many people we got today

01:32:08.720 now we got a pretty good crowd i think you have earned the closing sip

01:32:13.520 so what did you like about today's show while i'm sipping with you tell me in the comments which

01:32:23.200 points you liked do you like to reframe uh did you like i don't know is there any part of this do you

01:32:32.800 like more than any other part or do you or do you just like hanging out tell me

01:32:43.520 okay remember i was telling you yesterday that i'm a proud narcissist but only only

01:32:53.760 if i'm creating value for other people so i would be happy to be praised for what i did right

01:33:01.120 but only if it made a difference

01:33:03.920 you like to reframe you like hanging out all right let me pause some of these comments

01:33:16.160 just like hanging out that's perfectly acceptable and you like me destroying the democratic party i like

01:33:23.680 to reframe yeah the hangout

01:33:28.080 you like my blanket and my attitude

01:33:37.440 uh what else reframe in the start about smart people changing their mind

01:33:44.000 i could you know i i felt that that was valuable

01:33:52.240 a true narcissist only cares about adding value to themselves that's that's not true

01:33:58.080 that is not true uh well it's a definition so i guess you can you can have your own definition that's fair

01:34:08.320 oh drawing the map for republican success okay the persuasion talk is the most beneficial it might be

01:34:18.080 you like

01:34:21.120 you like seeing me be resilient

01:34:24.960 sorry

01:34:29.520 you like my non-tribal approach good

01:34:37.120 i get too much credit for

01:34:41.200 what i do because a lot of it is you know what choice do i have

01:34:48.080 uh daily aid of our bs radar

01:34:55.920 oh i love you too

01:34:59.600 all right

01:35:10.160 you're so wrote i see some racist comments which i do not approve of

01:35:15.520 um you know you're entitled to your opinion but the the racist comments i just i just think they're

01:35:23.920 uninformed just totally uninformed

01:35:30.400 talking about jv

01:35:37.520 all right

01:35:37.840 uh we don't need privatized social security

01:35:46.000 yeah um so somebody is reminding the locals people that i've given one person uh permission to be

01:35:55.520 inappropriate so so on the locals platform one individual was consistently over the line you know

01:36:05.680 just unacceptable uh kind of public opinions and instead of banning him

01:36:13.760 i i uh with his agreement he is now defined as our jester

01:36:20.560 so the jester says things that are absolutely inappropriate just a hundred percent but he's the

01:36:27.600 only one who's allowed to do it right only one person so that's worked really well because there's a

01:36:34.960 little bit of an outlet for that behavior but we reframe it as the jester

01:36:42.400 so that it doesn't have too much of a sticky quality to it all right we're just testing that

01:36:50.480 all right everybody time to go spend tremendous spending time with you i hate to leave

01:36:56.640 leave but nothing lasts forever i'll see you tomorrow bye for now

01:37:11.280 bye

01:37:16.800 you

01:37:17.280 You

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - December 22, 2025

Episode 3050 CWSA 12⧸22⧸25

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